Keith W

I've changed it every which way. I've tried white, black, patterns, hatches, images, none. It's always just black. K

I've been having a series of strange problems involving fills. The current iteration is a callout in the annotations of a SLVP. It is filled solid black (it created that way). I've changed the fill of the callout to none in the Attributes palette to no effect. I've even changed the fill of its class in the SLVP (over-riden to none, though it was solid WHITE before), none of it makes a difference. I can't figure out what is going on. I'm pretty sure it's a bug, but I don't see any other mentions here... Just to be sure I didn't miss something TOOO obvious, I can change the text color of the callout to white in the attributes palette, and see it against the black background. The fill is still set to none, but it's clearly black. There is no other black fill visible in the viewport. It's not the default of any of the related classes... changing the fill to anything still leaves it black. I can open and close the file, doesn't matter. I can restart VW to no effect. Haven't tried a reboot yet... Callouts made elsewhere on that page (and file) suffer the same fate, even not in an SLVP. I've put in callouts on other days that worked, and that are still fine. Keith

I'm just doing electrical sheets on a simple residential project. I notice that the switch object doesn't have any S3 or S4 options, which seems strange. If I go to the included S3 in Electrical Power Devices-Imp, and I try to rotate it, the 3 doesn't rotate. If I make a new S3 symbol, and I rotate it in 90 degree intervals, it will only allow rotation in two of the four possible orientations. If I rotate it to random (unsquare) angles, it works as expected. Now, the modal rotation issue is apparently true for all text, which seems destined to haunt me, is there some way to rotate text into the other two orientations (180 & 270)? And, did I miss anything re: electrical symbols? Thanks! Keith

Oops: I managed to miss the "config" button. How'd that happen? Thanks! Keith

You have to create symbols for the nodes. There doesn't seem to be much control of them. I don't know if they have any resulting data connections/tables etc. Keith

Does anyone use the flowchart tools (under Text: node & link)? I don't see anything here or in online help about it... I've a few questions: How does one control the text: size, style, whether it's above or on the link line, etc? Are there any tricks or techniques that might not be obvious? It doesn't look like I can reverse or double-arrow a link, for example, which isn't really a big deal. Just curious. Keith

Well, it has something to do with alignment or something. I just recreated the extrudes, and created the 2D overlay, and enlarged it by a bit, created the symbols, and replaced those that weren't working. All is fine now. Maybe it could have been solved with a "send to front/back" before I'd made the symbol, also... I guess, in retrospect, I could have edited the symbol components. I didn't see that until now. K

Hmmm. Did I miss something? I placed a rectangle on top of my extrude, and created a symbol. Twice, actually: in both cases, these are simple squares. In both cases, when I change the class to dashed lines, only the top and left sides are dashed: the other two are still solid. I suppose I could "oversize" the 2d overlay, but I doubt that's the right approach. Any idea why that would happen? I snapped the 2d rectangles to the existing extrudes... They are solid-filled. Keith

That's a great trick. I guess I'd sorta heard some allusion to it, but now it makes sense. Thanks! k

Alas, I do need to show them as lines elsewhere. I see now that I had changed the wall style to ignore class. Thanks, don't know how I missed that. Doesn't solve the problem of top view of extrusions: anything to do there? k

Here's one very bad solution: create a footing wall style that is dashed, duplicate the footing layer, replace with dashed style, change layer visibility in viewport. That's a whole series of bad ideas... but it works. And another thing: for some column footings, I just extruded some rectangles. Same problem: if I change/override the class to a dashed style in the viewport, it doesn't change the object line style since (I think) it's now an object with no separate/editable 2d representation... or (again) am I missing something? K

I'm editing a sheet layer viewport. I want to change the attributes of a class within it: specifically, line style to dash. Now I'm realizing that the lines I want to change are a strip-footing-style wall. So how can I change the appearance of the wall to dashes in the viewport? It's a simple wireframe top/plan view. Or was/is there a better way to do this (view footings, in this case, in plan, as dashed lines: pretty standard stuff). Keith

