shs@uts.amdahl.com (Steve Schoettler) (05/25/89)
This DXF converter program sounds useful, but remember that with
public domain programs, there are several ways to use autocad drawings
on the Amiga already:
From Autocad, save the program in postscript, instead of DXF format.
I have used autocad-produced-postscript pictures in AmigaTeX
documents. They work beautifully together!
Also, you can look at autocad-produced-postscript pictures with
Tom's port of ghostscript, although you might want to go
into the file to scale it if you want to see any detail on the screen.
Or, from AutoCAD, (or many other cad packages), you can save the file
in HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Plotter language) format and run the
hpgl2ps converter (available from comp.sources.unix). The output
of this converter can either be viewed on the screen with ghostscript,
or printed or used in an AmigaTeX document.
Another option is using Macintosh AutoCAD to save pictures in GIF or
TIFF and using the FBM library posted to comp.graphics
to convert it to IFF.
Of course, this presumes that you have AutoCAD running on a PC or MAC.
If someone wants to give you an AutoCAD drawing, just ask them to save it
in postscript or hpgl, instead of DXF. If you're stuck with DXF,
or you are using a text formatter other than TeX, you probably still need
the DXF translator.
Steve
--
Steve Schoettler
shs@uts.amdahl.com
{sun,decwrl,pyramid,ames,uunet}!amdahl!shs
Amdahl Corp., M/S 213, 1250 E. Arques Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94088sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (05/26/89)
In article <24wV02ZY2cHp01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> shs@uts.amdahl.com (Steve Schoettler) writes: >This DXF converter program sounds useful, but remember that with >public domain programs, there are several ways to use autocad drawings >on the Amiga already: > [description of saving Acad dwg in postscript and HPGL and GIF] Ah, yes this is all very nice to get Two Dimensional Autocad Data into Amiga software, but the Acad_translator transfers AutoCAD *Three Dimensional* wire frames into Sculpt-Animate scene descriptions. 3D. Then you ray-trace the wire frame with S-A.. And can even make an animation from it. For those who aren't familiar with ray tracers and S-A [both of you.]: Ray-tracing is a way to model reality within the computer. You specify 3D objects such as spheres, cubes, etc. and tell the program what sort of color and texture the object should have: Mirror, fuzzy, smooth, dull, etc. Then you specify where to place these objects in your virtual world. Add a few light sources and a viewpoint. Then sit back and wait. .. and wait. While the ray-tracer calculates a HAM picture from the 3D data. It has to calculate thousands of light rays and reflections. Sculpt-Animate is very hard to draw your objects in. AutoCAD only does wire- frames, but it is very simple to draw 3D objects in. So the two programs compliment each other quite well. Except they are on two different computers. And different file formats. Dos2Dos solves the first problem and Acad Translator solves the second. -- John Sparks | {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps [not for RHF] | sparks@corpane.UUCP | 502/968-5401 thru -5406 Beware of quantum ducks: Quark, Quark.