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[steve]

It would  be great if the Project > Scale function could be applied to only a selection (or maybe only one layer) instead of to the whole project.


Then it would be easy to place drawings with different scale on the same printed sheet

See this thread:

http://www.cycas.de/forum/thema.php?board=3&thema=28

[luca]

Hi steve, to give a little effort: I find that the better way is the one used in acad or turbocad (sorry I know better this ones) that is to have a "print composition" space different than the "normal" working space.
in the "paper" space you have "views" to the "model" space, each one with its different "zoom" (that means different scales), different layers setup, an so on.
You can draw things in the paper spaces as the headers of the drawing in ie a 1=1mm fashon scale and then add the boundaryes of the printed page, and all the views you need that fit in the boundaryes, each "looking" at some part of the modelspace drawing each one with a different final printed scale obtained with different zoom proportion.
I find that that´s the only way I´ve worked with that makes plots setup a snap, really boost your approach to the final presentation and really makes the difference from working to messing around with drawings.
I´ve told before that this should be a great quantum leap for cycas but should really be a big programming effort... depends which direction cycas is going to take, if the dir is mainly the pro audience with a look to the closest way as we think and design as now, this must be undertaken, if it il going to be a tool for self-housung, as I see around the forum, or 3d pre processing (with all the respect for both), this can not, but as a pro I can tell I already miss the first developement.
ciao
luca

[steve]

Hi Luca

yes I remember you have brought this point up before. I am familiar with the "paper space" concept and I do agree with you that it would be a very nice feature to have in Cycas. Of course it is possible to produce a professional set of drawings, but it can take some messing around as you say. We will have to wait and see

[Blackhawke]

Luca is quite right. I don´t know of any professional CAD programs out there today that still bind the user to a physical page during modeling/construction. Printed page layout is one of the last things done. Chief Architect has this beautiful drag and drop feature for laying the various completed drawing elements out on a virtual page that´s been pre-formatted with the company logo/title bar, etc.

I also agree with Steve. I´m a professional user. I´ve now done 3 projects in Cycas. The one I´m completing now is a $3,000,000+ USD project. The good folks here at Cycas have a choice: Support us professional users, or target the householder.

If they´re going to target pros, then they´re going to have to put in the kind of horsepower we need for our work -- and that our customers are increasingly demanding! My customers, for instance, don´t want to see a generic little model of their kitchen cabinets, they want to see their kitchen cabinets, with the counter tops they picked out. They want to see their refrigerator, their tile floor, their windows and doors. And manufacturers are providing detailed models to meet this demand. But since they´re DWG files, or Chief Architect or Vectorworks files, they can´t be imported into Cycas. Nor can I charge for the time it takes me to create a good 3D model.

To date Cycas has been the only viable choice I know of for Linux users who didn´t want to put up with running AutoCad in Wine. But BricSys is set to release V.10 of BricsCad for Linux, and that´s going to be a major threat to Cycas, since it´s also not only a mature architectural cad program, but it´s fully compatible with AutoCad and all the Autocad modules!

Unfortunately, 100% compatibility with AutoCad is a double edged sword. The files are HUGE and clunky, and BricsCad is as arcane as AutoCad itself. Those are all strengths the Cycas folks can play off of by offering the same functionality in their traditional light, fast, and simple work space.

[steve]

hey blackhawke, great that you using cycas for some big jobs.

look, cycas definitely needs an upgrade soon - my understanding is that it is coming. but may it never become anything even resembling those traditional windows based behemoths! i feel your pain but i would rather do without some features so that cycas keeps its unique feel.

i played around with bricscad about a year ago. it was a scary experience! and i managed to operate blender! so unless their v.10 involves a total rewrite, not sure if it will catch on.

to be doing architectural work entirely on linux is a major achievement that most would never even contemplate.

yet these are interesting times with a multitude of linux systems edging their way into the market place and microsoft losing some of it´s 99.9% hold. who knows what we will see!

[Blackhawke]

hey blackhawke, great that you using cycas for some big jobs.

Thanks!  

look, cycas definitely needs an upgrade soon - my understanding is that it is coming. but may it never become anything even resembling those traditional windows based behemoths! i feel your pain but i would rather do without some features so that cycas keeps its unique feel.

Well I hope it never resembles the behemoths! When I tell folks my data file size for big projects, they look agog! They didn´t even realize that you could do a full 3D model in such a small space. Kudos to Cycas for that.

Nor do I believe that Cycas needs to become such a behemoth to provide the same end result. Why on Earth, for instance, would you want to suck up the CPU cycles to actually work on a graphically correct model? I´m sorry! I remember the old IBM PC days when we felt fortunate to be able to even simulate a 3D line modes, never mind having to have the wood grain right on the hardwood floors while drawing! (Okay, now I´m showing my age.   )

That said, we can´t get away from increasing customer expectations, and that is going to have to be addressed if Cycas wants to stay in the game. So something is going to have to be done to address those issues.

I just finished a house earlier this year and one of the things I tried to do (to satisfy the customer) was to add a texture to Cycas so that the modeled look of a rock facade on the bottom of the house would be using the image off of the manufacturer´s website. Never did get that to go right. And I had to do it for free because had I been using Chief or Vector or Brics, it could have been done in a matter of minutes.

i played around with bricscad about a year ago. it was a scary experience! and i managed to operate blender! so unless their v.10 involves a total rewrite, not sure if it will catch on.

I run Blender too -- but for fun, not for profit.  

But BricsCad already has taken off. They´ve already topped 400,000 site licenses, and they haven´t even cracked the Linux market bottle open yet.

to be doing architectural work entirely on linux is a major achievement that most would never even contemplate.

