Hi Mike,

> Could a large file be parsed in hard drive memory? ...this is the kind of question a non-programmer like myself thinks up. ;-)

It's possible but accessing the disk is many many times slower than accessing things in memory so you can't just kind of stick things back and forth to disk a whole lot without it really slowing things down a huge amount.


> What if MoI, sensing that the output operation has taken more than a minute, puts
> a second progress bar on the screen. So if the current model means business... well.
>
> Not one based on estimated (or guesstimated) time, but simply info on
> objects-by-objects, say: "PROGRESS: 2,340/10,000 boundaries processed."

That is actually how it works currently - when it's actually processing surfaces and curves for the hidden line removal the progress bar you see is not based on projected time but on the number of work items that have been completed.

There is some initial setup work before that progress bar will get started, but over here I do not have any examples of that initial setup taking more than say 10 seconds or so even with heavy models.

- Michael