Posts made by elderla

Lovely! I should be so lazy!
thanks.

@mike amos said:

"What I found is that programs, such as Doublecad XT are frequently old versions of AutoCAD with some elements removed".

Sorry but that is rubbish. Doublecad is actually produced from the Turbocad engine and nothing to do with autodesk or its products.

Ok, well, I am not a developer. Nonetheless, my investigations did show that the programs I investigated (all the free and cheap autocad substitutes available at the time) had some but not all of the commands of AutoCAD, and also most had UIs indistinguishable from AutoCAD. The important point, from my perspective, was that I am trained in and use AutoCAD every day, so a substitute had to do what I needed doing. And these cheap/free programs frequently had missing some of the most useful commands, (also from my perspective). I looked for my notes just now in order to document my comments here. Alas, I am one of the people who throws things out.....

Donna

@escapeartist said:

Nice find! Downloading...

BTW, don't forget about Doublecad XT, also free: http://www.doublecad.com/Products/DoubleCADXTv3/tabid/1100/Default.aspx

Downloaded that and in the recommended section these showed up:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/arquimedes/?source=recommended for architects, CAD.
http://brlcad.org/ open source solid modeling.

The internet rocks, all these folks creating great stuff.

A couple of years ago I spent a week or two researching all available free and inexpensive CAD programs. What I found is that programs, such as Doublecad XT are frequently old versions of AutoCAD with some elements removed. I assume that enough elements are removed to get around copyright issues, but I do not know for sure. Anyway, what I ended up doing, and what I recommend others do, is make a list of the CAD features you use the most. Especially the commands you use every day. Make sure they are still in the CAD you are considering. You will probably have to download the trials to check. When I did all that, I found there were no substitutes that would work for me, waited for a sale, and bought AutoCAD LT. I, of course, use SU for 3D. On the other hand, I am checking this FreeCAD out asap. thanks.

@alan fraser said:

Hi Donna,
Assuming that you mean different materials..

Well, well, well, Alan. You may just have given me the reason to blow the however many hundred bucks for the Pro version!
Many, many thanks, this is welcome information.
Donna

@tig said:

NO.
But my 2D Tool's Freehand does allow you to set the segment length...
Search the Plugins Forum for it..............

Sure will, Tig, thanks for the info.
Donna

It seems I always need to show materials options, is there any way to toggle materials? I have always thought not, but have not kept up with ruby development lately....
I do know workarounds that involve copying parts of the model to be toggled to different layers, etc.....
Thanks
Donna

Is there a setting to control the node spacing when using the freehand tool?
Thanks
Donna

@alan fraser said:

You could also throw in a few billboard trees to complete the picture. Unfortunately, SU doesn't throw proper shadows from transparent pngs...and it would be too costly to actually cut around the forested areas in order to fake them. So you're left with rather unrealsitically hovering areas of woodland...unless rendered. But you could certainly cover large areas of ground like this.
Here's a quick example. The filesize will get big very quickly, because of the inclusion of multiple 1024x1024 pixel pngs, but it shouldn't affect performance too much.

well, ok, Alan, now we're cooking. I was thinking actually of taking the aerial into AutoCAD, drawing clouds around the the wooded areas, in plan. Then I would import to SU, push/pull each cloud up to the tree height, paint the tops with canopy paint and the sides with elevations of forest edge, and drop to the topography. The extruded clouds would cast shadows, too. I have supposed the weight of painting the sides of the extrusion would be too high, though. your hovering idea is really good. I could make the clouds, intersect with the hovering topo, and paint. I would only have to have the extrusion verticals in places along the area of most interest, in this case the river.

Well, if there is more to say, I welcome it. If not, thank you thank you. I am off to the client meeting right now, and I actually will have something useful to say, I believe.
all best
Donna Lilborn, ASLA
http://www.donnalilborn.com

Hello everyone
OK, maybe I can't model a forest with individual trees. If I need half a million or so. So does anyone know anything about bulk modeling forest areas, like some kind of bubble model painted in tree paint? or whatever? I remember discussions of this sort of thing years ago on the old SketchUp forums (fora?) before Google.......but I don't remember anything specific.

