scottmoore

And I should credit Andy Dunning of Landru Designs for knocking some sense into me many years ago regarding this topic.

I see a lot of drawings from various different designers, technicians, producers, etc. and it occurs to me that most people seriously under-utilize saved views. Due to the name, most people, if they use it at all, use saved views to recall...views; various perspectives, angles, etc. While that does make sense, there is a ton of functionality available in saved views to improve anyone’s workflow: If you take a quick glance at the dialogue box as your saving, you will see there are a lot of very useful options that would allow one to: recall class selections recalllayer selections (of course, both class and layer selections) activate specific classes for classing objects as you draw/insert them. Saving perspective views that do not change class/layer visibility’s so that you can see exactly the elements you currently have visible. Select specific sheet layers for printing Select sheet layers for rendering Any number of really useful things. Once you get used to this and have set-up some well thought-out views, you can often avoid a lot of the tedious turning on and off classes, selecting layers and sheet layers in drop down menus, constantly re-setting perspective views, etc. Muscle memory will simply take you to the saved views drop down to accomplish a large percentage of those tasks. Just a thought. Carry on.

I would agree that the seating layout and seating section tools should probably just be a single tool. There has beeen much discussion about the quality and reliability of these tools and as such, I simply don’t use them. I find seating layouts are just not that difficult to produce manually. Seating is one of those line item job descriptions that fall really low on most designer’s priority list but quickly can become the absolutely most important thing on site when you start to run into issues. The changeover crew either not knowing how to install the chairs correctly or simply doing it wrong, finding out you have an issue with codes or the fire marshal or running into manifest concerns with the ticketing staff. All of these can become serious stress issues between the designer, producer, promoter and local entities. I would rather absolutely know exactly how the floor plan was created and how it is to be implemented as opposed to assuming VW got it right. I’ve had teamsters furious with me that there was “no way they could fit that many rows on the floor!” All I had to do was walk over, ask them where they started their first measurement (which was wrong on their part) and how far apart they were planning on setting rows (also wrong on their part). It’s nice to confidently say, “set your tape here, set your rows at _____ inches and you will have exactly what I drew.” That was a lot better for me then having to second guess if VW had actually correctly populated the seating areas based on my input data.

...and make sure you have lighting levels that are bright enough to “see” the results. If it’s too dark, all you will see is a black stage regardless.

Quick solution would be to create a gobo and project that onto a curved surface using a lighting instrument. Not the most elegant approach but it will work.

Kevin, when you say your workflow is 100% 3D, are you mostly using direct modeling or do you use a lot of plug in objects and Spotlight symbols? I do all of my drawing in 3D using a combination of direct modeling and custom symbols. I’ve often wondered how much processing is going on “behind the scenes” when using items that are referencing data such as Spotlight symbols. I also wonder what all is involved, from a processing standpoint, when using Design Layer Viewports? I have been on record as saying that the last really bullet-proof, blazing version of VW for me was 2010. It occurs to me at that time I was using all my own symbols (which is still the case) but I did not include the Spotlight functionality beyond being able to add text via the label legend manager. I also had not yet implemented the idea of design layer viewports until Landru demonstrates that for me. I clearly recall the last project I designed in 2010 and how quickly I had it drawn and rendered. The difference between then and now is astounding and I am curious as to how much of that is the application and general and how much is due to how it is being used.

it seems to me that what really slows down VW is the usage of plug-in objects, Spotlight symbols that have to reference a lot of data, Design Layer Viewports and other items like that. It also seems like the physical “size” of the drawing (such as site plans that are 100s or thousands of feet wide) can be culprits. The amount of memory used in a drawing seems to impact things as well. So long as I am doing straight up drawing, VW seems to behave fairly well except for all the known and frankly, ridiculous bugs. I am not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination but I am pretty certain that VW is extremely dated in how it handles processing from a CPU and GPU standpoint. I would have much rather had improvements in that area than the multi-viewer feature or any other “improvements” added over the past several iterations.

Sean, I’ve experienced this as well and it appears it is just another in a series of minor but annoying issues. I’ve never been able to track the source of that issue.

I would sure agree to being able to right click and export. The drawing marquee thing seems really pedestrian.

Glad that solved the problem. I should note that there are times that spotlight fixtures disappear for no good reason. “Refresh Instruments” ( command / ) will solve this. It’s a little frustrating when that happens.

I thought I had replied to this but I am not seeing the reply. The solution was to copy the audience props from the reference file into the main drawing. Not at all what I wanted, not ideal, but it works. I did try deleting ting and re-asserting the reference file and that actually made things worse. I suppose I could copy and paste the audience into a dedicated drawing and then reference that in.

