Tom,

If you decide to buy a Quadro, select one of the more expensive ones. Their price/performance ratio is much worse than that of the "consumer" cards. I consider buying one as a sort of future-proofing. The only advantage is if you want to run several OpenGL-using applications at the same time. For instance, on my GeForce-equipped laptop it is not possible to view a 3D PDF if SU is open at the same time, but otherwise the display performance is not much worse than with the Quadro 1400 in my work computer.

Anssi

Things can also break down. The other day one of my colleagues plugged in his digicam. The digicam didn't mount as expected, and at the same time his mouse stopped working, and after several restarts we still couldn't get the machine to accept any USB devices, so we had to send it for repairs (still under warranty).

Anssi

Thanks!

A superb virtual Christmas present!

Happy Everything

Anssi

Hi Collin,

I certainly saw some z-fighting in your model, in the areas where the different imported aerial images overlapped each other. On such a large model, I wouldn't be surprised about clipping effects either, but I didn't see any of that, but what is shown on your short animation looks very much like that. Then there are the third type of aberrations, called shadow clipping, which show up when you turn on shadows, and fly through them. That is a known SU bug-search the forum for Carmac's reverse for more information.

Anssi

Of course making the compressed air will consume energy, and there will be some energy loss as well. It's only a way of storing the energy needed for moving the car, like a battery. The ecological advantages will be none if the air is compressed using non-renewable energy sources (of course local air pollution will decrease)

Anssi

Looks very promising. In fact the idea is age-old, as many good ideas. Air-powered locomotives were used in mines to reduce explosion risks.

Anssi

I think that SU works already in all Vista versions, if your drivers are working OK

I understand that the only advantage of a 64-bit architecture is the possibility to address terabytes of memory, so it is understandable that software houses have no hurry to make 64-bit versions of their products. In everyday computing 64-bit is slower than 32-bit, as there is more for the memory management to waste time upon. What advantage do you see?

As to ATI, it is the other way round. Ati should make its drivers more OpenGL-compliant.

Anssi

I am almost sure that this is not what the person asked you, but a standard 2D drawing exported from SU would look funny in AutoCad if one used the "hide" command. The export has no faces, so nothing happens there, but the section cut and profile edge lines are exported as wide polylines, and these lose their fill with Hide, and look meshy instead. Of course, a Regen brings all back to normal again.

Anssi

Gaieus,

Most professional or semi-professional rendering applications handle alpha-channel transparency quite perfectly, they can even use it for casting shadows. All SU materials are either totally transparent or totally opaque to the shadow-casting engine, as determined by the SU transparency setting. So in SU it is possible to make a totally invisible material that casts a shadow...

Anssi

Beautiful, as always! Thank you Tom!

Anssi

Simple, beautiful and fast to use. Is it made of some special sort of wood? The nice springy part must need the material to be hard but flexible. The same principle is used in the Aalto chair legs: sawn into slots to make bending possible

Anssi

Here is a Half-French binding I once modelled. It's a bit high-poly, not suitable for building a library

Anssi

Download Here

Just what is needed to make some nice forests...

Thanks!

Anssi

Nice idea. As another mentally challenged person, I find these kinds of tricks very useful. In my bookbinding hobby I have a set of ready cut cardboard strips for the most often occurring measurements and cutting corner pieces from leather etc.

The Stanley gig has btw a gauge built in, but it wouldn't be as accurate as yours.

Anssi

I am repeating myself, but I think that your present card is very much already a "decent" card for SU, and that you maybe might not get very much bang for your buck. Large models tax the processor very much too

Anssi

Have you inadvertently installed the Free version over the Pro? (Can that happen?)

Anssi

I too think that Modelhead is on to something. There is this thing that SU is very processor-intensive, and using only the single one, that makes it vulnerable to slowdowns caused by other processes. My home computers are very neat his "weenie" one. They are about 3 and 4 years old, a P IV 2.8 GHz, Non HT, luggable , 1.5Gb memorywith a Nvidia laptop card, and a P IV 2.66 HT small-form factor PC, 2Gb memory with an ATI All-In-Wonder card with ónly 64 Mb of memory.

Both these run SU quite well, and the difference to my work machine (3.6 GHz PIV HT, 4 Gb memory, Nvidia Quadro 1400 card) is surprisingly small. SU 5 loads faster than SU 6, but in use both feel about as responsive, and both are significantly faster, especially with large models, than SU 4. My models are mainly quite small, though.

I run the Norton security applications, they seem to be quite resource-hungry, but apart from that they never have given me any trouble. At work they have some corporate system.

I haven't upgraded my video drivers for years, sticking to the tenet that "if it works, don't touch it". The manufacturers seem to regularly release buggy drivers.

The users of 3D software seem all to be in some kind of technological cul-de-sac. None that I know support multiprocessors except for rendering, and manufacturers have stopped developing faster singlecores.

Anssi

It cannot be very efficient in regions with temperature often below the freezing point. Heat pumps are quite common here in Finland, but in permenent dwellings the tubes are most often put under the ground, or in a deep well, or in the bottom of a pond or lake, and in holiday cabins they use a simple air heater that doubles as an air conditioner in the summer. It is easier to extract heat from materials heavier than air. The plus side of this device must be that it might be much less noisy than an air heater.

I noticed that the marketing of this device was focussed to the south of Sweden and the Baltic countries, so regions somewhat warmer than ours.

Anssi

Francois,

Deleting the Plist file has often been the remedy for importers/exporters not working

Anssi

It looks somehow odd, like the doors and windows were somehow ghosts-or painted on the wall. Maybe the wall and roof textures are too big, or have too much bump. Reminds me of old 3D games.

Anssi