Mike Twining

Fred- Sounds to me like you did it the best way! Boolean operations tend to leave the resulting shpae without "intelligence". If you were to change the pipe sizes (and you had used the boolean operation), you would have to re-create the whole boolean operation, where as now all you need to do is change some size-boxes. If you ask me, you did it the easy way. MikeT

Ahhh.... I didn't know you could do that! It is close, but not quite there. It is a nice visual cue though!

IronWOOD is not complaining about your Video Memory here... so your video card is not part of the problem. How much physical memory is in your machine? I would throw a couple more stick of RAM in there... then take a look at using the /3GB switch so you can allocate that memory better (there are a few threads in here that address this topic). If I were you I would ignore the part about increasing your Virtual memory (a.k.a. pagefile) and go straight to increasing your REAL memory... it will make your IronCAD experience a lot more peacefull (and keep your Chi centered, your fung-shui in balance, and your Karma good). MikeT.

Oh yeah... they have benchmark tests at TomsHardware.com (among others). This thing is pretty sweet...(for gamers). Almost all of the whiz-bang features are shaders, anti-aliasing and what-not... mostly geared to rendering high-resolution, photo-realistic images in (almost) real-time. You know that the Quadro versions (CAD version) of the new chipset will be out soon though. Also, they are talking about putting up to 512 megs of memory on those hummers! I guess it is time to think about utilizing more than 128 Meg of video memory for rendering in IronCAD (hint hint). MikeT

Using the "Rendering" tab under part properties give me the power to adjust the rednering detail of a part in a scene, and moving the little slider bar shows me a representation of how many facets may appear on my part. Is there any way that I can either determine the actual number of facets, or render the part in such a way that the facets are shown (not using facet shading)? I was hoping to get a wireframe type rendering that included facets as well...something similar to an FEA mesh. I have some parts that seem to be slowing the machine down pretty badly, however their "Surface Smoothness" remains at the default 30. I have a feeling that there may be some small features dramatically increasing the number of facets on some of the parts. Thanks MikeT

quote: .... at a certain point with all the externally linked files, things start to fall apart quickly.id=quote>id=quote> Amen to that.... I think I am going prematurely bald trying to work drawings with hundreds of linked files...not much longer and I am going to be doing a little test of the .dwg export tool if you know what I mean... MikeT

I just got through my second re-install in 3 days, and just for kicks I thought I would try the /3gb switch, not expecting much (the last 2 installs required the patch for the /3gb switch to work)... and low and behold she booted right up. I have no idea what the difference could be, but it is working now....patch free. MikeT

On the NVIDIA site (when you try to download the new Quadro drivers) they have a whole list of software programs and the "Partner Certified" driver versions you should download. Next to IronCAD it tells me that I should download the 45.23 drivers, however the latest drivers are all the way up to 56.64! Seems to me that there is a bit of a gap there. Is there any reason that I should not go and download the latest (56.64) drivers over the IronCAD recommended (45.23) drivers? Anyone else totally disregard the recommendations and go straight for the new drivers? MikeT

I'm with Tom. Whatever it takes to get multiple standard views on the same sheet. MikeT

All I know is that I am runnig a Dell Precision 450 (Intel Xeon), and I get no love without the patch. MikeT

I think "some" flakiness might be a bit of an understatement. My computer has not been what you call "stable" since. I am in the que with our IT guys to get my whole computer reformatted and re-installed, and I am not going to install the so-called patch this time unless I really have to. Be warned, that you can't just download the patch, you have to call Microsoft directly to get it, and in doing so they tell you that it is a "beta" fix... the (not so educated) tech support (We have been spoiled by the IronTECH guys), I think was using a Mac, but anyway, I didn't get a warm-fuzzy feeling after talking with her. Either way, my personal advice to anyone who tries to use the /3gb and gets an un-bootable computer: Forget the patch, try to find another computer! MikeT

Count me in on that too. As far as tutorials go, the more there are the better. MikeT P.S. I have always thought that a "best practices" tutorial would be nice, seeing as how there are 100 different ways to do things in IronCAD and ususally only 1 or 2 that I would consider the "right way".

Thanks Mike! Just so you know, the extension was the problem, not the space (no jpegs I guess). I believe your user name (like mine) contains a space anyway, so...thats not it. Becides, most browsers will convert a space into a "%20". For the rest of you who want to insert photos, the following worked for me: 1. Click the little "Attach File" paperclip. 2. Select your file (locally) for upload. 3. When upload is complete, take note of the path (will be something like "\community\upload\(username)\(filename)") 4. In your post, select the "Insert Image" from the top toolbar. 5. Insert your image path (the \community\upload.... part) in between the tags. 6. Sit back and enjoy your picture-included post. MikeT.

