Hello,
Everybody gives suggestions for Cycas 4. I look forward to seeing the result. Have you already planned an approximate date of release ?

Yeah, what you said! We've been awaiting the release of v.4.0 for about 9 months now. Personally, I think if Cycas 4.0 is done right, has the moxie to beat BricsCad for Linux all to crap and gone. But we has to gets it, precious. Yes we does.

I see the spammers are back.

I wouldn't exactly say SMF is a "simple forum software" guys. I run two SMF forms and have successfully defeated the spammers using some of the capthca and other registration verification plugins available for it.

I do wish, however, that Iron Clad Captcha had an SMF plugin. I use that on my work website and it's so secure that I'm able to allow open comments on my blog posts.

'Tis true. I have working directories for each of my clients in which I store all kinds of data related to the contract. I create a "drawings" directory (folder) and that's where all of Cycas' files go, as well as any DXF and what not files that I import. I create a symbolic link from the ~/Cycas/ directory in my home directory to that directory for easy access. Never had any trouble.

It is true that we have a new forum is helpful, but what is needed is the software (cycas4).
Give us an idea at least:
- Release date of the alpha, beta ...
- what will be new to functions, import / export etc. ...

Been almost a month and we still haven't heard a peep! So I guess I'll have to say "Amen" to keep the thread alive in the hopes that we'll hear something. 

sorry! it wasn't meant to be scary!

It was close enough to All Hallows Eve for you to be forgiven. 

To be clear: I wasn't exporting an entire drawing either. Just the "visible objects", as Cycas puts it. 

I reality it was a stripped down site plan with boundary lines and monuments with some general architectural details. Maybe 6 layers out of a 4.6 megabyte file of nearly a 100 layers.

but then i have to agree that they have been very quiet for a long time...
the only reason i know they are still there is that we have the new forum..

That's kind of a scary commentary in and of itself. 

I hope they're enjoining a white sand beach with a mojito in their hands thinking about us... that's where I'll like to be...

ROFL!

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have a camera on the same layer as the objects you're trying to render. Therefore you either have to "turn off" that camera by selecting another one, or you have to delete it. (In that regard, Cycas treats cameras and lights no differently than any other object.)

I prefer to keep my cameras and lights and (and background stuff that's really irrelevant to real drafting and design) on different layers so that they're a) out of the way of the real work and b) easy to manipulate individually.

No I don't think so, Luca. One of the elements was a reference (GL) circle I had put in and then later deleted using -GL. The other line was a simple 2D line. Actually, it was a fragment of a line, which is even stranger.

As for the other, as I said: text objects being the wrong scale is not uncommon. I later got an email from the engineer saying she had figured out how to get it to scale properly, which was a relief as I can't figure out why Cycas suddenly can't produce a good DXF of a file it had just produced one from. Frustrating.

Hey... Any word on when we're going to see the new version, even a beta version of the new version we registered users can play with?

Oh... And anybody know where our absentee hosts/developers went? They're not answering emails and/or messages here or anything. Disappearing support is kinda scary when you're working on big money projects for clients. 

Anybody had trouble with DXF export being flaky? I exported a drawing for an engineer to work with and they said they were having trouble getting the text to show up the right size. Not uncommon.

I tried to export it again and couldn't get the text elements to show up AT ALL! Not only that, Cycas exported elements that had supposedly been deleted from the database. They certainly weren't visible in Cycas. But there they were in the export!

Ideas, folks?

I assume you're adding your textures to the cycas3 directory in /home/*/CYCAS3/tex/ ? If not, that's probably your problem. I've added any number of texture graphics to that directory without a problem.

Do NOT, however, try to add to the /opt/ tree!

There is also a little package that could be installed called "Info Box" that allows you to control where your image appears in your forum post, and wraps text around it. Or, you can put text in your info box and it works kind of like a side bar.

It's a very handy little package for posts that have lots of images in them. I've had it on my SMF forum for a couple of years now and it works great. It adds a button to the edit menu bar, but like most of the other items in the menu bar, the options aren't explained. That's the one bad thing -- about all BBcode forums actually.

[061110.260202 Partition wall, 2x4, 8' high, double top plate, 16" O.C.]

luca, i don't know of any...

if you just want a straight calculation of material quantities, it would be possible to use the info in the pov output file (which is text) from cycas to create an openoffice spreadsheet which lists all the meshes in your model, their volumes and the material assigned to them.

it could be a start at least...

dxf output from cycas at present is no use because materials are not assigned to meshes...all meshes have default materials.

Well, where Cycas is concerned, that sort of gets right to the point, doesn't it? If we could assign a material (or materials) to a mesh, and Cycas could build an SQL database, or Open Office or Excel database of assigned materials from the meshes, then we could build our own QTO database as we design.

For example: You draw in a partition wall and then assign it:

061110.260202 Partition wall, 2x4, 8' high, double top plate, 16" O.C.

Cycas calculates the length for you and adds it to the database. As an alternative, perhaps some guidance could be allowed as to how the length/quantity are to be calculated: Square feet/meters, Linear feet/meters, and so on, so that the take-off quantities entered into the database match the quantities used in estimating. It would also help if the above example was divided into fields: The item number (use CSI or figure out your own) and the nomenclature, and perhaps a couple of others, in addition to a formula field for computing quantity.

(The number is CSI Master format. The last 4 digits are Reed Construction data assigned numbers for that line entry.)

Just my two cents.