Eric Foy

Thank you, Kevin! That's exactly what I needed.

Is there any way to get in and fiddle with the inner workings of the Tools Catalog stuff? For instance, I would like to change some of the Fasteners to make them generate slightly different shaped heads of bolts...?

Oh... Just the usual new OS rollout stuff. Networking breaks every other day, must be reset... settings are scattered all over the place in an entirely unintelligent manner, two or three different generations of UI look and feel... It just seems like a whole bunch of spaghetti code. Everything from authentication issues to NTP server/client ambiguities and general no-workyness, to their new and disimproved licensing scheme wherein the software is licensed to a person who must have a hotmail or other approved email domain, to "Let's set you up with a Microsoft account" garbarge that I just hate. Sorry, everyone, I'm just on a personal rant here, because I don't like the way the world is going, that's all. But, man! If we could run IronCAD on linux... think what a sweet world that would be! You could embrace such superior standards, like Unix conventions, ODF export... Android functionality... all the really good stuff... and be free from the shackles of M$. Plus we would all get an immediate performance boost, to boot! "But what about the ribbon interface?" you may ask. Who cares? Not me. I've never used it, and I never will. I get the job done with half the mouse clicks using the legacy interface. Again, that's just me and my personal taste, which, I understand, isn't in line with the rest of the world... End of Rant. Nothing really to see here. You should move along now. ;-)

I AM FED UP! Microsoft has gone too far, and Windows 10 SUCKS EGGS — on SO many levels! IronDudes: I will help pay you to create a port of IronCAD to linux. PLEEEEAAAASSSE....!!! HEEEELLLLPPP UUUUSSSS !

My entire Title Block is on a locked layer, and all "variable" text fields reference system or part variables (attributes). You can create your own custom attributes and then edit them either through document properties or part properties dialogs. Setting up the right hot-keys helps make it less tedious. But that way you don't accidentally move a piece of text when you click to edit it.

Harley, I had the same problem: It didn't work. Then I figured out this fine point: Before dropping the Brep part into the catalog, you must select it at the Brep level (not the Part level) by drilling down. It must be in the catalog without its "part wrapper" in order to join itself to the sheet metal part.

I did a "Save As" into a new directory to get the answer... The main file and all linked files total 45MB, 24 files. _______ After a a bunch of experimentation, I have achieved much better performance. The most significant settings were: 1. Options|Performance|Rendering: Select "Use low quality transparency effects when FPS is low." 2. Options|Rendering|Advanced OpenGL/Direct3D|Display List: Select "Segment." Comparing OpenGL, OpenGL2, and DirectX... I ran some "spin tests" on a given model and looked at the FPS. Here's how they scored: OpenGL : 10.5 FPS OpenGL2 : 9.2 FPS DirectX : 8.0 FPS The OpenGL2 gives by far the prettiest picture, so that's what I'm using. With all that said, I'm still open to anyone's input to my original question.

I'm looking for tips on the best way to increase my IronCAD performance. If anyone has any suggestions based on experience, and given my current configuration, I would be most appreciative! Where my system slows down is when I load a large assembly. The video processing seems to be what grinds to a halt, requiring that I turn off edge visibily, and then everything seems to cruise along quite well. Another slow-down point is in the IC drawing environment, particularly while placing item bubbles, as the program draws the selected item in green highlight. Does anyone know if the program utilizes the graphics hardware in the drawing environment, and will a better graphics card therefore increase performance there? Specifically, I'm prepared to drop the 750 bucks on a Quadro 4200. Do you think I'll get a boost from that? Or should I concentrate more on, maybe, a dual Xeon system or something? Thoughts, anyone...?

Is there somewhere an exhaustive description of just what are all the ramifications of this? My specific questions: 1. Exactly what is a "relation?" 2. Will this affect other assembly files that link to the file being unlinked? 3. Are there any weird side-effects that will result from this operation? Can somebody shed some light here? Thanks.

One other idea: If the cavity is an extruded cross section, then first fillet the corners of the cross section of the master cavity (they all follow suit). Now you can create your blend by simply selecting the bottom face of each cavity, which is way easier than picking all those edges.

Thanks, Jonas... That's how I figured it might work, but I thought I had encountered an incongruity in that method. I'll report back if I continue to see any discrepancies in this behavior.

So here's the problem: In developing a drawing set, I have an assembly drawing in which subasseblies must be called out as "treat as part". In other words, they should not be expanded in the BOM on the top level assembly drawing. But then, in the subassembly drawing of the same sub-assembly, the assembly needs to show in the BOM as "expand"ed. The problem is that logically it only makes sense for these subassemblies to be *linked* into the top level scene. So every time I go to edit a drawing, I need to change the "expand" or "treat as part" in order to get the BOM to render properly, depending on whether I am in the top level assy or the subassy drawing. Is there a way to reconcile this, or am I stuck with this dilemma?

Innatrode