Mike Twining

...So I am crazy... that is too bad. How about an ER then.

I'm having an early senior moment here. I could have sworn that there was an easy way to reverse the direction of a guide curve (for a sweep), but for the life of me I can't figure out how (I am talking about the direction of the 2d guild curve line, NOT the sweep extrude direction). Was I just making up the thought that this is possible? A colleague has created a fully constrained guide curve where the end point (NOT the start point) is located at 0,0 (center of the x-section), and therefore the sweep does not compute properly. I told him, "Right-click the curve, select outline, right-click the outline, select 'reverse direction', done!" as I rattled it off in my mind. He then told me I was crazy....am I?

I was just curious what PDM software worked well with IronCAD, and what people out there are using. I would love any feedback on the matter...

Tom- You may want to try a 64-bit machine. A 32-bit OS has a max filesize of 4GB. Just the fact that you say the new AVI is 5GB implies that this was done on a 64-bit machine, but if not, I would not be surprised if the file itself is garbage. If it WAS done on a 64-bit machine, there are both 32-bit AND 64-bit media players probably installed. Usually, the 32-bit one is the default, and so you need to go and hunt down the 64-bit executable on the disk.... of course, the reason 32-bit players are the default is because there is not a lot of support yet for the wide range of video codecs, which could be your next problem...

I know I am definitely in the linux camp, but as a realist, I am not holding my breath. 1) The IC code (from what I can tell) heavily relies on MS... even back in the day I think you even needed to have Office installed (...either that or you couldn't install Office AFTER IC... something like that). 2) V10 was basically a rendering and MS facelift update 3) IC won't even run on Vista (the supported OS mfg. latest system) yet. 4) You don't really want all your coders working on porting a program to another OS until you have a pretty stable & bug-free foundation to port, and I don't think you get there without shifting the updates away from new features and towards performance/stability/bug-fix arena, and although I would certainly go for that type of thinking, my guess is that I am in the minority there. ...although, the IronCoders seem to be committed to C now (and have no real love for Visual Basic), so there is that going for us!

Perhpas it is time IronCAD implemented an "EZSave" that was not written by some hack....

When applying a constraint dimension to a 2D arc section, the resultant dimensional constraint is defined as a radius. Is there a way that I can get a diameter dimensional constraint on my cross section (as I want to use it as a driving dimension in a 2D drawing, but I don't want to have a Radius)?

To bring the post back from the dead: I thought I would add some information I found while doing my homework: 1) Dual booting Vista & XP can be done. It takes "similar" steps to dual booting other multi-OS sytems. The good news is that Vista has a drive manager utility which will allow you to re-size the Vista partition while Vista is running (something like Partition Magic). This allows you to create the space and additional partition you need for XP if you are starting with a Vista only install. 2) Vista only boots with the Vista boot loader (i.e. the XP boot loader, or Lilo/Grup can't be in charge of the booting. You can use the Vista boot loader to load XP, or shoot you over to Lilo/Grub. Unfortunately, modifying the Vista boot loader is a little more involved than editing a boot.ini type file. The good news is that there are free programs which will make it real easy for you: EasyBCD. Step-by-step instructions on Vista/XP booting can be found here:

Amen to that! You can manke your yearly suggested Windows re-install that much more painless.

Hey... their OS, their rules. Who's bright idea was it to pick a microsoft extension for IronCAD files to begin with? I think it is long past time for a new IronCAD Scene file extension...

That did the trick. Thanks Kev! As for the order of install events: You need to install Ironcad first and get it all up to date (for whichever version you want to run). Then you install Algor (v20 and up should automatically find IronCAD and register the necessairy .dll's). I have seen where updates to IronCAD (post Algor install) will break the mesh button in IC.... all I did was open up Algor, let it do its updates and it fixes (usually) the mesh button by itself.

I'm having a similar problem (with the Algor Mesh button not working) in IC 9.1.1 on one of 4 similarly configured machines. We used to be running Algor 20 (mesh button greyed out), tried a repair... still greyed out. Then tried an uninstall of Algor 20, install of algor 21, and the button is still greyed out. Then tried manually registering 2 Algor .dll's (named in some install help file), and the mesh button is STILL greyed out. Anyone with big ideas?

I agree. Just because a part is unlinked does not mean that it is a different part. Only if the unlinked part is modified does the question of part numbers arise. I am totally against IC (or anyone else for that matter) making any assumptions on my behalf. If my engineering system of checks is weak enough to let an incorrect part number slip by, then I have problems greater than IronCAD can solve by making assumptions. On the internal link & assembly front: this "problem" was explained quite some time back (v6 timeframe) on this board. I remember at the time that I didn't fully understand the "problem", nor do I now. I don't see any reason why one can not have internal links across assemblies. I am even more outraged by the fact that IC will break your link without telling you before hand (or providing you with a way out). Especially since a link can only be broken and never re-established between two existing parts. So, in summary, my vote is: -Don't delete anything I don't explicitly tell you to (that includes links and part numbers).

