Mike Allen

If I could set a keyboard shortcut, or button on the heads-up display to toggle Hide Attachment Points on Selection, I would have exactly the same functionality I used to have with Show/Hide Attachment Points. I haven't found that command any place I would expect to find it (Common or Tools,) I did a quick look on some of the other lists, but didn't find it. Could you tell me where it is located?

The new option to Hide Attachment Points on Selection seems strange. Since I only want to see the attachment points when I'm editing them, I prefer to not have them show up every time I select a part. I thought that it would work to Hide Attachment Points on Selection & have a shortcut to Show Attachment Points when I want to edit them. But it appears that the Show Attachment Points option is almost useless, since when it is selected in conjunction with Hide Attachment Points on Selection, it is not possible to select any of the attachment points. Is there a trick to selecting attachment points when the option to Hide Attachment Points on Selection is checked?

I don't always get a new session when I double-click a file with IC already open, but it happens often enough that I almost always drag the file I want onto the existing window.

A workaround is to drag the file onto the existing IC window.

If you use zero width lines, you might want to give them a thickness. Increasing the resolution for the export (from 150 to 300 dpi) can also help.

If you are offsetting a single line, you have to right-click the line & select delete. (http://community.ironcad.com/index.php?showtopic=11662)

Is there any way to control trailing zeros in Dynamic Part Naming? Sometimes I get 5.000 & sometimes I get 5. I'm using the same format (i.e. Shape1\Sizebox\Length.) I would prefer that trailing zeros always be dropped

Here's another way to do it. Curved_Profile.7z

Could you have edited the cross section of your original stock to create the corner chamfer? I tend to think of the Sheetmetal tools for "Vertex Fillet" & "Vertex Chamfer" as finishing options, so I don't add them until everything else is the way I want it.

OK, thanks, Kevin. I edited my ribbon to add the Split Part command (from the All Commands>Feature section.) I can see a need for the Split command (to split one part using another, while retaining the splitting part), but I really would have preferred if there had been a dropdown, similar to Extrude/Extrude Wizard

The Split Part tool used to have a default shape for splitting. What happened to it? Now, apparently I have to create a part to use for splitting before I click on the Split Part tool. Is there an options setting to get the default shape back?

When I'm sweeping cords, I usually break them into sections that each lie on a 2D plane. Instead of starting with a 3D curve, I model a 2D curve & either create a 3D curve from it, or trace it with a 3D spline. Drawing the curves in 2D gives you much more control. Another technique I will use is a combination of part torus & cylinder Intellishapes.

In the "Styles, Layers and Defaults" dialog box, there doesn't seem to be an option for setting the leader to a default position (left, right, up, down.)

Thanks Troy. I tried this & see it would work for simple line art. Unfortunately, much of the Illustrator art that we need to import involves fills. It looks to me as though fills are ignored during the import to an IronCAD sketch, so I'm left with only the outlines. It's a bit ironic that much of our Illustrator artwork began life as an IronCAD drawing. We create a 2D view of a 3D model, & export as a DWG. Then we import into Illustrator, add fills, crop as necessary & add text. Ideally, we'd like to bring that artwork back into IronCAD to be used in other drawings, while retaining editability. Alternatively, we would like to be able to take our original 2D drawing view, add annotations, etc. & drag it into a catalog as 2D vector art. The line drawing of the 3D model wouldn't necessarily have to be editable, but it would be essential that we could drag the view out of a catalog & change the annotations or edit view curves.

Cary - I just sent you an e-mail.

Well, I can get the DWG to open in CAXA & it looks as though it might preserve fills, etc. How exactly do you manage to get the art onto an icd sheet? I must be missing something.

Does anyone else need to import Illustrator (or other vector) artwork into IronCAD 2D drawings? I've never been able to figure out how to go directly from Illustrator to IronCAD, so we have been using Freehand (version 9, back when Macromedia owned it.) We would create a new Freehand OLE object in a drawing, which would open up a Freehand window, allow us to copy the Illustrator art into the Freehand window & "Exit & return to ..." from the Freehand menu. Works great - gives us access to all sorts of artwork that can then be scaled in IronCAD without any pixelization. Plus, we could then open the file from IronCAD for editing, based on the needs of our drawing. Then we could drag the art into a catalog for future uses. Now we're updating our computers & Freehand won't load on the new systems. Adobe bought Freehand a few years back & doesn't intend to update it (i.e. they want it to die.) So now we find ourselves with IronCAD 2D catalogs full of Freehand illustrations, which we can drag onto a drawing sheet, but won't be able to edit - and no way to get new artwork, save making jpegs (which is going to be another issue, when we can't get Microsoft Photo Editor to work with newer operating systems.) Any ideas?

For the basic Sine wave, these are my settings to get a 46" curve: Coordinate System = Cartesian Variable Unit = Radians Var. Name = t Tolerance = 0.1 Start Value = 0 End Value = 46 (the length of the wave when X(t)=t) Expression: X(t) = t Y(t) = sin(t) z(t) = 0 If you use a multiplier for X(t), e.g. X(t)= t*2, you will need to change the End Value accordingly (in this case, 46/2=23) to get the same length sine wave.

Thanks! I'll have to try that next time I need a DWG import.

From CAXA, I save as .exb (the CAXA native file type.) That helps me to know which files I've fixed. I don't think it's possible to just copy the outline from CAXA to IronCAD.

That is also our workaround.

I would use the Split Part tool. (The video shows me positioning it at center point & midpoint, but you can also use the TriBall to position it at any point & any angle.) Split_Part1.7z

I didn't knowingly uncheck the "Drop assembly/part into selected assembly" box. Normally, I wouldn't notice the behavior, since I normally click in the background before dragging something from a catalog into the scene (specifically to prevent accidentally adding a part to a selected assembly.) I don't even think about it anymore - until I actually want the new part dropped into the assembly.

That's strange. It is working now, but not earlier. I'll keep an eye on it to see if something I do causes it to stop working.

As a work around, I went to IC2012 & made a catalog of text in various rotations (45-degrees, 90-degrees, 135-degrees) & opened the catalog in 2013. The issue I can't solve is how to align a text box with a part edge in one of my drawing views - that's where the rotate tool really came in handy.