Kevin McAllister

Of course. I should have thought of that. So really its an interface wish then 🙂 Kevin

I wish there was an option to right click on an image (or even PDF) in a document and have an option to replace it with a new image. The idea being that images often get resized or cropped, so by using replace the new image would be scaled or cropped automatically by replacing the old image. So often clients request variations or send new graphics to be incorporated and this workflow would help with efficiency. Edit - images/pdfs should also have their filename retained somewhere in the "bitmap" or "PDF" object they become so you can easily track their source. Kevin

FYI this is the scale multiplier chart I shared with Adam in our message exchange..... I usually scale the object before exporting to STL and then undo. KM

Yes, likely. Years ago I wish-listed a way to output scaled objects to STL but that wish was never implemented. If you don't want to do math, then create a sheet layer viewport in the scale you want to print at and then dimension the object to the extent of its bounds on the sheet layer itself. This will give you a size dimension to input into your slicer to print at the correct size. I check print size this way all the time. Kevin

^ this definitely. My symbols often start out as just 3d but usually become hybrid at some point...... Kevin

I think I would make each artwork a symbol with an attached description record. Then you could easily label them in any view with a data tag that pulls the description from the record. It would take some initial time to input, but then it's fairly easy to maintain. Kevin

^ this. Ideally when adding a symbol from the library added a class VW would ask if I'd like to use the symbol's classes or assign them to my own. Kevin

This made me laugh out loud. I hate that class 😊 only because I move things out of it all the time. When something doesn't show in a sheet layer viewport, its usually in an autogenerated class and I've forgotten to move it.... Kevin

Nope. Reread the thread and you'll see why.... KM

I know the issue. I have the same problem with scaled symbols, which ungroup to unscaled symbols..... I wish there was an ungroup to current state. Kevin

That's super weird. Hopefully someone investigates it.... I don't like redoing things because VW misbehaves. Kevin

Not really helpful behaviour, is it..... Kevin

Bumping this. Still seems to be an issue in SP4 😕 Kevin

Hi Pat. The background render is shaded and the detail level is set to very high. It affects the polyline based extrude but not the oval based extrude. Kevin

Hello all, I had some weird behaviour with some geometry tonight becoming facetted. I use the same file settings and its been a long time since I've had facetting issues. I'm wondering if something changed with the most recent service pack. This is where I started noticing the problem with an extruded oval. Notice how different the background shaded render is from the foreground hidden line. When I went in and edited the oval to turn it into a polyline (cut it in half and then added the surfaces back together) the issue went away. So then I did a quick comparison in a clean file. Both started as ovals but the one on the right was converted to a polyline using the method above. The facetting is quite different. Shouldn't standard geometric shapes (ovals, circles etc.) render better, not worse? It's all very odd to me. Kevin (Its not related to either 2d or 3d conversion resolution which is where I started my troubleshooting.)

There was a wishlist item about this long ago. It would be better if they remained whatever they were before creating the EAP. Kevin

I would say some tasks are single core. There has been a lot of work in recent years to migrate the code across. There definitely are some bottlenecks but its much better. @JuanP or someone from NV may be able to provide more information as to which items are still single core. I suspect snapping, some selection highlighting, math and a few others are still single core. Kevin

Alan, it's great that you're sharing advice, but it would be more helpful if you read the original post carefully and answered the question, not just throw random partly related suggestions into the thread. The original post asks how to break up the object into individual pieces with the appropriately mitred corners to share with a joiner. Kevin

Note that you need to convert the planar (2d) surfaces to NURBS curves, not NURBS surfaces. That's why I extract the planar surfaces rather than just convert the original object to NURBS which results in surfaces. Lofting only works with NURBS curves. Kevin

Here's an example file of how I would approach it. I've included both VW2023 and VW2022 versions since your signature shows VW2022. The great thing about lofting is you can go from curve pair to curve pair without switching to the selection tool to select the curves you want to work on. KM VW Board Extract.vwx VW Board Extract v2022.vwx

The easiest way would be to draw the missing surfaces. Make sure your plane is set to layer or automatic and you'll get the correct snaps. Then use Stitch and Trim to create solids. Alternately, you could extract all the surface as planar polylines, convert them to NURBS which creates NURBS curves, and then loft between the pairs of NURBS curves to create solids of each piece. Kevin

I use paste in place all the time. Is the earlier version you're testing in pre-layer plane / screen plane? I usually only see anomalies in situations where the user origin has been moved, inside symbols (moving to or from), inside extrudes (moving to or from) and sometimes when the plane you were on doesn't exist (eg. pasting from sheet layer to design layer or the other way). Kevin

Seems like something to bug submit to find out why it's happening. KM

Allan it doesn't look like you're rendering it in hidden line, which is were the anomalies show up. Benson, I only get one of the two anomalies on my system. Kevin

I would encourage you to submit it as a bug. The only way the tool will get better is if someone looks at it. I have had accuracy issues with unwrapped surfaces in the past and tend to use Rhino now and export back to Vectorworks. Accuracy is important 🙂 Kevin