I find the result is exactly the same as in Charlie's version if you turn off Shadows and turn on "Use sun for shading"-only SU will run faster.

Anssi

I just saw the specs, and of course there is a catch:

It requires Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 or Acrobat 3D to export 3D PDFs.

My acrobat is v. 5.0 so I would have to upgrade that.

Pete, does the DE package have itself all that is required for 3D PDF output, or is it too dependent on the presence of the Adobe product? The DE output looked good, it seems to do better smoothing than the RPS one

Anssi

So has anyone tried this one?

http://www.righthemisphere.com/products/deeppub/DeepPub_View/dpub.html#

They claim it to be free!

Anssi

443359, level 11, IQ 119.
I ought to try to learn something about Canada and Australia-missed almost everything about them badly

Since I ruined some AutoCad files years ago (in the DOS days) when trying to work directly from a floppy I have never worked directly from removable media. Typical applications use all kinds of temp files and disk sectors to store their temp data, so using a small removable device when working is risky.

Even recently (while floppies still existed)some of my coworkers had their Word files destroyed in the same way: Open, say, a 300 Kb Word file from a floppy. Word instantly makes a temp file to the same location with the same size. Do a change and save. The original file gets overwritten, and the temp file doubles in size (to allow you to undo). So now your 1.4 Mb floppy has 900 Kb of data. The temp file grows in size for every change you make. Repeat this twice, and the disk is full, and both the original and the temp file are unreadable.

I don't know how SU behaves, but at least the read/write traffic that is needed to update the SKP file when it is open is, I guess, at least three times to what is needed to perform a simple copy operation from Explorer. The old SKB file is deleted, the old SKP file copied to a new SKB file, and the old SKP file is overwritten. It might be evwn worse if you use Autosave. And if the USB key is rather full, the file shuffling will take more time.

I also use USB keys a lot, but I always copy the contents to my hard disk before using it. That gives me a backup file too - to me USB keys seem more brittle than hard disks, a couple of mine have already failed (older and smallish models, though)

Just suggestions.

Anssi

According to the statistics I found, Finns are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. The amount of coffee consumed would amount to 160 liters per capita per annum - so the average adult drinks something like 6 cups a day. Our coffee is usually stronger than the American variant, but still no espresso. No Starbucks here that I know, but other coffee houses of the same type have started to appear in the larger "cities"

Anssi

So this might be a new variant of the well-known problems SU has with onboard graphics chips (usually Intel) that are not OpenGL-compliant.

Try the options in Window>Preferences>OpenGL: First turn off "Fast Feedback" and restart SU. If that doesn't help, turn off "Hardware Acceleration" and restart SU. If it now looks OK, you have verified that it is a graphics driver problem.

Working with Hardware Acceleration off slows down SU, but it is often the only option with laptops, as they usually have no graphics upgrade options. On a desktop machine it is often possible to add a real graphics card.

Anssi

And I would be thirsty but I don't like the beer my inventive fellow countryman used to boost his innovation.

Anssi

@ross macintosh said:

That last one is really cool.

Except that the light in real photographs is much more harsh than this-there is no sky to soften the shadows...

Anssi

The half column seems odd. I have never seen one used like that-maybe in postmodernism. But I am no expert-the Romans did many kind of things with their orders.

Anssi

Building surveyors are starting to use a 3D laser scanning device to automatically create a "point cloud". The device also records the amount of light reflected back from a surface, so the results can also be viewed as a 3D greyscale photograph. The file sizes are enormous, so the measured drawings are produced from these by using a BIM package to model the spaces.

Anssi

It seems to be faster now! (IE7 and Norton bloatware)

Anssi

I was able to close the end by drawing a diagonal, redrawing a line and finally erasing the diagonal. I don't know why the SU face-finding algorithm sometimes doesn't like to work, but I encounter this quite often.

Anssi

@chiefwoodworker said:

Susan is right. There is no "Point at center" on my SU 6 either. You guys must be drinking a Ruby drink.

Joe....

No, Joe,

We have only checked all the checkboxes in the Window>Preferences>Extensions dialog. Actually I don't remember if it is the Ruby Script Examples or Utilities Tools box that adds the Point At Center command.

Anssi

Granted. You are so focused that you ignore anything relating to your other projects, like email, phone calls...

I wish my flu left me - without attacking my family

Anssi

According to the SmartDraw website, it can export to the DXF format. That can be imported into SU.

Anssi

I like this kind of modern vernacular. The only thing that worries me is the garage roof throwing all the water against the neighbour's wall.

Anssi

Kwistenbiebel,

A great comparison. You seem to be a master of all rendering engines-the lighting was very realistic in every one. Only the Kerkythea one seemed to have too much light reflecting from the grass.

All the similar comparisons I have seen in the past have shown the author to be either biased toward his/her favourite application, or then that he/she has clearly not known how to use some of them. This time this has not bee the case.

I would like to hear your comments about the usability of the different systems, and how difficult you find the setting up required to get these outstanding results.

Anssi

Very good work.

Anssi

I like this too Genki. Simple, clean and well thought-out.

You seem to have much more snow than we in southern Finland.

Anssi