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ZeroLengthCurve  
#1 Posted : Sunday, May 11, 2014 10:41:01 PM(UTC)
ZeroLengthCurve

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There is something I hope can be changed.

I created fan blades via Bezier curves. I got a tentative shape and then wanted to make sure there was not too much or any overlap since the blades will need to change angle and not strike each other.

Polar Duplicate changes the layers of my duplicatess once the PD action completes. I specifically put the active layer to capture the created polar duplicates so I could change their colors and get them out of the view while not needed.

But, while creating fan blades, I need the duplicates to to retain their color and layer assignment so that it is easier to work with the parent blade.

I am in SLT v8. I do not know whether SLT 9 or VCP 9 have this issue. I call it an issue because any user with color/sight issues will have to take more steps to avoid ambiguity with control points of a parent and overlapping child geometry. Since the PD process forces the parent geometry (at least Bezier curves -- I have not tried other curves or surfaces or solids yet) to go to the same layer as the parent, then even filtering/Select Mask will not help.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#2 Posted : Sunday, May 11, 2014 11:03:08 PM(UTC)
ZeroLengthCurve

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I was astonished to see that, almost an hour into a refreshed restart of SLT v8, I'd unknowingly exceeded 1.8 GB of RAM in the Working Set and 1.78 GB in Private Working Set.

Also, there were 1,597,233 page faults. (Not that I can even grasp the significance, except that other apps I run have only a fraction of that, tho explorer (the file manager) has 35,822 faults for one instance of explorer, while another explorer instance had 16,940 page faults.

Anyway, I am also astonished (pleasantly) that even though I exceeded 1.8 GB of RAM consumption, Win 7 (32-bit, with 3,394 MB total installed, 331 Cached, 1,158 available, and 845 free) didd not crash.

What prompted me to take a look was when SLT wiggled/flashed like it does when the text is about to go bolded/outlined like highlighted for visually-impaired. It must be those polar duplicated Bezier curves. I ahve not even yet applied surfaces for slicing by an extruded solid.

Maybe I should change the Beziers to arcs or to control point splines, hmmm?

It may also have something to do with the shaft (really, this is a just one of a pair of propeller blades for my ship model) being over 200 feet long, and so the blades are around 150 m from origin. This must be causing grief for SLT, since on my earler attempts to do Polar Duplicate, I did not have the Translate Duplicates option selected and my blades kept going off elsewhere, which caused me multiple "Undo" steps to examine my faulty ways.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#3 Posted : Sunday, May 11, 2014 11:15:11 PM(UTC)
ZeroLengthCurve

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BTW, when in my main model I exceed 1.6 GB and try to save, I get the "Unable to Save" warning. In other cases, the bolding/black-white contrast, whited-out menus, and split-second-screen-flash-to-white usually happens, which takes down Win 7 by excursion through the BSOD (Win 7 CAN be blue-screened -- I do it at least once or twice a month during my SLT sessions, hahaha). But, that BSOD also takes down VirtualBox, which frightens me and prods me to just reboot my entire machine, not just the virtual machine.

So, needless to say, I keep the task manager open, behind my SLT tools, positioned so that I can watch the RAM size as it inevitably exceeds 1.4 GB when I start saving and restarting SLT, and occasionally Win 7, jsut in case any "cruft" is clogging up memory registers and arrays/pointers and in case SLT is going "walkabout" in the background with no warnings.

A former co-worker in IT would scold me for keeping TM open, saying it consumed RAM and was responsible for system instability. But, I kept it open anyway to monitor consumption of resources by some apps I was required to use. At home, even triply so do I keep an eye on SLT, since my base file of 56 MB keeps ballooning to 260MB file size, and no longer opens at 600MB RAM, but now at 980MB, and quickly PacMans its way to 1.4 GB. I'm surprised that this low-geometry count (less than 50 objects, at a fraction of the size of the ship file) file got to 1.8 GB when the ship file has around 20,000 objects and around 1100 solids (structural stiffening members).

All the more reason to go to 64 Bit, but I don't have money for that or a new machine to get more RAM to stay ahead of SLT ballooning. (I've rechecked and changed settings; I've even gotten into the undesired habit of turning off all my geometry and saving the file with nothing visble, which also involves me drawing a line, deleting it, compacting the file, then saving again, all no longer shrinking the file.

POI (Perversity Of the Inanimate...)
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ZeroLengthCurve  
#4 Posted : Sunday, May 11, 2014 11:28:32 PM(UTC)
ZeroLengthCurve

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BBTW, the blue solids visible are the OLD propeller blades model. I'm reworking the blades based on some SolidWorks and ACAD Inventor tutorials I watched recently.

I chose to use Bezier curves to avoid the need to use tangency tools to control the shape of the parent blade. In the tutorials, one used a wedge which was filleted and chamfered/etc, with a swept rectangle and coil tool use, while the other tutorial used 5 arcs and build up a surface between them and a swept surface combination.
memphisjed  
#5 Posted : Thursday, May 15, 2014 2:52:24 AM(UTC)
memphisjed

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curves make things pretty. Keep working in splines, or your editing becomes unobtainium.
Maybe work with two windows: one with your splines/master solid blade, and another with a copy of blade (it being a dumb aisc solid) and arrays thereof. Turn resolution to rough, before performing duplicates, you can always turn resolution up after.
pacman growth files happen, and near as I can tell they have some conflict math fairy inside. Once one is gone recovery is dice roll. It happens more in acad. maybe one out of 700-1000 is just power crazy (if it is shot your cam software will reject it too).
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