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scottmoore

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Posts posted by scottmoore

  1. 19 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

    The Scale command already has a measuring tool built in. Set the tool to the Symmetric by Distance mode, click the dimension on the right of the Current Distance field and draw between two known points. Then type the distance it is supposed to be between those points and the tool will automatically calculate the correct scale factor.

     

     

    image.png.1327072405a0547372aaa0d85a3988d2.png

    Sorry, I meant “symmetric by distance”. Thanks for the clarification. 

  2. On 3/23/2023 at 12:45 PM, Tom W. said:

     

    I'll call it a loo next time 🙂

    In the US, the term water closet has started gaining traction referring to a toilet in a small, isolated room as opposed to being open to the entire restroom. 
     

    I recall a story from the ‘70s where an American architect had designed a wayside chapel into an overall concept. He abbreviated it “WC”. An English client was extremely confused to fine the WC had seating for up to 40 people…..

     

    Regarding hybrid symbols, this was a huge selling point to me back in the MiniCad 5 days. “You can draw in 2D and 3D simultaneously?  Sold!”  Keep in mind that the 2D component doesn’t have to be a literal representation of the 3D object. Two examples:

     

    The accepted symbol for a wall outlet (at least in the US) is a circle with two lines through it. Create a hybrid symbol that has the circle and two lines as its 2D component and an actual 3D model of a wall outlet as its 3D element. Very handy. 
     

    For people symbols, take a 3D person, but in plan view add a piece of text detailing what that person’s function might be and a small cross hair mark as to where they are actually placed. Of course you could also render the person in top view, export that image and use the image file as your 2D. 
     

    Tons of useful options in hybrid symbols. 

    • Like 1
    • Laugh 1
  3. I don’t know if this helps, but “scale by distance” is a good way to sort out scaling map images. If you know a specific distance on the image, then draw a line on the image to define that distance, copy the length of the line in the drawing, then select the map image, scale by distance, paste the line distance in the first field, enter your know distance in the second, and you should be really close.  It’s much simpler than it sounds. 

     

    On outdoor site surveys, I always find a few obvious landmarks and measure between them. Items you know you will see from a satellite image. Then you can scale away fairly accurately. 

  4. I am, against my better judgement, attempting a drawing using BraceWorks truss symbols.  A couple of bothersome things I’ve thus far encountered:

     

    - when snapping a lighting device to a piece of 12” utility truss, it snaps to the center as expected and then I have to move the fixture +/- 5” to align the a truss chord (using the move command, not dragging) This is expected behavior as I understand it. When finished, some fixtures are attached to the bottom chords and some, inexplicably, to the top chords. All the same lighting device symbol inserted the same way; dragging until the red centerline appears. 
     

    - I just encountered a scenario where attaching a fixture to a truss causes the truss to become an “invalid truss symbol”.  That seems far more unusual. One note, I did modify the truss symbols in the following manner:

     

    - modified the 2D appearance of the trusses to make them appear a bit more realistic.
     

    - added a texture to the 3D component instead of a color

     

    - truncated the symbol name in the resource browser. 
     

    I’ve also duplicated the symbols to have both black and silver options. Interestingly enough, the black trusses are the original and the silver are duplicates, but it is the black truss that has the issue. The Silver duplicates perform as expected. 

     

    Any thoughts?

  5. One other note on file size and speed:

     

    While it is fairly common knowledge that replacing as many arcs and curves with straight lines in 3D is a massive time saver for rendering, I did not realize that also applies to 2D objects. When creating symbols, the 2D portion will often have arcs involved. If an item is going to be used a lot (for instance, thousands of chairs) reducing unnecessary radiuses will improve performance; often significantly. 

  6. Good information here. Just to clarify (and assuming one is using symbols when one would expect) grouping does or does not impact files size?  Following the seating examples sites, I typically do not use the seating tool, so instead I manually create my seating layouts. When I create a section of seats (using chair symbols) I’ll go ahead and group it. I’ve never considered the implications on file size. 
     

    Now, determining a proper file size for images for texturing, that is an issue. 
     

     

    • Like 1
  7. A few years later, the solution for exporting to visualizers is simply to export the design layers from which the DLVPs are generated independently. 
     

    To the question of naming conventions, I have some prefix information that is unique to my workflow but now call both the layers and classes DLVP 01 thru DLVP 10. I add a bit of specific detailed naming after once I’ve determined what one might be used for on a specific project. Works pretty well and I still find it quite intuitive vs schematic views. 

