Mike Allen

Hmm - it works for me - even if I use that filter to select faces on IntelliShapes from different parts.

I think we're good with this. We have multiple parts & assemblies at the top-level, but we don't use an indented BOM, so I don't see a problem for us. Nevertheless, I'll be sure to test it on the Beta. -Mike

Scene & Drawing can each have the same hotkey for different commands. For instance, I use Ctrl-G to assemble parts in the scene and Ctrl-G to create a General View in the drawing.

You can also open the scene, open the drawing, return to the scene and use "Save As" to rename the scene. The drawing will automatically relink to the new scene name.

Yes, you can edit the profile on curved stock - that is what it's for. A spline seems to work perfectly (although, as I said before, you would have to play with the K-factor to get the correct length when you unfold it.) But you have to use the curved stock - a regular bend can't be a spline. spline_stock.ics

Couldn't you use Curved Stock in sheetmetal & then unfold it? You would probably have to edit your tooltbl.txt to add the correct stock thickness & play with the K factor, because I'm sure that wood & metal don't have the same bend allowance. But otherwise, it seems as though it should work.

Yup - you got it, Tom.

Wow - I never realized that math geeks tended toward such violent behavior!

Whoops - Cary got there first! Here's what I was going to post: To answer Tom's original question, I see "Edit Direction...", which brings up a dialog titled "Edit Handle Direction". This appears to allow you to input a vector direction for the handle you picked (for instance: X=0.5, Y=-0.25, Z=0.75) If you enter values greater than 1 or less than -1, IronCAD strangely converts them to a multiple: (7,2,5) becomes (35,10,15), but (3,-2,4) becomes (-6.802,-23.807,30.610) - with vectors, you would normally expect all the values to be converted to a range between -1 & 1. This even works to change the direction if the axis is locked.

1) We rarely use external links, now that we can do a config-based BOM. 2) We frequently use 2D shapes to represent actual features and/or parts, but 3D curves are primarily for reference. 3) We could live with an option - especially if we could set it globally & then change it for individual parts. 4) We use surfaces to represent actual parts (mostly tensioned fabric), so it would be better the other way around - set the flag to treat it as construction.

Thanks Robert! This works in a lot of cases - but not for the IronWeb pages. I get the HOOPS window & can apparently rotate the view, but it doesn't display the .hsf model. It does remove the need to switch browsers for a number of files that require IE, but it must still be missing some of the functionality for full compatibility. -Mike

Is anyone using IronWeb (Tools->IronWeb)? We recently found a need to make a very large number of our models available to our dealers online. IronWeb allows us to batch create web pages with 3d models for an entire directory & all its subdirectories. It even creates thumbnails that could be incorporated into an index page. Unfortunately, this only seems to work with Internet Explorer - Firefox is not supported

We have been using Macromedia Freehand for many years to create illustrations that can be imported into CAD. (Adobe Illustrator doesn't work for this purpose - the images always come in as low-resolution, the same as you get from PDF.) Since this is virtually our only use for Freehand, we haven't upgraded since version 9. Our process is to use Create->Object in IronCAD, select "Create New" and select Macromedia Freehand from the list. Freehand opens a blank file, so open your desired file, select all & copy, close the file & paste into the blank file. Then, from the Freehand File menu, select "Exit & Return to Sheet 1" (or whatever IronCAD sheet you are on.) This method allows us to import high-resolution PDF files into IronCAD. The only trouble is that IronCAD always brings in a square image, so you must pay attention to the image proportions in Freehand. Where the Freehand image has no fill, the background will be transparent in IronCAD. Where the Freehand image is filled with white or any other color, the background will be opaque in IronCAD.

