Mike Allen

Steve & I (and all the other IronCAD power users at our company) are using Quadro FX1500.

Precise mode in the drawing view?

When you pick the Arc Fit Spline tool, there are settings at the bottom of the screen. "Fit error" is the control you want to change. Lower values will result in more arc segments fitting to the original spline. 0.01 seemed to work fairly well for your file.

I prefer the rendering on the right - the interaction between the part & the floor (shadow & slight reflection) definitely gives it an added sense of realism.

Here are two videos. The first shows how to use Arc Fit Spline. Note that the lines are almost black, when I bring the DXF in. You can control the color of the lines by using a lighter stroke color in Illustrator. One thing that might not be apparent, is that after I fit arcs to the splines, I click to select the splines & delete them - this can take a fair bit of trial & error, the way I am doing it. Sometimes I accidentally get an arc, instead of a spline & have to escape out of the selection. I'm not good at using CAXA, so there might be a more efficient way to select the splines. Arc_Fit_Spline.7z The second video shows importing the DXF into an extrude command in IronCAD. Files out of Illustrator generally come in very small, so you will have to scale the curves in IronCAD. Also, they normally don't come in anywhere near the origin of your grid. Normally, I make a rectangle at the desired size to use as a guide for scaling. Extrude_Logo.7z

The Arc Fit Spline tool in CAXA Draft has already saved me loads of time & frustration trying to get Illustrator artwork to extrude in IronCAD (the DXF/DWG output from CAXA can also be used in earlier versions of IronCAD, by the way.) It's just a matter of setting a small enough fit error to give an accurate representation of the original splines. But we still need a simple way to get a scalable version of .ai artwork (including fills & gradients, etc.) into an IronCAD drawing.

Open your dxf in CAXA Draft. Explode it until it is just splines (you have several levels of blocks in that file, so you'll need to explode a few times.) Use the Arc Fit Spline tool (use a fit error of .005) on each group of splines. Delete the original splines (leaving the arcs.) Then save the file. Start your extrude in IronCAD & import the DXF.

I think you could print the output to PDF & open it in Illustrator (I just checked it & you can indeed.)

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for? - http://www.packmeister.com/default.asp (I searched: cardboard packaging layout software.)

Here are some visual aids. First, there are two buttons for controlling styles: Line Types is where you specify what each line type is. So if you wanted to change the thickness of the Chain line type, this is where you would do it. Or you can also create new line types. In your case, you just want to match an existing line type so you just have to go to Styles & Layers. Select "View Curves" from the list. In the section that says "Available Styles" pick the style you want to modify (you can have more than one.) Click the Modify button. Change the drop down from "0.50mm Solid" to "Chain." Now when you make a line in Edit View, it will be with the Chain line type (so it should match your center lines.)

In a nutshell, go to the Styles & Layers dialog box & make sure that the View Curves line style matches the line style for your Centerlines (since you are using view curves to connect the centerlines from two holes. It looks as though you currently have the default line type for view curves set to .50 mm Solid. The reason to use Edit View, by the way, is that the added lines will then scale with the view. They don't actually connect with your dimension lines or centerlines, because those aren't in the view - they are on the sheet, (but not to be confused with sheet curves, since sheet curves have their own settings - I've always considered sheet curves "for looks only.")

You really need to make sure that each component has the correct mass properties entered, or you will get erroneous data from the COG tool. (Garbage in, garbage out.)

OK - I think I'm getting very close here. I'm using construction lines in the sketch to provide the position constraints. I can parametrically drive the angle using Design Variations, until I pass 90 degrees - so 22.5 is OK, 45 is OK 90 is OK - and 135 is OK, but it must break something, because after that point, I can no longer drive the angle through Design Variations. ******************* Hold on - now it's working. I changed nothing, but after setting the angle to 135 through Design Variations, I went to edit the cross section - but did not change anything in the sketch or constraints, because it all looked right. So I went back to Design Variations & have no trouble going from 157.5 to 22.5, to 90, to 45, to 140, to 30, etc. I'm still a bit concerned, since I have absolutely no idea why it started to work right. On a side note, I would really appreciate a tutorial on the best way to constrain sketches on structured parts. This trial & error can be quite frustrating, since when the constraints get broken, undo doesn't always set things right & I find myself scrapping the feature so I can start again. Oh yes - was there a reason why we can't use the TriBall to position the grid when creating features on structured parts? It would really come in handy, because I like my sketch to have a direct relationship to 0,0 on the grid.

