Josh

Yep I have been shocked by battery life on Macbook Pro, I never even think about carrying a charger with me. Easily get more than a day of working without a charger. Last computers have been a Surface 8 Pro, HP ZBook laptop workstation, and Dell XPS, all of which got a few hours of battery life when doing anything powerful. Always had to carry a charger with me and look for power points. Every program I use now works on Mac except IronCAD, and you don't have to deal with Microsoft being terrible at quality control with bugs on everything they do. Using IronCAD in parallels still works but there is enough latency for it to be annoying, so I miss being able to instantly open it up and design things happily. Now it's more of a process which is less fun. All the MCAD systems out there are still based on such slow and boring fundamental methodology, always start with a sketch, minimal re-use of geometry. I sometimes wonder how many times across the world people have manually made a cylinder by sketching and extruding a circle. So much geometry we use has been built before all over the world, it's insane that CAD still lives in the era of doing everything from a sketch. Mac compatible IronCAD would make me very happy, and also probably open up a nice new market for IronCAD (less MCAD on Macs, no SolidWorks, more and more PC market share is now Mac). It would take a lot of investment and courage to take that leap though, the code base likely needs a refresh at this point so is likely to be a worthwhile investment on both Windows and Mac.

Hello! Just installed on an Apple silicon M3 Macbook with Parallels + Windows 11 and... it works! Had to change graphics driver to OpenGL2 instead of DirectX, but nothing else was needed. (Menu>Options>Rendering>Driver Type) Note: I only just tested this, threw in a few parts to see if it could handle them and all worked fine. But I haven't done sustained work where I assume there might be problems floating around different areas.

Good question! No idea whether curved stock takes into account Kfactor, I assume it does not and assumes the curve is going to light enough to disregard Kfactor.

If it's a bend (not stock with cross section), then you can make a parameter that controls the length and apply it by filling in the length field in intellishape properties. If it's stock (with cross section), you can apply the parameter with a 2D sketch SmartDimension. 2021-05-03 13-15-33.mp4

I'm not 100%, but I don't think this can be stored as a default, it's meant to be a one-off change to solve complex sizing needs in the moment. I would say: a) Size in the other direction the second time b) If this is something that changes really (really) often, make it parametric and do the angle/length calculation with a formula.

Makes sense, pretty sure that should be a K factor of 1 then if there's no elongation.

Hi Joseph, I think the lost material in the real world prototype might be caused by the k-factor. Made you a video below: 2021-05-02 15-45-03.mp4

Nice! I do love a productivity hack. You could try delve into the Gestures side of IronCAD as well, I haven't done that in a while.

@Lykle I have them separated out of the string into individual files for each command (was needed when building the Academy). If you only need a few, then what the guys mentioned above is easy. If you need a big batch of them, just send me a message and I can send them through.

I know someone who was using a Surface Laptop (no GPU) and it seemed to run well. You don't need Windows "Pro" versions, I have used IC many times on non-pro windows versions like home-edition etc. Touch will not work very well, at the moment it is near-impossible to use IronCAD without a separate individual mouse. Touchpad and/or touchscreen both don't really have support. I have tried in multiple different ways to use IronCAD with touch screens by customizing things, it's possible, but painful. So it will probably run fine on Surface Tablet, but it will still need a mouse plugged in so not much use from the "tablet" side. And the GPU (or lack thereof) will probably struggle with any really big models. I would really like to see touch support and pen/stylus support for IronCAD. Small laptops, tablets, and even phones (!) are now powerful enough to run CAD software, so I think the future of design software will involve a lot more mobility and designing with portable devices. E.g. carrying a tablet or foldable smartphone onto a worksite or into a factory, and being able to design efficiently in the palm of your hand rather than needing to travel back to a desk with an external mouse.

@HDEAR Nice! Great to hear it worked. Must've been a tiring day for your computer's fan!

