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SeanOSkea

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Posts posted by SeanOSkea

  1. I posted this almost a year ago. Honestly, I'm using VW a lot less these days and haven't really been paying attention to when this happens. It persisted fairly regularly for a while (on multiple computers) last year but may have been resolved in some patch along the way or I just haven't had more than one doc open in a while.  Doesn't seem like a lot of people had similar problems so maybe a non-issue now? 

  2. I think it works on Building Shell objects. If its an object made from an extruded shape, its not snapping. But it is snapping to my Stair-tool built stairs. I don't have the patients to figure out what it wants so I just use the third mode "Reference line mode" all the time so I don't have to worry about it. 

    RefLIneMode.png

  3. I can only get that to work sometime. I think the reason its working for Bruce is that he's got a co-planer contagious shape. While Iwlehew has two separate objects that may not be co-plainer. The fix is to use the third mode that lets you trace guide lines anywhere in the viewport. I can't remember the name (don't have VW open) but its the 3rd mode in the mode bar. You just extend guidelines along your objects and measure between the guides not the objects. 

    • Like 1
  4. Sorry I'm just seeing this now.  I've never tried to import a whole VW scene, but I frequently export out individual hard surface meshes from VW to Blender pretty easily. No need to do any converting. There are a lot of things that "should" work out of VW and into Blender but don't. I've never been able to get the DXF importer to work. Either I get a million errors or just an empty appears. OBJ is unreliable.  However, there is one reliable method using FBX. I use the "Selected objects" option to prevent a bunch of other junk showing up in Blender.  Uncheck all the "Include" options except for Geometry.  Set the Render Mode to Final Quality Renderworks or all your curves will have that low poly look like you see Shaded/Open GL.   On the Blender side I just leave all the settings at default.   The import option is not on by default in Blender so EDIT> Preferences search for FBX and check the box. You don't even need to restart. 

     

    Remember to place your mesh in VW close to the 0,0,0 axis as that relationship will be maintained in Blender.  Hard edges will import with "marked sharp" that's what the cyan lines are. If they cause you trouble just select and right click and select "Clear Seam" from the pop-up. Hard Surface mesh will import with lots of dagger sharp triangles.
    DON'T use the Remesh Modifier at first as it will crash Blender. Instead use a Decimate Modifier set to "Planer" and poof! all those nasty triangles are gone. You will of course end up with a bunch of huge N-gons but for hard surface who cares? You can always use the Knife tool or knife project to put cuts where you want them. Also after you have decimated, you can now use a remesh modifier without issue.  Now you can bevel, extrude add loop cuts, whatever just like native Blender mesh. Worth checking the normal facing (Overlays Face Orientation) as sometimes a poly or two can get inverted.  

    I never bother importing textures from VW as you have so much more power in Blender anyway. 

    Hope this helps 

    • Like 4
  5. Help

    I have two documents open. I can work back and forth between them for a while but after 10 or 20 minutes I will switch to Document #2 and any changes I make are effecting document #1. Document #2 is completely frozen. The only thing I can do to "release" control is to close document 1.  When I'm on Doc 2 some things respond like running the scroll wheel will change the magnification percentage scale on doc 2 but the viewport doesn't redraw.  I have seen this behavior on multiple machines and multiple documents. 

    What the heck is going on!? 

     

    Sean 

     

    Windows 10  Ryzen 9 5950X     128GB    RTX 3090 

  6. 2022 looks like it has some decent new features and upgrades at last, so I'm eagerly exploring. But still no dark mode for Windows? Really? Its been three years since the icon change. They should just come out and admit that they are never going to have a dark mode for PC so we can stop hoping.  

    • Like 3
  7. Thanks fabrica, 

    I'm aware of those checkboxes, but they are sort of an all or nothing approach. A lot of the other software that I use lets you go through and manage plug-in and add-on content one at a time so you can turn off things you don't use and leave on things you do.  I wondered if there was any similar option for VW. 

    Sean 

    • Like 1
  8. VW takes a long time to open. As I watch the loading window a long string of libraries and plug-ins are loading, most of which I never use or don't even know what they are. Is there somewhere where we can turn off plug-ins or libraries that we don't use to speed up start up? 

  9. Yeah, I've asked this question before. I have the same issue with the Radial Dim tool not recognizing an arc in a viewport. Works fine if you trace over the angel or the arc but that's a pain. I don't understand why the tools we need to work in viewport annotations don't work in viewports. I keep coming back to the forums for this one because I must be doing something wrong. I can't believe these tools don't work in Viewports. 

  10. Sorry Scott, I don't check the forum as much as I used to. Just seeing this now. Yeah, VW to PDF to Glowforge is actually pretty easy. as you've discovered. A few issues to keep in mind: even in the PDF the GF sees all the lines. For example if you want to cut out a bunch of small planks as I do for making models. If you create a rectangle and make a array so you get a dozen or so in a row, be aware that the GF will see both sides of the rects even though on the screen it looks like a box with a bunch of vertical lines. So it will cut over all the vertical edges (except the very first and last with no neighbors) often charming the material. What you need to do is draw a 3-sided box [  and array that and then draw a line to cap the last one so the cutter just does one pass.  It really doesn't like Booleans either. You can get some weird results where it sees the intersection as pixels and tries to give it engraving settings. I think I've used something like Decompose  to collapse the modifiers and that fixes it. It may not be that exactly but something simple like that. But then sometimes I can get away with a Hidden Poly render of a 3D model in an ortho view and it has no problems. So over all VW with the GF has been really easy once you discover a few quirks. Same with the 3D printers and Cura. The only thing I just couldn't get to work was how to get drawing out of VW and into a SVG file for our Shapepoko CNC. But that one is in our shop on campus and I haven't been in to work with it for a while, cuz ya know. 

