Samuel Derenboim

Good afternoon everyone, This is more of a wish list item more than anything. Dealing with different engineers that work in autocad, i find it a bit frustrating to export elevations with hatches in BIM mode to be converted into linework. More importantly, when selecting option for hatches to be converted to a separate layer, any exported elevation (not plans) hatches in vectorworks aren't converted to a different layer, instead they remain in the original layer of the wall type class. As a result the dwg files become bloated and hard to modify. Any way to change this? I know a workaround, however, its a bit cumbersome - which essentially converts any surface into a poly - that can use hatch information. This exports just fine into required hatches, just a nuissance to do for every job. Perhaps there is another way? Thanks in advance !!

also, convert you pts files into .laz, itll decrease their size by over 90%, just FYI I have a 60 GB pts file that i need to shrink, and by converting to laz, i made it about 3 gb

I have a bit of experience with this. As a tip, I wouldn't recommend converting them to individual 3d loci - as it will increase the file size tremendously. What I would do however are several things. When you import the entire .pts file or .laz or .las I would put it on a separate design layer and do not touch it. Then i would use the clip club to get the proper section cut you need, however deep you need it. So lets say your pts file will have a high elevation of 7', and a low elevation at 3'-0" - use the clip cube to clip that precise amount. When you finish doing that, right click the top face of the clip cube, and select convert to viewport. This is important - Use a design layer viewport instead of a sheet layer viewort as you can snap the points. Also, point cloud information only works in openGL - not in architectural plan mode, so bear in mind when you do that. (use the number 5 key on the number key pad to go into plan view mode for opengl). Otherwise you will not see the section information inside the viewport. The great thing about this technique is that when you assign the design layer viewports for multiple levels, you can change the depth in the section viewport properties, so if you need 1", itll use 1", if you need a foot depth, it can do that as well. Same goes for sectional information. This definitely takes a bit of practice, however, definitely useful. This technique is for Dynamic informational use - when drawing your plans. If, however you want to make slices, the point cloud tool has the option to delete all other information when you create your slice. I would recommend looking into the tools tutorials. But you definitely don't need cloud compare or any other software to get the sectional point cloud information. hope this helps!

Pat, Sorry to bug you again, is there a way to show the dimensions of all sides of a space? not just the length or the width? In the New York jurisdiction the plan examiners are very meticulous to zoning floor areas, and as a result ask us not just to show the dimensions but show the areas and calculations of every space adding up to the whole. This requires Architects in New York to subdivide all areas into rectangles, squares, trapezoids and/or triangles. When you have a trapezoid in Vectorworks however, the length of width function only shows the dimension of the larger length, not the smaller one, and not even an average between the two - which is something used in calculating the area of a trapezoid. so my question is : 1 - any way we can call out/show all the dimensions of a space? 2 - using average(length) or average(width) still wouldn't work to call out the average between the two unequal sides. any workaround?

i was referring to the worksheet. shouldn't Str2num work the same way in converting a database string entry into a number format? I believe it worked for me earlier. I will double check at home, since i have done a few experiments with this already, but a while back. By the way, =Round string worked perfectly!, Thank you Pat!

Michael, Quick question, is there a string that allows a database header to round a number to the nearest inch? In other words, lets say i have a space thats 6'5.324" x 4'7.643" - when displaying the length and width and areas - is it possible to round these numbers to the nearest inch? like 6'5" x 4'8" ...etc? Also, str2num doesn't work in vw 2017 anymore...am i missing something?

its easy using the 3d polygon tool. first create the bottom edge, then the top edge. Once you have both profiles, use the polygon tool to create the surfaces. once you are done, use shell the create thickness of the walls

Is it possible to create a roof object that is tied to story elements? Or at least having a height setting for the bottom and top portion of the elements? That way rise over run / angle would be calculated automatically. Just a thought. How does everyone else feel?

Alan, Thank you for that! Although a great feature request would be to have a low point for the roof and a high point for the roof in the tools itself - without specifying rise/run or angle. It should calculate it automatically. Infact - it would be great if it was combined with stories - similar to the way stairs work. Wouldn't that be a sight?

Yes, I meant hidden line. Thank you for the correction The problem with open gl is that it turns the linework into an image, which can be illegible once printed on a larger scale format. Everything has to be a line drawing, especially for sectional drawings. I'm worried how it will behave when i create full building sections when all elements will need to be rendered. Of course the section line depth will save me to a degree, but still very frustrating. Wondering how it can be improved in any way?

*Update I think i solved the problem. By eliminating the classes you don't need, it doesn't preload that geometry. Just a note for the future for everyone - Be careful how you load you classes when you render a model. Also create a limited depth for the rendering to further increase speed! Although I still think there should be some way to eliminate preloading automatically for elevations. I will limit the items rendered in the future though. Hope this gives some people a heads up!

best way to go is getting details from manufacturers. There are often cad details provided in dwg format - for EIFS, various panels, thruwall details, for roof - a good set of details would be firestone, for masonry details - look for details in various construction institutes like http://masonrybc.org/masonry-technical-manual. For studs - try clark detrich - they have a substantial amount of framing details. Combination between these items would get you the result you need. But I'll be honest, there never is a quick fix. to my taste - cad details are very poorly done. but then again, that's just my opinion. hope this helps!

