This may be OK if you work in inches, but is rubbish if, like me, you work in millimetres. The slider will always give you a metric equivalent of an inch number.



ViaCAD will do the maths for you. Enter 17.5/42 in any entry box and the correct answer will be used.

There's no point in having a computer if you have to think yourself.

...Okay, I'll consider this, but what is the '17.5' and the '42' for? You haven't made this any easier to understand, have you? Divide these two and you get 0.4166666666666667 ??? I'm still confused :confused:...


Tom.
I think Bill in his example (above), is saying something along the lines of, if you have a line 17.5 units in length, and you want to divide it in to 42 pieces, then rather than work out that each piece is 0.4166666666666667 units long, just let VC work it out for you by inputing 17.5/42 in the input data box. You can also mix units such as mm's and inches such as 24"+99mm, which gives you 708.6mm, which seems pretty useful to me. Have a look at Expression Parsing on page 10 onwards in the manual for more info.

Martin.

Sliders in CAD remind me of an old joke: a fellow applies for a job as a quality control assessor. The employment manager passes him to the production manager, who sits him down in his office, opens a drawer in his desk and takes out a micrometer. He tells the applicant "This is a 0-25mm micrometer, +/_ accuracy of .01mm" (don't quotation marks look so wrong bracketing a "mm" figure?) The applicant whips a wooden ruler out of his back pocket, holds it up to the mike and tells the production manager, "Yep, that'd be about right..." .

I don't think traditional sliders are the right control to accomodate an infinite range of measurements, because they imply limits. They might work if they're set up in encoder style, so the point at which you're holding it governs an up or down count rate, maybe logarithmic, rather than an increment-to-distance. Instead, maybe a triangular virtual pad, the closer you are to the peak, the faster the rate of change, slower lower down. Positive or negative increments to right or left of centreline. But even something along those lines would have to be able to accomodate a wide range of user preferences regarding speed/acceleration rates. Some up/down counters already have up and down buttons that accelerate rate-of-change depending on how long you press them, but I find that sticky mouse buttons (mmm, cream buns) eliminate the possibility of precision!
Having said that, I understand the notion of individual preference, but in addition to the mathematical methods, you've got arrays for when you define the increment, and path copies to define them for you. To me sliders are tits on a bull.