P Retondo

Peter, thanks, that works! I confess that I didn't notice that "By Class" at the end of the drop-down list.

No news yet - I'm hoping that it will come with the next update, but version 13 may be the next update.

If you are trying to select an object or snap to an object on a different layer, bear in mind that your current layer and the other layer must both be in Top/Plan view for that to work. I do "Align Layer View" when an object on another layer won't select or snap - see if that doesn't solve the problem. Layers in any 3d view (i.e., any view other than Top/Plan) won't allow selection in any layer except the active one. I have never experienced any selection behavior that doesn't conform with the above.

But Christiaan, fused deposition modeling, the basic technology of their machine, was invented in the 1980s and is used fairly widely by a number of manufacturers. There may be some aspects of the RepRap equipment that represent potentially patentable ideas, which it is good of them to contribute to the public domain - but regarding the core technology, the cows left the barn a long time ago. Besides that, only a subset of potential parts for manufactured things can be created by such a machine, so their claim to be able to go into the garage and create a "Buzz Lightyear" with such equipment anytime soon is not credible. Luckily for us, though, architectural models are the sort of thing that FDM might be able to do! When you've finished your FDM 3d printer, let me know! I want to play.

We used to be able to control window glazing by modifying which class was assigned to the glass. We can still do that with doors to some extent, but now the window PIO has a special option for glazing opacity. Just when it became possible, with viewport class attribute overrides, to take good advantage of class assignments! Now I can't make my windows dark or opaque in those viewports where I want them to look that way. Am I missing something, or is this a candidate for the wish list?

Try setting your class option to Show/Snap/Modify Others.

Christiaan, I appreciate the sentiment and the vision, but the technology of the device is not an innovation, and has already been patented. The concept of sharing files so that the device can create some of it's own parts is interesting, but doesn't create the kind of ground-breaking advance of the first 3d printer (stereolithography). CAD/CAM software for driving these machines is well advanced. I'm not as up on the literature as I was five years ago, but if you are really interested in this field I would look at Paul Jacobs' "Stereolithography and Other RP&M Techologies" (1996) for a very interesting firsthand account of the first freeform fabrication systems.

In my version "y" toggles cues on and off.

Christiaan, this is just another of the many 3d modeling technologies that have been out there for more than 10 years. File formats such as .sla have been developed to communicate with equipment of this type, and it is currently possible to get a VW 3d model to be fabricated on such equipment - but it would take major tweaking because of interface difficulties. I've never gotten beyond the initial discussion phase in such an effort because the cost is just too high. But, someday . . . Bear in mind with the "RepRap" idea that "it would still require an external supply of several currently non-replicable components such as sensors, stepper motors, cameras, or microcontrollers," per the apparently self-authored Wikipedia article. Not too many people are going to want to build one of these in their home workshop.

I was having trouble with my DTM texture beds displaying as a wireframe object only. Problem solved by Gunther at NNA! There are two fields in the OIP where the texture bed class has to be entered - the normal field with a drop-down menu at the top, and a second field more towards the middle of the dialog box, where you have to type in the class name. Once you do this the texture bed rendering will be displayed. I've asked Gunther if the code can be changed so that it would be unnecessary to enter the class two times.

I believe this has been submitted to the wish list in the path. ACAD has the capability to scale blocks, and many people naturally wish that VW symbols could be scaled. It would take advantage of the symbol object in a more powerful way.

Problem solved by Gunther at NNA! There are two fields in the OIP where the texture bed class has to be entered - the normal field with a drop-down menu at the top, and a second field more towards the middle of the dialog box, where you have to type in the class name. Once you do this the texture bed rendering will be displayed. I've asked Gunther if the code can be changed so that it would be unnecessary to enter the class two times.

Sorry to say that I think implementing "referenced classes" would be a mistake. It complicates the program works in a way that would create instability. Look at all the problems we already have with just saving files on a server. A better system, which might save the same purspose if we have the ability to import classes, is a VS utility that each user could run, or would automatically run upon booting the program, that would import any new classes from your office standard. That way, any office that desires to have this kind of system could use the utility without creating messy file interchange protocols within the VW core.

I'm not saying we shouldn't support the metric system and European standards - though I am in the dark, probably through pure ignorance, about what aspects of these are not currently supported. I am merely pointing out that if one wishes to apportion the economic support of users to the software's base capabilities, one should look not at the last year or two but the whole history. I'm seeing metric units supported, and metric fasteners - is there a list of other things that need metric defaults/choices?

The vast majority of current users are beneficiaries of years of work on the program, supported in the early years almost exclusively by the US market - both in terms of economic support as buyers, and in terms of countless hours of user feedback and work process development that have been incorporated as a added value to the program. Based quite naturally on the momentum of these early years, NNA may still lean a bit towards the requirements of the North American market. Some choose to complain about the current situation without acknowledging the whole history. That said, it could only be good for all of us if NNA pays heed to the needs of the worldwide market and all it's local nuances.

Jason, Dimensions in the Design Layer will show up in a Viewport if their class is turned on.

To set the default height for walls you create, set the layer Z+/- to some value other than 0.

Good suggestion!

Unfortunately the only thing I think you can do as a user is to purchase a faster processor. It would help enormously if NNA were to make all the rendering processes work to utilize multiple processors more fully.

Katie, you just made checking this board worth it for the last week. I was going to say that the lack of this capability was the one thing ACAD had over VW, but not so! And Ray, your tip about using "View outside group" is another great one. I note that this doesn't work for Section Viewports. I'm also curious - when I translate a plan view in a viewport, the section line indicators stay in place as part of the annotations. Does that mean that the corresponding section viewports are going to change? BTW, if I am looking for something in a Design Layer, rather than change the Viewport scale, I just remove the crop or make it larger. Having the crop shape be independent of the Viewport object is a key structural adavantage over ACAD viewports.

When horizontal board textures are applied to walls, they often don't line up from wall to wall because they are applied with reference to the object instead of "world" coordinates. This could be corrected if, similar to how pattern fills are aligned from object to object, the default alignment of wall textures is to the ground plane instead of to some point on the object.

No one in the world (I trust Petri to correct me if I'm wrong about this!), except perhaps those who engineered the VW joist framing tool, miters rim joists. It's a pain to have to undo all those 45 degree ends and stretch them to look like the architect had some idea of how buildings are built.

The way things work now, all objects on WGR layers are locked. If one unlocks them, they automatically get locked again when the WRG is updated. One unfortunate side effect is that Section Viewports don't pick up those objects as part of the section, they are treated as background objects. I think this may be a bug, but it would work fine if we could choose whether a WGR layer is default locked or not locked.

. . . a "None" fill and a zero lineweight. By panning and zooming, if you're an AutoCAD user, you probably mean scaling and moving the viewport boundary. In VW, panning and zooming the screen view does not change the scale or boundary of the viewport, you have to do those things by changing the scale of the VP in the OIP, and by actually moving the VP crop boundary. Once you get used to the way it works, it's as good or better than the ACAD system.

To import all objects from a layer, including the layer name (which should be different from your existing layer names), add a Workgroup Refrence. Delete the reference and save the objects. C'est fini! What Christiaan is talking about is a more sophisticated and controllable import feature, and I would like it to include the ability to import Sheet Layers and Viewports. (BTW, Christiaan, is that pronounced "yeep" or "yep?")