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James Russell

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Posts posted by James Russell

    Custom Projectors for Video Screen

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    Hayden,

    From the brief research I've done on the Video Screen plugin it seems to have options for these kinds of labels.

    Right down the bottom of the OIP there's a 'Text Options' button which allows for labels such as Lens Information and other bits and pieces.

    Tried to pop open the plugin itself to have a peak if you can create custom ones but doesn't seems so.

    Does that help? Let me know if you need more.

    J

    Oculus rift and 3d interaction

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    +1

    Last year I did some fun experiments last year with some AR technology:

    http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/en/new_products/arplugin_vectorworks/info.php#download_trial

    As soon as a client is exposed to any form of 3D presentation whether it's AR, 3D PDF, Oculus or any other 3D interactive device they are hooked.

    I'll be posting some photos/videos of my AR table in the upcoming months. Still waiting for my Oculus though :(.

    J

    Importing .obj .ply .vrml .stl

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi all,

    Just wondering if anyone has had experience importing meshes/solids from .obj, .ply, .vrml or .stl files. I've been given some 3D scans in these formats and am keen to bring them into VW but don't know a midstep program/process.

    Any help much appreciated!

    Cheers,

    J

    Mass class based texture change.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi all,

    I've got a curve ball question today.

    I have a drawing that I've taken over of a temporary building comprised of several custom made panels (50ish separate 3d symbols).

    These symbols has two components, Wall Framing and Wall Cladding. Each of these is in their own class with respective names.

    I want to now do a rendering with an texture to the external cladding. Unfortunately at the time that these symbols were drawn they were not set to have their texture as class texture.

    Is there a way I can force all objects with a class of Wall Cladding to have a texture?

    Cheers,

    J

    Layer Plane Persistence

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    I though I was going crazy with this but maybe I'm not if others are finding it too. There is no doubt something is triggering it though when jumping around a drawing, catching me out on the occasional 3D rotation.

    If you find a source let me know, I'll let you know if I can pinpoint it over the next few days.

    J

    (PS. Still crazy, no doubt)

    Saving Intellectual Property

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    This is such an interesting discussion that I've had in the back of my mind for a few years.

    In most of the companies I work for it's PDF all the way. The VWX file never leaves the office, ever. Especially in VW2013 with Lighting Device and custom symbol data being strongly embedded into the files themselves it makes it difficult to manage even the most basic of saves/exports.

    It's interesting what you can now reverse engineer through from a PDF these days, layer and class data occasionally too. If any of you have received a PDF in the last 2 years you should bring it into VW and do a simple ungroup on it, vector data will flow for days, not only lines but rectangle, poly and arc data too. I've had one or two PDFs come into the office with layer data, (although I'm not sure how it would get there).

    In short the VWX never leaves me, too many Lighting Devices, custom plugins, scripts, title blocks, VP layouts to be considered.

    As for what can be done when you HAVE to export, decomposition of 3D objects, meshes not solids, 2D over 3D, removing all record data, the list goes on, mainly it's just a pain.

    Just an opinion, ;)

    J

    How do I build a raked stage in 3-D

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    Stephanie,

    Firstly welcome to the forums on behalf of everyone!

    I've attached a link to some images to go along with these steps, I would have recorded a video... maybe later: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/cKBfcMlP3H/

    Anyways,

    Step 1: Draw your 22' x 24' rectangle representing your stage. I like to double click the rectangle icon and type it in.

    Step 2: Extrude your rectangle to the total height of the rake (17"). Apple + E on mac, Control + E on PC.

    Step 3: Jump in a right or left view and start drawing a rectangle. I prefer 3 point mode (change it at the top to the last option). Click once at the highest point of your stage then head to the lower end, press tab twice and you'll get to input a change in Y. I chose -11" which is the difference from 17" to 6", click again and then draw a rectangle as shown in step 4.

    Step 4: Hopefully what you have after step 3.

    Step 5: Extrude your new rectangle to be wider than your entire stage, I chose 30'.

