Chris Lohman

The dll "should" work. Perhaps you need to manually register the dll. Perhaps you need local admin when registering the dll. I can't think of anything else that would prevent it.

It sounds like you had a "blow out" and pieces of ironcad landed elsewhere on your system. We can't explain that scrap file.

Sometimes if you wait long enough; it will straighten itself out. Most of the time if the system is locked then the error occured because of whatever is locking the system; and in this case there's no way to gracefully exit IronCAD. Just drop kick the pc...

Yes we are aware of the current state of our rendering engine and have been discussing the solutions internally.

I want to also clarify that the 500 is not a top of the line card; but it "is" as powerful as IronCAD can use and it costs less than the Q4900 and most other "pro" cards. At this point I'm finding with my graphics cards test that the 500 has all the power that IronCAD could use. Beyond the 500; the 1000 and 3000 (which I have both tested in house) don't improve the rendering of IronCAD. So what I'm seeing is that the current top of the line hardware has more power than IronCAD is able to handle; thus the 1000 or 3000 and the FireGL Z1 and pretty much all of the 256 meg cards are not worth the money if you purchase them for IronCAD only.

We have found that there is a noticable difference between consumer and professional cards in IronCAD in the past with regards to performance. We have found that the professional cards do have optimizations that improve their performance specifically in CAD type situations; whereas consumer cards do not. Consumer cards have, however, recently received significan't improvements that make them usable with IronCAD with small to moderate models. So until we upgrade our rendering engine next; the consumer cards are ok for now. Once we decide to put some serious work into the rendering engine though; we will only focus on improvements for the professional cards. (Note: I'm not saying anything about when or whether or not we will work on our rendering engine.)

This is not a known issue with 6.0 PU2 and thus there is no known fix.

I think that was a bug in an old version.

The dll is in the bin folder under the ICAPI folder. It must be registered before you can use it. You must also merge the matching .reg file. You do not need to compile the dll as we have shipped one along with the source.

1) Goto Tools/Customize/Commands 2) In the "Select Category" select list, choose the "Tools" item at the bottom of that list. 3) Now drag/drop the icon that appears to be a hammer with three rectangles under it; with one rectangle colored red and the other two green...drag/drop that icon onto one of your existing toolbars from the table of icons to the right of the select list that you just selected "tools" in. Then close out the "Commands" window. 4) Click on that new hammer icon. 5) Check "Smart Assembly" then click OK. 5a) When you perform step #5, a new toolbar should appear; it may be undocked. If you do not see the toolbar then something is wrong IE, bad dll registration or you did not merge the .reg file. 6) Select your part, then click the icon on the new toolbar that appears to be a large letter "A" with a plus sign next to the left of the A. Clicking on that "A" icon will add the IronCAD_Ext_Att1 attribute to the part.

Nice

We have no current intention of ever turning SAS into an "official release". It's intended use is for learning the API and nothing more. Of course there's nothing stopping someone from learning our API and writing their own for-profit plugin module for IronCAD As for the 7.0 new features; there are no dates yet on when we will release the list.

Smart Assembly is actually an example tool in our API documentation. Goto /program files/ironcad6/ironcad/ICAPI/docs/ICAPIHELP.chm in order to find the following information: SmartAssembly Location: \ICAPI\Samples\C++\SmartAssembly The SmartAssembly add-in has a toolbar with two buttons. button is used to query attribute for IronCAD_Ext_Att1. button is used to assign attribute for IronCAD_Ext_Att1. SmartAssembly also demonstrates the use of attribute and connector objects to support a smart assembly application. To use this demonstration, start the IronCAD application. Select the Catalog | Open command and select the \ICAPI\Data\piping.icc catalog. Using the contents of the Piping catalog, the user is able to easily assemble the piping components simply by dropping the appropriate components close to their matching connector. To identify the correct connector, select the Set Name option in the right-mouse popup menu on an attachment point. For example, the Large2Way component has 3 attachment points named LargeConn_F. The LargeConn_F (Female) matches with the LargeConn_M (Male) component. Users can use the add-in to create their own smart assembly catalog. The steps are: 1. Assign the IronCAD_Ext_Att1 attribute to the assembly components by selecting the components, then clicking . 2. Create Attachment Points on the components where the components mate each other. Then name the Attachment Points to be XXXX_F (Female) or XXXX_M (Male) by selecting an Attachment Point, and selecting Set Name option in the right-mouse popup menu on the Attachment Pointt. 3. Drag the components to a catalog. 4. When the components are dragged/dropped to a scene, the SmartAssembly add-in will base on the Female and Male matches and put the dropped components on the correct location. Of course; this is just an example tool for our API; it's not actually a new tool that is part of IronCAD. It probably does not have features that you would desire. As merely an example; it's a starting point for you to grow it into a great specialized tool for yourself. We do intend to enhance items related to assemblies with version 7.0 however and news regarding those enhancements will be released in the future (no date yet). That article accidentally mixed up the SAS API Example with our intentions for Assembly Enhancements in 7.0 which resulted in that mis-print. I recommend that you check out the SAS example in the API though. It's fun to use and can be a big time saver if your needs are simple. We used it to build a catalog of cubicle walls that automatically reposition themselves whe you drop them from a catalog so that they align perfectly to existing parts. Disclaimer: Of course since it's only an example from the API; if it doesn't work for you we can't guarantee that we can help you make it work.