=shrug=
Cycas is a nice little program. Doing some things with it are very very hard (like 3D slope models), but it can be done. And in the end, I´m not sure trying to run AutoCad in Wine would be an easier option.

And I won´t -- simply won´t run Window$.  

[steve]

quote: i played around with bricscad about a year ago. it was a scary experience!

i must apologise to bricscad! actually i was thinking thinking of another cad program which was very difficult to use. looking at the bricscad website, it seems like a piece of software worth looking at. amazing that they are producing a native linux version.

but...no matter how good it may be, it is still not a dedicated architectural app...so maybe like autocad and others, at best, arch. riding on top of a more general cad system. we will wait and see

i was reading an interesting discussion here about cad on linux:

http://www.freelists.org/post/cad-linux/...-lifesupport,28

a lot about trying to stay out of the dwg noose.

[Blackhawke]

but...no matter how good it may be, it is still not a dedicated architectural app...so maybe like autocad and others, at best, arch. riding on top of a more general cad system. we will wait and see

That´s what VectorWorks does too. It does have some advantages, especially if you´re trying to do something more general (like say determine shading for a passive solar design) within an architectural project. It can also mean you have a HUGE and expensive program with capabilities you never use -- which also describes VectorWorks to a tee.  

i was reading an interesting discussion here about cad on linux:

http://www.freelists.org/post/cad-linux/...-lifesupport,28

a lot about trying to stay out of the dwg noose.

I kind of agree with their major point. Since AutoDesk´s DWG format is the standard, whether we out here in the open source world like it or not, we have to deal with it. I NEED to be able to import models for doors, windows, cabinets, and etc. for instance. And I need to be able to do it quickly and efficiently. But quite frankly I don´t care whether I use someone´s third party app, a 3rd party plugin to Cycas, or something built in. I just need it done!

(I already use a 3rd party app for building envelope modeling.)

[steve]

""(like say determine shading for a passive solar design) within an architectural project

i used to use sketchup for this, but recently i´ve been exploring the possibility of doing it in blender which is working out quite well (there are some good sun plugins available)

""I already use a 3rd party app for building envelope modeling.

what do you use?

i agree that in the linux world we need embrace the idea of using a collection of apps rather than just one, for this kind of work. even in the mainstream there is probably no app that does everything perfectly. i´m pretty used to jumping from app to app depending on the job being done. trouble is,  the "jumping" process is hardly ever easy.

[luca]

Hi, the problem of dwg compatibility is that if you are passing 3d models or furnitures or to say vector model space objects, some workaround is easy to find, but when you have to exchange even 2d but mixed on layout pagination you´re off.
This IS the problem, in the professional world you are not working alone and is easy to exchange different revisions, revisions revised and so.
Say also that I knew very few people that really can be said have a real acad knoledge, so few dwgs are well made and easy to import.
The problem is so unresolvable that at the end it´s not a problem at all, we always have to deal with compromises so that our lives are a unique compromise (and here I want to hear from serviteur).
To make an example I´m aware I´m writhing in a subset of macaroni-english, but I´m sure you are understanding something as in turn you can´t read italian where I could be more accurate, so-> simplified concepts are better than nothing => simplified importing is better then nothing.
To stop my philosophizing, I´ve happly used opendwg consortium´s converting tool, with good results, making it run under wine so even no need of win at all, but in most cases, when there´s the need, I convert dwg´s in dxf with turbocad we use for structural drawings then reimport them in cycas and vice versa. Notice I´m talking of 2d drawings.

ciao
luca

[xluis]

Hi everybody.

I´m not very sure about *dwg is the standard. Till now it´s so standard as it was *xls or *doc; since we have *ods and *odt you can choose this extension in earliest MSOffice... I think this is the way and I´m walking along it.
So, as *dwg is quiet usual, I use commonly EveryDWG with Wine, even for 3D georefenced maps. My last experience was changing a georeferenced 3D map (ca. 800 ha) from *dwg to *dxf and importing it to QGIS with his own plugin and with Grass plugin, both succesfully. With Cycas I could import such *dxf too.

[steve]

thanks for that, luca and xluis...it is the same with me. anyway, it is hardly ever that you can convert from one format to another without having to make some adjustment afterwards. so there is always some extra work involved.

with dwg, i think it depends what world you are working in. in my world, i only know one person who uses autocad. others use a wide variety of different softs. so the suppliers around here provide their cad details in many formats, but always dxf. but it will be different for others.

[luca]

 ;DI´m living in the architects world... you know... it´s a world apart

[Blackhawke]

""I already use a 3rd party app for building envelope modeling.

what do you use?

Check out esp-r. It´s an older program, and so doesn´t have all the flash and splash of the newer ones, but it gets the job done. Also, it has the advantage of allowing you to build a local weather model for you area so that you can actually see how the building will work in your little corner of the world, rather than just doing generic performance tests.

i agree that in the linux world we need embrace the idea of using a collection of apps rather than just one, for this kind of work. even in the mainstream there is probably no app that does everything perfectly. i´m pretty used to jumping from app to app depending on the job being done. trouble is,  the "jumping" process is hardly ever easy.

Ain´t that the truth! Which is one reason I hope the good folks here at Cycas come up to the bar. That DWG/DXF converter you pointed me too seems to work just fine under Wine, btw. Kind of a case in point -- so long as the developers don´t improve it to the point that it quits working in Wine.  

[Blackhawke]

To stop my philosophizing, I´ve happly used opendwg consortium´s converting tool, with good results, making it run under wine so even no need of win at all, but in most cases, when there´s the need, I convert dwg´s in dxf with turbocad we use for structural drawings then reimport them in cycas and vice versa. Notice I´m talking of 2d drawings.

Just out of curiosity, why are you jumping back and forth between programs? That sounds like a heck of a lot of work.