RonR

Kaare, Thanks, Breaking the curves up into smaller segments was going to be something to try. I have tried without the flanges, and they actually seem to aid in the alignment, as the guide always finds the vertex if it's a corner. If I can get the same number of vertexes in he right positions to be found by the point alignment guide in the lofting tool, the loft works beautifully. Can any VW gurus tell me how the tool choses the vertexes it uses for point alignment? I feel if I can understand this I will be able to solve the problem. RonR

I'm trying to loft (with no rail mode) a series of complex closed NURBS curves that contain both sharp angles and smooth sections, making a container with flanges on the edge. The curves are all related shapes, but vary in size- a boat hull would be a rough analogy. The part is destined for injection molding. It seems that to get smoothly contoured results I need to have the same number of vertexes functioning as alignment points on each curve in the series- otherwise the shape twists wildly. Am I correct in assuming that the vertexes work as alignment points only if they are interpolation points, rather than control points? When I select the curves with the loft tool and step through the series of vertexes on each curve in sequence, the alignment guide "skips over" some points that seem to me to be interpolation points. I have tried turning them into points that would be used as alignment points by using the "convert points" option on the 3D reshape tool, but the results are unpredictable. As close as I can look at them the points appear to be on the NURBS curve, but the alignment guide (the little red line) in the loft tool won't snap to them. This seems as if it might be related to an earlier problem I had (I believe it was confirmed as a bug ) in which vertexes would "drift off" the NURBS curve and could not be brought back into alignment. Am I using the right approach? Is there a way to know the type of point I am dealing with, or is that not what determines the alignment of the lofted shape? Do the degree settings have an influence I should be exploiting? These shapes started as 2D polylines, and were converted to NURBS- would I possibly do better drawing them as NURBS from the start? Any suggestions for using the lofting tool would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron R

Interesting message from Thomas register. I would guess that since the site does not work with Mac, they see VERY few Mac users. It's not clear that even their feedback system works with Mac. This would be a great service- I emailed them directly letting them know I would like to use it. More feedback might help. TRSupport@thomastechsolutions.com RonR

I'm using Mac OSX 10.3.3 on a G5. With Netscape (current version) I came closest to being able to download- I could see the part, but pressing the Download button did nothing. We do programming here as well, including web development, and the few places I have seen this type of behavior before the culprit is often ActiveX or other Microsoft developed, Windows specific software solutions. These technologies seriously threaten the independence of the Web environment, because they "embrace and extend" (read as ignore and subvert) web standards. Many web developers are trained only to use Windows specific methods, even though standards compliant solutions exist that are just as effective and easy to do. It's the kind of thing that gets my programmer's blood boiling, because there is NO technical or practical reason that the kind of content on this site cannot be delivered in a platform independent form. It's not as if they are writing an application for the Mac- or Linux, Unix, or whatever. It's delivering files over the web. I can't see any reason why downloading the parts on a Windows machine and copying them to the Mac wouldn't work- though I have not yet tried it. For IGES files coming from Windows you may need to open the files in a text editor (I use BBEdit, which I believe has a free version) and change the line break from DOS to Macintosh and do a "save as" in order to be able to open the files. RonR

Has anyone been able to use this site successfully with a Mac? I have tried with several browsers and can't seem to get it to work. RonR

This is probably very basic, but I'll ask anyway. When drawing solid shapes- mechanical parts, in my case, I often want to create a cutaway view. But my parts, when split, often appear to be shells rather than solids. That is to say the sectioning surface doesn't create a flat surface on the part, and if I split an object in half, what I see is the interior of the skin, rather than the sectioned surface. What am I doing to cause this to happen? Thanks, RonR

When I have had this problem it has been because of a problem with the underlying object- edges that are not joined is the usual culprit. Try the compose command, or redraw the object. Some modifications to objects seem to "break" them such that the fillet command will not work on all edges. Drawing the same shape via a different method can sometimes allow the filleting to proceed. Perhaps someone with more knowledge can offer insight? RonR

I've had some IGES imports from Solid Works that took a very long time to process (complex mechanical assemblies imported as a single file), and when imported the line and object relationships made them for all intents and purposes impossible to edit. Single lines or arcs came in as many segments, NURBS surfaces as many individual surfaces, etc. My solution was to import the various parts as individual files, compose them in VW, and reassemble the object in VW. You might try importing a small part of the file, maybe a single object, to prove the process. It would also show you the kind of results you will get. RonR

I don't know if it's related, but check out my thread in 3D solids re. the problems I have been having with snapping NURBS curves consistently- I am also on a G5. A summary: I have snap to edge points turned on from the constraints palette. When I draw the curve, the "POINT" cue comes on, and the curve I'm drawing appears to snap to the other curve at a vertex. However when I try to create a surface a good portion of the time there will be an error: "surface could not be created from curve network". Usually when I look up good and close, the curves are not intersecting- though the cues were there and made a nice "snap" sound. When reshaping a vertex, likewise, the points appear to snap together. They show as being in the same position in the object info palette. The points appear exactly coincident, even when I zoom in 50,000% or more. If I use the NURBS analysis tool to check the intersection, only one 3D locus is placed at the intersection, not 2 as would be if they did not intersect. But when I select "create surface from curves" from the model menu, I get the message "surface could not be created from curve network". By only adding one curve at a time, getting a failure, then systematically eliminating intersections with other curves until the surface creation succeeds I can slowly isolate the problem intersections- but snapping the vertexes again does not always succeed. Sometimes it does, and I can add another piece to the surface. But if it doesn't snap right away it does not seem to matter how many times I reposition the vertex with either the "POINT" or "OBJECT" cue showing- the create surface command will fail if that intersection is included. I don't see any difference between the successful and the failed intersections. With a minimum of 170 intersections it's pretty tedious- one failed intersection means redrawing a line with many intersections, any one of which could fail as well. I'm assuming curves not intersecting is why the Create Surface from Curves fails, but maybe I'm missing something basic here? RonR

