Andrew Bell@NV

quote: Originally posted by christian: Smoothing angle I have experimented with the smoothing angle and however I set it, either I end up with too many lines defining a curve or I begin to loose the outline. This could definitely be improved, and is a known wishlist item. I'm not authorized to tell you when you might get a fix. quote: Component Intersections Where one component is inserted into another, i.e. the rails going into a chair leg. Hidden Line Rendering will often not show a line at the point of intersection. This is incorrect. The hidden line code never computes an intersection line; it only works with the edges actually present in the drawing. At present if you want this behavior, you should do a solid addition on the chair components, or subtract a copy of one component from the other, to get the intersection lines you want. quote: Groups Hidden Line Rendering does not appear to work on grouped objects. Everything has to be ungrouped and as a result the file grows enormously, doubling in size and more. At present, the defaceting code assumes you want to treat everything in a group as facets of a surface, and thus to have facet lines removed just like within a mesh. You can avoid this by ungrouping, although I can see how this is inconvenient; I'll consider adding a preference for how groups are to be handled. An ungrouped collection of objects is actually smaller than the grouped equivalent. Are you talking about symbols, instead?

quote: Originally posted by Adam E: I have been using Vector Works since it was MiniCAD in 1996. Since upgrading to version 10 on my Mac G3 with OS 9.2, I noticed that when I do a convert copy to hidden lines on something that has been drawn in 3d, Vector Works randomly omits certain objects. Are the objects that disappear always extrudes? Or possibly sweeps? We've been able to duplicate this problem some of the time, but its sheer randomness has made it very hard to track down. It seems to be Mac only.

quote: Originally posted by TJL: Can any one give me hints to how to perform this calculations. There are VectorScript functions that will display volume and surface area. Procedure MyVolInfo; BEGIN IF FSActlayer <> nil THEN BEGIN Message('Volume ',CalcVolume(FSActlayer), ', surface area ', CalcSurfaceArea(FSActlayer)); END ELSE Message('No object selected.'); END; Run(MyVolInfo); quote: At the same time I would suggest that the volume value should be showen in the object info pallet, together with area of 3D surfaces. The reason it isn't done is so VectorWorks isn't sluggish. For a complex solid, computing the volume and surface area can take enough time that it would affect the responsiveness of the system. A slightly more complex VectorScript that computes the volume and surface area of multiple selected solids is: Procedure MyVolInfo; VAR myHandle:HANDLE; volume, area: REAL; BEGIN IF FSActlayer <> nil THEN BEGIN myHandle := FSActLayer; volume := 0; area := 0; while myHandle <> nil DO BEGIN volume := volume + CalcVolume(myHandle); area := area + CalcSurfaceArea(myHandle); myHandle := NextSObj(myHandle); END;{while} Message('Volume ',volume, ', surface area ', area); END ELSE Message('No object selected.'); END; Run(MyVolInfo);

quote: Originally posted by Spencer: 2. Still looking for rules about when working planes move when switching views. You will be asked about having the working plane reoriented when it is parallel or nearly parallel to the view direction. VectorWorks needs a way to map screen locations to world coordinates, and it does this normally by projecting them onto the working plane. If that plane is nearly parallel to the view direction, the projected point is outside the bounds of VectorWorks' coordinate system.

quote: Originally posted by Geoff Grummon: I am trying to import some dxf files that contain 3d meshes of landforms. If the files are small, the objects come into VectorWorks as meshes (which I want). If the files are large, the objects come in as a group of 3D polygons (which are unusable). How can I get around this? Is there an import setting I'm missing? Meshes have an upper limit of 3000 unique vertices, so it's probably refusing to mesh them because the collected polygons exceed that limit. It's easy to convert 3D polygons into meshes by selecting a bunch of them and doing convert to mesh; you'll need to enter the group they're in or ungroup them first. You'll have to make multiple meshes if you have more than 3000 unique vertices, but hopefully that will work for your needs.

quote: Originally posted by shasta: In Renderworks, many textures do not have the images that created them included in the resource. Many textures are not created from images, they're created from mathematical functions. So there is no image to include, nor a real default for their resolution. It is possible to create an image from a texture by making a square 3-D poly, texture-mapping it, and using the Render Bitmap tool with the bounds of that polygon as the bounds of the render.