  8. My opinion is that VWX developers have decided it is easier to move users to external render programs than to rebuild VWX to the point that it provides GPU rendering. I would imagine that would be a massive undertaking. 
     

    Your points are all valid. My suggestion is to spend some time in a blank file just adding lights and adjusting them. Personally I’ve never had issues selecting and moving the sources.
     

    The biggest frustration for me is the confusion in calculations in a light beam where lit fog is in use. The beam of light, regardless of settings, appears brighter, the wider the beam gets. Somewhat backwards of how light really works. 

  9. Truly, the best thing you can do is experiment. Lighting a rendering is not all that different, in most ways, than lighting a theater scene or, perhaps more to the point, a video or movie shoot. In those scenarios you hire professional lighting designers, so plan on having to do some homework.  
     

    Play around with light sources to begin with. Setting the light type, beam and field, various fall off options, intensities. Note that <100% is an option and sometimes necessary. Look at angles, and direction.  Then it becomes a relationship between lighting, textures, reflections, backgrounds, etc. 

     

    Also note, that utilizing IES files, especially when the light is grazing a surface, can add a ton of realism. 
     

    The point above made by Luis is a good one.  If you watch the credits on an animated movie, you will see a lot of people involved with “lighting”. There is a reason for that. 

    • Like 1
  10. It is extremely frustrating to me that arc lengths are only measured from the counter-clockwise direction. I do a TON of work where I have to create arcs along existing arcs and mine have to be specific lengths and run specific directions. Currently I have to draw the arcs counter clockwise, set the appropriate lengths and then, if the arc actually has to run clockwise (which is often) I then have to rotate the arc into position.  That is simply archaic. 
     

    What would be ideal is either include a graphic in the OIP that is like the 9 radio buttons for a rectangle or 3 for a line as mentioned in this thread:

     

    or, a simple radio button that states “flip direction”.   The former would allow arcs to work like other geometry which is smart. The latter would be less intuitive but quite simple to use. 
     

    The current solution is just far too cumbersome. 

    • Like 4
  11. On 12/3/2022 at 3:48 PM, Mark Aceto said:

    We all just need switch to HUD full time, and then the problem will solve itself 😉

    We still yoke fixtures out on HUD truss (both top and bottom chords) as well as connect to the onstage and off stage chords, sometimes to the verticals and often to the legs in either the leg or catwalk position. Not to mention that VWX does not know to snap the fixtures on the center chord to the TOP of the truss, unless, of course, you’ve inverted the truss into a basket……

     

    ….but yes, we all need to switch to HUD truss. (Or Tyler GT, Christie F-type, PRG BAT, or the SGPS version whose name escapes me.)

    😉

    • Like 1
  12. Late to the conversation here. Realistic rendering is an art form unto itself. There are no magic tool sets. It’s all about attention to detail (what to include, what to leave out, how to “cheat”), lighting, textures and rendering styles. You can produce really beautiful renderings in VWX, but it’s all in the details. 
     

    As to including venues, you can see what is already available. For me it depends on the level of client and the potential that I will be in the facility more than once. That determines the amount of time I’ll spend on a model. If you can get decent 2D plans you can go along way in modeling.  Grab all the photos you can from the web and/or in person.  The architect tools available in Spotlight are plenty to get you going. I find I only use the wall and door tools at most and sometimes not even that. I say that because a lot of times it’s far simpler to generate simple geometry with an image texture than actually creating something like, for instance, a door. It will typically look better as well so long as it’s not a focal point of your design. Your renders will be much faster as well. 

    • Like 2
  13. Copy that and thanks Jesse.  That makes perfect sense.  No need for the additional script as it would take the same amount of time to just rename the sheet layers.  It is interesting to see how all this works.  I've noticed that there must be something to changing the name of a symbol as the name in the resource manager comes up with the newly assigned name.  The symbol's name in the object info seems to remain the original. Regardless, this is a serious game changer and time saver.  I love it!!   

  14. On 5/8/2022 at 4:02 AM, Jesse Cogswell said:

    @scottmoore After some noodling around this weekend, this is what I came up with.  This menu command launches a dialog box.  As you type in the Text field, the list browser becomes populated with objects whose names contain the given text, sorted by object type and defaulting to being selected.  As you type in the Replace With field, the Result column of the list browser will show you what the resulting rename will be, highlighting in red if a matching object name already exists in the drawing.

