cborer

I agree with all that and I love to work with IC But there is one thing they do better: They can produce proper dxf files! Where IC is lightyears away from!

I am doing sculptures of stainless steel or Aluminium as Artist, and I produce also Design items. Iron Cad is the near to perfect tool for my work ( not complete yet). For the rest I use Rhino (unfolding) , between I change data as Step or Iges. All that works good. After inventing, design and construction there is the idea to produce the parts or the artworks, thats why someone like me buys a CAD. To make a sheet metal construction as I do it for my artwork I need to cut it with laser. The laser-cutting machines all want .dxf or maybe also .dwg files which is the start of the problems. Half of my time on work is trying to get proper dxf! This is just boring, stupid, frustrating and it kills the fun of working with CAD .and I wish the creators of .dxf the same hell they prepared to me! All my hate on them! UFF! So far I ask what happens when all other developers of CAD and also Graphics would come together to create a real working and proper 2d file format (.cad ?) which they would allow to use for laser cutters and others. This could be like paradise! .and I still cannot believe that its so hard to produce 2d lines. Carlo www.carloborer.ch and www.cbindustries.ch

Dear Beat You will have to take care about my futur work! Thanks for your tips. I tried it between parts so it could not work! ...as it is for intellishape, cool option! But its easy to shoot down Iron Cad with playing impossible things. Carlo

Is there a sample for the match option at the intellishape properties / surface reshaping ?

I agree, very nice example for U lines! Beat I asked for that tool and called it "face pencil" ( attach and keep 3d line on surface as 3d line option) I was unhappy to have not much response. Drawing a 3d line on a face would be great.

Thanks Mike Big work around! An enhancement of the screw catalocs at this theme is a wish of me too. Better display of screws at comand, in the drawings but also in scene.

If you need to make Loft shapes: never work with acis! Allways use Parasolid Kernel. I had by accident acis as default Kernel and had to wait 2 seconds after every Orbit Camera use. It disapeared as soon as I choose Parasolid.

With the loft tool you have the control about sections yet. You can reorder them with the Triball, which works perfect. Also in the shape properties these options are to choose. I think it would be a bigger step to update the loft tool: guide curve as B Spline or 3d line.

So we still need the loft along 3d line ( 3d line as guide curve) I hope this will be part of IC 6.2?

Maybe this helps: I had a very strange thing when I was reordering my toolbars. I was setting a new tool from the sets to the pernament toolbars. The result was that I lost the green helplines in the scetch area. I never understood why. But as soon as I removed the tool button from the bar all worked as usual. Its some time ago sorry that I forgot which one it was. Maybe going back to standart installation may help?

Beat This is a real funny thing! I put an H Block on it......strange! Maybe it happend cause IC had to trim and boolean the faces at same time. It's great to know that this works. I had perfect results when the faces have edge together. Carlo

You can boolean surfaces to make a solid.

About this Question I was playing around a little: The good thing on the deform tool was: -Easy & fast to use -Changing the direction of the handle The bad thing was: -Low control -Just one handle I think we can do it very well with the new UV faces cause we have much more control with the improved 3d lines. Only: we still need some more control about 3d lines. See my suggestions about 3d lines.

I never used it. But it might be helpful if it is improved.

Chris I didn't know that your are a naturalist! ( birds, green grass ...) But I agree with you all! I was on a show where somebody tried to create a rotation body with mechanical desktop, he tried about 20 minutes. I do it with IC in 5 seconds. But the best is that I can change the ground-shapes after many operations. Carlo

Anchor: Choose slide along surface: it will also slide along a 3d line!

Sketch: The new detector of double lines: It will delete several double lines as long non of the double lines are connected. If some are connected shape creation fails.

Thanks Shaun for your honest report. As owner of a very little design company I know these problems very well. Guerrilla marketing ( nice name!) is a good low budget way. I do the same. IC 6 will be stronger than ever; and the concept is still the best. IC works the way a modern CAD should do! Also when there are still some functions missing. I often amaze people with showing what IC does. Best advertising is when we show what IC does. We sit in the same boat. And we want to keep IC going on. Maybe the user is even the best promoter. ( in the alventive days it was hard to promote IC) Well it is not that easy to sell a CAD. The cheaper Innovate may be is a good step to sell IC easier. Good Luck Carlo

1.Create surface shape from a surface. ( If it is a steel construction take mid of steel stock: first thicken half of thickness and then create a surface shape). ( these tools work excelent in IC!) maybe use parasolid, see my Tips at Tips and Tricks Forum. 2. export part as Step. 3. open in Rhino. 4. if necessairy use: rebuild surface. 5. Tools: Surface-unfold. 6. extrude unfolded face as a part export as Step or parasolid to IC ( dxf or dwg would be a pain to import to IC) or export dxf from Rhino controll it in Illustrater. Hope that helps. Rhino works very different than IC first steps maybe hard if you`re just IC user.

There is no! I asked for that since about 4 years. I do it with Rhino (translate with Step). That works great even with Loft surfaces! dxf will be a pain. I hope on IC 6.0! Good luck. Carlo

How about the timelines for 6.0? Which new tools will be inside? I am fevering to update soon! Best regards Carlo

Great to know! Thanks too!

Try this: http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/vehicles.asp Good luck Carlo

These are the Triball options I wish: By rotating and copy a shape: After choosing degrees and the number of copies, it would be nice to have an additional field for moving along the rotation axis ( it is there, but not activated yet). Say: “distance along rotation axis”. For the standard rotation it is zero. That way it would be easy to make twisted stairs. This function could then become even stronger as a: “ distance along 3d line” Triball positioning on 3d line works fine, but the copies will be in the direction of the Triball axis that was chosen. I want to copy along 3d line more than one copy and the copies should keep on the 3d line and keep their position geometry relative to the 3d line as it was in the start point. To make Triball incredible strong IC could add further dialog fields as advanced copy options like: Scale shape, Scale Distance.

Thanks Kevin Are there any tutorial about rendering around? Carlo