Questions (and answers)
- Are there any instruction manuals?
- Yes, you can download one from the documentation page.
- Are there any screencasts?
- Yes, you can also find them on the documentation page.
- How do I pronounce the name, and where does it come from?
- We get this one more than we expected. It's pronounced separately as two words, "three", then the word "depict" (to draw or display), strung together. The name originated from "3D PoInt Cloud Tool". If you have a US accent, it sounds like this.
- I'm running Debian/Mint/Ubuntu, and getting a crash on startup: "Floating point exception"
- We left some strict debugging in for some of the deb packages, which converts a minor problem into a major one, but only on some machines (we are not sure why). To solve this, you need to update to 0.0.8 or later. We have set up a PPA for Ubuntu users.
- I'm running Mac OSX, and when trying to update to the new version, I get the error "A newer version of this software already exists on this disk"
- This was due to us not specifying a version number in some early releases. Go to spotlight, then type "terminal", and open Terminal.app. Now cut and paste the following command into the terminal to remove the old version data.
sudo rm /private/var/db/receipts/net.sourceforge.threedepict.3Depict.pkg.plist /private/var/db/receipts/net.sourceforge.3Depict.pkg.plist
don't forget to press enter. You will be prompted for your password for this action.
- This project is terrible, it doesn't work! What can I do?
- Try asking for support; it might be fixable.
- Report a bug (complain). These will be prioritised to be fixed, if I can reproduce them (get the same problem as you by trying to follow your report). Remember that to solve the problem, I need to make the same problem happen on my computer, and if I can't then I might not be able to fix it.
- This project is great, can I donate?
- Not really. Small donations are not particularly useful, and small donations are not going to make me work on this any more than I currently do. However, there are several things you can do.
- Use it -- Knowing that people are using the program is good motivation to keep working on it.
- Email the author to say how this has helped you. If you are from an academic background, doing this in a formal manner is helpful too.
- Upload a nice screenshot online, then send us a link.
- Report bugs, or
- Work on something that the program needs, such as documentation, artwork, language translation, web design or programming.
- If you need a particular feature, you could fund a project to develop it, either independantly, or by contacting the author. This could be quite expensive though, and would require some level of computational skill and more importantly, familiarity with the code.
- This program doesn't do what I need -- can you still help me?
- Maybe.
- You can request a feature through the forum or contact form. I do not promise to get these things done, but you might find that it is quite easy to create a change. Worst case scenario is that you lose a few minutes asking.
- I might be able to propose a work around, or suggest alternate, or combinations of tools that can help.
- If there are modules that might benefit the community, or you are using this for a specific academic need, it might be possible to construct a problem-specific solution
- Just remember that there are many, many analysis tools out there.
- How much does this program cost?
- Nothing. If you paid for it, ask for your money back, and contact us.
- Is the program any good?
- I don't know. I'd like to think so. That's not for me to decide.
- Why did you write this program?
- I needed it to fill some needs that I could not find existing software to suit. I couldn't find a flexible point cloud + value analysis program that fitted my needs, so I built one. Seeing as I needed to do it quickly, free components were the order of the day.
- I'm keen on doing programming and all that sort of stuff. How can I get started?
- Firstly, make sure you are familiar with C++ and compiling projects with multiple source files. Then, the best thing to do is to compile the latest source code (.tar.gz file). This is by far the easiest under Linux, then Mac, and most difficult under windows, due to dependencies. If needed, you can run a virtual machine. Now, once done, you can make your changes as you like - there is a section in the manual describing some of this process. Also, you can check out the generated code documentation, which has some nice graphical representations of the program structure. Also, feel free to drop a line in the forums, or via a contact form, so we can give you a help.
- My question is not listed here.
- Can you put that in the form of a question?
- What if my question is not listed here?
- Well, try to contact the authors. These questions were written in a speculative fashion, and are not technically "frequently asked".