I don't know if anyone is out there, but I worked on this some more, and this is what I found. All of the rendered drawing views do not display properly; they do not appear centered when they should, and zooming in and out changes the location of the object in the drawing view window. Actually, I should say the apparent, or displayed, location. In some sense the object is centered correctly; I know this because I happened to move the cursor across an apparently empty draw view window and the snaps indicated that the object was there and centered, although I couldn't see it. Finally, the object reverted to a line drawing in the correct (centered) location and scale when I flattened it (which answers my main question above). I should mention that in addition to the part being off center, there were other artifacts displayed, including large black areas, distortion of the part, etc.

I can't believe that a bug of this nature could go unnoticed, its the first thing a new user will try. Either I am doing something wrong or I have a corrupt installation. Can someone please give me some advice before I try to uninstall/reinstall? Has anyone else seen this problem and can they tell me how they got around it?

Sincerely,

JoeM

First, thanks to all who have replied, I appreciate your input.

Scott,

I believe you are mistaken about ViaCad's ability to create arcs/circles/splines using the "Flatten" option. As I mentioned in my second post, I have already got this to work by applying the "Flatten" command to any of the rendered (flat, gouraud, phong) drawing views. The biggest remaining problem is that the rendered views are not displaying correctly. The workaround I have come up with is to set up the drawing views using the polyline approximation, and get them looking the way I want. Then I can change them by editing the drawing view's properties to any of the rendered views. They will no longer display correctly, but when I "Flatten" them they will revert to correctly scaled and centered line drawings that preserve arcs, circles, ellipses, etc.

Jol,

For Punch! developers: The problem I am describing manifests itself immediately if you open the example file of the paper towel holder with the 4 drawing views. As you zoom in and out, the apparent location and scale of the rendered paper towel holder changes, making it impossible to set up the drawing parameters correctly. If you pass your cursor over the drawing views, even when they are apparently empty, you will see that snap points are detected, indicating the objects are "really" there. When you "Flatten" the drawing views, the line drawings resume the correct scale and location. It is clear to me that the rendered draw views are not displaying correctly, at least on my system. Please confirm whether I have a corrupt installation or if it is a bug.

Cant select a draw view - about half the time .. why ?

make a cube

copy it

make a draw view

select the draw view

.. you can't (about 50% of the time)

[if you can select it, you can paste in geometry for a drawing of it]

So why cant I select it by clicking on OR in the dotted box

If I do this in Model to Sheet mode it works fine

Here, I can fence select it .. but it then wont accept my geometry .. why ?

Something weird here

Jol

this function is totally munted

if I fence select a draw view - it cannot be pasted into .. yet it registers with both the feature tree and the object edit box

if I click select it (which it seems to allow say 50% of the time) .. it lights up as selected correctly but registers in neither the feature tree nor the object edit box

Then as ever, after playing with draw views for a while, you can no longer select your objects .. unless you double-click the select arrow .. which seems to put things right. This last bug is as old as I am

To clarify

if I open a new file & make a single 'draw view' .. I can select it as I would expect .. and paste into it

if I open an existing file .. for example, the assmbly.cu model from the examples folder .. I can draw a draw view but I cannot select it normally to paste into it

Why ?

All of the above issues and requests submitted by Jol has been logged and brought to the attention of our development team

Tim,

Thank you very much for your interest. I really am impressed by the modeling capabilities of ViaCad; especially since in my line of work parametrics cause more problems than they solve. I believe there is a real market for a product like ViaCad, if it can generate 2D drawings.

Can you please answer the following specific questions:
1) Is ViaCad only able to generate 2D drawings made up of polylines? That is, no arcs, ellipses or curves?
2) Does this mean that the 2D drawings generated by ViaCad can not really be dimensioned with respect to hole centers, diameters, etc?

Please let me know.

Thanks,

JoeM

A couple of issues with Draw Views that I have fixed this evening for ViaCAD and Concepts...

--If you use the model to sheet tool, and select phong or gouraud as the edge format, you would get empty draw views. (Toggle the edge option and it will appear for workaround)


--Copy/Paste curves, text, and dimensions into a blank draw view would cause the orignal objects to disappear. (Bug was introduced when we added support for AutoCAD PaperSpace and Draw Views).

--You can now do a detail view on a draw view that was created from just curves.

Joe .. be sure to drop it to techsupport@punchcad.com