Make a ladder wider
Picture a tall 3D solids ladder standing on the XY plane and extending up the Z axis.
The ladder rungs are only 12" wide.
How does someone STRETCH the left vertical of the ladder and all the rungs so the ladder becomes 18" wide?
I've tried every contortion I can think of and can't get STRETCH to do anything but MOVE things around. The rungs never get wider.
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Move one ladder vertical 6" and then use the TCONNECT command to window all the ends of the rungs and press enter twice.
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Alternatively:
- Switch to the top view.
- Start the _DmMove command and window select half the ladder. Press Enter to conclude the selection.
- Specify two points.
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I think it was a real shame that the opportunity was missed, to make such 3D commands work-alike analagous, and same-named, as the familiar 2D commands. Just like RoatanBill, every 2D veteran 'knows' that Stretch should work on a 3D model. For example to select the entire cill region of an installed window, wall and all, and stretch it up or down.
Of course, 'under the hood' the process is completely different, with more options to efficiently input, but that's just a UI/AI design challenge to make it look and feel work-alike/analagous. Sure such a Stretch command would overlap with others also, like Extrude, PushPull - what an opportunity to streamline the awful tangle of awkwardly named commands that Brics should never have acquired, incl duplicated trad 3D and DM 3D ones.
Similarly, Tconnect as ExTend/Trim, Lconnect as FiLLet, and many others could have been designed and named as a seamless 2D/3D command structure.
Too late now - the point of no return passed, I think, at about v18.
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Thank you all that replied.
@Roy Klein Gebbinck - You've been much help to me, answering numerous queries. I think you misunderstood the problem. The move isn't going to take the faces along with it to lengthen the rungs. I tried _dmmove as opposed to plain move and didn't get a satisfactory result.
@Louis Verdonck - I'm on the trial version, trying desperately to learn the product in 30 days. It's the Pro version I'm contemplating purchasing and, if I'm not mistaken, BIM is only available in Platinum. I want a way to do it via 3D Modeling.
@Tom Foster - I hear you. As a (retired) Professional Software Developer / Electrical Engineer / technical (software) book author, what I'm encountering in the product in terms of software stability (many crashes on 2 different machines), documentation and tutorials is not encouraging. I've submitted numerous "incidents" to support for software problems either directly for the product or it's use of the Linux environment. As a former Software Development Manager I understand resolving issues takes time, so I'm not expecting solution. I'm just trying to help point out the holes.
My CAD experience is on a primitive app only. I have no AutoCAD knowledge to use. I'd like to rely on the docs and video tutorials for education, but they fall way short; way way short.
@Ian Johnson - I've tried your suggestion, but no joy. I've attached the drawing file. I can't get the SELECTCONNECTEDFACES to highlight a face; it want to light up the whole solid if anything. I even changed the UCS to align with a face to move, but no luck. Maybe you can see what I'm missing.
BTW - I have no idea why it truncated the name, but on my box it's ladder.dwg .0 -
"I can't get the SELECTCONNECTEDFACES to highlight a face; it want to light up the whole solid if anything" - that could need the SELECTIONMODES toolbar - whether to select the whole solid, a face, or an edge, and Tab or is it Shift can quick-modify that choice for a single shot.
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@Tom Foster - I've tried the tab trick. I can get it to only brighten up the face, but when I select that it turns into the whole solid.
I selected faces on the SELECTIONMODES toolbar - no help.With no active command, I select a face then issue the SELECTCONNECTEDFACES command and it immediately returns, doing nothing.
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In Platinum you can do the following (see attached video):
- Choose Select Faces in the Selection Modes toolbar.
- Hover over the end face of one of the tubes, then choose 'Select aligned faces' in the Select command group of the Quad.
- Move the cursor over one of the selected faces an choose T-Connect in the Model command group of the Quad.
- Press Enter to choose the 'Connect to nearest' option.
Regards
Loui
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@Louis Verdonck - I switched to Platinum, and restarted the app. Brought up the dwg. Clicked "Enable selection of 3D solid face", made sure QUAD was on and hover enabled.
I selected a face. The QUAD gives me none of your options. I tried to see what your command line was doing and keyed in SELECTALLIGNEDFACES. It selected them. QUAD still useless. I searched everywhere for something that looks like the letter "T" icon and couldn't find it. Your command area is reduced so I couldn't see what command the T represents.
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Hey Louis and RoatanBill - Correct, there is no "T" icon (or "L"). Either by icon "?" or by Menu BIM>Connect (same icon "?"), Commandline answers "Unable to recognise command "BIMCONNECT" - rightly so as it's been superceded by Tconnect and Lconnect, but which don't seem to be on toolbars or Menu yet.
Quad - could be the way you're using it (looked at Help?) or maybe T- and L- aren't 'added' in the version of Quad that applies to the Workspace you're in. At very bottom of screen, one of the buttons is 'Current Workspace' - R click it and try one of the other Workspaces offered.
