Dialog Box July 2006

Readers have their say.

1. You wrote: "You also can fillet between any cross-combination of lines, circles and arcs." But since AutoCAD 2000 you can add ellipses and splines to the list!
2. "You can fillet between a line and a pline segment, but the results are a little unpredictable." Why? A line with the fillet arc simply joins to the pline. They both turn into additional pline segments and inherit all pline properties (layer, color, linetype, etc.).
3. "The new options that have appeared in the last couple AutoCAD releases . . . You can turn the Trim option on (the default) or off." More exactly, these options appeared in Release 13 for the first time.

Bill Fane Responds
You're right on all 3 counts. Actually, I just slip these in deliberately to see if anyone is paying attention.

Suspicious Shaded Views
As a long-time Alibre user, I read with a great deal of interest your review in "What New In Cadalyst -- Manufacturing" until I got to Figure 4. Figure 4 is a really, really nice drawing, but the reference to "shaded views" is not correct. The only way that I know how to do this in Alibre Design is to export as a JPEG (image file) and then import said image file into the drawing and scale -- a real pain in the donkey!

I thought for a minute that I'd missed something that I thought should be in Alibre Design, but no. My version is 9.0 SP1 Pro -- I know it ain't hidden.

I was recently contacted by one of our costumers with a question regarding this article.

It says that Alibre Design can do shaded views, which Alibre Design does not currently have. The author may have been referring to section views, perhaps. I just wanted to clarify as this may cause confusion to our current users and potential users.

Editors respond
We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.

DDont' Like Ddmodify
The changes made to AutoCAD's Modify dialog box after Release 14 was the absolute single worst thing Autodesk has ever done. My production has decreased at least 10% as a result of the change. As the CAD manager of a small, privately owned company, I hear complaints from the other users constantly. Change for the sake of change is never a good thing.

ProgeCAD PDF Problems
Our company bought several license copies of ProgeCAD. They claim to be compatible with AutoCAD and have the capability to print PDF format. The truth about this product is more hip and does not deliver what they promise, I have several e-mails written to them and e-mail back from them that sheds light from their tech support that I feel your readers should know when shopping a cheap version of a CAD program.

Damiano Croci from ProgeCAD responds
First, we have nothing against refunding Mr. Jerry Garza if he is not happy with our software. Our technical support people have tried to help Mr. Garza to fix his problem with the PDF wizard, but unfortunately they were not able to solve this problem.

We have thousands of customer using happily the PDF driver on ProgeCAD 2006. As you know, on PCs you can find some incompatibility that prevents software to work properly on some systems. This sometimes happens, regardless of whether it's cheap software or expensive.

Please note the PDF capability is a plus for ProgeCAD, but customers can obtain easily PDF documents using Adobe Acrobat or free tools such as PDF 995 (as suggested to Mr. Garza). This problem doesn't compromise use of the program for CAD.

Also I want to specify that ProgeCAD 2006 professional comes as a 30-day trial so customers can test it before they acquire it.

ProgeCAD 2006, based on IntelliCAD 6.1 source code, has one of the highest levels of compatibility with AutoCAD. Please download a trial version here -- and test the PDF driver and AutoCAD compatibility level for yourself.

More SolidWorks, Please
I enjoy reading Cadalyst -- the articles, the trends -- but you need more articles on SolidWorks. I have been on SolidWorks since the 1999 upgrade, and it is a wonderful package. My team uses SolidWorks for the engineering development of retail displays, fixtures and graphic hardware.

Editors Respond
Have you checked out our monthly Solid Thinking column?

Creating Custom Linetypes
I'm with the county of Sacramento in northern California working as project engineer. We're using AutoCAD, Land Desktop 2004 release, and I was wondering if there's a way I can create a custom linetype for rail? I know that a custom linetype has to be either a shape or text, and I'm not sure what to use.

Bill Fane Responds
Here are the links to a couple of Learning Curve columns I did a few years back on the subject of creating custom linetypes.
AutoCAD linetype customizing facilities
AutoCAD linetype customizing facilities, part two

Putting Our Hands Together
On page 49 of your June 2006 issue of Cadalyst, I believe you have used a trademark of Oppenheimer Funds (the four hands joined), but not for them. Care to comment?

Editors Respond
In regards to your comments below, we appreciate that our readers have a sharp eye and pay attention to our magazine, so thank you for noticing. This photo, while similar to the illustration of the four hands joined at the wrist that Oppenheimer Funds uses, was purchased by Questex Media Group for usage on this particular ad. We use royalty-free photography and illustrations frequently for many of our publications, and this one is no exception.