    Step 6: From a Top/Plan view move the two extrudes so they overlap fully, then select both and chose to subtract solids.

    Step 7: Make sure the small object (what we're keeping from this and cutting into) is selected in red.

    Step 8: Hopefully that's what you're looking for!

    Let us know how you go, good luck!

    Cheers,

    J

    Ps: Sorry that my background is blue, I was chroma-keying some stuff before.

    ViewMatrix

    in Vectorscript

    Posted

    Michael,

    Present! (See attached!)

    I've never touched these two functions until about 30mins ago but I think I've got them.

    I had to go back to some 2007 documentation though to find out that it's 6 vars not 4 as the current documentation says.

    Here's a little script I whipped up (Sorry it's messy, wrote it at lunch...):

    --------------------------

    Procedure VPTest;

    VAR

    h,WSH:Handle;

    x, y, cx, cy, cz, rotx, roty, rotz : REAL;

    str1,str2,str3,str4,str5,str6 :String;

    xxx:Boolean;

    Begin

    GetPt(x, y);

    h:=PickObject(x, y);

    xxx:=GetViewMatrix(h,cx,cy,cz,rotx,roty,rotz);

    WSH:=CreateWS('Values',10,10);

    Str1:=Num2Str(3,cx);

    Str2:=Num2Str(3,cy);

    Str3:=Num2Str(3,cz);

    Str4:=Num2Str(3,rotx);

    Str5:=Num2Str(3,roty);

    Str6:=Num2Str(3,rotz);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,1,1,1,'X-Coord');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,2,1,2,'Y-Coord');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,3,1,3,'Z-Coord');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,4,1,4,'X-Rot');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,5,1,5,'Y-Rot');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,1,6,1,6,'Z-Rot');

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,1,2,1,Str1);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,2,2,2,Str2);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,3,2,3,Str3);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,4,2,4,Str4);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,5,2,5,Str5);

    SetWSCellFormula(WSH,2,6,2,6,Str6);

    ShowWS(WSH,true);

    End;

    Run(VPTest);

    ----------------------

    Should work on any viewport placed and then you just have to click on it and the script will generate a worksheet for the data. Attached is my quick testing file. Although I haven't touched SetViewMatrix I'd imagine it's pretty easy after this.

    Let me know how you go, I'm interested to know what you're using this for! ;)

    J

    urgent -- i have lost controls

    in Architecture

    Posted

    Michael,

    I've had this issue before also. I did find that it was a dialog in the background such as the auto save reminder that somehow it had occurred either whilst or just before drawing a polyline or other multistep tool. In very unlucky and rare timing the dialog can go to the rear of your window set and cause VW to appear in an unresponsive lockout state.

    The only way I've been able to bring it to front is to open task manager and for the process to come to front, whether you force it to minimise and maximise again or do it from the process tree.

    Hope you can return to work tomorrow, make sure you post if you can't and we'll have to brainstorm more.

    J

    Extrusion/Subtraction functions of 3D Polys

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Thanks for all your great replies guys, sorry I couldn't reply sooner (got stuck in China, boo!).

    The background to this is that I'm currently drawing up a temporary venue to be located here in Melbourne for the Melbourne Festival in situ. Surveyors did their stuff, gave me a dxf with a whole heap of lovely contour lines which covered everything except for a rather large, obstructing, and inconvenient garden bed. When I asked for more detail about it I got this in my inbox, thus the challenge begins.

    These solutions are great using advanced 3D poly techniques and using the Project Tool's 3rd Mode (probably for the first time ever personally) really pushes the high end of the knowledge base.

    In the end it would have been much easier if I had the 20ish point NURB that I have no doubt this came from I'm glad that we all got to have a challenge together. ;)

    Till the next one,

    J

    Extrusion/Subtraction functions of 3D Polys

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi all,

    See the file attached.

