Vector Art 3D Machinist

Post by **Rcnewcomb** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:13 am

Nuisance bug: disappearing palette icons

I'm using Vector Art 3D Machinist V1.004 on a Windows ME system with an nVidia video card.

I sometimes lose the icons on the palette after I close a design, open another one, and beging selecting different preview materials.

The icons disappear, but the following text remains:
Load 3D Model
Orientate Model
View Control
Material

The buttons Previous (grayed out) and Next are visible
On the menu bar "Ready" overwrites "File" and on the right-hand side of the menu bar where one would expect the minimize, restore and close buttons, in their place are 0 2 r

Minimizing and restoring does not re-establish the icons. I have to exit and restart the program.

Post by **BrianM** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:42 am

Hi Randall,

The current version of Vector Art Machinist is 1.007. Can you download this version from the www.vectroart3d.com website and check if you are still having problems?

Brian.

Post by **Rcnewcomb** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 8:25 pm

Version 1.007 seems to have the same issue (display corrupted after generating numerous previews based on different designs) but it does take longer before the display is corrupted. For example, this last time I had generated 26 previews based on 6 different designs before the problem showed up.

Exiting and restarting the program seems to be an acceptable work-around.

Post by **Rcnewcomb** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 8:26 pm

One other thing that I noticed is that the F7 key to "View Down Z" only works after the preview window has focus, i.e.:
1. Open a design file (file opens)
2. Press the <F7> key -- nothing happens
3. Click on the preview window
4. Press <F7> - this time the view changes.

Post by **Rcnewcomb** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:42 am

How do I add materials for previewing?

I put some additional files into c:\Program Files\Vector Art 3D Machinist\Textures\1_Materials but they were not picked up.

Post by **BrianM** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:18 am

Hi Randall,

Thanks for the reports, I don't think anyone else has ever generated 26 previews on the trot, so we probably have a slight resource leak.
When we build the next version we will fix that and the F7 focus problem you reported.

> How do I add materials for previewing?

Unlike VCarve Pro you can't add new materials to Vector Art 3d Machinist. We wrote the program to be as simple to use as possible and hence the material selection is hardwired with the little preview icons rather than the list of material names used in VCarve Pro.

Brian

Post by **Rcnewcomb** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:59 pm

Thanks for the reply Brian.

I'm generating all the previews to post on my web site so customers can browse designs with a choice of materials.
http://www.222artisans.com/doors.php

Is there a better way to achieve the same capability without generating all the preview images?

Post by **BrianM** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:12 pm

Hi Randall,

The website looks nice, but I can't think of an easier way of generating all the previews.

However, if you want to use your own custom texture you could copy it over in place of one of the existing textures you don't want such as maybe 'Blue Plastic.jpg' in the directory you mention above (your new texture would have to be called 'Blue Plastic.jpg' as well. The preview icon will not change but the actual shading will.

Brian