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Which workspace are you working in? The needed commands are not available in the 2D Drafting workspace. Choose Modeling in the Workspace field in the Status bar, or choose a user profile in the Welcome dialog box at startup that uses the Modeling workspace. If no such user profile is available yet, click the Profile Presets option on the Welcome dialog, then choose Modeling Profile (in the top right corner select an appropriate unit for the profile).
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@Tom Foster - I'm in the 3D Modeling workspace. I switched to BIM and all the toolbars disappeared. All that was left was the viewing window, the properties section and the command line.
Ok, I'll bite. I selected a face. OK. I executed SELECTALLIGNEDFACES. OK. Then, just to see if it would do anything, I keyed in PUSHPULL. I moved the mouse and the screen locked up. I waited a minute to see if it would recover, but had to nuke the app.
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@Louis Verdonck - I'm in 3D Modeling normally because that's what I'm most interested in. I'm using the trial version which is still V18.
After the app locked up (see above) I restarted it in 3D. I selected a face. OK. I entered SELECTALLIGNEDFACES. OK. Keyed in PUSHPULL just like the previous session and this time it didn't lock up the app. It worked.
I undid the PUSHPULL so I could try it again.
Selected a face. QUAD now has SELECTALIGNEDFACES as an option. OK. QUAD now offers PUSHPULL, so I select it. App disappears - crashes.
This is what I've now experienced on 2 different machines. All my other networked boxes run integrated graphics so they're not candidates for the app. Yesterday I sent my hardware config and journalctl logs to support (you?) to provide some evidence of what is going on. Haven't had a reply.
I have $1500 worth of motherboard, RAM, video board, etc in my Amazon shopping cart but haven't ordered because I'm afraid a new box is going to do the same thing. That would really chap my hide.
Given I'm on an island in the Caribbean, it would take at least 3 weeks for the parts to arrive and by that time the trial would be over.
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Tconnect and Lconnect are new with v19. BIMCONNECT ought to still work in v18?
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@Ian Johnson
I reviewed your video clip and tried duplicating your results.
My install (V18) does not have the TCONNECT command. I also checked the V18 BricsCAD command reference and TCONNECT is missing. I suspect you're using V19 or have additional V18 options installed (BIM, Sheetmetal, etc) that might provide the command.
I do thank you for taking the time to help me out.
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You should have the command "BIMDRAG" and then use the option "connect", which should automatically connect to the nearest face, or alternatively, you can click on a point on the face and the selected objects should all connect up to that face. It worked on your example file for me, though I should add it did actually crash the program for me as well on one occasion.
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In 3D workspace, I entered SELECTALIGNEDFACES and clicked on a face. OK - got them all.
I keyed in BIMDRAG /Enter
Enter to take the default.
I see a flash and nothing changed OR it locks up with 1 cpu core at 100%.I've done it several times and it NEVER connects.
I noticed that if I move the mouse anywhere inside the viewing space the app either freezes or aborts after hitting enter on the bimdrag command. If I route the mouse around the edge to get to the fly-out selection and hit Connect to nearest, it doesn't connect, but it gets me back to a command prompt without freezing or aborting.
I believe this has to do with the video board(s) I'm using and the drivers. I've asked Support for a recommendation on video board but they just send me to their Politically Correct web page that's non committal referring such questions to REDSDK's site. That site is just as PC because it says to use an Nvidia or Radeon chipset. Both of the boxes I've tried using have Nvidia and Radeon boards with the proper drivers loaded, so the generalization isn't valid. I think it's wonderful when two corporations get together and point fingers at each other so there's plausible denial. It's no one's issue.
I'm ordering a Quadro board from Amazon that will take 3 weeks to get to me but that board is heavily recommended via Google search for "workstation" boards for CAD. The 30 day trial will be over by then though.
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Actually _DmMove is a usable command for the task at hand. Because when you _DmMove sub-entities adjoining sub-entities belonging to the same solid will change to accommodate their new position. To select sub-entities when 'window selecting' use the Ctrl key to choose the right option. Depending on your Tips configuration the Tips widget will automatically display. I see now that I have failed to mention this crucial step in my previous post. IMO _DmMove is the 3D equivalent to the _Stretch command.
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@Roy Klein Gebbinck
Ah - the secret ingredient!
I could light up the faces of the windowed entities.
I used the mouse to select the corner and then started moving towards the other vertical when BricsCAD crashed. I could see the movement was in the right direction, but in about 1 second the whole app vanished.I appreciate your tenacity and I learned something. Thank You.
For now, due to constant crashes and screen freezes, I'm giving up on the trial till a new Quadro video board shows up. So far, I suspect BricsCAD hasn't liked my existing Nvidia and Radeon boards. I'll have a dozen machines to test out the Quadro & BricsCAD.
