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P Retondo

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Posts posted by P Retondo

  1. In the past, I have created hybrid symbols by converting the 2d objects to a symbol, then creating the 3d version in the 2d edit space.  Then the different modes automatically separate themselves.  With v2020, I can no longer do that.  As soon as I create a 3d object in the 2d edit space, it disappears.  I can no longer put together a 3d object from parts, add and subtract them, then exit the 2d space.  Nor can I add to a 3d object it its edit space, since every time I create a 2d object for an extrude it disappears.  Very disappointing lack of understanding on the part of VW engineers regarding our typical workflows.  Or am I missing something?

     

    And now we have the highly complex "component" system for hybrid objects.  Not worth the time to get into that, in my opinion.  Is there any way to opt out of that?

  2. After consulting with tech support and doing a lot of testing, it seems like this is a combination of font, object fill, and GDI+imaging.

     

    What the image shows is my preferred font (Tekton Pro, which is an .otf font) superimposed on Arial, which is a default font that appears when Tekton won't display properly.    There has been a problem for several years with GDI and Tekton, and I've heard, all .otf fonts.  Turn on GDI, and Tekton is rendered as Arial.  Why both of them appear in this circumstance is a mystery, but there it is.

     

    The fix is to create the animation with "None" class set to solid fill.  For some reason, the problem doesn't occur with those settings.

     

    To add to the confusion, the fix does not work in my file, which was converted from vw2017 to vw2020.  So for this file I am changing my default font to a non-.otf font for solar animations.

    • Like 2
  3. The good news so far:  they fixed the problem with 2d object type preferences changing when editing a Sheet Layer viewport crop!  The bad news:  many more crashes, pretty unstable for a SP3.  A bit slower than the version I have been using for a while, 2017.  Not driving me crazy, but I will update this post as I go along.

  4. Anyone have a solution to doubled text in a solar animation time-title?  Looks like this:

    image.thumb.png.640967f9d99e181dc231a44a9b803574.png

    It looks like the text is casting a shadow., but there is no object actually below the left 80% of the text.

     

    BTW, I attempted to search for community posts on the topic "Heliodyne AND 2020 AND solar animation."  It returned something like 180,000 items.  Someone needs to fix the search engine on this board!

  5. I haven't downloaded versions of VW that I have purchased since 2017.  Can someone tell me from experience whether the window PIO has been improved since 2017?  For example, when we create a casement window in 2017 (and previous versions), the sash is placed at the center of the jamb.  No casement window in the world is built that way.  Just one example out of dozens of shortcomings.  Any joy in 2020?

  6. 1 hour ago, Kevin McAllister said:

    There's definitely room to improve the current snapping system.

     

    Glad you agree!  You may recall a thread a while back where users tackled the question of how to draw an arc tangent to given points on two circles.  We found a solution and proof to that problem, and though we can construct such an arc using techniques similar to how you typically draw tangent lines, it escapes me why these basic calculations can't be reliably incorporated into VW tools.  BTW, although I find that the problem that started this thread does not exist for me in v2017, Mike has found that it does.  So something a bit arcane is going on.

    • Like 1
  7. On 1/2/2020 at 5:23 PM, Kevin McAllister said:

    I've never found tangent snaps in VW very reliable. I tend to draw a known tangent and rotate it around the circle to where I need it. I also wish there was a way for the second click to be the tangent point on the circle (eg. from a point on another object to the tangent point on a circle).

    Kevin, do you really think this is acceptable?  Tangency geometry is pretty straightforward, you could construct a bulletproof algorithm in less than an hour.  I just think there is some careless engineering going on.

  8. In the version I'm currently using (2017), tangents behave properly with respect to being 90d from the corresponding radius line.  The only odd thing is that when snapping to the end point of a horizontal line, the tangency sometimes flips 180, and I have to use the <alt> key to get it to snap to a point on the other side of the circle.  Maybe something was fixed incorrectly between then & now?

     

    By the way, the reason I haven't installed my 2020 version is that I keep hearing about problems with v2020, and no fixes to longstanding problems or deficiencies that make it worth the effort to switch.  I'm pretty sure I'm dropping out of Service Select and upgrades this year.  Any advice to the contrary would be appreciated!

     

    VW v2017 SP5

    Win 7 x64

  9. It's time to let us know what version you are using.

     

    To select an object after first selecting the tool, hold down the "Alt" key and click on the object.  It is more efficient to just get used to the VW way of selecting objects first, then choose your operation.  To just move the object, change the settings in the "Move by Points" tool the way I previously suggested (see graphic above).  Those settings will stick unless you change them.

     

    You should not be duplicating the object unless you want to use the "Move" command (see below).  To use the "Move by Points" tool to both move and duplicate with the settings I have suggested, hold down the "Ctrl" key (or Mac equivalent) while making your two clicks, and it will temporarily override your settings from "move without retaining" the original object to "move and duplicate" (retain original object).

     

    You can get rid of offsets when duplicating by editing VW Preferences (Edit tab) and unclick "Offset duplications".

     

    "Tools" are in set in boxes, usually on the left.  "Commands" are from dropdown menus on the top bar.  There is a "Move" command that brings up this dialog box:

     

    image.thumb.png.c42d383978c2e0a927a7118189a0bf74.png

    PS:  to increase your speed, get used to using keyboard commands.  That is the next stage in your development.  Most veteran ACAD users use keyboard commands, ACAD used to be a command-line program before they started using visual icons to select operations.

