Bricscad Platinum ?

Stephan Bartl

Hi, does anybody know something about a "Bricscad Platinum"?

I got an e-mail from bricsys.com using that term, but I never heard of such a thing before.

Regards, Stephan

John Gaunt

No. Sounds like some try hard copy cat scam.

I am so happy with Bricscad I am not sure I would bother with the promise of a quantum improvement.

Daniel Eiszele

There is a platinum but it is only for Beta testers at the moment so I don't know that we can say anything further at the moment

 

Regards,

Stephan Bartl

Aha, now it is out - officially on the website: Obviously there is a Platinum version from now on.

Can anybody explain to me again, what the differences are to the 3D-features of the Pro-Version? I do not understand the features description on the website enough.Thx.

Regards, Stephan

Damian Harkin

The X-Solids in Platinum are just normal ACIS Solid entities, except that they each store a recipe in Extended Entity Data.  So when you place a 1 x 2 x 3 cuboid, those numbers are stored on the solid.  The tools allow you to come back later and modify the dimensions.  This makes solids much more useful.  Apart from that, a 'QuickDraw' tool can generate 2D drawings (plans, elevations) from your solids.  And a great library of steel sections, nuts and bolts etc. make it productive from the start.

Sander Scheiris

Bricscad V11 Platinum for Windows enables 3D parametric solid modeling for users who want to work both in 2D and 3D without leaving the .dwg environment. Primitives such as box, cylinder, cone, sphere, torus and wedge are available together with extrude, revolve and sweep operations. By combining these through Boolean operations – union, subtract, intersect – the user can form complex composite solid shapes.

• X-solids captures the history of solids as they are created, allowing parametric editing of these solids at any time. Any primitive parameter can be easily changed.
• X-Tools and QuickDraw allows to form complex composite solid shapes and automatically creates and aligns 2D geometry for up to 10 views at once for easily created detail drawings.
• X-Hardware Extended 3D library with parametric objects of all kinds – nuts, bolts, screws, pins, and more – are instantly created or resized at the touch of a button.

Stephan Bartl

Damian, your comment helps me. Thx.

Sander, as mentioned in my prev. post, "I do not understand the features description on the website enough." Therefore just repeating it, does not go a long way. (But I guess you were just too busy to actually read my prev. post.)

Anyway, what is still unclear is this:

What means "without leaving the .dwg environment"? Is that referring to exporting the drawing to another program in order to change the 3d-solids?

Extrude, revolve, union, substract and intersect are commands that generally exist already - although extrude and revolve can not be applied to 3d-solids (in Bricscad Pro). However, the sweep command does not exist in Bircscad Pro at all. Is that correct?

When it says: "Any primitive parameter can be easily changed", does that mean that once I created "complex composite solid shapes" I can NOT edit those complex ones anymore?

In the original features description it also says: "ACIS kernel performs fast solid modeling operations ... ." The ACIS kernel is not new compared to Bricscad Pro, or is it? Because it mentions the word "fast" it would be actually nice if the 3d-modeling would be faster in Platinum than in Pro because in the German forums (at least there) Bricscad has the reputation of being very slow in 3d. Users say that it can really only be used as a 2d-cad-system. So, if all these editing features are added but 3d-modeling is not made faster at the same time, then, I am afraid, most of the develpers' effort is missing it's target. (For those who speak German, here is one expamle: Link to German forum-thread)

Kind regards, Stephan

Its_Alive

X-solids builds on top of ACIS solids by storing a UCS matrix within the solid's Xdata . This is actually a very powerful  combination as you can retrieve the solid's correct bounding dimensions, even after its been rotated in 3d space, something that is "very" difficult to do with ACIS solids alone. Sure once you have created a complex solid, you may lose the ability to edit primitive dimensions, but you can still use the standard ACIS modeling tools.  The nice part is, you still have your  UCS matrix attached.  There are tons of applications where this is highly useful, I.e. extracting the exact dimensions of every I-Beam  in a building for a bill of materials, generate cutlist of a set of kitchen cabinets modeled in 3D, or collecting the correct minimum material requirements  for your complex solid.. exciting stuff really  

Its_Alive

I've created a sample BRX project on how to export the bounding dimensions of an XSolid over at theSwamp.org

http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=36232.msg412951

There is a usable BRX file in the solution attached to that post, that will export the bounding dimensions to a .CSV file
the command is xport : )

Roy Klein Gebbinck

If you have BC Pro installed, how can you start a trial for the Platinum version? Should you reinstall? Or is there an easier option?

Daniel Eiszele

Roy, you should have gotten a trial key in your email which you can enter into the Help>License>Modify.  If you can't find the key try in your My Stuff area or I guess put in a support request.

 

Regards,

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Thank you for your answer Daniel. But I had to reset my system for other reasons and have now installed BC11 with a "normal" trial license to test BC Platinum.

Stephen Crane

platinum looks great but is not reliable.

I dedicated an important project to the xsolids but after many days work it became unstable xsolds become uneditable and some drawings unstable.

Hans De Backer

@Stephen,

thanks for providing us with a sample drawing earlier today. We investigate the issue with priority and will do the best we can to solve it causing minimal inconvenience.