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Kevin McAllister

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Posts posted by Kevin McAllister

    Fingerprints

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I posted this question in a thread about a week ago. My distributor posed the question to Nemetzchek and here is my understanding of what it means -

    - Vectorworks library files are fingerprinted and have been since Vectorworks 2010.

    - Vectorworks 2012 is the first version to have a warning dialog when you open a fingerprinted file.

    - On a Mac, the word FINGERPRINTED appears next to the file name in the title bar of the drawing window when you are working with a fingerprinted file.

    - Any file created from a library file (ie. open a library file and then choose save as, give it a new name and use it as the basis to create your own drawing) carries the same fingerprint.

    - Fingerprinting identifies which modules are needed to use the file (ie. I don't think Fundamentals can open a file that is fingerprinted for Spotlight, Architect, Designer etc.).

    - The fingerprint apparently does not propagate when you import a resource from a Library or other fingerprinted file (ie. importing a symbol through the Resource Browser) unlike the Educational Watermark.

    - You can cut and paste the elements from a fingerprinted file into a new file and save it to remove the fingerprinting.

    In my case I had somehow "fingerprinted" one of my working files for a project. I've never started anything from a Library file that I know of so its a bit of a mystery to me how it happened.

    Kevin

    Rendering Tab in the OIP

    in Rendering

    Posted

    I agree that the interface needs improvement, however that doesn't solve my immediate challenges.

    The enabling / disabling of the Scale, Rotation, Offset H and Offset V seems to be related to how a texture is built. As an example, if I edit and add a Bump Shader to a texture that previously had these options greyed out suddenly they become active.

    Is there a list of which texture attributes affect whether an applied texture can be scaled, rotated, offset etc.? All this trial and error is time consuming and wasteful.

    Kevin

    Graphics card problems maybe?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    After having worked with Vectorworks 2012 for a few days I suspect that you may be unhappy with only 256mb of video ram. My Macbook Pro has 512mb of video ram and seems fine for most things. However a couple of large imported PDFs and some geometry heavy models have caused some strobing with the redraws.

    Kevin

    Rendering Tab in the OIP

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Hello,

    I am a long time Vectorworks user who has struggled off and on with the Rendering Tab in the OIP. Frankly the documentation is terrible and the interface doesn't help. There is all this power in the background that is barely accessible. (Spend a little time with C4D and you'll know what I mean.)

    My most recent challenge is that the Scale, Rotation, Offset H and Offset V are greyed out and not accessible. What causes this? I've tried different objects, different textures, different mappings and it just seems locked.

    I am also curious if there is documentation somewhere about how Vectorworks determines the origin point for a texture on an object. It often seems very random though I'm sure there is some logic to it. The manual pretty much glosses over this...

    Thank you for any help you can provide,

    Kevin

    Powerpack 2

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    I think this would be awesome. I use the existing 3D Powerpack tools all the time and while powerful, they certainly could use updating. The comparison to Cinema 4D is a good one. Vectorworks has good solids modelling, but the power of a robust polygon modelling system and a deformer (in the case of VW fillet, chamfer, addition, subtraction) system for solids would be such a great leap forward.

    Kevin

    (an interim improvement could be a 2-way file exchange system for models between C4D and Vectorworks)

    Select Object Behind, Force Select

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Bruce,

    Funny I've never been able to make it work until now after reading the tooltip in your image. Its a bit odd, but here's what you do -

    Click on the object that you want to select. It won't select (in my case it was on a greyed layer).

    Now right click and choose force select from the contextual menu.

    Magically the object was selected.....

    Odd workflow, but it seemed to work....

    Kevin

    Wall to roof intersection

    in Architecture

    Posted

    If you're using Vectorworks 2012 and a sheet layer viewport there is a new solution. Choose Hidden Line Rendering, click on Rendering Settings (either foreground or background) and select "Generate Intersecting Lines" in the options. This should do what you want....

    Kevin

    Hidden Line Intersection Edges (New VW 2012)

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Kevin McAllister

    I was very excited about the new feature Hidden Line Intersection Edges in Vectorworks 2012. I've been playing around with the demo and am not getting consistent results for some reason. The first file I was playing around with one instance it didn't render correctly (a cylinder overlapping at a corner, I've indicated it with a dotted red line). When I tried again in a new file it worked fine....

    Does anyone know, is this the expected behavior? Is there a limitation to this feature?

    (In both cases the Generate Intersecting Lines checkbox is selected.)

    Kevin

    Extract Planar Object Problem

    in Architecture

    Posted

    Curved objects extract as NURBS surfaces (3D geometry) not as planar objects (2D geometry). Hatches only stick to 2D objects as far as I know.... Probably the only work around is to add the hatch to the surface in a Sheet Layer viewport. If you set the viewport's rendering settings to hidden line and then edit the annotations, you can use the paint bucket mode of the polygon tool to fill the areas (create polygons) that need hatching.

    Kevin

    Missing text when exporting batch PDF

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I have the disappearing font problem all the time, though it sounds like yours is a little different from the norm since you see the fonts in a preview of the PDF on your own machine. Usually a single font disappears through the entire exported PDF. It sounds like yours is only on select sheets. These differences indicate it may be a font corruption issue.

    I can often track the problem to a single sheet in a drawing set and sometime to a single viewport. The problem tends to show up when a drawing set gets to a certain size. All instances of a single font disappear from the entire PDF set. They are missing when I preview the PDF on my own system.

    Kevin

    Vectorworks 2012 pricing

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The subscription pricing model seems to be based on the way Maxon (also a Nemetzchek company) has traditionally sold Cinema 4D. I'm not sure how long they have been but they are on a similar yearly release schedule. For them I think it may be based on trade show dates. They are also serving an industry that is moving forward quickly. For all the speed that they are moving forward with I can't say that I've encountered many bugs in Cinema 4D..... You would thing it was as equally complex as Vectorworks if not more so.

    So far the subscription model has not been introduced for Vectorworks in Canada. We were told a year ago it was coming so I suspect maybe with 2012.

    Kevin

    Offset Tool on 3D Surfaces

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted · Edited by Kevin McAllister

    Ok, I was able to get it to work this morning on some simpler surfaces but the intermediary step of Extracting surfaces or curves was needed. But you can step in from the edge of a curve, which is what I'm most interested in. Attached is an example. Note this curved surface is a pretty simple example (ie. parallel sides).

    KM

    Creating Surface from NURBS Problems

    in Solids Modeling

    Posted

    Hi Jake,

    I suspect its the little wings I've highlighted in red that are causing you problems. Your two top surfaces drape as you expect a real tent to drape and so they behave properly. The sides don't quite drape as a real tent would and so they aren't behaving well (they bulge at the centre where the "wings" are and this is causing the deformation when you convert the curves to surfaces.

    When you create the tent in plan view, you've curved the lines in the xy direction. If you keep them straight, like the lines I've drawn in red, you will have more success I think.

    Kevin

    page setup/print window

    in Architecture

    Posted

    Sarah,

    You might try posting an example file here to see if someone else is able to change the scale factor.

    I notice you're using Lion. Vectorworks is not yet fully Lion compatible to my knowledge (it works but there are some known issues I believe). I read somewhere there is going to be a service pack issued for compatibility but that hasn't happened yet. Printing is an area that could very easily be affected by an operating system incompatibility so you may have stumbled onto a bug. I would consider contacting tech support.

    Kevin

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