quote: Originally posted by Cloud Hidden: I've had trouble with the saddle connections at times and with shell thickness regularly. You could create the thickened hemisphere via Solid Subtraction. If you often have hemispheres of the same size and thickness, I'd suggest setting up a symbol library. You might also look at using the Project and Trim Tool or Split Tool in Split By Line mode from a top view to cut the initial openings for your saddle connections, and then extract curves to get the shapes for the loft. And again, making symbols for the saddle connections where they are of common size and thickness will save you a lot of time.

quote: Originally posted by BiplabNNA: We may need to update the tutorials with this change. Thanks for pointing this out. We should also pop up an alert and not allow the dialog to close if the value is invalid (I just tested entering the offset of "Fred", for example, and it "accepts" it). I'm adding this to the bug list.

quote: Originally posted by Davidm: I need to make an old fashioned circus tent, 180' x 60', with 8 main support poles. I would suggest looking at the Create Surface From Curves command. Make NURBS curves connecting the outer poles to the peak poles, with the cross-section you would expect, and other curves for the edges connecting the outer poles. Then use that Create Surface From Curves command to make nurbs surfaces from each enclosed region. You can either make duplicates of the curves that you need in more than one surface, or use the Extract Curve tool to make a new copy as needed. The weakness of this approach is that your tent isn't "smooth" between the pieces, if that's the effect you desire.

quote: Originally posted by mark@custom: Is there any way to have a curvy perimetered nurbs surface not deform (around the edges) when moving interior vertices? Is this a bug? Will it be fixed in 10? This is not a bug, the edges -- also known as trim curves -- are defined in the "space" of the surface. Think of the nurbs surface as a very stretchy square of cloth, with the edge lines being drawn on that cloth. If you pull on the cloth, the lines move with it. So it's not a bug, although we can certainly see how you would want a way to reshape things differently. It's certainly something we are considering for future releases.

quote: Originally posted by Shaun: Thanks for the reply Andrew, I have buglisted some of them already but I noticed that they weren't fixed in 10.0.1. 10.0.1 was fairly limited in the number of fixes included. There will be more general bug-fixing in a future VW10 release.

quote: Originally posted by Shaun: I just started playing with VW10 and it seems good but the jump I had from MiniCAD 7 to VW 8 was by far greater than the jump from VW 8.5.2 to VW 10. However overall I am pleased with VW10 (but it has a few bugs which I am sure will be ironed out in the bug fix). Make sure you report those bugs, we can't fix what we don't know about. Note that there were just as many (actually more) programmers working just as long on VW10 as there were on VW8, so in terms of programmer effort, you're getting as much or more in 10 as you did in 8.

quote: Originally posted by Chris T: That was not address, and I would have liked, to have seen fixed. (i.e.. round walls, [...] I asked before, but you never answered. What problem(s) are you having with round walls? We can't fix what we don't know about. (And if we do, there's a good chance we've already fixed them.)

quote: Originally posted by bdellis: New here and new to Vectorworks. If I had a lot of time, I might be able to figure this out, but I'm hoping to use Vworks in my current project. I have been trying to figure out how to create a 3D polygon that is sloped (has different Z values for various vertical lines on the vertices.) The 3D and extruded poly tools only seem to make level polygons. Is there a way to do this with Vworks 8? Do I need some plugin or an upgrade of some kind? Or is there a trick? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Aside from the previously mentioned ways of doing this, you can also adjust the working plane to be at the required angle, and the 3-D tools will work with that. (See the set working plane tool docs for more information.)

quote: Originally posted by Katie: Do you need a layer option that shows layers in grey, but the capabitlity of snapping? I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he wants, Katie, I've occasionally wanted something like that myself. Actually, I'd like to see it go further; instead of just graying, you would have the option of selecting a "graying" color for each layer, so a given layer could be red (or faded towards red), another green, etc. But then I don't use the package for actual work. What do you users think?

