I wish Punch! Software many good and fortunate years ahead. Punch! ViaCAD is hands-down one of THE best and rewarding and gratifying software purchases i have *ever*made. I don't care that it hasn't got every single feature of AutoCAD or SolidWorks/et al. What i am learning and doing now is plenty to keep me busy and to get most of the important stuff in hand.

However, i can see where Punch' have to or want to up the price or charege for extra modules if these were added:

-- x-refs (and some ability to freeze/thaw, as in acad)

-- some ability to move multiple layers en-mass (to deal with "darn, i created 25 layers with long names in the wrong tree, or in the same tree, but think i need to do right-click-move-layer-up 25 times, 24, times, 23, times...)

-- visibility penants/control flags (say you have a large structure, and you're demoing it, and you want to reserve some orb or pallet or object as a control, then to that control or object run "extensions" or lines between them, and then assign on/off/translucency up/down, then simply single/double/triple-click the control line to turn the attached geometry on, off or make translucent, hide, etc. )

As for 3rd item, this could really fun or crucial where many layers cross and where many pieces of geometry are obscured and where using the concept explorer is a long tree to climb and descend.

So, imagine the old chemistry or toy sets with sticks and holed wheels. Imagine a building or ship structure with a "control stick" just off to the side (or, if you will, imagine "fibre to the curb), with "tendrils" branching off to whatever geometry you want the tendril to touch.

Now, click and drag and associate something. Assign properties to the tendril. Branch the tendril to a basic control panel or manifold. The tendril only does what the panel/manifold (or, panifold? hehehe) says to do.

Now, Mac people could have a FIELD DAY with the remote gizmo demoing a factory floor or showrooom concept, or assembly line. Dunno about PC users, tho I'm a PC/Linux/Mandriva/VirtualBox/Vista/ViaCAD 2D/3D-going-VCPro 6 user.

What inspired me to suggest the tendri-fold/panifold thingy? Well I'm designing a ship. It has hundreds of layers already, and i constantly need rapid access to turned-off layers that may help me visualize potential interferences, to create floors/decks/stiffeners/ and other geometry. Since CAD is almost never a linear process, it would be really useful for me to assign tendrils like ACAD assigns layers. Instead of going into a panel and interrupting the work flow, a set of 3D-space tendrils (translucent or opaque) could be clicked and rapidly turn on and off or make opaque many disparate but critical layers. It could be stateful, in the sense of being independent of the drawing crash/open state. So, maybe it might be a separate database, maybe SQLite or somesuch, something unencumbered by too many legal issues so Punch! could use at some low cost.

Potentially, even the BOM could be tied in to this. Relationally, like a database, portions of the BOM could be "torn off" and set aside as needed, almost like the tool pallet does. Tear off a tool, and its dupe vanishes. Wanna ad-hoc associate groups of tools? Well, Tim and crew could fix that up, i suppose...

Chime in, everyone!

Someday soon i need to upload to Tim/Ryan some of my hull lines (buttocks and waterlines) that are turning up weird. For instance, i export from Delftship as .dxf my hull lines. There are waterlines, buttocks, edges, and stations. Into ViaCAD, i import the lines, create layers for respective starboard and port geometry, various waterlines, but not yet the buttocks. (Buttocks can be visualized as the curves visibly resulting if you cut downward on a bar of soap or block of cheese or some item that has curvature... Even better, imagine an ellips, or, better yet, a submarine hull that you see on one side/profile elevation. Now drop planes down from bow to stern and successively do this frm the outermost edge of the hull to the centerline and on to the opposite side. The buttocks will defin the shape of the hull in that view. Waterlines and stations do similar for other views...)

When I click on one of the buttocks the beginning and ending X points are coming up as the same, but buttocks are pretty much like that only if dealing with sonar bulbs or local protrusions or indents because they may be oval in nature. I don't think that should happen for a line that starts at the bow and terminates at the stern.

Stations and edges are fine. The waterlines are, too, for the most part, too. Actually, since Delftship is not a fine-modeling tool, some of the keel curves curve up or in a manner that ViaCAD might trip over aggravating ACIS mindset about sweeps that turn inward on themselves.

Part of my problem is that i allow myself to get hung up on tiny little details. But, in a sense that's not bad. Even though i'm not desiging my ships as if some yard will build them, one of my supervisors tells me that is exactly what i should do. It will reflect on my work and help make me better at CAD. Unfortunately for that case, work uses AutoCAD, and i'm NOT going to do my ships in AutoCAD. I don't personally enjoy using AC for my work, particularly since it's expensive, AClite doesn't loft/surface/do solids, AC 9 & 10 (IIRC) don't do CGs (centers of gravity), and are just way too feature-filled to bother with much of what's in there. VC is a nice balance for me.

I'll try to get around to putting some of my work up behind a link so you can see.

BTW, any of you heard about this?

http://www.stx.co.kr/english/pr...earchColumn=&searchWord=

Kewl, that an office worker not really familiar with ships won a design/lego modeling contest for a passenger ship design. Maybe one day i'll achieve the same for "naval cruiser/maritime policing vessels designed by non-engineers".