Be.eM

Mickael, as I said: don't worry, everything is well. I just was curious what you wanted to say, as a link between eitech and Germany wouldn't have been something impossible. There have been times when Ramjac had been (or would have been) interested in such a link/collaboration/association in any form. However, this is "water under the bridge" or "Schnee von gestern", as we would say in Germany :) Bernd

Don't worry, not offended, just curious :) Bernd

And back they are. For me this looks like a dummy page. The German text is written (or translated) by amateurs, and contains information that matches the age of the linked products. Back in the time when animation was magic. Nothing there actually is current or serious. This is what it looks like, when you're developing the structure of a website, filling it with placeholders. Maybe the owners think that nobody sees them, as this is a "dead" domain. I am in Germany, too. What's your point? Bernd

Hi Bill, I've done all of them. For JT I've got a PolyTrans add-on, and STEP/STP can be done with a large number of applications, including ViaCAD mentioned above. Using FormZ for this, you would even be able to get the assembly hierarchy to FACT/EIAS. This is a Pro/E assembly, not a JT file. Bernd

Well, just to propose something different here: In my opinion ViaCAD is the product which already is quite close to what EIM was or Tesla should be. It's ACIS based, offers usable modeling tools, a working CAD import, an existing FACT export, and runs on Win and Mac. Files exported from ViaCAD shade fine in EIAS (once "use polygon color" is disabled). And it's available for $99, which really makes it a candidate for adding it to another application like EIAS. It has its limitations, sure. For me the worst thing about ViaCAD is the missing ability to create hierarchically sorted groups or assemblies, which both EIM and FormZ can do (and every other CAD application out there, too). But maybe this is something that can be requested from Tim (Olson), when talking about teaming up forces… What I'd love to see even more is bringing together what was an unbeatable team years ago. FormZ or Bonzai3D as a companion for EIAS. Again, something should be done with the current FormZ FACT export, it's quite difficult to get a good shading of objects (although it's possible). But again, maybe the "teaming up" offer could help to get things fixed. Anyway, these are all existing products, and all include FACT support. Tools like Silo are without any use for me (personally), because I mostly work with CAD files from clients. An SDS modeler is simply the wrong tool for this, and even EIM/Tesla were or are (probably) not designed as an SDS modeler. Bernd

In order to run Amorphium, you need to downgrade to Panther. This was the last version working. That's why I'm using the Windows version of Amorphium, running in Parallels. Bernd

dr, this "extended precision coordinates" thing has never worked (I've tried once or twice, years ago), and to be true, I don't even know what it's good for. I've never had a problem without this option, things were as precise as they should be. So simply forget about this mega-turbo-crashing switch, you don't need it :-) Bernd

David, although I have quite a lot of 3D modelers/applications (ViaCad, SharkFX, IronCAD/Inovate, VX Modeler, EI Modeler), FormZ is the only application that's really used for modeling work. Every version since 2.7x, currently at 6.6. For some unknown reasons, FACT transfer to EIAS isn't as easy as it was with the "vintage" combination FZ 2.x/EIAS 2.x. With these old versions, exporting was as difficult as selecting the "export" command, and the result looked perfectly smooth in EIAS. With current versions, you have to experiment with a lot of triangulation/facetting settings, until the result looks as good as in earlier days. Sometimes, especially with quite complex CAD shapes, I tend to export to SAT and do the FACT conversion in SharkFX (ViaCad), which is more of the one-click-solution now. In this regard SharkFX has replaced the EI Modeler for me, which I've been using for FACT export for quite a long time, even when the models have been created in FZ. Bernd

Nice :-) It's good to see that - now that christmas is over - the bells are re-used ;-) And it's good to see you here on board, Jens. Bernd