quote: Originally posted by Hugo: I was working on a 8 MB file in VW Architect 9.5.3b2 under Mac OS X 10.2.1 when it suddenly crashed when trying to insert a simple window in a wall. You might want to send the file to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net (with an indication of the actions needed to duplicate the crash), so we can check that it is indeed fixed. Alternatively, you could call tech support and talk to Katie or one of our other good people if you have the time, and we can make sure we can duplicate the problem and perhaps give you some indication of the resolution status.

quote: Originally posted by AMO: would a linux port really be hard to acchive? isnt Mac os X freeBSD with a few snippets so surly most of the code for linux is already there. also you must be coding parts of it in linux Programming for Linux is about as different from programming for Mac OS X as it is from programming for Windows. The great majority of our operating system-dependent stuff is GUI calls. Linux uses X and associated toolkits, which has no relation to the Macintosh's Aqua interface. If the bigwigs at NNA thought a Linux port would increase profits, however, they'd make the arrangements to produce one. In these economically uncertain times, however, it could be an expensive gamble.

quote: Originally posted by Heather Francis: Will the new version 10 allow us to export a rendering with a greater resolution than 72 dpi? How are you exporting your rendering? Looking at both Export Image File and the document preferences in VW9.5, I see several places where the DPI already can be specified.

quote: Originally posted by Chris Tavernier: KEY PROBLEMS SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIXED. LIKE ... [...] -ROUND WALLS. What problem are you having with round walls?

quote: Originally posted by InstantGlueck: second, is the 3D solids kernel a ACIS kernel?, or ACIS conform?. if so, there is a possibility of .SAT export?. if not, which solids underlaying is there? We do not use the ACIS kernel, nor SAT files. We do have IGES export, which will allow you to export the component surfaces in a format that many other packages can read.

quote: Originally posted by Mbuck: For some time Vectorworks has had the extrude rectangle tool. Why haven?t NNA implemented a extrude circle tool on the same tool set? It would be fairly straightforward to reuse most of the cone tool to work as a cylinder tool, but other stuff has seemed more important. But it's on my personal suggested future projects list. quote: This would be great for 3D piping, 3D handrails and other such things.I think what is really needed for that is a 3-D pipe plug-in. The plug-in would have a 3-D path, created from a (degree 1) nurbs curve, and a radius and diameter value. The plug-in would generate a pipe of the given diameter corresponding with the provided path, putting in curved pieces at the corners. This is a lot like an extrude along path of a circle, except for the automated corner generation. You could combine pipes by doing an Add Solids operation on them. I added this idea to the wish list not that long ago.

quote: Originally posted by Robert Anderson: The Extrude command produces a polygonal cylinder. This isn't quite accurate. It creates a "true" cylinder, but for various purposes (drawing in hidden line, wireframe, converting to mesh, etc.) we have to use a polygonal representation of that cylinder, and the number of faces we use is dependent on the 3-D conversion resolution. However, if you render a cylinder using OpenGL or RenderWorks, at least with the use nurbs checkbox checked, you'll get a smooth cylinder. Likewise the solid operations treat the extruded circle as a smooth cylinder, and again if you render a solid addition of a couple of cylinders, you'll get smooth surfaces. Volume and surface area is likewise computed for a true cylinder.

quote: Originally posted by Erik Buijs: And Katie, when I said isolines, I actually ment the renderlines. I sometimes still use terms of AutoCad! Sorry! Note that isoline is a technically appropriate general term for what you are describing, although a person may need to be reasonably well informed about geometry or topology to know what you mean by it.

quote: Originally posted by Erik Buijs: Gareth, I tried to put the file in my menu. Downloading worked fine, however it doesn't work yet. It seems to be a .sit file, can I use that on PC? .sit is a StuffIt Archive file. Go to http://www.aladdinsys.com to find a Stuffit decoder, it's a free download.

quote: Originally posted by AndyM7777: I have an object in 3DS that when exported to dxf turns into 30K polygons. My question is this: Is there anything 3D power pack can do to turn this into a usable object. I can't add solids, I can't convert to mesh. Meshes are limited to somewhere around 3000 vertices. Try to select only some of your 30K polygons at a time, and convert them to mesh. Repeat until they're all part of various meshes. Then add the meshes together.