This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (62 messages)
NY 3D animator needed
Message #68653
A doctor (ob/gyn) friend in New York will be presenting some research results at a conference this coming April, and feels that an animated 3D simulation is the best way to get her ideas across…but she needs someone to produce the animation. Anyone out there in the NYC area with…
Tom – I'm having similar problems with the 2.21 version downloaded from MSL… on DOS 4.01, with QEMM 6.02 and a Sound Blaster Pro. Complete lockup upon any attempt to access the drive.
Siegemund – We're edging toward use of the Sun's ANSI C compiler ourselves, but even if we don't end up using it for Release 12, we should be able to supply an alternate version of the ads.a library that uses it. I'll spread the word in-house that this is needed.
Myron – Yes, that's right. But the Mac permits us to be more creative with the menus (using icons rather than text), so a Mac-specific version of the menu is provided.
Myron – Just to answer your underlying query… the Macintosh version of AutoCAD has the same commands and shares the same data file format as the DOS (and Sun and Apollo and DECstaton…) versions. AutoCAD drawing files can be freely exchanged among all supported platforms without a conversion step; all…
Jeff – That's a repeat of your original message, right? I saw that one, which is why I quoted your "dreaded 'bad entmod list'" in the first place. But your messages doesn't give me anything to work with in tracking down the problem or suggesting a remedy. If you were…
Michael – As far as I know, AutoCAD R11 for the Sun comes with drivers for both SunView and OpenWindows. You are correct in that future versions may be for OpenWindows only, as that is the only environment that Sun will be supporting.
Michael – Autodesk has not yet made a decision concerning an AutoCAD update for OS/2 2.0.
Michael – Eh? AutoCAD R11 for the Sparc (and 386i, I believe) has been available for several months.
Jeff – I don't know about this "dreaded 'bad entmod list'". Can you give us an example?
Brad – No, he's using MetaWare's compiler for the Sparc. They have one; we even used to use it to compile AutoCAD. But we don't anymore, and the ads.a library we ship for the Sparc doesn't either. On the Unix platforms, the ADS library we supply is generally for the…
Craig – No, there's nothing in the works for that, but it sounds like a fine idea to me…
David – Layer names and linetypes names must conform to AutoCAD's symbol naming conventions, meaning that they must contain only letters, digits, and the special characters $, _, and -. They cannot be more than 31 characters long, and cannot be blank. See pages 263 ("Layer name" at the bottom…
Clark – This sounds like a bug we recently fixed. AutoCAD saves the name of the most recent ATTEXT template file in its configuration file, ACAD.CFG. The saved file name includes the drive/directory prefix. In subsequent ATTEXT commands, that saved file name is presented as the default for the template…
John – Ya got me… I doubt whether we know many details at all about what the Windows NT version will support, but perhaps Robert Wenig would have something to contribute here…
Greg – I'm hoping that someone who knows the real scoop will jump in here, but if the SCO Unix version of R11 isn't available already, it will be shortly.
Tony – I have a feeling that Phil is asking more about the functions DEFUN'ed inside other functions, and listed as local symbols in the outer function's argument / symbol list. Phil, that's just an isolation technique, used just as other local symbols are used, to limit the scope of…
Lynn – RTKWORD isn't an error; it's an exception case, but not necessarily an error. When you use ads_entmake() to finish a Block Definition by supplying an ENDBLK entity, the RTKWORD status is returned so that you can use ads_getinput() to retrieve the Block's name. This isn't important for ordinary…
Greg – AutoCAD Release 11 for SCO Unix is in the works. Actually, I haven't been keeping careful track; it may be available now. I'm not sure if we've decided to support SCO beyond R11, though, since AutoCAD sales on XENIX have been far below our other platforms. Other possibilities…
Dan – AutoCAD's FILES/Delete utility doesn't do any file scrubbing or wiping; it simply issues the DOS function to delete a file. So perhaps the space that had been used by those files was consumed by other files, or even by the drawing file you were working on at the…
Mark – Of course, at the prompt you're talking about, DTEXT doesn't take just the "J"; the "J" is the start of the "Justify" keyword, and a space or RETURN must follow it in order for the keyword to be acted upon. This *can* be accomplished using the (initget) approach…
Brian – Thanks for your thoughts on this subject. I suspect we'll just sit back and compile them, and see if a consensus emerges. In the beginning, PLOT was a totally separate program… then the Main Menu was developed to allow you to switch among the "separate" Drawing Editor, Configurator,…
Rick – If you're talking about an extension to VISRETAIN to include XREF layer color/linetype info as well as on/off settings, it's something we need to do. No committment for any particular release, however. Our message scroll rate varies depending on the traffic load, but tends to be about 5…
Paul – The "show" version (in every release level for which it's been available) has always permitted plotting from within the drawing editor, provided that the drawing has not been modified (other than simple stuff like turning layers on and off) since it was loaded. So no, you can't plot…
Dave – Thanks for the wishlist item. If your multiple-configuration requirement is indeed due to the need to switch among multiple printers/plotters, you should like what we're doing for R12.
Jean – Well, I'm on the technical side of things here, but I think you'd do well to contact Wayne Hodgins here on the Forum or at (415) 332-2344 extension 8247, or Mark Sturges at extension 8209.