     

    The search text is not case sensitive since Vectorworks names are also not case sensitive.  However, this also means that this tool cannot be used for changing an object's name casing, since it will be flagged as an existing object name.  If changing an object's name will create a conflict as a result of this tool, an alert dialog will appear to notify you, but the operation will still go through for any objects without a conflict.

     

    I should mention that any interaction with the Text field will reset the Replace With field as well as the list browser.

     

    image.png.0886485a191f58bf471adb998a04caba.png

     

    The tool will work on any version of Vectorworks from 2019 forward.  To install the plug-in, follow the steps below:

     

    1. Download attached .vsm file.
    2. Open up your User Folder in an Explorer/Finder window.  The easiest way I've found to get to it if you don't already know where to look is to go to Vectorworks Preferences, click on the User Folders tab, then click on the Explore / Open in Finder button.
    3. Place the .vsm file you downloaded into the Plug-ins folder.
    4. Restart Vectorworks.
    5. Go to Tools - Workspaces - Edit Current Workspace.
    6. Click on the Menus tab.
    7. In the box on the left, find and expand the JNC category.
    8. In the box on the right, identify a menu to place the tool.
    9. Click and drag Replace Name Text from the box on the left to the target menu on the right.
    10. Click OK.

    This was a fun little project and I've already started making use of the tool in my own workflow.  I primarily drive VW2019 which predates the Batch Rename menu command, and this can be used to rename many things really quickly.

    Replace Name Text.vsm 13.34 kB · 5 downloads

    OK, this is really quite amazing and I really appreciate it.  I do have one question; the script does not seem to locate sheet layers.  Any suggestions?  Otherwise, this is exactly what I needed and a massive time saver.  It finds layers, classes, saved views, and symbols in one operation.  So great!! 

     

     

    • Like 1
  15. 5 hours ago, halfcoupler said:

    Last year I worked on a project with over 100 individual drawings, each on a seperate design- and sheet layers.

    To keep control over this I grouped them by simply adding empty layers between each group. Not perfect, but it worked.

    Actually, I use blank layers to break up my list of layers. This allows you to organize anyway you would like, and if instituted in your template, will make locating layers (and saved views by the way) much simpler. 

  16. @Jesse Cogswell thanks for the input. It might be helpful if you had an understanding of what I am doing. The particular template in question is for creating stage plots for multiple artist festivals and award shows.  The template is set up for 15 artists initially called “Artist 01”, “Artist 02”, etc. for each Artist there is 

     

    class “Artist xx”

    sheet layer “Artist xx”

    saved view “working - Artist xx”

    saved view “print - Artist xx”

    symbol “Artist xx keyboards” and a symbol

    “Artist xx drums”

     

    If I could select class, sheet layer, saved view, and symbol, I could update the file in a couple of minutes. Currently it’s mostly useless for this purpose and the process is pretty tedious. I think the check scenario like one uses with “Number Fixtures” in Spotlight would be ideal in my opinion. 

    • Like 1
  17. I ran into an issue yesterday that has happened a few times before.  I am the administrator of the project file for a point of reference and have always had my working file and project file either on Google Drive or Dropbox.  I open my working file and find that I cannot do anything because apparently MY computer has everything checked out.  There is no option for an administrative release, and I am dead in the water because apparently I (or a ghost me) have everything checked out.  When this has happened before, I finally resolve to create a new revision of the project file, inform users there is now a rev _____ and we move on.  Yesterday I contacted Service Select and the representative made a point I had not considered before.  Apparently it is possible for your cloud based service (Google Drive, Dropbox) to "confuse" the project file when it is syncing and can cause it to see a second version of your file which appeared to be what I was experiencing.  As of yesterday, I've moved my working files to my personal computer(s) and leave the project file on the server.  The reality is, you are saving and committing your changes to the project file anyway, so a backup of your working file is not as crucial.  That said, I still have backups running on VWX to a folder on my computer should I need it, but none of that is getting backed up to the cloud. The project file, however, is. 

     

    • Like 1
  18. The Batch Rename feature is nice, but could use some enhancements:

     

    - I think the state of the tool should remain when re-opened in a session until changed. It’s tedious to constantly select type and process each time. 
     

    - I would really like the type selection to be check marks instead of a drop down, as it is quite possible one might need to change the name of multiple types of objects at the same time. Case in point, I have a specific template that requires up to 20 name changes and each name change applies to a class, sheet layer, saved view and two symbols. Because the state of the tool reverts each time and you can’t select more than on type of item, It’s only useful for the symbols. It’s faster to do everything else manually. It may be faster to rename the symbols manually in fact. 
     

    Just my opinion. 

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