Meeting: Simply CAD? Use Draw!
John Cartmell from Qercus visited to talk about Draw. Starting with the idea of draughting Meccano pieces, he took us through some simple concepts before moving on to the subject of 3D perspectives and isometric grids. The evening was rounded off with a look at the new features added to Draw in RISC OS 6.20, along with some of the other additions to RISCOS Ltd’s latest version of their OS.
Report by Chris Hughes
This is only a brief review of what happened at the March meeting.
The meeting was opened by the new Chairman – Chris Hughes – with various little announcements regarding the show. Our guest speaker for the night was John Cartmell of Qercus and FinnyBank Ltd, who was going to talk about using Draw – using as an example the Meccano article from a recent issue of Qercus. He had brought along some actual Meccano models, as used in the magazine article.
John demonstrated how to use the grid options in Draw, and how to create a curved end to the Meccano parts. He showed various methods how to get holes to appear in the panels (for the nuts and bolts to be fitted), and then proceeded to show how you could get a 3D-type effect for the side pieces of the wheelbarrow he was using as his example.
This was all done with the current version of Draw as supplied in RISC OS Six, although many of the basic techniques can be used in older versions. John then moved on to showing the issues surrounding the use of isometric grids for 3D shapes like boxes, and the audience was asked various questions regarding the effects achieved.
John then offered round copies of the magazine the article was in, not just for the article itself, but for the extra front and back cover of that issue (it had a double front and back cover). The extra front cover had a RISC OS Six keyboard shortcuts list on both the front and back of the page, while the extra back had a game from the FinnyBank range, with the full instructions also available.
