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Triball ( then the options while Triball is active, such as Spacebar ) Hide UnHide Target Look At Like Tom said, it depends on what mode I am working. If I am trying to make wires, I use a specific sequence and limited tools. So what I would ask for is possibly a way to set up maybe 5 different "Modes" determined by the user, that allows a certain bunch of "shortcuts" that also could be assigned by the user. So I could see a "Wire Mode", a "Blend/Chamfer Mode", etc, that allows IC to work more smoothly when doing a large amount of any one thing. The normal way IC works is nice, because there is no real "Mode" you have to be in. But, there are some times, when I am modeling something that might be heavy in Wires, for example, that I would love to have a "Wire Mode" that makes the process more streamlined. One or two wires, no problem. Lots of wires, big problem........ As far as improving or making something faster, I would love to see a better way to make wire/piping, and also better ways to handle how the BOM picks up information from the model, such as a way to pick many parts at once, and change the check box for whether it is used in the BOM, or not. I use IronPro, but this is not the best either for this feature. More to come Mike

I know what you mean Tom...I'm getting more and more AARP stuff in the mail lately! It's a Bee Otch getting older! Mike

What Cary said, was what I was trying to explain in my response above. What I find odd, is that I always just take the default orientation when inserting a part into a scene, so how can any coordinate system be different? Does the local coordinate not default to the Global system? I have noticed that when taking a part out of an assembly, and then parking it in a catalog, when I grab it and insert it into another scene, it will once in awhile come into the scene cocked off at about a 45 Deg angle, although I never have measured it. I will have to try and do this in a controlled way, but for now this is all I have. Mike

Are you sure you are not seeing the "Assembly" anchor, instead of the "Part" anchor? If you have the anchor on the part oriented right, and then pick that part first when you make it into an assembly, maybe it grabs the "Part" position of the anchor, but orientated to "Global" instead of the local of the part. I have all kinds of issues when I have parts that I take out of assemblies, and then insert them into another model, and it seems to have the coordinate system all goofed up. Haven't really tracked it, but it has been an issue always. Just guessing. Mike

Ha, Ha.......Careful Kevin, I have a standard transmission auto, as well as an automatic! I don't think this is a good example though, but that is another story. Your comment of hearing weekly from others about why don't you change this old UI, was certainly NOT made by people that are making a living using Ironcad all day long. And if you ever were to put two people side by side with the two interfaces, you would quickly have the guy in front of the Newer UI going, Man, how did you get that done so fast????? I don't envy your trying to please everyone, as it is a constant, pretty much unobtainable goal, but I just would hate to see the old UI go. I have used this product since it was Trispectives, and while my joining date in this forum does not reflect my real length of time with the product, I have been making a living using it for quite awhile, and have done so along side many other CAD systems. I think I, like others who have been using CAD for along time, have a good idea what works, and what doesn't, and I think you can tell by the responses we are fairly passionate about this. Any changes you make, really do affect what we do for a living. It's not a part time thing for me and many others, so do not forget that when making your decisions. The old UI just works! Happy Birthday, and thanks for a great product! Mike

My simple sum up of the UI for me, is this, if I can do something using one mouse click, I want to keep being able to do it with one mouse click. The deceiving part is this.....a one click action to do a command as before, hidden under two mouse clicks to get to the "ribbon" that lets you use the one mouse click for the command. I am constantly reminded of the ProE days, and the hundred million trillion clicks of the "done" box to close down the windows you used to just create a line. ( slightly exaggerated, but not much ) It was astonishing. I started using IronCad for the simplicity, and the SPEED of creating parts. I understand that looks will change, but I have a problem when now it seems as if IronCad is going backwards to look like all the other applications, which still use a flawed interface, MS Office included. I'm OK with a change, but not at the sacrifice of speed. It will take away what is good about IronCad, and I would bet a large amount of something, that most every user of IC feels the same. I know IronCad does not want to make things more difficult, and I am sure you are working hard to try and keep it flowing proper, I just want to make in known that I for one, love the old UI, and if anything new does not work as smoothly, and the old UI goes away, I won't like it, and would consider other software at that point. Mike

Long Live the Original UI !!!!!!

Cary, I very often do something similar to Marcus also. I will create a normal set of views, and then change one or more of them to a different configuration. A typical example of that for me would be having an "Assembly" of parts that might have some wires going to it, along with the mounting screws etc. The normal views show it in the assembled state, but I will usually take the ISO view, and show it exploded, with a clear view of how the wire connection is done, as well as the various sequence of the hardware used to mount it. This is a very useful way to get assembly views for manufacturing, and minimize how many pages need to be output. Mike

I too, like how the smartdimensions work now. If you want to add more abilities etc, that would be fine, just leave what's there now alone. I could see maybe having different "modes" of how the smartdimensions work, but I have not given it much thought. Mike

As long as there is an option to keep it as it is. I do quite a bit of work away from the web. It would be an absolute stopper if I could not do this. I don't even like working from a network drive. I want to be able to keep working no matter what! Too many bad experiences. I'm for staying as close to my license as I can. On the other hand, I have worked with shared licenses, with software that shall not be named, and it can work if set up well, and if there is a fallback if something goes haywire with the license server. My .02 worth. Mike

Ok, here is what happens. When I go to properties, and change configuration to Default, nothing changes when I come back to the sheet. If I hit update after, I get what you see in the attachment. If I do nothing but right click on the BOM, hit update, I get what you see in the attachment. It corrects the line issue, but puts the 2 lower level parts in the wrong spot. They should be under the A0001 part, not on their own at the end of the BOM. Mike

As I was doing some custom BOM work, I came across a format issue that I cannot seem to change. There are lines missing in the column when using the indented list format on the drawing. It was showing up on my custom template, but it also is the same on the default template. I usually do not use the indented list on my drawings, but this is not right. See attachment.

