Andrew Bell@NV

quote: Originally posted by Archken: Then how about SetPrefReal(72,1) -- would that create one smooth curve looking from all four sides (front, rear, right, left) in Hidden Line render for the example shown? No, more like SetPrefReal(72, 20), as the faces of the round wall are about 15 degrees rotated from each other. The parameter is a value in degrees: 0 would be coplanar, 90 would be a square corner. You want a parameter that is larger than the angle between faces that you want the lines removed. It takes a little experimenting to get the value you want. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

VectorWorks Architect includes all of the functionality of the basic VectorWorks package, as well as the architectural features. You can do everything with VA that you can with VW (and more, of course.) ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by Travis: I can't seem to print (or export an image file) a Renderworks image. A quick solution -- tech support could probably better diagnose your problem -- is to use a screen capture program, render your file, and capture the screen image. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

SetPrefReal(72, 0); disables the facet line removal, it'll work just like it does now. You need a value greater than 0 for it to remove the lines.

The defaceting code was finished late enough in the development of VW 9 that it didn't get the polish it could use. Really, I wanted a checkbox for defaceting all known curved surfaces (on by default), with the angle only relevant for meshes. Maybe by VW 10, it'll get its own "hidden line preferences" dialog, like OpenGL and RenderWorks rendering have. Walls and roofs do work as solids, although if you have different textures for the different faces that gets lost when it becomes a solid, and the special texturing for roofs disappears. Are you working on a Mac? I've been doing a decent-sized project with several solids on a PC, and while solid computation isn't instantaneous, the speed wasn't slow enough to be an issue. I've even considered turning sweeps into solids so there aren't so many lines in wireframe (by subtracting objects that don't intersect with them). ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA [This message has been edited by Andrew Bell@NNA (edited 08-23-2001).]

quote: Originally posted by Archken: 5) Round Object Segments: Create a way to hide all edges of round walls in Hidden Line render mode. Your wish was my command. In VW9, a simple VectorScript of SetPrefReal(72, angle); where angle is somewhere between 0 and 90 degrees, will get rid of a whole lotta facet lines. Experiment to figure out the best value, maybe 20 degrees? Sorry this didn't make it in the standard UI, we just ran out of time. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by FRED JOHNSON: One thing I would like to see in the next upgrade to VW is automatic generation of files in PDF format listed in the save as or export to functions. Why not use "PrintToPDF" or the Windows equivalent to print PDFs, if that's what you want? Seems a duplication of effort for us to write yet another exporter when this is available. Go to http://www.jwwalker.com for the Mac version, and I think he has links to a Windows equivalent. There are reasons to prefer the PDF print, and reasons to prefer the viewer, depending on what you want to let the client see. Pick the appropriate one. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Every time but only with a use the QD3d rendering the 2D objects are all ways drawn on top of the 3D model. [/b] Isn't it done by layer, with later layers drawn on top of earlier ones? If so, you should be able to specify what's on top via layer order. You might also check into the render bitmap tool, which allows you to render to a bitmap which is a 2-D object and follows the standard stacking rules. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