    I'm attempting to use a 3D polygon I've been provided with and I wish to create a solid from it that reaches my ground plane neatly but has the z-data attached to the upper vertices still. In the file attached imagine the 3D poly is the top of this solid and neatly meets the ground plane as the extrude does.

    I've tried to subtract my poly from a solid trace, extrude the 3D poly itself, loft using it as a nurbs curve and several other things.

    Any ideas? If you have queries let me know, I'm racking my brain!

    J

    Reformat Worksheet

    in Architecture

    Posted · Edited by James Russell

    Yep,

    Under the little drop-down arrow in the top right hand corner select Zoom>x% to scale up or down. Shouldn't effect the actual size on the page.

    Cheers,

    J

    Reformat Worksheet

    in Architecture

    Posted

    Kieron,

    See my attached before and after screenshots.

    With the database header row (Row 4 for me) selected you can drag the icon for Sort Ascending from the titlebar and attach it to Column B with the Mark sorting in them.

    Should do the trick, as long as the data is number based, I've had a few errors with numbers in text fields in the past.

    Hope that helps.

    J

    Worksheets Dual Dimension

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Just going to throw something in here that I was having a look at:

    http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=VS:SetWSCellNumberFormat

    Trying out both option 10 under the DO NOT USE category. Seems to somewhat work but didn't have the brain space at the time to play with option modifiers.

    Also I think there should be either modifiers for option 5 (Dimension) to enable Secondary Dimension choice, where you could easily have your two dimension sets or just create an option 14 for Secondary Dimension. It would make sense to have it as a modifier option so you could have Secondary Area and Secondary Volume also. Maybe it exists, maybe it's a wish.

    Love the formula though Michael, it's a crafty one!

    J

    Does anyone from Nemetschek Read These Forums?

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    Just thought I'd also pop in here.

    In the last 3 months I've been contacted by VW solutions staff on two occasions from issues I've posted here, both times with a formal email following up a query and solution/guarantees with both.

    This has restored my faith in the developmental side of VW staff and in my mind reinforces why we're all here.

    The occasional general 'Hi, that's something we're doing' wouldn't be too bad though! ;)

    J

    Split Screen View

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    I was asked this question earlier this year and had a go at it late one night.

    I mainly wanted an isometric rendered preview pane, and it was quite effective for the most part.

    See attached now.

    Two Vectorworks windows open. One main file, design layers and all, this is the 'Working Document'. Then a second document open, this is the 'Preview Document'.

    Within the Preview document I referenced the Working document, and created a Design Layer Viewport using data from the Working document onto the Preview document's design layer. Anytime the reference file link is updated in the Preview document the flow-on effect update the Design Layer Viewport, meaning it's like a isometric preview panel.

    The point I stopped is when I hit a little issue of self updating time periods. I tried to alter the reference settings from the Organisation panel to auto refresh every minute, (I tried 0.1 mins but it wouldn't take it, Darn!), but it seems that this function isn't instantious anyway. It relies on saving of the source file... so I set the autosave to 1 min also for the Working Document. This has a flow-on effect, (depending how quickly you could open the two files respective to each other), of creating the required kick to force the update. All would be fine, except for the unavoidable dialog asking if you would like to update the references that are out of date, (no lovely do this every time check box here!).

    So is it possible, sort of.

    If there was a script that could run in the background and force an update of the reference file, which it should be noted when done manually applies changes even though the Working Document hasn't been saved, every 10seconds or so with no questions asked you'd be set!

    Anyways, good luck getting this implemented as a feature, I'm doubting VW has the power to support multiple windows in this capacity. Perhaps a preview pane style maybe.

    Cheers,

    J

    Spread sheet formulas

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Ash,

    I've been playing with this issue for a while now and my answer so far is no. Without a record to reference, an entity counted by a database cannot create a numerical sequence purely within the database sub-rows.

    I'm hoping that someone is going to but in and have a clever way of =(CurrentSubRowNumber-CurrentRowNumber)*10 but I haven't found such an answer yet.

    I'll be interested to see though!

    J

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