Thanks Cary, I knew there was an easier way. Mike

Custom_names.bmp I'm trying to add a simple custom property to all my parts in the Scene, that will show up in a BOM on the drawing. I have no problem doing this one at a time, but am wondering if there is a way to have the custom property name show up on the drop down list as shown in my attachment. Thanks Mike

I have been using my SpacePilot on my desktop machine, and the older Travel spaceball on my laptop forever, and I have not had any issues as what I am reading about. I use Win7 Pro on my 64bit desktop, and XP on my 32bit laptop. I'll try and dig up what drivers I am using in case that helps. I could never go back to not using a spacemouse, so I feel bad for anyone having an issue. This is a little unrelated, but Ironcad will lock up and crash if I try to move the model with either the mouse, or spaceball during the load of a file. I have to be very careful when loading a large file that I do not move the spaceball puck to much or it will crash. Mike

Cary, I was not clear in how I wrote my comment, but I did mean for it to be a separate icon that followed the "clear" or base icon. I think it is important to leave the original icon in its place, and not cover it with another icon. I should have read my own comment before I sent it. Mike

I don't use the structured mode, but on other Cad systems I have used, I think it was and is very important to be able to search for failed parts. Especially on a large model when changes are being made. So I would vote there be a search capability. As for the Icons and color, I would tend to vote for a solid color shape that alerts you to a condition, such as, a solid red triangle for a failure, a yellow square for a caution etc........ That way there is a shape and color that would associate to a condition, that is repeatable. I have not thought this totally thru, but I have always liked a shape/color combination for quick recognition of a status. Mike

Yes, I agree. The jump back is not good behavior. I use the spacepilot for almost all motion, but when I do use the mouse, it is a pain to have it jump back when you max out the zoom. This does need to be fixed. Mike

How much memory are you working with? What video card is in your laptop, and how much memory for it? I had been using the same Dell M6300 laptop for a couple of years, but recently switched to a desktop machine because things were getting too slow on the laptop, just not enough horsepower. I had 4 megs of ram in the machine, and was using the 3/gb switch to at least use a little more that 2mb, but wasting ram non the less. I only had the Quadro FX1600M with 256mb of memory for the video, and it just was not enough when the models got to be larger than 100meg or so. I also was using Win XP Pro, but now have Win7 on my desktop, with 8mb of memory, and a 1mb video card. It is a great running machine, with really no problems so far. I still use the laptop at home, but don't do any large designing on it. I don't know about you, but I had to replace the graphics card on my laptop FOUR times.......The Dell guy said there was a problem with this card with heavy CAD users. I can vouch for that! Anyway, goood luck on things. Mike

Well, here is what I found out. It puts the tooltbl.txt into a hidden file folder under users/"my user name" / AppData ( the hidden folder ) / Roaming / etc, etc.... You can change the tooltbl.txt file under the normal Ironcad folder all you want, but until you delete the tooltbl.txt file under the directory above, it does not change anything. As soon as I deleted the file under the hidden folder, it picked it up fine. This is for Win7. So thanks Doug and Cary. It was just under a hidden folder in Win7. It seems odd, however, that you have the tooltbl.txt file in IronCad, and you edit it, but it does not update the file it needs to unless you delete it from another place. Makes no sense at all. It should just overwrite it if you change it in the main IronCad directory. Maybe this is just a function ( read "problem" ) with Win 7. Mike

I am having a problem with getting the tooltbl.txt file to change. I have done this with every version of IC, so I am familiar with how to do it, but this time, it is giving me problems. None of the additions I have added are showing up, and it is acting like it is not actually reading the tooltbl.txt file that is visible, but maybe from some hidden area??? I am using Win7, so I don't know if this is an issue or not. Is there some other spot to look for this file, or is there some other file that is directing it some where else? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Mike

OOOPPPPPsssss, that makes complete sense. I was wondering where it was going to get the actual value. I just thought the variable did more than that..... What, no secret formula!!!! Anyway, that cleared it up. Yes, it's too bad that IronCad can't provide that info. It knows how many pages, it just wants to keep it to itself! Thanks again Mike. Mike

I'm missing something here Mike. I made the variable, but it does not seem to recognize what I put in for the variable. See attachments. You can see with the Text Properties picture that what comes out is in the red box to the right. It has the output as just the text that was typed in. Mike

Thanks Mike, that was helpful. I was familiar with the dropdown list of the standard variables, but was hoping there were more, which I guess there is if you make them yourself. It just seems like IronCad knows every variable in the program, and it would be nice to have an insite, or access to those, instead of having to make our own. That may not be totally clear, but it just seems like things are a bit tougher in IronCad to customize, than other programs I have used. The drawing template in particular, or at least the information as to how to customize it, is, and always has lacked a bit, for directions. You can get the info, but it just seems to be tougher than it should be. I appreciate the help. Mike W.

I'm finally getting around to making my drawing sheets to be a little smarter, and I am wondering if there is a master list of "variables" to go by. For example: $PRPSheet:"IC-Title" It would also be nice to have them listed by Scene / Drawing I have some things set up, and now I am looking to go a bit deeper. One example is being able to have an automatic tracking of how many sheets in the drawing, so I can have a box in the drawing that shows this, for example: 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3, etc. It's really helpful when you have 5 or more sheets, and you add another. You are forced to go to every sheet and update manually, when I think this could be an easy variable. I know I am a little behind in asking for this, but a list would be nice. Thanks Mike