Meantime, Alan, I still want to know how you saw that there were so many edges in my model. Entity info window does not pick that up. Where do I find that out?
Donna

@rickgraham said:

Pardon me for jumping in but I have a question on these trees and shadows in general. Please see my attached picture. The shadow doesn't project correctly unless I'm doing something different.

Rick

Rick, you are right. The shadow casting part of the component is not properly lined up, my bad. If you put file in monochrome mode, you can see and select the shadow casting component, and move it to line up better.
Donna

Alan,
How did you find that edge count? That is definitely the piece of information I have been missing. I counted only 2 .png images, 1 edge (on the .png) and the 2 shadow casting faces with no edges. What am I missing here?
Donna

Hi Gaieus,
Thanks for your reply. I think I will have to have trees so light that it wouldn't be worth using proxies. But I did not know about that .rb, and will certainly use it elsewhere, where I have more detailed models. Thanks!
Donna

Hi Alan,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Since you are seemingly willing to look at this in detail, I am posting the 2 types of models I am currently considering.

First, I should say that the 10,000 tree model you sent me maneuvers well on my machine, but makes all the commands very very slow. Is this a machine thing? I use SU 6free, 1.9MB RAM, dual processors. That is my problem with my .png models as well. They move ok, but they slow the commands way down.

Model 1 is the barest model I am currently using, 2 .png images, one with one tiny edge so you can make it a component, and 2 faces that are the shadows casters. 2.pngs,1 edge, 2 faces painted with 6px each. So I understand you to say that it would be leaner to put the pngs on the faces, (the tree itself and the plan symbol), as a material. Do I have that right? But doesn't that throw the weight of the model to the processor, for rendering, as opposed to the video card, for the .pngs?(which I have always understood can do the job better....) Currently the shadow casters are painted with a very clever material, devised by Tom of Tomsdesk, that has only 6 pixels, and that appears transparent yet casts shadows.

Model 2 is a much heavier model, 5 more .pngs and many more pixels per .png. I am thinking it would be used in areas that require some detail. 5 pngs, 1 edge, 2 faces painted with 6px each.

Another option I am considering is using all .png face me trees for the uprights, plan symbols that show a large number of trees but have only one face, and upright shadow casting components that have a single face showing the shadow to be cast for groups of trees. Those upright shadow casters only have to go around the north edges of the forest, who cares about shadows inside the forest, eh?

What I am trying to communicate is that I know how to make several kinds of very lean models, but I am fuzzy about how they behave in the machine. Do I want lowres.png images, or do I want faces with lowres materials? What is known about the upper limits of machines to handle these different items? And why do large numbers of lean, maneuverable components slow the commands?

thanks, and thanks again!!!

Donna

Solo,

Why do you say this? Over the years I have seen people remark that they could use thousands of .pngs without overwhelming their video card, is there a limit to that number? (which is my original question, actually.) My choice of SU, and my hope that I can use it, has to do with the use to which it will be put. Namely, it will be used by a community group for planning for years to come, I will certainly not be the only one to use this model, so the preference is that it be in a free and relatively easy to learn app.
I saw your post on Vue7, I'll take a look at it. I did take a look at your website, very, very good looking work.
I, however, am not trying to get a rendered image. Or even a rendered model. I am trying to get a sketch model that will be sufficiently abstract to allow a community group to think about their watershed, but sufficiently detailed so that they can think about their watershed.
Many thanks for your reply.
Donna

I have an assignment, as a landscape architect, to model an entire watershed, mostly wooded, many square miles.
I have made some tree models which contain 1.ultra low resolution .png, with face me 2. (2)shadow.pngs vertical and horizontal from some old free models of Tom's and 3. a low resolution plan symbol. I made another model, of a single urban neighborhood, with 2360 instances of the trees, it seems to move around fine, when the shadows are turned off, of course. But will I run into problems with 1000 times more? The attached files are entirety and closeup of the urban neighborhood.
thanks for your help, all.
Donna