Kevin McAllister

Yes, this is what Sheet Layer viewports are for. If the viewport next to your pasteup is a Sheet Layer viewport, you could easily Option-Drag it to make a copy and then change its View to Isometric. Kevin

^ the absolute worst I've encountered is the "hole" object of symbol designed to insert into a wall. It is so buggy. KM

I usually draw a guide shape to do this or rotate my objects so the direction of rotation is easily achieved, do the rotation and then restore the object position. Unfortunately the Rotate tool doesn't really make this very easy. I think I've wishlisted something like this in the past. If there were a "universal" widget like in most other 3d software it would be easy to rotate around an axis. Kevin

In this case I would probably cut the object into horizontal slices, since those look to be predictable rectangular slices, and work from that. Any approach is dependent upon how the end object is used (eg. how big is it, materials, etc.). For example it could be easily made with a few rectangle frames and four corner sweeps of steel rods welded together, then covered in stretch lycra. But that would be a scenic form not a structural form 🙂 Kevin

Here's how I might try it - Duplicate the two contours and group them, then work in the group. Convert the contours to NURBS curves. Move the inner contour up a known amount. Loft between the contours with the Create Solid checkbox enabled. Use the third mode of the Extract tool (Iso-parametric Curve Mode) to extract the midpoint curve. This will give you a NURBS curve contour. Alternately, you could slice the solid with the Split Tool and then extract the top of the bottom half as a 2d planar surface. Kevin Intermediate Contour.vwx

Hi Grant, That's a hard question to answer without seeing the surfaces and understanding the surface you're trying to extract. Is there a way to cut away the "surface" you need a as a thin solid, rather than extracting? Kevin

Awesome tutorial! KM

Here's the file containing both water features on separate layers as a VW 2019 version. Take a look at the file. It has the various pieces and steps I used from left to right. KM Spiral Water Feature v2019.vwx

Here's a VW 2019 version of the file. It contains both water features on separate layers. I'll try and find time later today to detail the steps. I started with one helix surface as a base and worked from there. The helix surface was derived from two Extrude Along Path helix spirals and a sphere converted to NURBS. KM Spiral Water Feature v2019.vwx

Here's an example of how to model this one.... the various steps I followed are from left to right in the file. KM Spiral Water Feature.vwx

Here's a file showing how I would approach it. The two objects that will help you are the helix spiral and the sweep, both of which give you control over pitch. The helix spiral can be a bit unwieldy, especially when you add an Extrude Along Path, so I limited it to a flat spiral and created the pitched part with a sweep. Kevin Spiral Water Feature.vwx

I noticed that Apple upgraded their iPad Pro line today and they are now running on the M1 chip. Does this mean that the new iPad Pro will run Vectorworks? Kevin

Here's a file with two different approaches – Approach one shrinks the base shape by 1" and adds the profiles using an Extrude Along Path. Vectorworks seems to struggle with this geometry and won't Add Solids cleanly at the end. Approach two uses a second smaller extrude on top of the initial extrude that gets filleted and then squashed so its height is 5/8". It creates a clean solid addition. Note VW wouldn't initially do the 1" fillet on the small extrude. I had to use a smaller fillet dimension and then change it to 1" later in the OIP. Hope this helps with some options. These are pretty common and basic shapes. I'm sort of sad that VW struggles so much with this. @JuanP the development team should try out this task 🙂 Kevin Irregular Fillet.vwx

Sounds like a marionette activated PIO.... it would be awesome! KM

@Benson Shaw I knew you'd have a simple, clear approach! Kevin