Small feature patterns like these are often painful, it would be lovely if patterning was multi-processor... Not sure about ICD or CAXA, but have you tried doing this with the new "Fill Pattern" command? It will still be processor intensive, but once you have it set up it should only require one size change and the holes will all automatically update for you rather than needing to manually copy anything. You could suppress the pattern when you don't need it to avoid big regen times. Here's an example if you haven't tried Fill yet: 2021-04-08 15-23-28.mp4

Haha great point Jan! Definitely good to be ready for lots of tweaking, especially with more difficult materials. I would add that while there are various important limitations to learn when designing for 3D printing with FDM, there are also some capabilities which surprised me and are not intuitive. Things like bridging and printing at large overhang angles. Learning how to apply these can make for some really fun design work! Overhang and bridging examples below. Very fun. @jvik I've always just increased my STL resolution stupidly high, that's great to know if the slicers work with OBJs. BridgeVideo.mp4

@HDEAR I have a Prusa Mk3, it's great. It's been really reliable, and can easily be tweaked in lots of ways. If it ever does break there will likely be plenty of spare parts and a community of people that can help fix it (the Prusa community is big). Depending on how much you like building Ikea furniture, I would recommend getting the pre-assembled version rather than the kit. Assembling the kit is easy, but VERY time consuming. Expect at least 6 hours of little screws and reading through instructions if you buy the kit. Mine literally sat unused for many months because I was busy and didn't get around to it, because I knew it would take so long. Eventually I got around to it and it's been a ton of fun. I haven't done the multi-material kit yet, as I've read it can be extremely finicky, and I haven't needed to do much multi-material stuff (you can still do multi-material without the kit, you just have to change the filament manually which is easy as long as it's only a few changes per print. IC works no problem, you just export your file as an STL (Stereolithography) and then import into the Prusa software which creates the Gcode for the printer. Note when exporting STLs, increase the resolution to around 200 or so, instead of the default "fine" or "course" modes, because both those modes are pretty course in reality. (This should be fixed in a future IC update I hope). Filament Don't worry about buying lots of filament, once you start printing you will probably realise the filament you want is different to what you bought and so on. I have a ton of filament I bought at the beginning which is probably never going to be used. There are some cool companies making recycled filament if you want to use that too, filamentive.com are great, and I've even got some Nylon filament made from disgarded fishing nets. From an environmental standpoint, from what I understand recycling PETG (made from oil) is likely better than using new PLA (made from plants) which is theoretically bio-degradable. But defintely get some PLA to start, as it's a little easier to print with than PETG. Although note PLA can't be used for many real world applications, even if you leave it in a hot car in the sun, it will ruin the print (it has a very low melting point). Carbon fibre filaments are very overated. I wouldn't bother with them (I have some). Basically they are more stiff but weaker than standard. This is a good resource for materials: https://help.prusa3d.com/en/materials Other stuff This guy (CNC Kitchen) has a great YouTube channel with a ton of info on filament, material strength tests, printer tweaks etc. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiczXOhGpvoQGhOL16EZiTg I have some cool models that I can send you that I have printed. Including a replica of the NASA 3D printable fabric made in IC. It's a good idea to buy some spare nozzles, you can clean nozzles, but when one gets clogged it's a pain and much better if you can quickly swap a new one in and clean the other one later. This is a great video to get you excited about possibilities. Have fun!

I agree, should default to Density units.

I agree parameters in the thread tool would be a great improvement and I know this limitation got in the way of a customer's project recently. I'll add a 6th one: We should really have pre-made threads, instead of requiring drawing a cross section every single time. It should be possible to choose from a list of pre-sized threads, and then only customize if actually needed. This would also allow the user to save their own threads to the list. At the moment, it's like someone wants to buy new tires for their car, and instead of showing them 50 tires to choose from, we just provide some rubber pellets and say make your own tires from scratch. We should have a list of threads that work automatically, and then the ability to customize their values where required.

In case you want to learn more about building complex parameter models, I just recently made a training course here: https://www.ironcad.academy/advanced-training Note it's a paid course (it took me many many hours to design and record all the course content and example models). But you get over 6 hours of content, and I cover a ton of detail on the different levels of parameters (Sketch, Shape, Feature, Pattern, Part, Assembly, Constraint, Dimension, & Suppression Parameters). I also cover a bunch of other related topics, like Assembly level push-pull handles, adding dynamic pricing info, attachment point parameters and more. I would hope/expect that the course price (299) would quickly pay itself back from all the future modelling time saved with the knowledge gained from the course. Anyway wanted to mention it exists! All the best.

Nice @Jonas@Solidmakarna you are the king of bug number tracking! I have also submitted tickets for this in the past but don't know the numbers... Would setting the default to Assembly/Part have a negative impact do you think? In practically every case I can think of Assembly/Part would be the more useful default setting for customers.

