scottmoore

This has been going on for quite some time. There are plenty of comments about this. Perhaps search “render cache”. I will say that I’ve not seen it nearly as much in the past year or so. Actually, I am not sure when the last time I saw it might have been. I am on 2021.

Ok so 2 1/2 years late and this would still be a workaround, but what if each of your 14 symbols became lighting devices and the texture that needed changing received its color by object and the particular geometry to which this texture was applied received its color by class and you made that class a “lens” class? Then all you have to do is assign a color to the “lighting device” and it would change the texture color of each individual item. Don’t forget to set your Spotlight preferences to allow fo this.

While this doesn’t really help you, I’ve always been a MBP user and have never run into this issue. I do a ton of rendering in VWX. So long as my laptops have been on a power adaptor, I’ve never even considered battery life. That seems really odd.

Works great as export PDF with layers. Just did a test file.

Ok, so first thing is I wasn’t aware you could export PDF with layers. Seems like this will work like a champ. Stand by...

Sean, I am bringing this topic back up as I just bought a Glowforge Pro and am interested in your process. When exporting a PDF, should I assume that line/fill colors can be used as scoring, engraving and cutting? Some experimentation today is in order I think.

I would tend to disagree with this. It is crucial to be able to have the potential to cast shadows or not per texture. If you place a light object inside a piece of geometry, the texture applied to that geometry needs to not cast shadows in order for your light to work. Not casting shadows is often helpful when using process renders when you want to investigate how things look without waiting for shadows to render.

I was a late adopter of that button as well, but certainly speeded up the process once I realized it was there! The thing about a CAD program like VWX is that accuracy is really important. That is why there is less interactive than you might suspect. Sometimes that can be a downfall when you “just want to make that tree a little bigger”.

Not exactly what you are looking for but “scale by distance” might help you. I find it to be rather quick.

True, but it is far more time consuming than simply rendering on the design layer. I’ll give that a shot.

For what it is worth, I have had this issue in both 2020 and 2021 on multiple files with three different machines; two laptops and a desktop. I just find it incredibly infuriating.

Depending on your requirements, you could also consider image props.

That does seem odd. I don't recall ever having that issue. It sounds like a bug. Are you on 2021? In 2021 I just tried a referenced file via viewport (which is how I always do references so that might be an issue). I tried renaming a class in the reference file to the name of a class I had in the primary file. Made sure to save the reference file but left the file open. I updated the reference and it worked as expected. I then changed the name of another class in the ref file, saved it and closed it. Updated the ref in the primary and it still worked as expected. Might be worth a call to Service Select if you have that service.

First of all, this sounds like an awful lot of work maintaining multiple files when you do not need to do so. That said, I also understand the need to move forward on existing projects in their current configuration, but definitely look into the section view functionality in VWX. It's not difficult and that will be a huge boost to your productivity. In the navigation palette, select the references icon at the top (should be the last w=one on the right). When you select that, every file you have referenced in should be visible. If there have been changes made tot he reference file, the name will appear in red text. Off the top of my head, you right click on the referenced file to brig up a window that will allow you to update. I believe there is also an option to auto-update those files. Does this help?

I do that as well, however, It’s not really possible to check detailed lighting, reflections, bump shaders, that sort of thing in OpenGL which is the primary issue.

What is it going to take to fix the RenderWorks issue of rendering on the design layer?!?! There is no reasonable workaround for this that doesn’t become extremely time inhibitive. We should be able to model something, add a texture, add some lighting and immediately render to see if we like the look of the modeling, the texture, the reflectivity, the lighting. The fact that we constantly have textures return blank, or changes not represented is ridiculous. Render bitmap tool? No thanks. Sheet layer viewports? That is for final output, not in-process renders. This never used to be an issue. Seemed to show up in perhaps ‘17 or ‘18? This needs to be fixed. So bloody frustrating! (please don’t tell me that “rendering on the design layer is not a good practice”. That is, frankly, preposterous.)

I suggest contacting Andy Dunning and see if he will code one. Then he can add that functionality to the lift tool. Now would be a good time since we are all looking for projects.

Ugh

I’ll give that a shot.

Bumping this up...

Bumping this up....

I converted the requisite scripts to tools and gave them a short cut key. Unfortunately, I cannot recall how I converted them as I’ve only done it at one time and that was seven months ago. I did not see any info on this in the help menu but it is very do-able and really worth it.

That is so true. It helps when you are the one signing everyone’s check. 🙂 To the point of this thread, it will be interesting to see if adding the 3D functionality to the cable toolset is really all that crucial or is it just easier to direct model things out in 3D when needed.

@samjones to your point, I would only render cable “looms” and not individual cables. Just a single path to a particular truss. It’s all about getting lighting, rigging, video and scenic teams on the same page.