    • Like 2
  10. To simplify:  change the settings (in the top bar on the left) to "Move mode," Object retention off, 1 duplicate:

    image.thumb.png.04b68e05279460d3c4de9dd0f6843979.png

    Then click on two points on the screen and the object will move by the distance and direction (vector) defined by those points.  That's exactly what ACAD move by points does.  Using the data box is not doing a move by points.  Selecting 2 points is a move by points, the first of which can be on the object if you so choose.  Is it possible you are stuck on the Move command, which is different from the Move by Points tool (see my previous post)?

  11. I don't know what version of VW you are working with, but since several years ago VW implemented the move-by-points tool.  It's in the Basic Toolbox, and looks like the highlighted icon:

     

    image.thumb.png.f4d58d5b2a937a3f8865cfe57708960a.png 

    It works just like ACAD, in that you can select an object, then select the tool and click on any two points anywhere to define a move.  There are lots of options, so check those out (number of copies, keep original object or delete, distribute across the vector or repeat the vector for each copy).

  12. Well, cheeselog, I'm wondering about your handle.  It's hard to wrap my head around that.

     

    To answer your questions:  the first effect you are seeing is pre-selection highlighting.  It tells you what object you are about to select if you left-click.  You can turn that off in Vectorworks Preferences dialog box (Interactive tab), and there you can also find a link to the detailed settings for highlighting colors & effects.  When you select an object, the highlighting CAN be different if you have selected something different in the Interactive Appearance Settings dialog.  I have set my preferences to not show pre-selection highlighting, and things are only highlighted if selected.  You should also see little blue squares at key points on an object when it is selected - those are points you can grab to reshape an object.  Also, pay attention to the actual shape of the cursor.  It is an arrow when you are not "within range" to select any object, a white triangle when you are within range (a left-click will select), and a cross symbol when you are within snap radius of a smart-cursor point (like an endpoint, for example).  You can also set your snapping "sensitivity" in Vectorworks Preferences Interactive tab by chosing the appropriate selection box and snap box sizes - it's intuitive, play around with it.

     

    If you are used to AutoCAD selection, try to wipe that out of your mind.  Marquees will not select an object in VW unless it is totally encompassed within the marquee.  (Unless you hold down the "Alt" key).

  13. Thanks Will for that heads up on the viewport text scaling.  That seems counterproductive.  Why take a feature that was supposed to deal with having a VP at a different scale from the layer, and make it solve a problem that didn't exist with text in the VP annotation space?  Is this what I am hearing?  Depressing.

  14. Just to be clear about what I have said, I think this thread and Jim's comments are an extremely constructive response - not at all an attempt at deflection or obfuscation, rhetorical or otherwise.  If you have ever worked on a software project (I have), you will know that testing is probably the most important part of the process.  In that regard, developing some benchmark tools, which run the software through a series of speed tests, would be extremely important to be able to know whether the code as written is helping or hindering the specific goal of optimizing the speed of operations.  Making the result of benchmark testing available to users, compared across versions, is what both Jim and I would like to see.  Not as a way of solving every user's particular problems, but as a way of knowing in general whether a new version of the program is improving performance, or not.  Just as getting a faster processor may not solve someone's issue, having a version that benchmarks better may not solve every issue, but it will at the least tell us whether a performance problem is due to a basic software design issue.

    • Like 1
  15. For what it is worth, I'm a strong advocate of NOT being constrained by a software engineer's vision of what I should be designing.  Tools that guide the process, or make certain results more efficient to achieve have the potential to seriously crimp creative freedom.

     

    BTW, yes, a serious distraction from the topic at hand, which is benchmarking!

     

    On that topic:  the tests that occur to me as being key are 1) OpenGL 3d navigation, 2) Final Renderworks, 3) operations in sheet layer viewports (which have been subject to slow performance in the past), 4) site model updates, 5) undo certain operations (such as convert polygons to lines), 6) applying linetypes (much slower now than it used to be), 7) populating the resource palette, 8) booting.

  16. Jim, thanks for the thoughtful response.  Obviously, specific dysfunctionality of certain files and workflows are not going to be a good subject for benchmarking.  But that doesn't mean benchmarking is useless.  On the contrary, having some set of reasonable tests for various aspects of VW (rendering, certain 2d operations, certain sheet layer tasks) would be just enormously helpful, so that we can compare speeds - let's say, going back to VW15 - and get an idea of what we are in for if we upgrade.  The other issue you mention is that this would have to be done on different machines, let's say three or four generic representatives of the kinds of machines your users tend to have.

     

    It's not an end-all-be-all, but head and shoulders above the information desert we currently face.  I tend to think that almost any simplifying decision about files, testing categories, and machine types made by you and your team would be enthusiastically welcomed.

  17. Melanie, if you are reading this, the topic is not closed.

    I sympathize with your problem, and don't have much to offer since I am sticking with v2017, despite owning three v2018 licenses and two v2019 licenses.

    Jim, VW needs to deal head on with these speed and efficiency perceptions / reality (?) by instituting performance testing and releasing the data.  When I buy a processor I look at all the available data, and it is both voluminous and convincing.  CAD programs need to do the same thing - if for no other reason than to let their engineers know whether they are doing a good job.  When I make the time-consuming commitment to convert my files and resources to a new version, I want to know if my performance is going to be at least equal to the previous version.  That's just a simple business decision, and I don't base those on sales department press releases.

    Processing is ever more heavy, and Melanie I would be interested to know about your video card and it's RAM cache.  16 GB RAM on your computer is not as big as I would target for a new computer - I'd be looking at 32 or 64, minimum.

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