DWGEditor less than perfect...it seems?

Well, so far Sporkman, the workaround for it, is to not use it.

Having been an AutoDesk VAR, and being certified on AutoCrap (shoot me now!), I'd think I'd know why my dimension text is incrementally growing away from ther dimension line, but I don't. Of course, maybe it is because it is so freakish thing that some programmer put in there, whether he (she) knew it or not.

When my temperture lowers some after wraslin' wiht it for awhile, I go back and look some more. I also now know that my DIMPOST does not work. I used to have DIMUNIT set to 7 (Fractional), and had the post of " (inch marks), but it no like that set in a startup LISP routine.

Mr. Pickles

You know what is really weird, that you really have to remember?

DWGEditor uses the Aliases FIRST when doing "shortcut" commands. If you have an autoloading LISP that has certain kets assigned, they may NOT be the same as your default Aliases. So you have to delete the Alias. As soon as you do, the LISP routine will take over the keystroke. You DON'T have to reload the LISP routine.

I mentioned this before, but figured I would again.

Mr. Pickles

In case anybody wondered, the Entity Properties toolbar is misleading. One would assume that it is showing the Layer, Color, and Linetype for the thing your fixing to draw. It ISN'T.

It is showing the last entity you "used" or something.

To see what layer you are fixing to use, a "clue" might be to look at the bottom of the screen (just right of center), where the LAY is. It is color coded to the layers color.

Mr. Pickles

Hi Pickles,

The other thing that I saw with the dims that made me shy away was the lack of an origin grip for ordinates. I rely heavily on the ordinate grip to confirm that I have not messed up my ordinate dimensioning (1 out of 100 is bad on a good day) by using a mis located UCS.

I think that if one is used to the "real" autodesk products, then this tool will perform adequately at about 90% the power. If none of these are avaialable, then this little "extra" would be really nice for many users.

I'm comitted to thinking of it as a bonus for users without any DWG editor, but not as a replacement for my tried and true "real" one (i.e. the one with 20 years of development and debugging backing it).

Later,

SMA

SMA,

I think that is more than 90% there, but the little bitty things that are important, are VERY important when they are missing. There isn't too much "missing", but some things are quirky, but maybe they are suppose to be. Since i don't use the Ordinate Dims, this doesn't bother me, but I see it could bother some like yourself.

I can live with it instead of the tried and true. I have a work around for most of my issues, and some of the DWGEditor things I like better than the big guys. Kind of like a Microsoft/Linux deal....

Mr. Pickles

Sean,

I did notice that if you change your UCS in the SP0 version of the DWGEditor, and perform a dim update, the ordinate dimensions update to reflect the new origin point.

Not as convenient as moving a grip, but will get the job done.

Hope this helps your situation.

John

"CAD Guy" wrote in news:rKC%c.17067$2s.9315 @twister.nyroc.rr.com:

Hmmm. I think that's not a good thing. I used to use a ton of ordinates in ACAD. Each view of a part may need at least one ordinate origin. So if you need to update the dimension style for all your dimensions, you'll have to make sure to change the UCS and apply the update to each group individually. At least there's a workaround. Thanks for pointing it out.

Yesterday I received my latest copy of Desktop Engineering. In an acticle describing SolidEdge 16, the author mentions that SolidWorks

2005 comes with "a full license of IntelliCAD, in the form of the DXG Editor". Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell

I think it should be obvious that ADesk is not going to license ACAD to SW. IntelliCad was probably a good choice for those customers that need a seat of ACAD to continue using/purchase SW and not have to remain with ADesk.

I found this link regarding IntelliCAD:

It is going to be interesting to see how the VARS are going to support this. Maybe they will have to hire one of the many out of work ACAD users I have seen in the last few years, because just from your few comments here about DIMVARS, etc. I think not many VARS will be able to support this product. Will SW have training in ACAD?

DWGEditor was probably a real bargain too:

http://www.> If you know something about ACAD, you know what having dimensions moving

Yes, you are right. Support on this is probably up in the air. The more corporate adds, the more the VAR is going to have to up their ability to handle the many different "paths". I have to get with my local VAR and find out and see what they find out on support.