Brian – A command recall/edit facility has been requested often. We've prototyped a few, but have yet to find a suitable solution. I doubt we'll have one for R12. Some of the issues involve mouse/digitizer picks (should they be replayed too? Should they be editable or replaceable by new point…
Anil – If you believe everything you read in the CAD Report, well, the best I can say is good luck to you. Mr. Wolfe can be entertaining, but I view much of his reporting as inflamatory, bordering on slander. He has misstated our products' capabilities often enough that it…
Anil – "Is there really going to be a 13?" Of course…and a 14 and a 15… One of the changes due in R12 (the elimination of the Main Menu) may also make it possible to use AutoLISP to run the PLOT command. Expect *lots* of improvements involving plotting. As…
Peter – Yup, that'd probably be nice… but in most cases, we're using the standard file dialogs provided by the various GUI systems. Most of them seem to reserve this kind of stuff for their File Manager (which, of course, you can get to while running something else).
Ron – Well, what do *you* mean by a "drawing management system"? Everyone seems to have their own definition. What I can tell you about R12 is that the Main Menu is gone, and that you'll be able to use file dialog boxes to scan through your directories and choose…
Tome – R10/DECwindows, I believe, was our first port to an Xwindoes platform, followed by R11 for Sun's OpenWindows. We're not ignoring Xwindows. As I understand it, however, SCO's Open Desktop doesn't have backing store support (or at least it didn't the last time I heard), and lack of that…
Ralph – Disappointing sales aside, removal of CAD/camera from the market reflected our recognition that to be truly useful it'd need quite a bit of further development, using more of our resources than we were able to pour into it at the time. So, rather than continue to sell a…
Pretty darn slim, AWA. Sorry.
Mike – You won't see a list of features or a ship date until it's very near shipping. During the QA/beta test phase, features sometimes get kicked out if they don't work well or are incomplete and require more work than we have time or people to devote to them……
Mark – Although AutoCAD can read ASCII files in any of the various end-of-line formats, it tries to be a good citizen, and writes such files using the conventions of the system upon which it's running. Unix style on Unix, DOS style on DOS, Mac style on Mac…
I don't know, Peter. It does appear, however, that we haven't sold enough copies for XENIX to make any profit on developing for it. Similar to the OS/2 situation. We're always open to reconsideration… I'm not sure we've made any final decision about R12 for SCO UNIX. As for Solaris,…
Dieter – I wouldn't be so sure about SCO support for R12.
Mark – Just to be sure you're clear on this… THERE'S NO NEED to massage a Unix-style DXF file (or any other ASCII file read by AutoCAD) into DOS format for AutoCAD's sake. It reads all formats without the need for user intervention.
Mark – Yup, that sounds about right.
#21495-
#R11c2 BUG VERIFY HELP
Message #21588
[Continued] …There *always* ONE MORE BUG… ..and as long as you're doing an update, you might as well fix that one, too… and why not update to the latest version of the PharLap extender, and slip in that new Sooper Dooper XSVGA driver while we're at it… and maybe an…
#21495-
R11c2 BUG VERIFY HELP
Message #21587
Mark – AutoCAD reads ASCII files in any of the four extant end-of-line formats: CR/LF – DOS LF/CR – VMS (?) LF – Unix CR – Macintosh That's been part of the "portable database" code since R9. Further, DOS doesn't convert all command input to uppercase; just try "echo Hello,…
Jamie/Mary – The "hash table" message is not an error message; it's a debugging message that should have been turned off in the released version of AutoCAD (and will be, in Release 10). Just ignore it for now. .
Don – The '386 does have its good points! Even with today's version of AutoCAD (and other software) designed for the 8088, 8086, or 80287, the '386 really flings those bits around. One thing to keep in mind is that both the '286 and the '386 support extended memory, which…
Don – For certain programs, perhaps the claims you heard are accurate. For AutoCAD as a whole, however, such does not appear to be the case. AutoCAD is already using inline floating-point code. The benefits I see to making a 386/387-specific version would be a slight reduction in code size…
Michael – AutoCAD has a number of built-in "default variables" -such as the last hatch pattern and style, the last text rotation angle, the last system variable referenced by the SETVAR command, and the ending angle for the last line or arc drawn (for continuation) — that are not saved…
Rudy – The "$S=X" switches to a blank submenu named "X" to clear out all item labels before switching to another submenu. The "s" can be either upper or lower case. The numbers you see after some submenu labels indicate the starting box number for that submenu's labels, so you…
Brad – The numbers I've seen indicate 10-15% improvement for a 386/387-specific version, not 15-30%. .
David – Here's another method involving a recusrive "mymin" function: (defun mymin (a) (cond ((> (length a) 2) (mymin (cons (min (car a) (cadr a)) (cddr a)))) ((= (length a) 2) (min (car a) (cadr a))) (T "Argument must be list of 2 or more numbers") ) ) Assuming you've…
Leif – No, I doubt that the screen I/O ("processing vector nnn") has much bearing on the speed of a PLOT or PRPLOT, but we'll kick that around. (It's funny — I remember a user group newsletter suggesting that the difference between an 8-bit CPU and a 16-bit CPU could…
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