Seeing as we have quite a few members in this discussion and this relates to it, is anyone against the idea of having Mechanism Mode default to "Assembly/Part" instead of just "Part". I find myself constantly switching to Assembly/Part and as far as I know there is really not much downside to just having this as default. However there is a big downside with the current default of just "Part" because no complicated model (anything assembled) works by default for new users, and they have to somehow magically learn to switch over the tiny button down the bottom right. Am I missing some reasons why "Part only" has to be the default or would it be better for most people if "Part/Assembly" was defaut?

Thanks Tom, I agree it would be great to have an ICD command section with videos to help users, and I have also discussed with @Jonas@Solidmakarna the idea of making a replica of the catalog system that explains the catalog side of things, including all the ICMECH command functions. With the catalogs added it would really start to tie together the IronCAD design philosophy to help users of other CAD systems understand the IronCAD way. Unfortunately the command videos take a very long time to make, and the Academy does not really earn me much money. So at the moment (personally/financially) I can't really justify spending much time on it as I need to find a new job/income! All the best Josh

Thanks @Malcolm Crowe & @HDEAR Thanks so much appreciate the messages, great to hear you enjoy it!

Current IC sheet metal unfolding only supports "Developable" surfaces, which means anything that does not need to be stretched or compressed to unfold. The way I understand this is that basically anything sheet metal can only bend on one direction at a time. A useful way to physically interpret this is with a piece of paper, if you can make something with a piece of paper, then it's a developable surface (broadly). Paper does not allow much compression or stretching, so it's a useful representation. You can do a square to round transition with paper, and also twists etc without needing to crease the paper. If you try to fold a sphere out of paper, you will need to crease/fold the paper, it won't be possible as one smooth piece, because a sphere is not a developable surface. But if you take something flexible, like balloon rubber, then you can make a sphere by stretching the material. Look up "Cut out sphere from paper" on Google and you'll see what's needed if you want to keep it developable. So IronCAD operates on the assumption that sheet metal cannot stretch. However in the real world sheet metal can stretch, especially when using a press. It's worth noting that I think IronCAD's method is still correct, because if you need to include "stretching" then you have to account for the properties of different materials and thicknesses, basically how stretchy they are, otherwise the unfold will be wrong if the stretchiness is not accurate. So doing this would make sheet metal calculations much more complicated. However it would be VERY useful in future for IronCAD to have the ability to unfold non-developable surfaces with some sort of assigned stretch value. Rhino can do this. Instead of part of sheet metal, I think this would need to be a separate tool "Unfold Non-Developable Surfaces" where you told the system the type of material you were using, and then it would use the properties of that material to produce a correct(ish) unfold. I think having some ability to do this would be very valuable, especially for boat hull design and car panel design. It could also be used for fabrics on sofas, car seats etc. Even if it is only accurate to within a few mm or so, the tolerance can be quite high and it would still be very useful tool to have.

I'm still a bit lost as to the goal, but here's a video showing what I had in mind. Note I'm using the TAB key during sketching to toggle onto the values for length/angle of the line, and the green snap points provide all the right locations once a couple of lines have been done. I'm still thinking of it in Innovative Mode not Structured Mode though, so it may not be what you need. 2021-01-24 13-00-45.mp4

I don't think there's a way to parametrically control 3D curves in IronCAD. Are you aware of the pyramid shape in Shapes catalog? Or alternatively taking a Cube and applying a Draft at the feature level. Then you can control the angle of the pyramid with a Draft parameter, and the size with the Sizebox. If you can explain in a bit more detail what the end model needs to achieve I might be able to help more.

@Malcolm Crowe @Cary OConnor As part of this ER, can we simply reword the parameter area in Attachment Points so it's easier for new users to understand. Right now, for the Variable area, it's a little confusing which one is the variable on your existing part/assembly, and which one is the variable that will be the driver. Basically which variable is controlling which. I would suggest instead of the current: Variable: Referred Variables: Value: | | As Parameter Expression We change to: Parameter To Change: Selectable Parameters: Driving Parameter: | | Lock as Parameter Maybe it is just me, but I find it confusing to know off the top of my head which box refers to the existing model, and which box refers to the model I'm dropping out. I normally just end up looking at a model I've done earlier to check.