DXF is the basic format in which AutoCad handles data (DWG being mainly a binary version of DXF). So the format incorporates the features that AutoCad assigns to objects, and it is different for each AutoCad version. As AutoCad objects have no native material or texture information, there is no fixed way of conveying that via DXF. Rendering applications working as AutoCad plugins (like its own rendering) generally store their information either in an external file or into the XDATA section of the DXF/DWG file. The contents and structure of XDATA is defined by the plugin programmer, so there is no standardized format, and the data stored is useful only to the plugin that originated it.

Anssi

Modelhead,

You are right, SU seems to always export using the units specified in Model Info. However, import units can be set, and the default is Feet whatever your Model Info says.

Anssi

Modelhead,

Set your export or import unit options to Inches instead of Feet in the Options dialog (button under the preview pane in the file dialog)

Setting materials to the default can also be done in the Materials browser by right-clicking on a material swatch and selecting Delete.

Maybe some Ruby guru has written or could write a script that could merge materials.

Anssi

To go back to Tom's original question:

It is usually said that the specs for SU should be "A lot of everything". IMO this is roughly true, but with today's hardware the performance difference between a "basic" SU computer and another with double the price is disappointingly small. The SU "experience" is split between the main processor and the graphics card, with the former taking care of the faces and edges, and the latter mainly of the textures and shadows. So SU is very processor intensive, and as it only can use a single one, the real bottlenecks are there. The memory on a graphics card is important only if you use a lot of big textures, and the difference between a mediocre graphics card and an ultra-cool whizbang one is almost imperceptible.

Anssi

Matsuo,

So you want 2D vector files?

I would suggest exporting to EPS or PDF and using Illustrator or other software that can open these file types and save as WMF. I think that Ghostscript might be a free alternative, with the right plugins.

Note that textures or shadows cannot be exported from SU in this way.

Anssi

Even if I don't know exactly what you mean, the short answer is no.

Real fluid simulation, I understand, is done using supercomputers. And if you mean animation, Su has no object animation at all, let alone particle or fluid animation.

Anssi

Hi Eeva,

It's actually relatively straightforward:
Statistics shows only the "top" entities, if you have the "Show nested components" checkbox on top of the Model info>Statistics dialog box unchecked, and if you check it, components inside groups are included too.

Anssi

Hi,

Uncheck the box "Export standalone edges" from the Export options dialog box (the Options button is under the thumbnail preview in the Export File dialog box)

Anssi

Thank you Tom! A great addition to my collection

Anssi

This is called "mouse trailing" and it is a graphics card/driver problem. It can sometimes be fixed by un-ticking the "Use Fast Feedback" option in the Window>Preferences>OpenGL dialog.

Anssi

You can right-click on a material in the Material browser (select the In Model tab, the little house icon) and select Delete from the context menu, and answer Yes to the dialog that asks if you want to replace it with the default material.

Anssi

It seems to me that too many topics are at some point converted to Win vs Mac topics. Couldn't we skip it? Everything that can be said about that has been said over and over in other venues, does it have to be repeated here?

Anssi

jmac,

there might be something wrong with your browser settings - I remember similar complaints from another forum. It could be the same problem as some browsers insisting to put a .txt or .htm extension to downloaded Ruby script files.

Anssi

Jmac,

It's a good habit to make your model so that there are no backsides ("blue")faces visible. Also, always try to apply "paint" on the front sides only. This is because sooner or later you'll want to make renders in some other application, and renderers usually don't play well with backfaces-some of them don't show them altogether. In SU itself there is generally no difference.

Anssi

Susan,

At work I have one computer with the same problem. The right-click menu takes more than a minute to appear.

To me the reason seems to be that the company network had a radical change, and as this particular machine was left to the old configuration for some backward compatibility, every nook and cranny of its brain is filled with references to network drives and locations that do not exist any more. The rest of our hardware was either upgraded or reinstalled from scratch.

After messing around with it, I noticed that the problem persists with only the old user accounts. With a new user account "local" to the machine, everything works OK. I have no option to use a registry cleaner, but it seems to me that a good such might be able make things better. You might try if the problem persists wih a new or different user account.

Anssi

I like that very much. Also shows how a simple SU output is mostly enough - no need for fancy Photoshop effects.

Anssi

If your lines form a nice triangulated mesh, Todd Burch's Makefaces.rb might do the trick. It is a freebie from the Smustard site.

Anssi

Hi brichins,

Everything you want, except disabling Orbit, can be done quite quickly using Pages(version 5 or earlier)/Scenes

Anssi

Fat faces is a feature that the SU team once demoed at a "basecamp" meeting. Shortly it was a way of adding thickness to SU faces, making the modeling ow walls, slabs and similar structures with multiple faces unnecessary. Combined with some kind of tagging system and IFC export you could design and model a building wholly within SU, and export to a full BIM package for documenting-what a dream, as the modeling interfaces in all BIMs I know are much clunkier than SU.

Anssi

Also, the file "Preferences.dat" that is created when you push the "export" button in the dialog, can be opened in a text editor like Notepad, and the shortcuts are listed there in a quite readable form.

Anssi