So, how do you guys (who know how to do it) insert pictures into your posts? When I hit the "insert image" button all I get is "[ img][/ img]" (without the spaces). I tried to upload the file so that I could put a path in between the tags, but I get a "File Type not allowed" message when I tried the .jpg format. ... I figure, I have been using the forums for about a year now, might as well learn what I am doing. Thanks MikeT.

Hell yeah! Now that is/was a good idea. I love how just when you think something can't be done, someone comes up with a cool IronWOOD hack that makes everything easy. Shoot... I would like to see Pro/Motion do that! MikeT

Tom- Not quite sure the best way to make the belt, but I would go with a 3d sweep (for starters). For reasons below, I would make the thing in 2 parts. As for the animation, since there is really no way to make a part change dimension, what you might want to do is make your belt from 2 parts (which overlap at an "unstretched" state). This way, (as long as you have 2 parallel sections of the belt) as you move the sections away from eachother, the overlap will fill the gap and look like the belt is elongating. Of corse, this will look a lot better if the part edges are turned off (which I assume they will be in an animation) so you don't see the overlap (the other option is to make the belt black (like you do) so you don't see the edges. MikeT Edit: After looking at your sketch a little closer, I don't see any parallel sections of your belt...since that means that the geometry will be consistantly changing as you reposition your parts. My unprofessional, overly lazy opinion is that you can't do it without a lot of pain and suffering. If you have Windows XP (or some movie editing software) you might be able to hack together individual frames of movies of your belt from different "stretch" states ( which would require you to render lots of individual frames after tweaking your belt geometry....) but like I said... for the lazy man, it can't be done.

Working on a little company progapanda, making movies with a little "cool" factor in them and what not. This morning I loaded up the file I have been working on to find the message: "At least one SmartMotion segment failed to load correctly into the SmartMotion editor and will be ignored." ...only when I go to the SmartMotion Editor, everything appears and the animation proceeds correctly! How do I determine what animation segment IronCAD didn't like so I can try to do something about it? MikeT

Well, today my computer started generating these files (WinXP, IC 6.0 pu2). It has been running without creating these files for about a year, and now I am getting these .dll files all over the place. You may want to take a closer look at what you did to make this "not a known issue with 6.0 PU2" cause I have a feeling there is a little work left to do. The only thing that I do know is that all critical updates are installed automatically on this machine... that could have started the problem. MikeT

There is a complete list of how IronCAD deals with different AutoCAD entities in the built-in IronCAD help (F1). Look under "AutoCAD 2D DWG/DXF Files". In just browsing, I can see a lot of "Ignored" and "Not Processed". Hope this helps. MikeT.

Haha!

Another (quicker if your comp wont boot) option for your boot.ini file is to ADD another line (not just add the /3gb switch). In Chris's example, your file would look something like: boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional Himem" /fastdetect /3GB this will allow you to select wether or not you want to boot your machine with the /3GB switch. To make your life easier, make sure you have different names within the quotes so you can tell the difference between your 2 choices). If your machine won't boot (like mine didn't), you won't have to go through the hasstle of using your recovery disk (not that this is a good excuse not to make one). MikeT

David- One more thing to add (to answer one of the questions you asked). In order to have the "H_Block" and "H_" whatever work as a cut and not a positive shape (as your are seeing) you need to drop these items onto an existing positive shape. As an example, if you want a block with a hole in the middle, you first drop a block into the scene, then you select the "H_cylinder" (or various other tools available for making holes) from the catalog and drop that part ON TO the original block. This will cause the "H_Cylinder" to become a feature of you part (you will get a little + sign next to the part, which you can expand and see all the features). If you drop Shape2 onto an existing Shape1, then Shape2 will be a feature of Shape1 (1 part with 2 features). If you drop Shape2 onto nothing in the scene, then Shape2 will become its own (new) part. Hope this helps you out! MikeT

If you don't mind creating a lot of individual part files, you could just save the individual parts separately (and have them linked to the master scene). It would make the drawings a lot smaller I bet (filesize I mean). MikeT

Just a side note, if I were you I would avoid Boolean operations like the plague (so they say). You can get the same functionality by using an array of "H" parts (or negative shapes) which will allow you to control the geometry and maintain the "intelligence" of the different parts. MikeT

I'm no architect, but I use the Major units only all the time (most recently in a drawing package for a home remodel). Not that it means anything because it was only being looked at by some poorly educated city employee who was more interested in his lunch hour than approving plans (I love getting drawing approved by the city). Also, if you are asking because of some IC enhancement, I would LOVE to see only the Major units if possible (same thing in using Architectural format for refrence dimensions... if I have 265' - 0", I only want to see 265'). MikeT