Loren42

I'll check the class and let you know. Thanks!

Did something change in 2014 that prevents me from applying a Center Mark from the Dimensions/Notes Tool Bar to a hole on a part inside of a Viewport? After you go and 'Edit Annotations' to get into the viewport you can select the Center Mark tool, then the hole's circle turns red when you move the cursor over it, select the hole with the mouse, but the center mark does not appear.

I have had some quirky issues when trying to create a 2D polygon with chamfered edges or even arcs. The chamfers/arcs seem to appear and disappear as you change zoom and I have had issues when trying to use the Connect/Combine tool with these arcs and lines. I had to go back to VW2012 to complete the design. To compound the issue the original base file was a VW2012 or earlier file, so there may have been a compatibility issue with an older file. If I tried to recreate this problem from a fresh new sheet in VW2014 it seems to work correctly.

It's 40 feet in diameter sitting on a 7' wall. It is not a full half-height, so the distance from floor to top is 21 feet.

Great questions! First, this is a Florida home, so the living levels need to be high enough to prevent water from being blown in. This requires an elevation above grade, garage floor, and any patio. I want a sunken living room, which is the curved section at the top. The following rough draft cartoons should give you a feel for what I am trying to get to. There is a loft that sits on top of the wooden posts that is accessible via the wooden staircase. The rest of the house is single level. The roof will be a conventional hip-style roof that will overlap the dome. The dome is not visible from the street view. The purpose is to create an open-sky feeling in the main living area with a loft that is open so that you can look down into that area. My previous house had a sunken living area and I like it. I did not find tripping an issue. The concept here is to lead the person into the home then a short step down that reveals the open ceiling of the living area. We are both into esthetics of the living space and we are trying to create something that is not too far off the conventional home that still stimulates a little creative experience. Both of us are artists in our free time. The loft is going to be a studio of about 600 square feet. Comments and suggestions are most welcome. Another perspective... Links are: http://www.mdbq.net/cad/draft1.jpg http://www.mdbq.net/cad/draft2.jpg

Please excuse my ignorance on the subject, but I use Vectorworks for machine design and I am now trying my hand at creating our next house. So I am in a bit of a deer in the headlights mode. My next house concept uses multiple level slabs offset from the main floor (elevation = 0"). The question is, when I create the slab layer do I: a. Create a separate layer for each slab level, b. Create a single layer and offset the slabs? After I do that, the walls will also need to be of different heights, but I think I can manually tweak that in the next level.

Thanks! I have 2012 Designer/MD, so I will try giving the first solution a spin.

Greetings, I have a custom door I made based on an actual product that I would like to use in my model. However, I do not know how to create the symbol so that it can be inserted into a wall and have it automagically create the opening in the wall. Is there a way to do this? Thanks.

Runs better than VW 2009 does, but I have not given it the full shakedown. I have had other problems with Snow Leopard and programs. Even Grab crashes to desktop a lot. I think the premise for Snow Leopard is good, but the OS appears to have too many issues running programs that ran fine on 10.5. I am attempting to reinstall OS X 10.5, but I just get a "snow" white screen when I try to boot from the original CD. My next attempt will be to buy another HD and pull the one I have now and reload a clean install of OS X. The upgrade to Snow is costing me hours and hours of lost time at a time when I have angry customers demanding product. My advice, don't upgrade the OS X until all the issues are settled, which I would bet won't be before the end of this year. The reason I predict that is because both Apple and its developers all need to fix program bugs before things are stable again. Additionally, if VW 2009 upgrade for Snow is not going to be available until November of this year, that tells me that the changes to make VW 2009 compatible are not trivial. Most likely the rest of the software developers are in a similar boat.

FYI Even though Snow is not yet supported, importing a DXF file will cause VW 2009 to crash to the desktop. Ask me how I know. ;-) Other than that, I have not noticed any other ill effects with VW 2009 and Snow Leopard. That doesn't mean that there are no other issues, I just haven't been bitten yet.