    Hope you're having fun. 

  11. 1 minute ago, DBrown said:

    I'm with you on @SeanOSkea that, the software makes way more productive until I bang my head with some issue that everyone is asking in the forum those days, but sadly the new features from the last keynote are going to use some obscure AI to enhance images and create models, with the, oh dear, VSS,  I only want a wall that i can stack components for skirting, and every other software has that, except Vectorworks, why? I dunno..

    By the way, you used to have a Youtube channel? Right?
     

    I know! Right? One of my #1 gripes: the embarrassingly complicated process we have to go through to add trim to a wall.  There's that Italian guy who has the $ plug-in that does what we want but why isn't something so profoundly basic like that in the default package?  Instead we have the new Hinged Truss tool! Thank goodness. My other one is why in the world is there no transform tool with axis locks like virtually every other software in the world? Fricken, TinkerCAD has that but we don't? They just need to give up on RW and make it easier to export models to 3rd parties. And not C4D, sorry. I'm not going to pay four grand for a one-way export to another package designed for an entirely different industry just so I can get some decent visualization tools. Don't get me started on Lucy holding the football of "improved performance" year after year. 

    Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant. And yes I still do have the YT channel I just don't upload much anymore because I've kind of lost interest in teaching people this software. I've moved mostly to a 2nd channel hosted by my school where most of the stuff I put up is unlisted and for my students. Honestly, I work in performing arts (for now...assuming we can ever put on a show again) and if it wasn't for Spotlight, I think I would have given up on VW. I keep on using and teaching it year after year but I won't be upgrading again until some of these bone basic issues are addressed. 

    • Like 1
  12. @Diego-Resuelvectorworks That's great for Mac users but according to JuanP earlier in this thread "we are hoping to improve the look of the whole UI soon. Unfortunately, it will not be for version 2021." So the PC users are going to be looking at this for (at least) two years. I mean its just an aesthetic thing, but why roll out new icons designed for a dark mode that won't be available to half your users for three years?  

    • Like 2
  13. This thread has probably gone cold but I'm still playing around with this. I can't find much documentation on the Chain Extrude or on the Path Plug In Object. 

    Chain extrude has the same awning example that's been in the help for over a decade. Search on YT and you get 1 Jonathan Pickup video from 2009 illustrating exactly the example in the help.  It looks like Chain Extruded works with one profile and would be perfect for molding etc except it only seems to work in top/plan. Even tracing along a horizontal edge results in the object appearing on 0-Z. Try anything vertically and you get a weird result with a huge piece of trim horizontal and far away from the object. 

    Path-Plug in objects like those that have appeared in the RB content, look promising but appear to be generated from Chain Extrudes as well. It has the one, very nice feature of being able to click along the actual wall faces and not have half the trim buried in the wall. But again it only works in plan view and it often has very odd and inexplicable results. Like the path and ribs looking great in the preview but as soon as you click to execute the ribs appear 50' bellow and 10' offset from the properly placed path "awning" object. 

    Off to another term of teaching VW (this time long distance!) and trying to explain why the Extrude along a path function is so difficult to use. 

    • Like 1
  14. @ccsw I know those Apple mice are sexy on the desk but I don't know how I'd get as much done without my 9-button (I guess, gaming) mouse. I have buttons mapped to Alt, Shift, Tab, X and Crtl, as well as one for flyover and undo. I'm a terrible typist so I love not having to constantly look at the keyboard to see where my hands are, but instead just change my grip on the mouse. I don't know how many, if any of those mice are compatible with Macs. Stuff like that is the reason I switch to PC years ago--before Apple got cool and took over the planet, of course. My mac days are why I ended up as a VW user in the first place. 

  15. Yes, all the the basic Nav, selection, transform tools need a major overhaul. Many  require clicking a button or 2-handed shortcuts. I hated at first but am now really getting used to and starting to like the MMB orbit (flyover) and Shift+MMB for pan that is common in many other programs. The Space-bar pan (sort of) is good fro me because I spend a lot of time in Photoshop but I'd be willing to give that up to something else to help Nav/Transform get easier. 

  16. @Kevin Allen 

    3 minutes ago, Kevin Allen said:

    The second drawing shows (exaggerated) what I think @SeanOSkea (and I) would like in the EAP dialog. So, I could trace the walls, leave the line (path), select the profile, and direct VWX to extrude from the point.

    Yes Exactly!  And you wouldn't even need a new interface, just simply make it work in the way it intuitively should work--just as you select one of the 9 control points in the Obj Info to change the dimension of something in the direction you want, we could simply click on the control point that would be aligned to the path. So in Kevin's illustration we would select the profile, click on the upper-left control button, select the path and Extrude and the crown molding would be perfectly in the right spot. No need to fudge the profile, or to edit and re-position the profile after extruding.  

     

    Even last night after reading all the posts about aligning the profile on the working plane attached to the path (Sketchup style)  I was chastened and thought, "well I should do that from now on." But then I was modeling last night and damn it if I wasn't hiding and showing classes and layers, and fighting with the flyover, and doing all kinds of fussing just to get a clear shot at the end of my path and I thought, "No dang it, it should be easier than this for such a basic and essential function!" 

    3 minutes ago, Kevin Allen said:

     

     

    • Like 2
  17. 2 hours ago, Amorphous - Julian said:

    We use this tool for cornice and baseboards. Gives you the ability to customise your profiles.

    Advantage is to not end up with silly bunch of lines in Plan and RCP
    (Why do we still have wireframe objects in Top/Plan view? What on this planet is 'wireframe'?Is there even a use for them in Top/Plan view?)
     

     

    That is awesome. This is exactly how this tool should work. 

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