Good afternoon everyone, I have a fairly serious situation when i recently decided to go about creating an existing 5 story building in vectorworks. The model is pretty large, approximately 405 megabytes. It contains 7 floor plates - including a cellar and a roof plan, but other than that it isn't that complex. I did include plumbing and sinks in 3d as well as 3d cabinets and countertops for kitchens on most of the floors. The existing building is a substantially a brick building, so i decided to use a brick hatch and texture for the surface perimeter. the opengl 3d model is pretty responsive, it takes a little bit of time to preload the 3d elements, but after that its very easy to navigate. The problem is this - the wireframe renderings for elevations take extremely long, in fact impossibly long to render and i cannot figure out why. In previous versions i haven't had this problem on 4 - 5 story buildings, but i also didn't have as many objects in it either. My question is this - could this be a memory leak? or just incorrect method of approaching the project? or perhaps not enough hardware specs? Listing my hardware specs below: Windows 7 sp1 Intel Core i7 - 5820k @ 3.3 ghz (can overclock to 4) Ram - 16 Gb - Dual channel ddr @ 1200 mhz Motherboard - Asrock x99 Extreme 4 Graphics - Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 - 6 gb Main HD - crucial 250 bx100 ssd drive (operating system, temp storage) Storage HD - Seagate 2 tb harddrive - 7200 rpm If its hardware - what do you suppose the bottleneck is ? Hint - could it be the ram? I checked the usage while rendering - and it jumped to 16 gb (my max). But does it really need that much ram in order to render line renderings from a BIM model? and 2 - why does it preload ALL the objects in back of the facade when they're not shown? Isn't that a bit counter productive? (at least it seems that way - from a logical standpoint) I could post the file - but let me know, its 400 mb Thank you in advance everyone !

Thank you Alan! I'm looking the marionette, very interesting! Just need to convert metric to imperial units! In fact, I'm currently experimenting with it now. I still don't have my head fully wrapped around marrionnette, but i will keep at it! This is an example of a roof that's fairly complex but that's fairly easy to create out of 3d polylines. Converting it to an actual roof is very tedius. Any suggestions? test roof.vwx

+1 !!!

something interesting - why do Sketchup models when imported with sloped faces can be easily converted to sloped roof objects? But we can't easily do that within vectorworks itself?

For classes it could make sense to do it by class independently. But you're right, it can get complex if somehow you wanted to create separate textures for plug-in styles and still maintain classes for 2d line type elements. The only way to do that is to have 2d elements and 3d elements controlled independently. That seems like it might be a total overhaul to the plugin objects themselves.

yes, that and how would you call out the attachment element of the structural member to 'attach' and 'move with' a node object, or a symbol for instance. Regarding the example file - I will upload shortly with screenshots : )

Well by class is one of the preferences. You can also set line types by object or plugin style as well. So if you were to take the custom texture approach, force the plugin style to use line types by object. Doesn't seem that difficult of a method to address coding wise (I'm guessing) because not too many parameters would need to be changed or overhauled. Just a simple conditional statement.

Any way to just generally convert a polygon into a roof face without specifying slope? or any other information? Lets say you have a 3d polygon with a series of sloping edges. My goal is to extract the sloping edges from that model - and create them with roof faces in their place. Any way to quickly do that? The only work around i see is to create a series of roof / facets in a 3d geometric object and then use shell solid tool to give it a thickness. It's crude, but very quick and effective.

Yea i was referring to members that would be sloped. This would be very effective for truss type structures - where you would have a class for the web, the top chord and the bottom chord connected to lets say a column top and bottom. By moving the column, this would in turn move those elements on different classes. Is there a way to have a marionette be coded for members attach to something like a node?

@Matt Panzer - I know, but it becomes a little redundant with the amount of classes one can have for every texture. What if i have 5 different window types with different textured frames / glazing. Wouldn't it be more productive to set the textures in the plug-in style rather than create 5 different classes for each one of those elements? Essentially ill have a class for every different window type, personally don't think it would make sense productivity wise. The other way to do it is by object - give a specific object a whole texture and select all of those particular objects by special selection. But it's still cumbersome and counter intuitive. Perhaps this can be a wishlist item?

I've noticed that the new beam tool can attach to girder elements and such, which is great. I did have a question though - the attachment is lost whenever there are beams at different heights. Is that meant to be like this? Also, any plans for column elements to snap to beam elements such as this in the future planned? Thanks in advance!

Good afternoon all, Was wondering, is it possible to assign door / window texture by plug-in style? not by class? This would be especially useful if you have one class that controls windows, but several window types. Was wondering how everyone handled that situation?

Has anyone had the problem of going over the limit of describing a Walltype in IFC records that are longer than the character limit for the description? I have been having trouble with that lately, and have been creating separate records to fully verbally describe the condition of the wall section.