B. Ludin

Currently, the use of configurations and constraints is almost mutually exclusive. I have asked for configuration-specific constraints ever since IC6, but surprisingly never got much of an echo in the forum. Maybe we get it for IC10 (or would that be ICX) if some more people raise their hands... Beat

Umm, I think there's a misunderstanding here. The user selects several parts and wants to apply a certain property value to all of them. That's one thing. I can see that it would be nice to have a function to check that parts are identical in some cases, but that's a different beast alltogether. Beat

Not in a gazillion years would I ever dare to insinuate anything even remotely similar. On a side note, it's interesting that Tom with some 2000 votes has the same status as you. Looks like the only evolutionary step up from Triball is extinction or conversion to a SW minion (the former being clearly preferable, of course) Beat

Cary, I don't agree. Simply filtering through the very limited number (approx. 60)of property values of parts is going to be orders of magnitude faster than comparing their geometries. And it is pretty straightforward, too. True, if you select hundreds or thousands of parts, the delay will become quite noticeable. But it is still a great lot faster than having to change the properties for each part one at a time. A flight from London to N.Y. can seem pretty long, too - but not if swimming is your only alternative And if there are some properties which may create problem (variables are the only ones I can think of), just make them inaccessible when more than one part is selected. Cheers, Beat

I guess, all we really need is the ability to select several parts and change their common properties at once. That would also allows us to change rendering properties, densities (there's currently another thread on this subject), names, part number, descriptions, and so on batch-wise. Sounds like a great ER to me. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement, should it? Beat PS: Retrograde linking would be great, too, of course. But it's quite obvious that it harbors a number of pitfalls (in addition to the amount of number crunching required). PS#2: Tom, I see you been promoted to Triball (is there something coming after that?). Congratulations! How does it feel to be clicked, spun and pushed around all the time? PS#3: Mike, what about your post count? That can't be real can it?

Precisely! And while you're at it, could you add them to the drawing environment, too? Thanks in advance Beat

Hi Cary I'm using an extended version of the camera direction tool. Now if you would be willing to add the 4 missing standard views to the camera picker toolbar, I would give you my blessings for removing VBA support Cheers, Beat

The problem was (is?, I've disabled the feature ever since the option is available) that the automatic re-ordering had a habit of doing exactly the opposite, not always but far too often to be acceptable since this meant that we had to re-machine a part when the "loss" of the H-shape wasn't discovered in time. Cheers, Beat

...only for private use, though. But it IS one of the sleeker and more efficient protection packages (AVG, not NAV). Beat

I have evaluated and used Modelpress for a long time and it would be great, but the rendering is rather slow and it isn't supported under MacOS and Linux. Also, because of its the intolerance to imperfect geometry (which is almost unavoidable when importing data from other sources), it fails very often. We want to put 3D models of products on our web site, but they often contain models of our collaborator's products, which we usually receive under an NDA which allows us to use the model for visual representation as long as it doesn't allow reverse engineering of the product. I'm not sure conversion to a facet model is enough protection to satisfy this requirement. Sure, there are ways to (manually) deteriorate the model, possibly w/o an impact on the visual representation quality, but it's a time-consuming extras hassle. Cheers, Beat

Is there a way to protect the model so the user can only view it but not download and import it into a CAD application? Beat

I'm still using the the section tool quite a lot and have the feeling that it has gotten a lot less trouble-causing over time. But I still tend to delete cross-file sections before saving complex files. The idea to use the assembly feature instead is interesting. I will definitely try it out. Beat

Given that I have to redo all of my customized settings with every new version and PU, 6 month cycle is frequent enough for me. Of course, if IC would finally, finally retain customized settings... I guess, everybody has his/her own set of most urgent ER's. In our case, differential locking and a render-friendly environment (documentation-specific smart paint-remembering configurations, reproducible and transferable light and camera settings, perspective vector drawings etc.) would probably boost productivty by around 70-100% (but I can see that this may be different for people working in different environments). I've seen a few of my proposal been implemented in the past and I hope, one day in the near future, IC will have the aforementioned features lest we get tempted to waste time evaluating competing products - not that there is any serious competition to IC, of course Beat

First 5-6, that is

I can only second Carlo's vote. Merging (and splitting) of 3D curves is essential in many situations. The existing workarounds are often cumbersome and too limited functionally to be useful. Given that IC's advanced surface modelling capabilities rely almost entirely on 3D curves, these simple functions are absolutely essential to get the job done. Beat

Sure. But nothing that you should be too concerned about - except, maybe, for the exact day of the imminent doomsday I was just playing with words and local traditions. Here in Switzerland, Santa is said to sack bad kids in the literal sense, i.e. he puts them in his sack and takes them away (where, nobody knows). And of course, IronCAD LLC might want to sack us, their customers (in the sense of robbing or ripping off) I didn't take into account that sacking also means dismissing people in modern slang. Didn't mean to worry you. Cheers, Beat

Just saw a report on TV showing Santa being beaten up by two rabid easter rabbits. Thus he might by late this year, so PU1 still has a chance...

Joans - thanks a lot for the link. Great little program. But shouldn't release IC from the duty to fix the problem. True, other programs suffer from the same problem, but none as badly as IronCAD. Beat

...with respect to sacking people?

My personal impression, for what it's worth, is that ACIS is currently more stable and a bit easier on the CPU than Parasolid, so I use ACIS as the default kernel. Beat

Hey developers How about using an (or maybe several) old-style .ini files for saving all customized settings. That way we could transfer settings from version to version, workstation to workstation, etc. What information does the ironcad.tbc file actually contain? Maybe we should keep a backup copy and write a little batch file that restores the backup when the toolbars go haywire? Hey, maybe you could even build that functionality into IC? It would seem to me that the IC developers have tackled more complex problems in the past... Beat

Here's a single-patch UV-mesh version. Surface1.ics Cheers, Beat

Beautimous! I guess that trick could also be used to place several decals on a surface...

Removing the checkmarks would be inconsistent with the implementation. It should be greyed out to indicate that the setting is inactive. Beat

You can also drag the shapes to a (temporary) catalog and from there to the new part. That's a useful workaround in many (but not all) situations. Beat