Kool Aid
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Posts posted by Kool Aid
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The problem is that if our set designer would post a question about VW/Spotlight, she would presumably receive the same wrong, irrelevant suggestions and perhaps conclude that VW is useless for her.
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A very good question!
The Wall has all the necessary features. Why can't we send walls to surface?
Some years ago I wrote a script that created a series of walls to follow the designed surface above and a curvilinear plan. Nasty user interface, I seem to recall, but it worked.
It is possible to write a script that draws walls through 3D loci sent to surface. With a nasty user interface??
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I don't think so. Pattern-making (which I assume you refer to) is an art & a science and there are few, if any, functions in VW that could be used even as a starting point.
(As a teenager, many a moon ago, I sort-of learned the basics of pattern-making as I wanted to sew my own blue jeans? It was quite fascinating!)
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Another obscure idiosyncracy?
VS is full of functions that do not work as one expects and as the syntax implies. These (redundant) variables are needed so often that I no longer even attempt to use compound statements like the one that failed in your script.
Dr. Wirth, I believe, would not be amused should he hear of this.
Yep, thanks to Miguel & you! I have to keep this in mind.
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Trying, surely. But what's the point in trying to be helpful if you haven't a clue about the subject matter? Messrs Archoncad & Oz are NOT set designers and it is glaringly obvious that they know even less about that profession than yours truly.
When you have only a hammer, all problems look like nails?
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That ?certification? means only that VWA will be considered for certification?
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OK. It went reasonably well. Probably because I paid no attention to the uninformed disinformation spread by mike m oz and archoncad, the champions of ignorance and prejudice.
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IVectorworks Architects meets the minimum standards.
It does? Why hasn't anyone told that to the certifying body?
VWA does not meet any meaningful IFC-standard, despite the smoke, mirrors and spin-doctoring by NNA staff.
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can anyone tell me what a good spec would be. My work computer is a Intel Xeon CPU 2.80 GHz, 2.79GHz, 2.00 GB ram. Display adapter is NVIDIA Quadro FX 540. This seems as if it should be a fast computer but is slow copared to my home computer which is a lower spec especially when refreshing, panning or zooming. I would be gratefull for any sugestions.
A 21in iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 4670 display controller should do the job.
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I learned a lot. One thing I learned is just how valuable a good tradesperson is.
Couldn't agree more. Even when I was young, I never hired a tradesperson under 50?
Now, with our Case, 1"x3", the commercial reality may well be that, by default, every piece is cut from whatever pile of timber. Going through the scrap bin may not be economically-rationally justifiable.
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Unfortunately, even that would not actually do the job to the level of accuracy that would generate a true cutting list: some members may be of parallelogram -type of geometry.
To get that accuracy, members should be extruded in elevation projections. Then a script could go ?into? them and calculate the gross length and also angle settings for cutting.
Gross lengths would then be listed. Now, at the timber yard they have certain standard lenghts. Some members may ?take? an entire length, but more than one shorter ones will be cut from one length. Enter optimisation?
Let's assume all this can be done. Now, at the shop, each member becomes a Part with a designated location and it is cut from a specific length of material. After selecting the correct length from the pile of planks supplied and cutting, the saw operator has to write the part number on the piece of timber; the chippie has to find the parts from another pile of planks and assemble them by the numbers.
It just gets very, very complicated! Of course this is, by and large, how timber element factories operate, but the scale is somewhat different from a scenery shop.
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Easy.
A workseet report by suitable criteria.
List volume.
In the next column, use a formula that divides the volume by 3 sq in.
Result = length. May need a conversion factor.
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I take no-one else has encountered this problem?
More info: at least in one PIO hiding the button misbehaves quite frequently, in some others only on occasion.
Compilation mode may have an effect, but not sure yet.
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For the average scripter, the free TextWrangler should be enough. (I find the HTML-focus of BBEdit a bit of a distraction.)
There is a very good VS language module for TW by Orso available from VectorLab.
While we are it: one of the advantages of this genre is that they can keep any number of back-ups in a single folder. Multi-file searches are also fast and efficient.
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Off the top of my head:
Use Name2Index() to get the FPat number from the hatch name, then SetClFPat()
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Good points, Kevin!
Maybe a set designer's job is not entirely unlike an architect's job after all.
That might be it: we do basically the same thing ? sets for people & ?things?. Why, like the Truman Show? Someone designed the Cosby family home, too.
All the world's a stage set,
And all the men and women merely players extras in a commercial.
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Nicholas,
That is a very kind offer, thank you very much!
I'll see how this First Contact goes, focusing on The Set, with a couple of lights just for the show. Hey, maybe their lighting man person gets interested, too?
At this point it seems that my big problem is to tone down the lighting aspect of Spotlight, so that the client does not think she is paying big money for things she does not need. There are precious few features that aren't in Fundamentals that she ? I imagine ? would really need:
Column
Door
Human Figure
Ramp
Stair
Stack Layers
Table and Chairs
Window
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Absolutely! It would be an extremely useful interim mechanism while we wait for editable section views without any silly "viewports".
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It seems to me the Getting Started booklet is a very useful adjunct to your presentation. I wouldn't dismiss it quite so readily. It does have a section dedicated to Spotlight and if as you say your client is a VW novice then this gives them a reliable bottom up reference guide.
Spotlight tips, guides, manual references, videos etc. relate only to (theatrical) lighting, which in this case is rather irrelevant. Throwing a 100-page book about lighting to a set designer is not likely to impress.
Of course charm, experience and a sample project set will do the rest.Well, yes, that's the trouble: those I don't have?
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Perhaps I am chasing too much detail, does anybody else bother modeling connections, haunches and purlin cleats in 3D?
I think you are. The result will be very slow to render, with little additional value.
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So right you are! I was just hoping that someone who would actually know what a set designer does, would have chimed in.
There's nothing relevant in NNA's offering you referred to.
OK: I won't do the demo.
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Yeah, right.
Now, I don't have VW 2010. Yet, I've been asked to do this demo by the Finnish distributor of VW.
No, I'm not going to spend money to do promotional work on behalf of The Distribtor, without pay.
Besides, there's nothing even remotely relevant in ?this?.
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On Wednesday I'm supposed to show VW to a set designer (mainly film & commercials) what VW might be able to do to her. She has used 3DS and AutoCAD and specifically dislikes the latter. She also wants to get a Mac, so she's not stupid!
Presumably she wants to discuss camera angles and things like that (for which I don't even have names) with the director & producer. Creation of sets, of course, but to what level of detail?
Yes, it would be good to have someone else to do the demo, but none of the possible elses is available, so that's not an option.
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If I understand correctly what you are after, I don't think it is realistically doable.
What you appear to be after is what relational databases or ?lookup table? -type of things do. Unfortunately, there is no Lookup function in VW's function arsenal for worksheets. No-one knows why not.
There are things that could be done via scripting to emulate the result of the said functionality, but they tend not to work in the real world. Unfortunately the better approach, using an external relational database to generate the reports, does not work either, in the said frustrating place.
Lumber cut-list, aka materials needs list...
in General Discussion
Posted
Using blue symbols is a good approach, since each timber size needs to be in a specific class and there needs to be a separate ?database? for each size.
Or actually vice versa: since there needs to be a separate database for each size, there needs to be a class for each, too.