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ps - who starred me up > that was nice! thanks

It sounds like roof face is the ideal candidate here. Especially if all the other walls are vertical chances are they are constructed differently as well, so any plan or section can be drawn to represent the reality. Just draw a rectangle / trapezoid in plan for the angled wall, AEC>Roof Face> - Click a line for to define the roof axis and the side you want it to ascend. View in 3d and edit the parameters in the Object Info palette. You can even use the roof framing tool - rafters to generate the structural timbers. Or - Duplicate the face - change the thickness and offset it to create the components. Bonne chance!

Have you applied a texture to the walls. They should look differently depending on how the light is playing on them. Place a Background and see the difference.

Assuming your 3d object is planar have you tried extract surface? Also if it's cylindrical /conical you may have success extracting the top & bottom curve and using these to draw the developed surface.

This should work - did for me. Duplicate your Door Hardware File Vectorworks 2009>Libraries>Door Hardware. Open Door Hardware.vwx and locate the symbol you need to relocate in the Resource Browser. You may want to duplicate & rename it. Now Edit the 3d Symbol moving it relative to it's default location. Save the file and all is well. It will now be available in the Door Settings > Data > Include Hardware > Browse window. Likewise - edit the symbol in 3d and scale it there. If not - return the unsullied Door Hardware.vwx to its rightful place and no harm / no good done.

HI Kelly, You need to apply a Texture by Class to the class Style Glazing 1 (or whichever one your using) . Go in edit the class, apply any Glass Texture and if you're using the same class for both the internal and external panel as Peter suggested you should have the look you need.

Hi Orlando, Yes, Renderworks can be slow (SLOW even) when trying to get realism. I've found the following works well for me. Set the minimum # of lights. Turn off the Layer Lighting or on just <10% Turn on Lighting from Background eg Curvy Dome Also - changing the Sheet Layer ppi to ~20 can really speed up the Viewport rendering and allow you to tweak the scene until happy. Then bump it up to 150 / 200 or 300 click Update and off to lunch! Also - The Render Bitmap tool is invaluable to get a quick look at a portion of the view without having to endure a full scene render. For urgent projects something like this can get an acceptable result in an acceptable time - I just took a look at LuxRender - they are beautiful. I wonder how long they take to texture, light & render?

If you're looking for ease of use - why not, for ~$400 upgrade to include Renderworks. It's built in and I imagine the learning curve for Final Quality Renderworks scenes to be extremely short, for rendered scenes including lighting effects would be longer. Allowing the full application of textures will be very useful. Just a thought.

Try Shift Cmd ~

ykes

HI Greg, Have you tried the drape surface command? It can produce interesting meshes without painstakingly editing each node. Here's a quick example of one draped over a random 3d array of an angular extruded polygon. With a stock texture added. http://files.me.com/smiletotheworld/8mzzx8

HI Gerrit, How are you navigating into 3d space? I find using cameras to be useful only when preparing 3d perspective views for presentation. Otherwise I use either the standard orthogonal & isometric views which, I believe, will center on the some weighted center of all the objects on the visible layer, or the shift-c flyover tool which centers the 3d rotation on one of 4 origin modes. (selected point /selected object / ground plane origin / working plane origin) hth Brian

HI Rosetter, It sounds like you may be using viewports as static snapshots. They are in fact live windows of your work. Assuming you are working in 2D here are a couple of possible workflows that may help. 1) Create your reference viewport on a new design layer. Create a separate design layer (eg Option 1) and with both layers visible draw your Option 1 design on Design Layer Option 1. Create a viewport on Sheet Layer Option 1 Turn off Design Layer Option 1 Create Design Layer Option 2, and with this & referenced layer visible ........ etc. On the sheet layers - you can turn on/off the layer visibilities of the viewports at will. Alternatively: 2) Create your reference viewport on a new design layer. Create a Sheet Layer Viewport of this DLV on Sheet Layer Opt 1 and in the Viewport Annotations - draw your 2d design on top of the underlying data. Repeat with separate viewports either on the same or on separate sheets. (Viewports can be copied & pasted) Hope this helps.

Just a wild idea Tracie, are you sure you're looking at the same wall in the referenced file and the younger file?

Wow, Thanks Benson, I just saw your response. Will check it out. Brian

Debra - a combination of Mike's and Pat's methods may work for you here: Assuming all faces are indeed planar: Use - Set Working Plane>Planar Face Mode and >Look At the face Use - Extract >Extract Surface Mode tool to extract this face as a 3d Nurbs Use - Modify>Convert>Convert to Polygon - results in a 2d group Ungroup and Modify>Compose Presto - 2d Polygon. ...repeat as required...

Hi, Probably a trivial question : Does anyone know how to extract the length of a Nurbs Curve. Thanks Brian

iTunes will also play Quicktime movies

You could decide to save the file as a Template. This will have the effect of opening a new instance of the file every time it's opened - without the chance of the original being overwritten.

Photoshop uses Shift Cmd ~ (tilde key) . could this work?

For clean masking set up your psd file with transparent background and save it as a png. In VW: File>Import>Import image file also using png compression. Turn your objects fill attribute to None. Viola, a masked image file in VW.

If using a digital photo you can mitigate the tiling effect by running the image through photoshops offset filter & repairing the seams. http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/seamless-tiles.html

btw - you can send me your file & I'll take a quick look at it

5.13kb sounds impossibly low, I'd try opening a new file and workgroup referencing all the layers into the new file rather than copy/paste, break the links by deleting the reference and try your pdf export from there. If pdf printing is working on other files then it doesn't sound like a ram issue to me - although upping your ram is never a bad idea.