As for its use, I think time will tell. I could pretty much ditch my Big A and use this and work with any "limitations", which for me aren't very many. I think there were SW versions with more issues than this DWGEditor.

Mr. Pickles

Absolutely agreed. This to me would not be usable as a "neat" feature, but a nasty little oddity at best and more likely a bug. For the moment, I'm sticking with the tried and true.

I would also use a very tiny crossing selection around the 0,0 point and do a quick "toolbar" color change to reveal that all the ordinates were a common color. The unchanged dims would reveal themselves as a problem. I'm surprised that the ordinate origin grip is not even implemented. Tiny nuances like this could make life bad and make for a flakey program. But nobody is obligated to use this tool that they have so nicely supplied - those without any dwg editor will benefit from having this addition.

Thanks to John as well for pointing the update thing out.

Regards,

SMA

Mr. P,

The thought occurred to me that with this software, putting an Exchange like interface or having it replace the whole drawing environment might be a really good step.

The logic is that SW does 3D solids and assemblies really well; ACAD does detailing really well; therefore put the two together instead of having them at odds.

Here is the big question:

If you had ACAD as the detailing/drawing interface in SW would you be more or less productive?

Another slightly smaller question:

If ACAD and SW were integrated in such a way that 3D solids and assemblies could be imported into the ACAD side and detailed, would this open SW up to the whole civil and plant engineering fields? This would get SW past the 1km limit and allow the Civil types to drop 3D buildings, machines, etc. into the ACAD environment where there is no practical size limit.

On a BTW note I saw Intellicad in Chicago back when it and Visio were the same company. Intellicad had several features that ACAD later picked up on like the explorer for blocks.

I don't use 2D (acad, intellicad) very much, but I do have a thought concerning all of this complaining:

When someone switches from some other package (Acad, ProE, IV, etc.) to SWX and begins complaining, a common suggestion from people here is to: Forget what XXX taught you, SWX is a hole new game. Keep an open mind. Focus on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative.

As a different product from a different company, DWG Editor will never be exactly like Acad. If you can't do what you need to do with DWG Editor, you have 2 choices:

1.) Do some sort of workaround. You can get what you need, but it takes longer. 2.) Evaluate the necessity. Do you really NEED to do it that way? Why not do something different to make life easier? (change is not always bad)

snipped-for-privacy@cbd.net (P) wrote in news:71bbca63.0409100749.2a65d803 @posting.google.com:

I don't think ACAD is THAT good at detailing. Back in my MDT days, it was certainly not better for detailing those models than SW has been for the last several releases. Bolting the SW modeler and another app. together would likely produce another MDT, and I don't want that. SW detailing is getting to be pretty decent. I say they should keep on with it and fix the shortfalls they still have.

If SW had the Acrap detailing interface, I would be more productive, but only because I am very familiar with it. Others who have spent little time or those that have spent no time in Acrap, would not be more productive. I agree with Dale that they (SW) are getting better at it. They still have some work to do to make it even better. Hopefully they understand that and continue to work on fixing it and other issues that have been there for a LONG time that they don't SEEM TO CARE ABOUT....

Mr. Pickles

What is all this talk of modeling in SW and detailing in intellicad (DWG Editor) or AutoCAD. Are you crazy. AutoDesk Inventor has this very same idea and I see it as the backward thinking at AutoDesk. Please destroy your licensed copy of SW and buy Inventor. You will be doing the rest of use true 3D users a great favor. Civil and Architectural firms software has been lagging behind MCAD for years because they willing gulped down all the crappy software AutoDesk was force feeding them. The SW of the architectural world is software called REVIT. It works in much the same way as SW but is gearded for architecture. AutoDesk knew it was a product that was far above their architectural offerings so they bought the company. If you can't beat em, buy em!

Overall, I prefer the SW method for detailing to that of AutoCAD. The only time I use AutoCAD is for floor plan or process layouts. Also, own Viso but haven't spent much time learning to use effectively. More comfortable to open AutoCAD for those types of applications.

Kman

I feel they included Intellicad dwg editor so you could finally divorce yourself completely from Acad for schematics, diagrams, etc, and the occasional need to do a quick and dirty 2-d revision to a legacy 2-d drawing. I don't feel their intentions were to use it for anything else.

Just my 2-cents.

Bill