Rich_Winsor

LOL! I think David just set a Guinness World Record for duplicate posts.

Whoa! Hold it right there buster.... You aren't one of those shape-shifting insectoid praying mantis aliens who came down to earth from a star in Orion's belt to infiltrate our society and enslave all of mankind.... are you? .... I'm onto you guys. You won't get away with it on my watch.

Oh yeah, well I'm SILVERIER. What do ya think? I put my shades on too. Kind of like two peas in a pod, huh?

Too true, what is it that they say, people are "dying" to get in there every day.

Sorry, I got carried away there. Not to change the subject (again) but have you noticed how hauntingly similar my image and your (Mr. P's) image are?

"You've painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair Ruby, are you contemplating going out somewhere? The shadows on the wall tell me the sun is going down Oh, Ruby don't take your love to town"

Dang Jon, either there is some serious foreshortening going on or that is one tall flag pole. If that is a 10' basketball stanchion in the distance I make the flagpole out to be 50 to 60 feet tall.

What I am espousing is a sea change in marketing strategy. Why not try a strategy like the Grateful Dead used? When they found out that their fans were "illegally" taping their shows they didn't spend a fortune trying to prosecute the offenders and cracking down on them. They embraced the concept. Then when the taping started to become a nuisance to other concert goers they didn't cut the practice out, they made a special section for the concert tapers. They established a social network long before the Twitter and Facebook geeks ever thought of the idea and facilitated the distribution of the "bootleg" recordings. Did this cut into album sales? Maybe, but the trade off was a fiercely loyal fan base that would follow them anywhere and they became one of the highest grossing touring acts in history not to mention a merchandising cash cow. The point being that any user is a good user. Some may never "go legit" and buy a full license but that doesn't matter. They are all building the user base and market share and getting the software name out there in the marketplace. Maybe they buy a tee-shirt or ball cap to show their allegiance, or pop for some manuals or some instruction. There are many ways to extract some value besides strong-arming your user base for license fees and SSA's. There will always be the users who see the advantage of having a fully backed license with all the tech support and content that entails. There will also be those, like I did, that come late to the table but end up in the fold. Not allocating all the time and money trying to police the product would free up many resources which are sucked up in the ironfisted security approach and these resources could be plowed back into making the software an even more desirable program to use and own which in turn would increase the user base and market share and so on and so on. Will such a thing ever occur, probably not, but a guy can dream can't he?

Actually it wasn't "stealing, plain and simple". What it was was a bona fide e-Bay transaction. I was in the market for a product, did a search for said product, and found that product up for auction. I bid on the item and was the winning bidder. Did the price seem suspiciously reasonable, sure, but it's not my nor any other e-Bay participant's job to research the legitimacy of a product up for sale on their site. I wouldn't be shopping there if I didn't think I could find an occasional good deal. And in hind sight how much did it hurt the software company? They ended up getting full market value for their product which they would never have received if not for the original e-Bay transaction, which was my whole point to start with.

This is analogous to an argument I have made in defense of bootleg software. Back in 2005 I bought a bootleg copy of SolidWorks on e-Bay from a guy in England for 40 British pounds (they have since tightened their security for these types of transactions). After using the software for about five years I decided I had become proficient enough to justify shelling out the big bucks for a legitimate license with all the support and content. When I told the guy who handled the transaction that he would never be writing up the sale if I hadn't bought the bootleg version and had a play with it he could not comprehend the concept that having the bootleg copy led to getting a legitimate copy. I suspect that if the time spent on policing the software was spent on developing a truly superior product the sales would take care of themselves.

Hey O.T., what does a four stringed musical instrument have to do with the price of beans in Boston? I'm just funin' you because recently I spent the better part of a half hour on Dictionary.com trying to find out how to spell the word that I would pronounce as "wah-lah". All that French stuff is Greek to me, but the word you were looking for is voila.

Nick, isn't that what the little green up arrow is for? Dang Bill, there you go again. So we need some contour lines, fine. What tool shall we use? Of course, skinny sidewalks, how could we be so thick headed?