No glow texture. I am going to try and delete the reference and the reinstate it. Here is what is happening currently. The disappearing people in the main seating area are in class in the reference file. The people in the upper suites are in another class in the same reference file. The people on the ground are in the primary file. B712EC16-DE2F-4C31-ACE6-2D19515890B3.MOV

All the ones that are currently disappearing are on a single class in a referenced file. Other props in other classes on that red file work correctly as do props in the master file.

Several.

Greetings. I am having some issues with image props in a rendering. There are LOTS of them. (Thousands) I’ve used this same concept on many projects successfully but have also run into this issue and don’t know what to do to troubleshoot it. Basically, the props are there in wireframe and in OpenGL. Whenever I render unsung Renderworks, they disappear. They show up for the OpenGL preview, but they disappear with each processed block. What is even more odd is that it is just sections of them. Some still remain. Anticipating that this issue might show up, I’ve been rendering from time to time and all was well. Once everything was done and ready to start actual renders, this issue popped up. Any thoughts on what I should check? Is it possibly an issue of quantity? It’s about 7,000 props.

I think we often get too focused on the parametric tool sets. Those can be great assets but they can also be a huge time suck leaving one with less than satisfactory results. Case in point; I needed a curved I-beam ladder truss for a project yesterday. I thought I would give the curved truss tool a go which I generally never use but I do know how it works. I spent about ten minutes futzing with it trying to get something like what I needed. I punted that and drew my own in under five and it was precisely what I wanted. Point being; for every parametric tool set, one has to learn how it works, where the buttons and appropriate fields are located how data manipulation returns what kind of results, etc. Now that is all very cool when you can quickly turn out something that is exactly what you wanted. On the other hand, one can learn one set of tool sets for direct modeling and that one set of tools that work the same way everytime (or at least they are SUPPOSED to) allow one to draw pretty much anything you might ever need. Modeling is really not all that difficult. It’s a skill that will serve you well. And yes, VW is still slow and buggy....

I posted one a year or so ago that was rock solid in it’s failure 100% of the time. I’ll try posting this one, however, I am sure the problem will go away as the file will have been re-started. What is even more frustrating is that I will often start a new, blank file, create some geometry, render it, get a screen snapshot to make a texture and move on. No need to waste time saving files and all of that. When this happens, I now have to stop, save the file as something, somewhere, close it and then re-open it. All of which probably takes as long as it did for me to create the necessary texture in the first place.

More of the same two years later... I posted a short video on the Entertainment forum, but it doesn’t want to load here.

I know there have been posts about this in the past and I ha e started at least one of those. Regardless, this issue of Renderworks not being able to track changes is completely out of hand in my opinion. This is just another example of simple things VW should be able to do without the user giving it another thought, but apparently it cannot. Infuriating!! 8959869E-680B-4BF9-A1EE-78CA53A515D3.MOV

I do more or less the same thing. I use realistic instruments but non-descript silhouettes for people. It’s not necessarily ideal, but I also find that it is better to either use a silhouette or an image prop of the actual person than using a non-descript model. I tried figures years ago and the first comment I would get from clients was some joke about how different the model looked from the actual person. I’ve also messed around with mannequins. This is nice because you can see the effects of back light, side light, etc. but it does slow down the render process and often the gains are just not worth it.

Smarter people than me will respond to this. As far as I know, using DLVPs (which I do all the time) is a fantastic tool in VW, but they do not translate to exports. I am not aware if this is an issue with VW > Cinema4D, but it is an issue when exporting to many other sources including Vision. I would assume that would be an issue with DWG files as the angled geometry is really not angled geometry at all; just a picture (for lack of a better term) of standard geometry that has been rotated.

This is another example of a great use for a design layer viewport.

Jim, What is different between 2010 and 2018 is that my drawings have become more complicated. Certainly more viewports. That said, I would seriously disagree with the idea that 2018 is any way comparable to 2009 or 2010. There was no way that I ever sat around and waited for over 10 seconds for the program to allow me to change the active class. I timed that particular issue at roughly 15 seconds this morning. I do recall 2008 being a bit of an issue, but what I am seeing now is really unacceptable. Certainly, 2010 was nothing like this.

Troy, Vectorworks was just like that about 8 years ago. It was lightning fast, rock-solid and I always looked forward to working on it. Now.....not so much.

My approach would be the same as Andy’s above: create the blue surface texture and apply a glow to it. The question to ask ask is how would this work in the real world? My assumption is that the blue surface is a back lit translucent plastic. If that is the case, then I would absolutely create an image that has the proper gradient, (I often do these in greyscale so I can easily change to color of the “light” by changing the object color or, more typically, assigning the object to class by color and changing things globally that way). Assign a glow texture to it, add a bit of reflectivity as well if it is smooth plastic and you should be good. Realism vs rendering performance will determine if you want your texture to emit light. The reflectivity makes a HUGE difference in realism.