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As to the lack of stability:
I can confirm that this operation (dmmove with several faces selected) is very likely to crash BricsCAD 18.2.28 on Linux (see attached backtraces, gathered in some minutes of playing with ladder.dwg).
As far as I can tell, BricsCAD runs significantly less stable on Linux (and probably on Mac) than on Windows - which can hardly come as a surprise, when you take the user base into account. Since Bricsys gives you the freedom to use the same license on all platforms, I would not complain about this.As to the lack of consistency:
Concerning this special case, it might be seen as inconsistent that window-selection always defaults to objects, no matter what selectionmodes is set to - if tips are turned off, the user will probably not figure this out.
Otherwise I am mainly with Tom, all the different options and commands still do not add up to provide a convincing and intuitive user experience, e.g. the direct modeling commands work on ACIS-geometry only, while stretch originally worked on everything contained in a dwg.
I am less convinced that overloading the legacy commands with new options is the way to go - this might create incompatibilities if Autodesk happens to do so as well, but in a different manner. I would rather vote for extending the new commands to work on all kind of objects (why can't you dmfillet a polyline or region?), and leave it to the users to switch the tool and shortcut definitions to the new versions once they are convinced the new stuff completely supersedes the old.0 -
@Knut Hohenberg
Thank you for the reply, but your message isn't exactly good news for a 100% Linux user. I said "good riddance" to Windows in 1999. The only boxes I own that have ever seen Windows are laptops and I repartition the drive to dual boot them. I was forced to pay the "Microsoft Tax" upon purchase, so I don't nuke Windows, I just don't use it.
I completely understand the business reason for writing an app with Windows as the primary platform. The bulk of the worlds computer users just take virus infections, blue screens, constant reboots, O/S upgrade failures, etc as normal. They're unaware of a much better O/S - Linux. When I had my computer consultancy, my record was a server I built that had an 'uptime' of over 3000 hours when I took it down because it was near out of disk space. How many Windows servers have been up for over 8 years without a reboot? The client was a Civil Engineering firm that ran dozens of AutoCAD boxes.
But I digress.
I have no AutoCAD knowledge. I'm a Professional Software Developer / Electrical Engineer, now retired, that has taken up welding. Coming from my background, I'm too ignorant to see the finer detail of the user interface command structure that you and @Tom Foster describe. Like the Windows user, I don't know any better.
My issue is with documentation in all its forms. Thorough AutoCAD knowledge is assumed. Whomever designed the written docs apparently hadn't heard of 'white space', proper paragraph usage, list alignment, etc. All the official docs are written to provide an overview of the product from an altitude of 10,000 meters. If it weren't for the free book authored by Ralph Grabowski, I would never have figured ANYTHING out. That's why I've been so active on this forum; it's the only place to get any useful information.
Since I just ordered a Quadro board, I'm hoping that at least some of the instability issues are due to video hardware & driver. If I complete a command by supplying a distance manually as opposed to dragging with the mouse, it always works, so far. If I come to realize that even with upgraded video hardware stability is still an issue I'll pull the trigger on an Amazon order for high end components and install that other trash operating system; dual boot, of course.
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@RoatanBill
I completely agree - the last version of windows I installed on one of my computers was xp, and I never thought about returning into Microsoft's arms since then. I also ran a database server on debian 2 many years ago, and it needed about one reboot a year. On the contrary, I am forced to use Windows 10 in the office, and it is a constant nuisance and a real drag on productivity.Sadly, I am not so fond of recent development in the Linux world, and I see no medium term perspective for it to gain a share of desktop installations that could turn developing commercial applications for linux into a profitable business. In that respect, I am thankful that Bricsys has opened a way for me to stay on Linux, even if the lag between the Windows and the Linux versions is undeniable, and crashes like the ones you experienced are disheartening. Just to correct that negative image a bit: I sometimes work for days without a crash, and my laptop is an aging macbook 6.1 that runs ubuntu with the (officially unsupported) nouveau driver (I would attribute roughly half of the crashes I encounter to video driver problems). When I run into problems using the direct modeling commands, I revert to the (non-interactive) solidedit command, which quite often does the trick.
The documentation that Bricsys offers is IMO on par with what most other vendors provide, and combined with Ralph Grabowski's books it caters quite well for the needs of users that have their roots in the AutoCAD world - for users with a different background, the story might be different. I do not even dare to explain all the oddities BricsCAD has inherited from AutoCAD to our staff that is used to ArchiCAD (and mostly does not know about anything else). Staying compatible with dwg has great advantage, but also downsides that you have to live with.
Where documentation falls short is IMO the inner workings of BricsCAD-specific additions to dwg, namely components - I never took the time to drill down through the database to gain complete understanding of how the additional information is stored, and consequently shot myself in the foot more than once.
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Same here,
I welcome very Bricscad ambition in macOS and Linux ...0