I needed to upgrade my video card for another program that required Open GL. Serendipity smiles on Vectorworks. Wireframe rendering does not see much of an impact, but whoa! Doing 3-D renderings in Open GL with all the controls set to their highest quality is simply spanking cool!!! I no longer use Final Quality Renderworks, which is dog slow. Open GL, even on the highest quality settings, is almost like rotating the part in front of your face in real time. There is virtually no lag or redraw when you manually spin the rendered object and the image is near photo quality. The 3-D rendering engine gets high marks from me. If you are considering this card sit down before checking the price. Everyone seated? $1500.00

I would have to agree. Snap To object, corners, or points is much more difficult than it was in VW 12.5 when in a crowded circumstance. I assume that is why they added the Z key function as a work-around.

I was asked by our machinist which type of 3D model we use when exporting IGES files to them. They asked me if the model we were creating was a surfaced model or a solid model. Does anyone know? They stated that surface models would explain the need for trimmed surfaces, which was the only format that they were able to import.

I hope I am misunderstanding the Help Screen, but after generating a 3D model of a part I create the 2D renderings in a Sheet Layer and I am free to annotate them with dimension lines, etc. The problem is, for circles, arcs, and holes the help screen states to draw a "guide" circle over the circle or arc you want to annotate, then select the dimension tool and annotate the "guide" circle. After doing that you can delete the "guide" circle. I find a few problems doing that: 1. Drawing a circle over another circle or hole is next to impossible because I can't locate the center point of the circle or arc! 2. Deleting the circle also deletes the dimension line attached to it. What am I missing? Is there a simple way to do this?

Found that out, too, but it wasn't apparent when I first tried it.

Okay. So when I take a number of 3D objects and perform Model > Add Solids, Model > Subtract Solids, Model > Intersect Solids, etc., the end resulting model is considered a group? It seems to work as advertised. Much better way to work. :grin:

Greetings, I am still learning the methods to generate 3D Models and then create viewports to generate the 2D views and isometric views. I think I get the basics of that process. However, things get awkward when you create a 3D model by adding and subtracting solids and later need to modify that 3D model. For instance, I create a plate of some thickness, add some countersunk holes, add some threaded holes, and/or add some appendages to the plate. Later I need to change the size or position of one or more holes in the model. How do I break the model up or at least edit the holes of interest after I have gone and Added and Subtracted Solids to create a single part? The only way I know how to do that is repeatedly ungroup the solid until the object(s) of interest is disassociated from the model, make the changes, then rebuild the model all over again. Is there a better way?

Thank you. I am getting the idea now. I am working with one of the tutorials (ValveArm.mcd) and learning about view ports. Seems to do exactly what I want.

Thanks for the tip. Done. ;-)

I am pretty new to this and just started playing around with 3D. My question is how should my work flow go? I need to design a part that I will send prints to our machinist. I would like the 3D so as to export to their CNC. However, I also need to dimension the part in 2D. 2D and 3D seem to be two different animals. That is, I can create a 3D part, but it appears that I have to also create a 2D part from scratch, too, then add the dimension lines and annotation. Am I doing this wrong? Is there a way to link the two (3D and 2D renderings) so that changes in one are back annotated in the other? Thanks in advance, Marv

Thanks!

Greetings, Previously I have used VW 12.5.3 and have done everything in 2-D mode. Our machine shop we use then takes the drawings and hand draws them over again in MasterCam. This is a waste of time and money. I have upgraded to VW 2009 and just started using 3-D, which is a joy so far, but now I have questions about how I should implement everything. First, it looks like I need two renderings of everything. One must be 2-D to let me annotate and dimension all of the features of the part. Next, is another rendering in 3-D. My first question is, how do I do this? Is there a standard convention I should use? Do I have to replicate two sheets for every part (one in 3-D and one in 2D)m or should they live on the same page? Second, does anyone have any experience with exporting VW documents to MasterCam? I want to make the effort from drawing to physical part as easy for our machine shop (and ourselves) as possible. I am struggling to do this mainly because my field of expertise is electrical engineering, but I have had to wear a mechanical engineering hat lately. We are making machined parts for aircraft controls out of aluminum and steel. The machine shop we employ uses CNC to reproduce these parts. Thanks in advance, Loren