Posted by Jerud Crandall on August 11, 2000 at 09:42:25:In Reply to: A+B posted by Gary V on August 10, 2000 at 20:03:40:
Wow, thanks for the responses!
I had merge machine in mind when i was talking about A+B, actually, but decided to play it safe just in case. Having control over material/texture would be nice, though. Another option that we mechanical engineers would really dig is if the objects could be filleted at their intersection, with a field to specify the fillet radius. Or is that asking too much? Actually, now that i think of it, a separate fillet machine would be pretty nice to have. . .
With merge machine, one must only submit a single file with multiple objects to be merged, so this A+B business doesn't make sense. But with a boolean subtract, it's more important to keep straight which shapes are subtracted from which. So users could submit a "parent.dw" file and a "subtract.dw" file, and the objects in 'subtract' would be cut out of 'parent'. This should even work with multiple objects, say, if i wanted to subtract a circular array of cylinders out of a large flat cylinder to make a boilerplate with holes in it. 'parent' would be the large flat cylinder (the plate), and 'subtract' would be a circular array of smaller cylinders. They two files would, of course, have to be positioned relative to each other properly with respect to the universal coordinate system.I think it is more expedient (at least for now) to use online machines to give dw users boolean capability. It has been explained to me that integrating new functions into software takes a while not because of the coding but rather the legal junk. It would help relieve some pressure from the nice folk at artifice who're already working to improve DW if users had a boolean machine to tide them over 'till the patents clear.
jerud