So... what exactly is it doing? Registry change?

The newer computers here are showing up with a Quadro FX 3500M in 'em. They definately perform better. Those suckers can rotate large assemblies (v9) while rendering what my 550 drops to wireframe.

UPDATE: I added some stuff on setting affinity and priority of processes (#'s 7) as well as threw in some info and links for the /USERVA setting (to be used with the /3GB setting) into the original post.

IC Guys: Is IronCAD still limited to using 128M of video RAM? If so: when do we expect that to change. If not: What is the new max (if there is one)? Doug- If you are using the machine for IC only, I think the answer to the above question should help you out. Normally, I would say go for the best that you can afford, but in this case (if we are still limited to 128M video mem usage...and will be for a while), you may be better off upgrading memory/processor/hard drives for the price difference... That being said, my Quadro FX 550 has performed well...

Tom- I had it all done until I noticed the last picture showing the (b/tr)ike leaning and the wheels still pointed straight, a clear departure from what the technical description stated. I don't have SW, so... I don't think I can help to create such fictional unicorn-esk designs .

Plus, you can always wipe out Vista and install XP on any new machine...if you are into that kind of thing.

I'm a die hard IronCAD guy, and I won't let the work cronies install v10 yet. I'm pretty much of the belief that version x.2 is the ideal IronCAD version, so until we get to that point, I think we will keep with the evils we know about in 9 (we don't do any real rendering so there is not much for us to sacrifice when working in v9). And, since we have so many "features" in v10 that hotfixes are being released (and no one probably has the time to work on Product Updates), version 10 is starting to look (to me anyway) like the short-lived version 4.

The "approved" drivers (per application) appear as a list on the nVidia site... it is not something you get from IronCAD. For whatever reason, they have a really old driver listed as the "approved" one. Don't even try to find it cause it is really of no value... I was just making sure you guys didn't fall for that BS on the nVidia site. As a former tech support guy, I can tell you that the first thing you ask someone who is having graphis related problems is, "Do you have the latest video drivers?". I'm not sure I have ever been in a situation where the video drivers were the problem...(*shrug*).

I know its tacky to ask, but are you using the newest driver from nVidia or the last "approved" one from IronCAD (... the correct answer would be the newest one...)?

Do you mean run the program locally and have networked .ics and .icd files? If so, this is what I do. Our company does not back up the PC's here, but they back up certian network drives nightly. I got tired of loosing files, so I now just work from the net. Ironcad is local, but catalogs, drawings and scenes are on mapped network drives. The only problem with the system is that when you lose the network connectivity, strange things happen with your file directories (i.e. hitting save will save everything locally, so the next time you try to open your files, they are some older version). Once you figure it all out, and move the local files to the net, any master files will still refrence local external links... you need to be pretty aware of what is going on if you lose the net mid-design.

I take it your drives are formatted as FAT32? Theoretically (and the theory is not that sound if you ask me) NTFS is suppoed to be a lot better about preventing fragmentation of the hard drives. You do bring up a good point though, with FAT32 formatted hard drives you should occasionally de-frag to speed things up. Additionally, your pagefile was really fragmented due to the continual changes you were making to the USERVA setting (and chaining down the line to the pagefile seetings if your pagefile size is managed by windows). As you mentioned, a nice congurent pagfile will go a long way to increase performance, so any changes made to the pagefile size will greatly benefit from a de-frag. Plus, if you want to really group your pagefile, you should do a de-frag, re-boot, then de-frag again, as the OS won't want to give up all it's pagefile while it is running (and de-fragging). The re-boot should completely release the pagfile (much like quitting IronWood to completely release the memory it grabbed), such that upon re-boot, windows will re-create the pagefile (hopefully with a nice congruent chunk of hard drive space). Glad to hear you got that machine dialed in!

Tom- Are you saying this guy lays out his house in the 2D (drawing enviornment) first, or does he use a 2D sketch plane in the 3D (scene) first. I've used 2D sketches to lay out rooms and things in the past and it has worked well. If you select the correct printing options in 2D (either draft or precice... but only one works... I can't remember). You can see your 2D shapes, and scale as required. Additionally, with a 2D shape, you can use the edges and what not to extrude with and snap to. As for the architectural units (ft-in)... your options are either ft x 12 or in / 12 (like you already mentioned). You get used to it EDIT: The only not-so-minor drawback to the 2D shape method is that you need to periodically finish the shape to "save" your work. An accidental double-Esc to quit a tool and you just lost all your work.