In a similar vein I like to change the color of the framing with the Adjust Material Definition tool so that the walls show with a little more "pop" when viewing a floor plan in a 3D Doll House view.

If your roof planes are properly constructed the fascia boards will match up. Need a little more info to tell just what your problem is.

So… you want me to spill the beans (as we say over here). Such a simple yet powerful illusion. Think about it. All the walls are exactly the same height (count the bricks). They are not tapered or skewed in any way and all of the corners are at exactly 90°. All the surfaces of the water (save for the waterfall) are perfectly level. How can that be?...... All the distortion is in your mind……with the help of a little embellishment with PSP.

I have a few observations on this topic. I was under the impression that one of the main reasons this new forum format was implemented was superior spam prevention. When spam is present I would like to be able to simply mark it as read and be done with it. I don't know how everyone else reads this forum but personally I just log on, click on the "first unread post" dot beside the first topic on the page and go from there. When I get to the bottom of each thread I don't go "Back to General Q&A" but merely hit the "Next Unread Topic" link. There is no way to know if the next unread topic is spam or not so it is quite easy to inadvertently open an unwanted topic. If I have to go back to the General Q&A page after reading each thread it will make using the forum a very unpleasant experience.

Here is my latest entry in CA's Pool design contest. In paying homage to the great M. C. Escher I have created a self-filling pool. The secret is all in your point of view.

Right clicking on the "User Catalog" in the Library Browser will give you the options for adding new content to your library.

Hope you don't have to drive the car that has the horse inside.

Jonathan, I had some grandiose goals when I set out. I was initially working with a circular exterior wall and a hemispherical dome on top but when I started poking holes in that roof rendering it brought my rig to its knees. So in the interest of expediency I stripped it down to an octagon which rendered quite acceptably. The real kicker is that I still have this new GTX 780 Ti video card sitting here on my shelf because up til now I just haven't had the time or real need to install it. It will be interesting to see what kind of improvement the new card will give me. Jon, I like the "flavah", although I didn't realize that ice hockey was all that prevalent in the Asian culture. I'd give ya a "like" in the contest but unfortunately I don't have nor do I intend to get a Facebook account so I can't vote.

Forgive me while I indulge in some shameless self-promotion. Here is my entry in Chief’s Custom Ceiling Design Contest. I have been playing around with a lot of different concepts lately (round structures, cupolas, curved roof planes, sun light angles, etc.) and I had this crazy idea to combine them all into a custom ceiling design. Since we are in the period between Memorial Day and the 4th of July I settled on a patriotic theme I call “Hail to the Red White & Blue”. Initially I had circular exterior walls for the structure but the roof became too complex and the time it took to redraw after every edit or change of view became prohibitive so I went with an octagonal exterior which rendered much faster. The design features an oculus in the top of a cupola set on top of a domed roof. The dome is pierced in eight locations by star and bar openings which accent the cupola and cast striking sun light images on the inside of the structure. Since the contest rules limit the entries to a single image file it is hard to effectively do justice to everything that is going on so I have attached some additional images. Check out the contest submissions here: facebook.com/ChiefArchitect If you “like” it enough I could get a free memory stick out of the deal.

I believe "they had it coming" is a valid defense in many jurisdictions.

Pretty much as Mick called it. Just draw 3 manual roof planes and lock and adjust the Ridge Top and Fascia Top heights as needed.

Dang it David, you took the words right out of my mouth.

I too have experienced this phenomenon and it's definitely exasperating when it occurs. It certainly would be nice to have this problem addressed but there are things you can do to minimize your losses. First off I always go directly to the "More Reply Options" window to compose all my posts. I have on occasion been dumped back at the forum sign in page when I hit the More Reply Options button after starting a post in the Quick Reply Window. Then, of course, you can copy your response to the clipboard before hitting the post button (never a bad idea if you have a substantial amount of time invested in composing the post). Finally if all else fails Chief does Auto-Save the content of your post at periodic intervals and you can often retrieve all or some portion it if you navigate back to the original thread and re-open the reply window. Look for the "View Auto Saved Content" link located at the bottom left hand corner of the posting window.