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don_temple

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  1. I couldn't have said it better. Modeling in IC is pretty darn good, almost acceptable but drafting is the worst. I burn so many hours overcoming the bugs in drafting that the job's profitability is sometimes completely lost. I don't want to go into specific bugs but let's just say, customers are sometimes not happy with prints because of the way IC draws and exports them. The problems have and will continue to cost me business if I don't switch.
  2. Some time soon my subscription to this board will expire. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with all of you and collaborating on ways to improve IronCad. Over time, there have been many occasions when I wanted to post to this board but decided not to. In the early years I didn’t want to be a rabble rouser. After so many versions and so little progress I tried raising some ruckus. With so many issues still unaddressed my participation has waned because it seems to do little good. It seems that someone has to shake things up so here are my final comments: * Many members seem to have stopped using this message board. I propose it’s because the thought and effort we invest in proposing improvements and solutions appears to be largely ignored. * IC development engineers need to understand how the product is used. Watch a new user to see what they have trouble with, watch a seasoned user to find out what functionality is lacking or cumbersome. * The persistent appearance of the same ER’s and bug reports over several years is evidence that he current system for documenting, prioritizing and implementing bug fixes and enhancements needs improvement. I’ve used a lot of programs over the decades and I really think IronCad could be the best. Please please please, continue improving IronCad to make it the wonderful program it could be.
  3. Is there an external thread tool in V8? I need them to show up in the drawing.
  4. I'm sad to say there are dozens of ERs and bugs on this forum that have never been addressed. Some are a bit bizarre and some would require major development. I understand those ERs taking longer to address. But many ERs and bug reports are simple items like adding a user preference setting or fixing reverse rotation of the triball. Not only are these items (and others) critical to the function of any CAD program, they are discussed on this forum on a very regular basis. I often wonder about the product development philosophy or vision at IronCad. The only hint I’ve seen was in the protracted battle over automatic feature reordering. IC did not want to disable it because doing so would be against the product philosophy. Meanwhile, forum users explained at length how and why this was destroying models and wasting time. It indicated to me that the needs of professional CAD users are of little importance to the company. That observation has only been reinforced by the company’s failure to implement many of the critical, well conceived recommendations discussed with great regularity in this forum. I hate disparaging IronCad but I've seen at least three versions in which simple issues have gone unaddressed. I'm grateful for the new features we have but frustrated with the bugs and inefficiencies that persist from version to version to version... Making prints in this program is so frustrating and inefficient that I have no choice but to buy something else, which is a nice segue to price. IC costs the same as other mid range modelers yet has the annoying quirks of a $100 program from Office Depot. Another curiosity in pricing is the difference between Innovate and IronCad. I know there are some modeling tool differences but the inclusion of drafting in IronCad is the big difference to me. The same drafting module that makes IC so frustrating adds $2000 to the price. I apologize for the length of this post and I would apologize for its content but this needs to be said. Only professionals are going to pay what IronCad costs. We’re going to loft complex surfaces, draw big prints and all the other things professional Cad users do. Each release of IronCad needs to be better at all these things. Here in the forum, professional Cad users explain what we need, how to improve features we already have and possible methods to implement new ones. To maintain current users and attract new ones, IronCad needs to apply this feedback to the product. To date however, I haven’t seen it. Please please please prove me wrong and make IronCad a program I can continue using. I really don’t want to buy something else, nor do I want loft features that don’t follow their guide curves, space balls that move in opposite directions, a TriBall that rotates the wrong way, confirmation that I want threads on my drawings or 3 decimal place dimensions all the time. Please make IronCad the great program it could be.
  5. Is anyone using DXF exports of drawings for CNC programming? If so, how is it working in v7.0.2? Thanks, Don
  6. A client just sent some parts that require non planar parting line detection and I want to do draft analysis after a very embarrassing draft oversight on a recent mold. I know Think3 has had these tools for years, SolidWorks has molding tools and I think SolidEdge does too. What do you guys think is the best bang for the buck? As much as I love IronCAD these parts are just too complex and this customer is too important to use anything less than molding specific tools. Thanks, Don
  7. Thanks Tom. Can we convert this to an ER? It would be better if we could create a solid and set its operation to "subtract material" and by that virtue, it would be an H shape or negative shape. It would also be good if we could set the behavior "add material" or "subtract material" when we are editing the catalog item.
  8. What should I do to a catalog item so it automatically subtracts material from another part when I drop it on the other part?
  9. Version 7 is the first in which I've experienced this problem. It's a pretty frustrating bug, any hope of getting it fixed?
  10. I've had some inquiries about IronCad's ability to import and export ProE parts and assemblies. Is anyone doing this with any regularity? If so, how's it working? The major questions are whether the models will maintain any feature information or if they will become "dumb" solids when being translated into IC or out to ProE. Also, can whole assemblies be exported as a .g or .neu file? If anyone has worked out what to tell customers with respect to this translator I would be very grateful for your input or experiences.
  11. For screen shots and annotations check this out: http://www.moodysoft.com/spx/index.html I recommend the Capture product and Studio to add some basic annotations. The Graphic Editor program might be worth it if you don't have PhotoShop or PaintShop Let's see if I can add some screenshots for an example
  12. Is anyone interested in an ATI FireGL X1-128 video card? Its served me well but I'm doing most of my work on a notebook now. BTW the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 handles IronCAD pretty well. Here are the workstation card specs: http://www.ati.com/products/fireglx1/index.html The 8x AGP power connector is included as are two DVI to VGA converters (its dual head, very cool to put all email etc on the small monitor or flat panel and run IC on the big one.) If interested please email don@qkdraw.com
  13. A client and I want to try opening a Catia file to work out the bugs for future projects. Does the Catia translator have a time limit or license fee like the Granite translator used to (and maybe still does)?
  14. This will be very helpful but I still wish the items could be listed in an order not related to the scene browser. This is especially relevant when you want all your fasteners listed last but they are part of sub assemblies that appear higher in the feature tree. There are a couple of ways the BOM could be improved in this area; A. A check box for "Order the BOM based on the Part Number attribute" B. The ability to drag and drop BOM items in the BOM window to set the order, Move Up or Move Down buttons would also be acceptable. Maybe this could be accomplished with a mapping table in the background, something like this: See attached image
  15. I installed the Mozilla calendar (Sunbird) and email (Thunderbird) over the weekend and so far I'm quite pleased. The calendar could be a little nicer but its adequately functional and stable especially for its development stage. I'm happy to use it instead of the Outlook bloatware. The email client (Thunderbird) and web browser (Firefox) are outstanding. Thunderbird is small and quick with an intelligent (bayesian) spam filter built in. Firefox has some really nice features built in that make it more convenient than Internet Explorer. Thunderbird imported all my email and the address book from outlook. Sunbird had to import appointments via a CSV file but that wasn't too difficult. The programs install easily and seem to be easy to uninstall although I haven't had the inclintation to do so. Overall this seems like a viable and affordable step away from M$. If all goes well I will uninstall Outlook in a week or two.
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