Per-Arne Almeflo

What's your setting for the Virtual Memory for best performance? I have one GB internal memory and plenty of room on the hard drive.

Should we see the moral of this story as comforting for the IronCAD community, or as a call for awareness?

What update times do you see on assembly drawings with ~1000 or more parts involved?

Chris wrote: "Perhaps you need to manually register the dll". We tried that. No improvement. "Perhaps you need local admin when registering the dll." I'm not sure what you mean here? And yes, those drawing files convert like a charm with a right mouse clic when IronCAD is installed. We now have installed IronCAD on two computers from the IronCAD CD just to to make the extraction facility it work. I hope this PDF function does not die with the expiration of the demo days. In our office this might be a useful workaround, but for subcontractors and customers it is not. Could you please release the PDF extractor as a normal software installation?

While working our way into more and more complex sawmill machinery, we feel that IronCAD gets a bit slow with large, or even semi large, models, especially after the drawings are created with their links. Therefore it would be great if you would improve IronCAD's ability to take advantage of the latest hardware.

I would like to get back to my previous question: Chris Lohman says: "We use only the most generic of OpenGL calls in our rendering" Would this mean that the use of a pro OpenGL card is a waste of money? The standard FX cards also have the most generic OpenGL support. Would a FX 5600 be as fast as a Quadro FX1000 for IronCAD use? They are based on the same graphic processor, but the FX 5600 has some software based restrictions in the OpenGL performance. If those OpenGL tricks are not used, whats the reason to pay many times the price for the Quadro card? Chris, please enlighten us!

The PDF extract function works on the machines with IC 6.0 installed. Now my boss wants to print the drawings without IronCAD, but the dll does not do its stuff there. He's got Windows 2000. What do you think?

id=quote> Such curve behaviour in a velocity curve is technically called a jerk.

id=quote> I'm happy when you are happy, and I don't write this to put you down, but to tell others that are about to shop, and who may have other expectations and needs, that this is not a top of the line card. The Cadence review covered low cost cards only, and they wrote: "ATI's FireGL Z1 significantly out-performs the other cards when running SolidWorks, making it well-suited for anyone who wants to get the best performance at a reasonable price point with today's mechanical design software."

This is what tomshardware wrote about the Quadro FX 500 in a review of OpenGL cards: The output from the graphics pipeline is rather wretched. Just 45 millions triangles/s and a fill rate of 1.1 billion texels/s mean the Quadro FX 500 is only suitable for customers with few demands in rendering performance. The typical user uses it to create building plans, such as floor plans or office equipment, etc. and simple mechanical components. http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030916/opengl-08.html

id=quote> Are you asking for a file to run benchmarks on your system, or a file with a review of your card compared to others? There are several cards named WildCat, which model do you have?

id=quote> Where did you find a recommendation for the Quadro FX 500 specifically? The Quadro 500 is based on the FX5200 card which really is not high performance card. In the tests I have seen, the old Quadro 750, 900 and 980XGL's are much faster than the new Quadro FX500. The new Quadro FX 1000 however is tested faster than those older cards. Also, Chris Lohman says: "We use only the most generic of OpenGL calls in our rendering" Would this mean that the use of a pro OpenGL card is a waste of money? The standard FX cards also have the most generic OpenGL support. Would a FX 5600 or higher be as fast as a Quadro FX1000 for most of the IronCAD use? What Solid Works users complain the most about for non-pro cards are their bad performance with lots of windows open. The IronCAD work flow does not use the same technique as Solid Works, where they drag the parts from all those open windows into the assembly, and hense that multi window quality is maybe not that important for us.

Shaun and Steve have released news about the Smart Assembly System (SAS) coming in IronCAD 7 to the Swedish press. It's printed in Verkstadsforum october 2003. May we ask them to unfold the news in release 7 to the community too?

id=quote> Are you working on getting into the certified application list of ATI also? I believe it is important to be seen in such places together with "the industry’s key Computer Aided Design (CAD) companies".

id=quote> I heard even IV had problems with their DXF output, producing double lines that laser cutting machines could not handle. Some of the IC DXF issues are comma/dot oriented with different language settings. Should be fixable.

There can be no denial that efficiency in everyday commands and a manageble 3D tool like the triball, that is exclusive to IronCad, far outweight most bells and whistles of the others. But you must also consider that the latest D-Cubed tools for constraints and mechanism simulation are essential for designing machines. Others have them, IronCad may eventually get them. Hopefully sooner than later. Another thing that all 3D cad software have in common are the bugs. Search the other guys discussion groups for "crash to desktop" (it's so common they even created an acronym: "ctd") and you will see that IronCAD is not all that bad. But that's not much comfort when you try to fight the way through our own bugs though. A virtually bug-free environment would be a vast advantage over the others. Keep up the good work.

id=quote> Doesn't packing density count too?

There was a function with IC 5.2 that could extract a PDF file from the drawing file for viewing or saving without starting IronCAD, so that anyone in the office could read and print drawings. Whatever happened to that in IC 6.0? I find nothing in the help file.

And we have problems rotating a frame structure with a lot of SmartDimensions. If "Show SmartDimensions" is turned on in the "Scene Properties" it jams the rotate command. But when off, all turns nice and easy. It's around 100 parts. IC 6.0 and WIN XPpro, Fire GL 8800 and 1 Gb internal memory.

That's not a solution, that's a workaround.

Didn't a lot of IC guys speak out for ATI Fire GL 8800 lately, while the Nvidia drivers had the handle bugs. Fire GL 8800's are no 'gamer's video cards' either!

I would appreciate any tip about how to design grate flooring for footbridges around industrial machines. Would it be best to use texture pics for showing the grate structure? I do not need full 3D info of exact construction of the floor grate sections anyway, only the outer size limits. Do you know of any source for such pics of textures for expanded metal, checker plate and steel grate?

OK guys, we have the new 1 GB workstations on the floor now. Would you recommend us to install IronCAD 6.0 right away, or is it better to run the 5.2 and await the first patch? When is that due anyway? (We do not need the surfacing enhancements of the 6.0 at this point)

What is your best bet for a free VRML viewer that a customer or sub supplier coul use for viewing exported 3D models? Could be an Internet Explorer plug in or stand alone. It must be real handy to zoom and spin the model without getting lost in space.

id=quote> Since that post we saw three press releases in february, two in march and none in april so far. Just keeping an eye on the PR dept ("PR" stands for Press Releases, right?)