Squishing is a result of IronCAD changing the scaling factor of the import texture. You can goto the decal (or smart paint) tab, into the settings button, in order to change the scaling factor back to 1:1. I can't make it as crisp as photoshop either. I don't see extreme blurring, but what I do see looks like it's over antialiased (fuzzy).

Yes ATI is next

I would never purchase a wildcat card for IronCAD. While the 3d Labs cards work fine because we use only the most generic of OpenGL calls in our rendering; in the future if we start supporting hardware features in our rendering engine; the hardware that we support will be nVidia and ATI first (speculation at this point). 3D Labs doesn't do anything with their card that is superior enough to justify their major price difference in my opinion. Plus I prefer the driver release cycles and methods for obtaining tech support from nVidia over 3d labs. The 256 meg cards really won't be a benefit over the 128 meg cards with IronCAD right now. The 128 meg Quadro FX 1000 and 2000 nVidia cards are so powerful right now that their power has exceeded the capacity of our rendering engine. So if you jump up to the 256 card; you may see some speed increase based on the GPU; but the extra ram won't help you; right now at least. The future will of course hold changes in our applications that may make the 256 megs valuable to you; but right now it doesn't make sense to purchase it just for IronCAD. The SATA drives are getting close to SCSI, especially if the drive has the 8meg cache in it. For models that are under 40 megs in size; the SATA will perform just fine (IF you get the 7200 RPM disks with the 8 meg or higher cache). The 10krpm SCSI will be faster than the ATA but not by a noticeable factor until your file sizes are 50megs+. Now if you go with a SCSI RAID card that has 32/64 megs of RAM on it; and 15krpm scsi disks; then you will notice a very big speed difference between that and the SATA's.

A gig of ram truly is the "comfort minimum" for IronCAD on Win2k/XP. While IronCAD runs fine on 512, it is slower, just as it runs fine on 256 but crawls once you reach a certain point. 2gigs is even better than one and really isn't far beyond the realm of necessity. Watch your task manager and if it ever reports that you're using more than 950 megs of ram at any time; I would recommend jumping up to 2 gigs (or 1.5 or whatever you can cram into your case). If you have available RAM, when IronCAD asks the operating system to give it some memory for us; the OS will allocate blocks of RAM; which is solid state memory that is a gillion times faster (or so) than a hard drive. If the OS does not have enough RAM to allocate (remember it keeps 128+ ram for itself) then it will create a file on your hard disk and use that file as though it were ram. The problem with that file is that it's speed depends on the speed of your disk; which you're allready taxing with other applications. With RAM being so inexpensive these days (compared to a year ago; which is 7 computer years); it is my opinion and experience that one should just automatically fill the workstation to capacity with ram if the workstation is for CAD/engineering work: of course with 1 gig as a comfort minimum with budget constraints as a factor.

Using the API?

IronCAD will NOT take advantage of the 64 bit chip right now (and probably not with version 7) and at this very moment our plans for the future do not yet have 64 bits in them; but of course our plans could change at any time so we can't say never. I don't want you to purchase a 64 bit chip because we encouraged it nor do I not want you to NOT purchase a 64 bit chip because we said that we're not going to support it. We're just focusing on the features of version 7 right now so we haven't yet decided when/where moving to 64 bit architecture is going to happen; if it happens. So there is NO OFFICIAL WORD from us on our support fo the 64 bit architecture yet.

Yes they were updated. No there is no list. I have also seen that ACIS is better at handling complex surfaces than Parasolid is; which is the opposite of 5.x. The granit kernel is included and it comes with a 60 day trial.

Keep in mind that our decision makers do read the posts on this discussion forum so any comments regarding what you like and dislike about us and other CAD app's are most certainly heard and taken into consideration. We encourage you to say what's on your mind and by using these forums; others can agree with you. So please do "plague" us with information about what our competitors have that you desire and anything else that you want to say. We make this application for you, the user, so what you have to say about our future product direction is VERY important to us. Can you think of some things that those applications that you listed have that we should have? How can we take their idea and improve on it so that it's easy in IronCAD. Why would someone use the other application instead of ours? Thanks

Ah well if there's a bug, such as cutting at an angle, then we'll certainly correct it I agree to the usefulness of cutting in the flat.

The idea with cutting sheetmetal after form is that when you unfold it; our sheetmetal performs calculations to rebuild the cut-shape so that in the unfolded state the cut appears as you would need it to be cut so that it would fold correctly. We don't merely unfold the sheetmetal; we completely rebuild it and all of the shapes within it, taking into consideration k-factor, stock, and the other properties; so that you are given the correct unfolded shape that is required for it to fold properly.

Also keep in mind that as you modify items; they can change their location in the part history. Try unchecking "Allow Reording" which is a right click option on a part in the scene browser before modifying the bend.

Scott instead of using the custom profile; use the "Cut Sheetmetal" command in the tools menu to do this. A custom profile has a very hard time stretching around bends whereas the cut sheetmetal was intended to cut through any sheetmetal regardless of how curvy it is. How to use cut sheetmetal: 1) Create your stock/sheetmal 2) Create a solid part (not a shape, but a part) that represents the hole that you want to cut out of the sheetmetal. This will be your cutting tool. 3) Position the tool so that it "cuts" through your part 4) Select the sheetmetal at the part level (blue) then shift+select the tool, then run the "Cut Sheetmetal Part" command from the Tools MENU (not catalog).