Larry:
Justin has it right on the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), the ability
to make changes to an embedded object without leaving your current
application. Granted, you may not want the individuals preparing a build
file to have access to change design data in which case you can password
restrict this ability depending on the application and the individual. Some
design houses have the engineers do the modeling and the Maestro build
preparation, in which case OLE would be a real nice feature.
Unix has incredible staying power, but with more and more applications going
to NT, maybe OLE will never need to exist on Unix. But there are a lot of
creative individuals out there, I'm sure something similar can be done for
Unix.
Also something I've been thinking about, if RP programs (like Maestro) are
integrated into design software (3rd party add-on functionality), the STL
conversion could be done in the background without having to bother the
designer (preset sag and maximum triangle sizes could be used but also
easily accessible to the user if changes are needed). Another idea, if
Maestro would "grow up" and be able to recognize solids and volumes (then we
get into ACIS versus Parasolid format issues) and be able to slice these
entities, then the STL format and conversion would be unnecessary.
One of these days....
Regards,
Glenn Whiteside
Cessna Aircraft Co.
e-mail: siderwhite@worldnet.att.net
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