Well, now this is getting frustrating- I am still having difficulty getting NURBS curves to make a surface. Here's what I'm doing: I have snap to edge points turned on from the constraints palette. When I draw the curve, the "POINT" cue comes on, and the curve I'm drawing appears to snap to the other curve at a vertex. However when I try to create a surface a good portion of the time there will be an error: "surface could not be created from curve network". Usually when I look up good and close, the curves are not intersecting- though the cues were there and made a nice "snap" sound. When reshaping a vertex, likewise, the points appear to snap together. They show as being in the same position in the object info palette. The points appear exactly coincident, even when I zoom in 50,000% or more. If I use the NURBS analysis tool to check the intersection, only one 3D locus is placed at the intersection, not 2 as would be if they did not intersect. But when I select "create surface from curves" from the model menu, I get the message "surface could not be created from curve network". By only adding one curve at a time, getting a failure, then systematically eliminating intersections with other curves until the surface creation succeeds I can slowly isolate the problem intersections- but snapping the vertexes again does not always succeed. Sometimes it does, and I can add another piece to the surface. But if it doesn't snap right away it does not seem to matter how many times I reposition the vertex with either the "POINT" or "OBJECT" cue showing- the create surface command will fail if that intersection is included. I don't see any difference between the successful and the failed intersections. With a minimum of 170 intersections it's pretty tedious- one failed intersection means redrawing a line with many intersections, any one of which could fail as well. I'm assuming curves not intersecting is why the Create Surface from Curves fails, but maybe I'm missing something basic here? VW- it would be a lot easier to troubleshoot this stuff if the curves missing an intersection were indicated. RonR

Thanks for the suggestions- I've tried to use the snap to edge constraint, and it does work to create intersections when drawing or dragging vertices, but does not appear to work when entering values from the keyboard. What I would like to be able to do is to draw a NURBS curve constrained in one dimension that will snap to intersect with my other NURBS curves - like a topographical contour line, or the waterlines on a boat hull intersecting with cross sections through the hull. I may be missing an obvious way to do this, as my experience is limited, but if I have 1) the constrain to working plane constraint turned on, and 2) the snap to edge points checked, and try to draw a NURBS curve, the snap to edge points does not work to place the vertex at the intersection of the working plane and the curve I'm trying to intersect with. If I don't have constrain to working planes switched on, the vertex is not placed at the working plane either. Is there a simple way to draw something like a contour line that would intersect other curves and constrain it in one dimension? My workaround has been to create a NURBS surface, position it sectioning through the curves, use the NURBS analysis tool to place a 3D locus at the intersections, then draw a NURBS curve through the loci. However when I do this many of the curves don't actually intersect, although they appear to do so in the drawing. I'm going to try this again, though, I'm not too sure that I have had the snap to edge constraint turned on when I was doing this. RonR

I'm using 10.5. I may not totally understand the snap features in the new release, though. Will they work to snap a vertex to another object when you are only moving a single vertex, not the whole object? I'm fairing complex curved shapes by adjusting the NURBS vertex of the defining curves through keyboard entry, and I'd like to be able to make sure the two curves intersect when I move the two vertices to the same location. Thanks, RonR

What would be incredibly useful to me- maybe there is a way to do this, but I haven't seen it- is the ability to snap a given NURBS vertex precisely to a vertex on another NURBS object. I'm creating very complex curves and would like to use the create surface from curves tool for some objects, but find that I can't reliably edit the vertexes to create intersections. Snap to objects works if things are drawn exactly right, but the intersection is lost if you do any keyboard editing of the vertex positions- even keying them into the same X/Y/Z positions does not create an intersection. Does anyone have a suggestion for ensuring that given curves intersect at a particular location in space? RonR

I appreciate VW's timely and frequent updates and upgrades. But the link doesn't give any information as to the nature of the incompatibility or the suitability of the Beta update for the current OSX versions. I'd like to know more so as to make a decision to update/ upgrade, Specifically; does the beta update run under OSX 10.2.xx, or is it ONLY for Panther? RonR

will confirm what Mike B says, with one small caveat. While VW is not aware of dual processors, the OS is, and some other apps, notably Photoshop, are so there is still a processing speed advantage with the dual system. It does somewhat depend on what you are doing. I'm doing complex 3D solids modeling, all curved shapes, no straight lines, and lots of rendering. This is the kind of math the G5 processor shines at. I moved from a G4- 500/1 gig to a G5 1.8 single processor/1.5 gig (only because the dual wasn't shipping- today I'd get the dual). A render that took my old system 4.5 minutes completed in about 12 seconds on the G5. Solids operations are incredibly faster. It's a really big leap forward. I'd guess RAM is very important if you are doing large (lots of pixels) renderings. At one point I was running VW and several other apps while working on two 400 MB photoshop files, and with 1.5 gig of RAM I could see some delays. I'm not sure about VW, but most apps can't at his point use nearly the amount of RAM the G5 can install, and won't be able to until they are rewritten to take advantage of the 64 bit processor. It's not just processor speed, either. The data pathways in the G5 system- at least the 1.8 and dual- are a lot faster, and the systems should get more responsive as the OS takes advantage of the processor architecture. Video cards make a big difference with animations, movies, and games. As fast as the G5 is I doubt you would detect a difference among them in using VW. Actually, one of the parts of the new system that speeds me up the most is the 23" cinema display... RonR