I'm giving this another try as a Structured Part. I need to constrain the center of the cut feature arc at a specific point from the end of the stock. Then I want to drive the angle of rotation through parameters. In the position shown, it's easy enough to put Smart Dimension constraints for X & Y of the center of the cross section arc, then put an angular dimension between the straight edge of the cross section & the bottom edge of the stock. The problem arises when I try to change the angular dimension - all my dimensional constraints go away. Is there another way to make these constraints?

I'm probably just missing something here, but when I apply an angle constraint between two shapes (one is a hole shape, with dimension constraints to keep it's center fixed on the other shape), I'm unable to predict which direction it will rotate when I change the angle. For instance, if I start with the constrained edges at 90 degrees & change the angle to 45 degrees - as often as not, it will rotate 135, or 225, or 315 degrees. What I need is plus or minus 67.5 degrees from the 90 degree position. Any ideas? angle_constraint.7z

I think it's all in the way the bytes add up. When I get properties on my downloaded file for IronCAD2009XG64.exe, it says "Size: 559 MB (586,459,520 bytes)" and the size in Windows Explorer shows 572,715 Kb. Those extra 24 bytes per thousand really begin to add up when you approach a gigabyte.

We installed IronCAD 11 with Vista Business 64-bit & it has been very stable. I had to "run as administrator" for a couple weeks before I was certain that everything was working correctly - now I just run it normally. We tried Advanced/DirectX rendering, but quickly switched back to Advanced/OpenGL. We use a lot of surfaces & they tended to disappear with DirectX (even with "render both sides" turned on) - we were using Recreate Display every couple commands. With Advanced/OpenGL, we have relatively few display issues (far fewer than in IC 10.) With IronCAD 11 Vista 64, we have had none of the low memory issues that we had with IronCAD 10. We've had a few reported crashes, but orders of magnitude fewer than IC 10. The biggest issue we had with IC 11, was the 2D edit cross-section - but that was largely fixed with a hotfix (the new interface still took some getting-used-to.) Overall, I'd have to say that IronCAD 11 Vista 64 (PU1, with all the hotfixes) is stable & let's me work productively.

Actually, IronCAD 2009 Beta lives harmoniously alongside IronCAD 11 on the same machine. No need for a separate computer to install the Beta. It's very handy for comparing the two versions.

Thanks, Tom!

The file has expired - could you please share it again?

Thanks - this helps.

We use 1680 x 1050 resolution (single monitor), Quadro FX 1500 - 256 MB (driver version 7.15.11.8120), Dell Optiplex 755, 8 GB RAM, Windows Vista 64-bit. We tried a more recent version of the Quadro FX driver, but noticed a definite delay when selecting objects in the scene (especially when using box select) - so we rolled back to the previous driver version.

Just in case I'm not the only one who has had a hard time finding files in Windows Vista, when I KNOW the files are there - here's a tip. Apparently, the default search settings are for SPEED, not ACCURACY. If, by some chance, you might want to actually FIND what you are looking for (what a concept!) - go to "Organize > Folder & search options" in Windows explorer and select the "slow" options on the Search tab. I spent a lot of time searching for IronCAD's XML customization files before it dawned on me that Windows didn't think I'd actually need to FIND them.

We have one guy who reports slow drawing saves to his desktop - but I don't know if he is leaving the scene on the network. Otherwise, all our files are being saved to a Windows network.

Is anyone else experiencing slow drawing save times (on the order of 20 minutes)? We're seeing this intermittently - some days, a specific drawing will take under a minute to save & other days, the same drawing will take 20 minutes. On the days when "drawing A" is slow, "drawing B" (being a drawing of equivalent complexity) will save quickly. Sometimes, we get both slow & fast saves on the same drawing. (Associated scenes are always under a minute to save.) If this were network related, it seems that other programs would also have slow save times & all drawings saved at that time would be slow. But we're seeing one person having a slow drawing save, while the person at the next desk has quick drawing save times. Anyway, just wanted to see if we're alone in this.