Thanks IM, I'm curious: I've done ExtrudeAlongPath with circles and lines -- why would I need to convert them to nurbs, what's the advantage? Does that get me my radius bends or something? In any case, I don't think I can start with a "piping run" object... Keith

I subsequently saw another recent thread on this in the general forum. Looks like I'm not the only one. Keith

I keep hoping to use piping objects, but I never get anything other than 2d display (that is, lines) of the objects. Is there any way to change them to actually display/render with the dimensions assigned? Or would I need to use cylinders or some such if I wanted actual 3D display of pipes and fittings? The issue is, when designing complex MEP layouts, I'd like to actually see/show piping "fit" in 3D. Additionally, I need to design a "scaffold" of 2" tubing that could be done more descriptively with a 3D representation/render. Thanks for any help! Keith

Seems like it would also be useful to flesh out your sig: what cpu/ram/video card are you using now? If you're using something ancient, then you may be overestimating how dire your situation is. Also: seems like you're going for the bleeding edge of technology. It's an expensive place to hang out. The performance difference between that and 1 or 2 tiers down may not be too significant. Finally: I agree that rendering seems slow, though I haven't played with it much yet. However, if the rendering engine isn't programmed to take advantage of whatever resources you throw at it (i.e. quad cores) then you're throwing your money away. Keith

I suppose the problem is that the "face of stud" is not a defined entity: imagine a building with several different wall styles (as typical): depending on the number of elements in a wall, it might be anything but obvious where to dimension from. One could try to define a "dimension to" element in the wall style definition, but you might have different "dimension to" needs for different purposes... I think it's actually conceptually thorny. I suppose you could have the autodimension tool pop up a dialog wherein it asks what the "dimension to" element of each wall style it encounters is. But you'd want to be able to save that list (and edit it), for complicated buildings, so you don't have to do that every time... Or maybe I'm overthinking this. Keith

I appreciated the original question, since I'd been wanting to ask it recently myself: what's the advantage of unchecking Stack Layers? I used to leave it unchecked, but then I realized I didn't see any reason to do so... Also: you mention looking at multiple layers through viewports: DLVPs or SLVPs? I assume you stack layers, adjust your view, and then create your viewport? Or is there another way to do that? Thanks! Keith

Thanks David, yes that bucket fill is exactly what I hadn't noticed, somehow... And the block/brick approach you mention is hardscaping, which I don't think can be poured in in that same manner... But I haven't played with it. Thanks for the link notice Ray. Keith

Cool! I don't know if I even need to look at it (I will though): just realizing/noting that I can notch walls as 3-D objects gets me set up. I find myself cautious about messing with walls too much, worried that I might mess up their magicness... Keith

No, nothing was locked. But I haven't had it happen again. I think something just got corrupted. Hopefully it doesn't haunt me. Keith

I'm doing plans for a split-level house. The way the stairs strike the various layers, there's at least one place where I need two partial doors (one for the top of one stair door, and the other for the bottom of the other). No matter what layer owns walls, etc, I have this problem. How does one do that? I think it would work the same for windows, though I think I need doors since I need something that breaks the top and bottom edges of the wall... Alternatively, I suppose I could just cut holes in the wall. Suggestions? Keith

I just had something strange happen: I could select some items on my layer, but not others: for example, I could select ext. walls, but not their windows. I could select some interior walls, but not others. I checked layer and class settings... I rebooted and it seems fine again. Strange. Just for kicks I went and checked some of the interior walls I could select, against those I couldn't. Same wall style, same layer, same class. Keith

That's great Pat, thanks so much. I would never have guessed that space objects that show in viewports are counted twice in worksheets. Always more to learn. Keith

I've created a worksheet with gross space areas, by going to each floor and creating a "space by walls". At first, I set "show additional data" to show the net area. When I looked at the worksheet, there were two entries for each line. I eventually deleted all my spaces, confirmed that the worksheet was empty, and recreated them without additional data. One of them worked (only shows once in the worksheet), and the other three still show twice. Any ideas? Thanks! Keith