Does anyone know how to access the buttons & keyboard shortcuts for the 2D Editing toolbar in Drawing mode? The Customize dialog box doesn't seem to have these tools listed in any of the dropdowns. -Mike

We deal in physically large assemblies (from 10-foot square to over 100 feet on a side), so we have: 1) Lots of little detail images (views exported from IronCAD, imported into Freehand and back into IronCAD, so they can be dragged into a catalog) 2) Actual photographs of assemblies that would be too memory-intensive to model (we normally deal in no-detail representations of panels, truss, etc. which look good from 20 feet away - so we often uses photos to show detail) 3) A number of notes & symbols made in IronCAD (to speed up the annotation process) -Mike

While IronCAD 2D still has a long way to go to match my ideal, I like the way it's heading. I still feel that text (notes, etc.) is a second-class entity - no undo for moving text, minimal formatting tools... Nevertheless, I use IronCAD 2D every day to produce some pretty good-looking documents. It's relatively fast - and where it lacks a particular functionality, I've almost always been able to find a workaround that will give me a similar end result. I totally agree with Mike T. - I'd be really happy with a version 9 that focused on bug fixes & 2D enhancements. -Mike

Maybe it's because it is late on a Friday, but I'm not following. I made our Template directory structure exactly as in Kevin's example & restarted IronCAD, but am still getting the 0 tab. Is there a folder that corresponds to the 0? (Not really a big deal, but it's one extra click to get to our templates.)

I'm using a Dell Optiplex GX270, Pentium 4, 3GHz, 3GB RAM, with a NVIDIA Quadro FX 500. My system is a couple years old, but still seems to be working good with IronCAD. In the past, I've noticed problems in IronCAD when running the NVIDIA Desktop Manager, so I keep that disabled. Make sure you have the 3GB switch enabled in your boot.ini - that seems to help with even as little as 1GB of RAM. -Mike

I regularly work with scene files of over 120 MB (the one I'm currently working with is 133 MB) and haven't noticed any limitations (with 3 GB of RAM.) Drawing files seem to have a practical limitation when they get up around 250 MB, as it takes several minutes to save and you end up spending more time saving than working. When that happens, I usually start another drawing file and continue from there (sheets 1-16 in drawing 1 and sheets 17-32 in drawing 2, etc.) -Mike

X, Y & Z are vectors - each can have a different value. But if only one has a value, it might as well be 1 (either positive or negative, depending on the direction you want to rotate.) When you want a rotation axis that is some combination of x, y & z, the range for each value is between -1 and +1, although you can enter other values and IronCAD will convert them. Your rotation axis is the resulting vector when x, y & z are added together. You can also work it backwards. Take a part & rotate it with your TriBall using unconstrained rotation. Then check the orientation in the part properties. -Mike

The workings of the Formula Curve tool are still a bit of a mystery to me. Nevertheless, the other day I needed to model a curtain & decided to figure out how to make a sine wave with it. Here's what I came up with: This will give you a sine wave that is 60 inches long, with about a 2 inch wave (crest to trough.) Then I copied the resulting 3D curve up to the desired height & used Ruled Surface to make the curtain. (Note: Some end values work better than others. 50 works good, but 51.75 gets messed up toward the end.) -Mike

So this may be elementary to a lot of you, but I'm hoping it may make someone say "AHA!" If you have two curved surfaces that are supposed to be touching in the real world, but they don't seem to render right, a small offset for the sake of the rendering can really be beneficial. Here's a rendering of a glass of wine, with both the glass and wine made from spin shapes. The cross section of the wine was created from a projected edge of the inside of the glass (I made a copy of the glass & then split it in the middle.) Then, I edited the cross section of the wine and offset the curved edge by .01. This small change removed the interference problem caused by the facets of the two objects & vastly improved the quality of the rendering.

Hi Tom, In IronCAD Help, go to the contents and find the "Parameters" section in the "Working with parts" chapter. Most everything is there. -Mike Edit: The section you're looking for is called "Basic Functions for Use in Expressions."

Left-click sets the camera to look along the positive axis, Shift-click sets the camera to look along the negative axis. It's a handy tool.

As far as I can tell, it changes the Measurement Scale Factor. You can also access it from a dialog box - DDIM -> Modify -> Primary Units tab. -Mike