3DC 5.0.7

I’ve got two operations to write before I can andquot;give you give youandquot; andnbsp;

Richard

Richard, Did you fix the andquot;problemandquot; with the insertion points that I was complaining about recently? Jeffrey.

I noticed the thread is now 5.0.7, but was 5.0.6……
Does this mean that I should download again?

Thanks
Patrick

troub,

It has been a long road. But I think things are looking good. My opinion on frequent updates is that they are a andquot;good thingandquot; as long as the new update improves and fixes things rather, than just adding new bugs.

Jeffrey,

No I didn’t add the enhancement that you requested. I have decided that this enhancement does not improve 3DC, it actually makes things confusing. I don’t want to add any extra steps to the import process. In the rare case where people do not want wheels etc. centered they can easily correct it with the Shift operation.

If you would like instructions on using the Shift operation please let me know.

Richard

All that I had to do is move one point a very small amount to turn it from concave to convex. Sometimes that is all it takes.

Either way, you can use a Concave cross section. It just means that you have to alt-select the cross section end for extrusion. And, depending on the model, you may need to do a bit more work in the andquot;finishing upandquot; phase.

Richard

Richard, I place the insertion point EXACTLY where I want it in AutoCAD or TurboCAD, and I DON’T want 3DC to move it when I export 3DS files created by AutoCAD or TurboCAD into 3DC. I use 3DC to texture 3D models and to export 3D models to MSTS files. PLEASE add the option to keep the insertion point when exporting 3DS files into 3DC to the next version of 3DC. Jeffrey.

Patrick,

Well…. if you have noticed that file sizes are very large (say in the 2+ MB range) even after compacting your model then I would say it might be worth the trouble. It all depends on whether download 18 MBs is a big deal to you or not. There are no other changes other than the file-size fix.

Jeffrey,

3DC has always moved the andquot;insertion pointandquot; on models. I think it just coincidently has worked for your models in the past. 3DC is now more clever about how it does it. At some point (perhaps for 6.0) I should be able to retain the exact hierarchy and andquot;insertion pointsandquot;.

Richard

Hi Richard,

I have been following your cross section modelling tutorial, but am a bit stuck, either I have done something wrong, or there is a step missing?

In part 2, your cross sections in wire view show nice clean interiors with just a few horizontal lines (when viewed from front). But when I make a cross section, it is made up of a large number of triangles.

You also say select the left-most face and extrude it, however the left most face as above is a lot of triangles, and I have not worked out how to select the whole face apart from by selecting each triangle individually, then the extrude produces a strange shape.

I realise my queries will be stupid to some, but if I dont ask, I will never learn.

Thanks – Mike.

Mike,

It sounds like your cross section is concave (posting a picture here would help). If so, you have three options:

1) double-click your cross section and modify it so that it is convex (you can tell this by switching to wire frame mode while in the extrude tool-when the triangles disappear you have a convex cross section).

2) trim away the edges on the end of the cross section (one at a time using the Trim operation).

3) alt-click to select all of the faces on the end. alt-click selects all faces that are in a particular direction. It should work well (I think).

The difference between convex and concave can be very small:

Concave:

Convex:

Hi Richard,

Thanks very much for the instant reply, I will give it a try tomorrow and see how it goes.

Mike.

Hi all,

A new bug-fix update to 3DC is available. While creating the new cross section modelling tutorials I came across and fixed a few bugs. Unfortunately one of the bugs made completion of the tutorials impossible (or at least difficult) so out comes a new release:

[img:3e9242hk]http://amabilisplus.com/downloads/3DC.msi[/img:3e9242hk]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://amabilisplus.com/downloads/3DC.msi">http://amabilisplus.com/downloads/3DC.msi</a>&lt;!– m –>

If you are wondering what happened to 5.0.6, I had a report this morning about 3DC file sizes getting quite large even for small objects. Compacting didn’t help. Fortunately the fellow could describe how to reproduce the problem, so I added a fix and replublished 5.0.6 as 5.0.7. Those of you who use boolean operations may well find that your files are considerably smaller after this update.

There willl not be any new updates for a while (unless there is an emergency fix required). I am beginning my research for 6.0, and will be doing some work on marketing.

Note that it will be a long time until 6.0 is available. The research phase alone will take months. In the mean time, 3DC is very extensible now (due to the Operation/Plug-in/Script architecture), so new features are easy to add even while 6.0 is in development.

Richard

That’s great Richard. . .I thought it seemed a little hectic–just when I finally got around to downloading one update, sure enough, out comes another the next day . I think 5.0 has reached a great level. I only started using it whenever you began with MSTS support (not too long ago), and it has evolved very quickly and nicely. Thank you!

Richard Scott,

Yes, you always have to download the update from the Help menu. There are dependencies between the DLLs and the EXE (pretty complicated ones) that require it. Sorry.

Hopefully this will be last update for a while. On the other hand, if you don’t andquot;needandquot; this update and downloading is a problem, you could wait for a while to ensure there isn’t a 5.0.8.

Richard

Richard

Do we need to download the Pro Upgrade again with 5.07 (I last downloaded it on Saturday evening UK Time)? Or can I just uninstall and re-install with that version.

Regards

Richard Scott