According to Sean Flaherty, Nemetschek NA's CTO, in an interview in Architosh, NNA's next update should have a public beta in a couple of weeks or so. (He said a month, and the interview was dated 8/8.) So if you still have time left before sending it back, why not see if that helps? I know there are performance enhancements in the coming code, I've added some myself. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by jnr: Sean: Thanks for the reply. Can you confirm that 9.01 is optimized for 64-bit processors (I think I read it on this message board from an NNA employee)? You'll confuse people if you say that. Macs and PCs have what are generally regarded to be 32-bit processors. What happened in 9.0.0 is that VW switched to a 64-bit floating point format for storing coordinate values , as opposed to the 32-bit integers of VW 8 and before. This gives much greater precision and range in the values (you can model the solar system and still model a building on Earth), so you never have to worry about losing precision while rotating, changing scale, etc. Because they are twice as large, memory access times double, file sizes are larger, the processors have to work somewhat harder, and so on. In general this shouldn't be that readily apparent in performance. On the Mac, we've noticed that certain situations can lead to a significant slowdown, and we're fixing as many of those as we can. Otherwise, most slowness probably comes from our restructuring, which hasn't yet been fully optimized. Our new solids engine (Add/Subtract/Intersect Solid) is more precise and capable of handling curved surfaces. However, it is slower for faceted surfaces. Solids are used in some places you might not expect, such as window and door plug-ins. If you have multiple identical plug-in windows, make a symbol of the plug-in and that should speed things up. (Note: A processor is generally considered 64-bit if its address and data busses are 64 bits wide. Macs and PCs are pretty much limited to 4 gigabytes of main memory because they use 32-bit addressing. Intel's Itanium and Compaq/Dec's Alpha are 64-bit processors. I don't expect to see them in consumer machines for a few years, and NNA is unlikely to be developing for those machines before then.) ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by aminoNYC: Does Vectorworks and Renderworks utilize the dual processors for the macintosh - similar to how Adobe's Photoshop and After Effects do? Check the various other dual processor topics in this forum. The short answer is no, although it's possible Apple may take advantage of dual processors in their OpenGL library which could speed up some rendering. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by ajs: Were the issues with them found in the famous Video Card Woes thread on this site resolved? Yes, nVidia released new drivers that fixed their problem. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by mbanvard: I've already (swept a circle and a locus). The group of circles is not a 3D solid. What do you mean by "it's not a solid"? It certainly should render as solid, and volume and surface area can be obtained for it. It also will work in the add/subtract/intersect solid operations. The sectioning operations ignore "solidness". If you need a solid section, use a solid subtract instead. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by csherpa: I called customer service this morning and was told that the only way I could get working serial numbers was to buy a $315 upgrade! This does not seem fair to me considering that I paid good money for this program. You will find that few commercial programs, even if they have both Windows and Mac versions, will sell you a license to use both. (Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, for example, are each sold for only one platform.) One thing you might consider is getting VirtualPC, which will at least be cheaper than the VectorWorks upgrade, and will allow you to run Windows software -- such as your current version of VectorWorks -- on a Mac. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by kiwiross: Like a lot of people, I have VW9 / Architect and Renderworks9. The libraries containing site stuff are somewhat limited with trees. I know that most of us in the architectural field do not and can not afford to go full on by getting Landmark. Note that NNA now makes a combined Architect/Landmark package available (ArchiMark? :-), which should be a fair bit cheaper than buying a full package of Landmark. (Call our sales group for pricing if you're interested, you should be able to upgrade from Architect for a reasonable price.) But if you just need a few tree symbols, you might want to check what's available at http://www.vectordepot.com, there's a couple of listings in the symbol library for trees. (VectorDepot stuff is free, just download what interests you.) ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by P Retondo: Doing a particular (complex) solid subtraction in a file originally created in VW 8.5.2 took about 8 seconds in VW 8, and over 30 seconds in VW 9.0. We changed solids engines for version 9. Try adding a couple of spheres in 8.5.2, and rendering in QuickDraw3D, and then doing the same in 9. You'll see smooth surfaces. Unfortunately we weren't able to fully optimize the solids engine to the same level as 8, especially on the Mac. We're still working on trying to speed things up. I don't think the 32 to 64 bit conversion is the main difference in this case, especially since the old solids engine also used 64 bit doubles in its computations. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by jfmarch: We upgraded to 9.0.1 just this week and have noticed it's slowness. Man, I can eat a sandwich when I place an oject on a drawing. We also notice that the measure tool is incredibly sloow and weird. Sometimes I think it's because my machine is getting hot, but I think i's the program. Makes me worry about VW's future..... I'm on a powerbook G3 w/Mac OS8.6. Are you placing plug-in doors and windows? The first thing to consider, if you're placing multiple identical objects, is to place one and create a symbol from it. Not only should the symbol insert into the drawing faster, but it should also result in a smaller output file. Also, if you decide you want to change some option on these identical objects, you only need to change the one symbol. Second, several of the plug-ins have an option for generating 3-D polys instead of 3-D solids for their geometry; choose that for better speed. I'm not particularly familiar with the measure tool (you mean the tape measure tool, right?). You should report slowness to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net, with as many pertinent details as possible (whether it seems particularly slow with particular object types visible, for example), including mentioning that you're on a Mac, what OS version, and so on. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by trunnel: extruded paths extrude around the path at the center point of the profile. Can Vectorworks extruded at a different spot on the profile object other then the center. If so, How and where is it in the manual? You can't do this during creation, but if you "edit group" on the extrude along path and edit the profile, you'll see the profile in its own little 2-D space. The 0,0 point of this space is the center point for the extrusion. So you can shift some other location on the profile to 0,0, and that will become the new center point. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by Scott A. Miller: CTRL+J Does not work. I tryed to join to simple lines! (Windows 2000 Windows Version) That sounds like a flaw in the workspace provided by Architect. (I don't have that handy, so I can't check easily.) If you look at the Join menu command, it should list a shortcut on the menu entry. If that is not ctrl+j, then that shortcut isn't assigned to Join. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by msjarch: Another thing that don't seem to work VW9.0.1 Join (both menu and keyboard) I was able to join walls and lines using both methods. What were you trying to join? Could you submit a bug file along with general info about your system (esp. Mac vs. Windows) to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net? (You could cc: me -- andrewb@nemetschek.net -- if you like.) ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by jbern: Will [or when will] multi-threading be available? I have a dual processor G4 and would like to be able to use the efficient threading in OS X to get some speed improvement. The last public NNA statement regarding this was that NNA had no pending plans to multi-thread VectorWorks. The key thing to understand is that multi-threading an application isn't just flipping a switch. Every algorithm that is to take advantage of multiple processors needs to be restructured. Multi-threaded code is harder to write, harder to debug, and may require different implementations for different platforms. For users of single processor systems, the end result of this work would probably be more bugs and a slightly slower system, and most VW users have single processor systems. So for most users, this isn't what they want NNA working on. Also, there are almost certainly plenty of opportunities for us VW programmers to optimize VW's performance even on single-processor systems. So if we're going to spend time improving performance (as opposed to feature or interface improvements), multi-threading still isn't the top of the list. Do you have specific areas of the program where performance is a big issue for you? ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by kennyvestal: Minicad used to produce a scaled down 2d version of minicad called Blueprint. Has this product been discontinued? Yes, I don't think NNA has sold Blueprint for five years or more. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by PeterT: A bit curious why no one has posted to this area though. PeterT A lot of the active VectorScript users are on the VectorScript mailing list; you may want to check that out for a (currently) more active user community. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by Stereo: I think it was me who introduced the idea about Allplan against VW. I wrote down this because this actually is the biggest fear I have about VW / Nemetschek. As someone who works on the VW code full-time, I would stake my reputation that you have nothing to fear in this department. VW development continues on full-force. According to a just-released press release (see the NNA web site for more info), VW 9.0.1 updates will be being sent out the first week of July (next week.) ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA

quote: Originally posted by Henry Finch: On another note. Nemetschek should immediately extend the warranty period on VW9 to promote confidence. Henry If you bought directly from NNA, are having significant problems, and are nearing the end of your return period, call the sales folk and let them know your concerns. Note that there's a link on the NNA press release page regarding 9.0.1, but the linked file is not set up yet. So expect an announcement imminently. ------------------ Andrew Bell andrewb@nemetschek.net I am not an official spokesperson for NNA