As an avid follower of these forums, I can’t help but notice that activity has dropped to only a few posts a day.
Is everyone on vacation? Does the lack of discussion mean Carl, Colby, et al are now focusing on 2D drawing? Is 7.2 about to be released? I mean, come on guys, it’s been 2 whole weeks since the last release. 
Yeah, the activity has dropped a bit. Also around the office it seems like it’s been calmer. I know that in general a lot of people are working on a lot of things, so it must be vacation time or something.
As for us- yes, we’re working on 7.2. We’ve got a ton of stuff we’re trying to pack in, and are shooting for an end-of-october release date. While that won’t include full 2d drawing, it will have a new workspace system that lays the groundwork, and it will also include some big improvements to clustering (making it much better for basic redundancy setups, ie, what 99% of customers want to use it for). That, and about a million other things we’ve promised people will be there 
I’ll ask this here rather than the main board since it seems that I’m the only one who uses the paint component extensively, but how difficult would be be to extend the canvas to Java3D? I’m doing some 3D effects with the existing canvas, but I’m pushing the limits of my artisic capabilities. 
I happen to have an ABB Robot project coming up, and being able to include 3D feedback would be mind-blowing to the customer, especially if it could be used to simulate and test crash-detection code.
edit: More to the point, I just need to be able to do something like this : http://www.smallshire.org.uk/sufficientlysmall/computing/jython3d/
The code itself is pretty straight forward, but I can’t import the necessary java libraries.
I don’t know too much about Java3d, but this sort of extension seems like the perfect use for our developer API. Using it, you could create your own 3d components in straight Java (using any Java 3d libraries) and then bundle them up into your own module.
So, if I understand this correctly, I would be creating a 3D canvas component just like the existing 2D canvas? And then it would show up in the designer where I could draw my 3D objects?
Sure - our components are just Java Swing components. Part of the developer API is geared for 3rd party developers to write their own components in Java. They’d appear in a new tab, just like the Reporting Module or ActiveX module’s components do.
Back to Robert’s question - don’t you know?.. It’s the beginning of hunting season! Everybody takes time off this time of year.