SSIMMONS

I don't use sketchup ( I messed around with it one time on my friends computer when he left his place for a couple hours because I was bored and have an ex that was an architect that used it), but this is good information to know Dariusz. I didn't know there was a format limitation like this for skp, Thanks. -Spencer

Why are you not just importing directly? -Spencer

I would run everything on SSD. The technology has come a long long way and you are almost guaranteed to wear out most of the components in your system (or they will be obsolete from time) by the time you have an issue with a solid samsung EVO product or another reliable SSD. The only reason I even have a hard drive is to throw old files on that I may never need again, but want to keep. Make sure your boot drive is SSD also. You will not wear out an SSD, there are no moving parts at all inside (solid state). Does the memory degrade with time blah blah blah, yes of course, but so does the sun and the paint on your walls. It will be perfectly fine and you can always back things up on the HD if you a nervous for the first several years. When people say SSD's wear out they are not keeping into consideration that by the time it does you could re buy the same one at pennies on the dollar because the SSD standard will likely be in the multiple TB range by then. Just look at thumb drives, when I was a kid they were like 100 bucks for one that was 8GB because it was miraculous at the time. Gamers use only SSD and they brutalize them for years with 120 GB games like ARK an what not and they never fail because of it. Hope this helps and don't be scared to load down that SSD if it's a good product. - Spencer

Yeah, It seems to be stretching by some percentage of the overall stock length that feature belongs to. Very odd, i'm at a loss on this one. I will be interested to find out what's going on with it though. - Spencer

You can always just right click the view and crop it to whatever size you want. -Spencer

What Malcolm said for sure. If you want to get real technical and really mess with lines and what not, open in CAXA and do the same print to PDF. - Spencer

I have been reporting them as I see them so that may help a little.

Good Morning, What you are talking about would most likely be done by a combination of custom properties and inserting columns with scene properties. The drop down menu will have all sorts of properties that are pulled from the parts within the scene. Ones that are not on the list can be made using the custom properties within the scene. Hope this helps. - Spencer

You can do CPU/ GPU combination rendering in Blender with only a few clicks, but more is not necessarily better. There are many circumstances where this will slow down rendering time a lot. If you are rendering an animation that is 30fps and contains 90 frames you will end up rendering 90 independent images that will result in a 3 second video. No matter what you do or what system you have, this is going to take you a lot of time. Rendering animations is not for the impatient to be sure haha. and also if that is your only computer at home, you might not be able to do too much else on it while the rendering is in progress due to the CPU load most likely being 100 percent and the GPU load will be quite heavy also. Your computer will auto re-allocate some percentage of tasks to allow for use of other programs, but it will show a large dip in performance. Just a little heads up for anyone trying to get into some more extreme rendering stuff. - Spencer

Here is another similar example. I just need to find a way to add them to the gallery if anyone can help. -Spencer Fluid Impact Sphere Test-A.mp4

Not at all. So I used Blender (2.8 I think maybe) and used a filled in circle as a water emitter inside of an invisible box as the domain the simulation runs in. That is the Reason some of the water droplets seem to float when they hit the ground outside of the platform. You can model stuff in IronCAD and export it in using an .OBJ format (IC is just WAYYYY easier to model in). You can of course expand the domain beyond the camera to avoid that. Mostly it is just practice practice practice like most things and getting familiar with cycles rendering at different resolution types and different samples (this is where time will be saved or spent mostly). The viscosity of the fluid can be changed, though I fear it is more or less a guessing game and not very accurate to a real world scenario unless you spend a lot of time dialing it in. The water in this animation appears slow, but in actuality I think I set the objects to be extremely large. There are a lot of great online tutorials of various things on the software. Like I said though, do your modeling in IC for sure. P.S. ~ Thanks Harley! -Spencer

Does anyone know of a good converter to GIF that doesn't leave a water mark and lets you download the converted file? Most of the rendering quality will be lost i think, but it should still look decentish. Fluid Impact Sphere Test 5-A.mp4

Good Afternoon IC Community! Can we do animated renderings for the rendering challenge? - Spencer

That is a great question Tony. Off the top of my head I think that anyone with the link can view it. I do know that the link will die after approximately 2 weeks and no longer work. If you want to send whole models in a 3D format the shrink-wrap tool can come in handy to eliminate the finer details of a model. Another option is to create the link and place it on something like Microsoft 365 and allow access to only whomever you want to have it through the share feature. - Spencer

First I would not get the i9. I have been an Intel committed PC builder since as long as I can remember, but there are just simply better options now. The Ryzen 9 3900X is some serious piece of kit with absurd performance (more than you will EVER need). In my next build I will almost certainly be putting that CPU in there. Get some Corsair vengeance with 3200 MHZ because any faster and you are just wasting your money. I would recommend two 16 GB sticks so if you ever (which you wont) want to add more you will have the slots left for it. Get you a sweet case with a clear glass wall (the Corsair Carbide series Mid towers are lovely and very easy to work with) to keep an eye on things in there and a 750W Power supply. Please Don't buy some giant clunky full size case just to look cool, you will regret it and id towers get great air-flow these days. The RTX 2080TI is most definitely a monster if you are willing to pay for it, but the RTX 2080 super is also a very great card. Other than that just get a reliable MOBO (I like the ROG STRIX myself) and you will be off to the races and there wont be much that could keep up. Good Luck! - Spencer

Looks like a good card at a very affordable price point to me. Just make sure your MOBO is compatible (most likely is) and the clock speed is reasonable and I think you will be happy with it. AMD is starting to really step up their game in the CPU and GPU markets, especially in the CPU market. Good Luck! - Spencer

When I open an assembly of about 350MB I have no problem rotating and having full view of all line edges, etc. When you get larger than that, depending on your other hardware, it can become sluggish, but you will still see all line edges. I posted a video below which resulted in a 600MB file of all imported parts. My computer specs are on my profile. - Spencer 2020-05-01 12-45-39.mp4

Good Day, I have worked with IC on two different workstation cards and two different consumer cards. the Quadro K1200 and the P1000 or something of that nature. When i used my GTX 1070 it was arguable which was faster in IC, but I swapped over to the RTX 2070 and I can tell you with absolute certainty that it BLOWS AWAY the other two cards by a mile plus some in every possible way. Just my two cents worth. -Spencer

Yes it is. I do this very often if I have wire mesh or grating. I will go to google images and find something that will work for my needs and apply it to stairs, etc. It can be very helpful for file size and performance when paired with transparency. - Spencer

Brent, Can you elaborate? I am a little confused about what you are asking. Is this part actually two different parts that are assembled (it looks like one part, in which case the blend feature should work fine)? Also, why hollow blocks? - Spencer