Vitanaut
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Posts posted by Vitanaut
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Hey VW team.
It would be great to make this a priority. VW 2008 is great and could be much greater with support for the more advances 3d mouses.
I want all the functions of Space Pilot (same drivers as space navigator by the way).
(three years ago I put this on the wish list!)
Thanks
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None of the stairs displayed. However, after a cold boot, they are unexpectedly working like they should.
Thanks, Robert
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The settings dialog box for the Stair PIO no longer displays. I have a building with multiple stairs and now cannot configure them beyond what you can control in the Object Info palette.
I hope there is a quick fix and this is not a file corruption issue.
Please help.
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Correction.
The problem may also be caused by NVIDIA's nView Desktop Manager.
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Katie,
I think Spy Sweeper is the problem. I ran for hours last night with not even a slow down after shutting it down. Spy sweeper impacts a lot of other programs as well---most notable Windows Explorer.
When VW stopped responding i let it "not Respond" for hours on several occasions.
Interesting I could start a new session and it would work fine though even while the first was still trying to close.
I seem to have gotten off lucky with this quick discovery. You have successfully pulled of the Socratic method on me.
Alanmac,
SLI is now manageable through a typical dialog box. Turn it off or on depending on what you are doing without rebooting. This make great sense for me because
I am driving three dell monitors a 20", the new 30" (fantastic by the way) and another 20". and SLI can only handle one. When I want to do some heavy rendering in any app that uses an Open Gl engine for example the speed is incredible. I have not loaded any games.
On my last machine (dual xeon, radeon 9700 Pro) the render times for some images may have been 45 min or so with lots of artifacts. On this machine they are in the 2 minute range. (not a very scientific comparison I know but I am very happy with it.)
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Possible conflict with SpySweeper?
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Again, not the issue.
Sorry I forgot to answer your question. The simple tasks i am doing are 2D polygon editing and wall movement. It simply hangs. and then shows "Not Responding"
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That was not the issue. It happened again. I noticed this time however, that it happened with a scheduled email check. Could this be network related?
I am trying again to work without MS Outlook running.
Any other ideas?
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Thanks for the response Katie. I have done some experimenting and have more information.
I was hesitant to get into hardware/drivers because this machine is designed for high end CAD work and frankly I didn't want it to seem like I was posting to brag---but then I work from a home office and no one can appreciate it anyway so. . .
It's a dual -dualcore operteron.
dual NVIDIA quadro 4500 with SLI toggle
4 GB ram
4 10k rpm raptor HDs in RAID 0+1
I could go on but you get the point.
Every component has the most recent driver available (w/ no beta versions)
The additional information has to do with Open GL acceleration (the reason i paid 10x as much for the Quadros). i turned off Hardware accelerated 2D navigation in VW preferences and so far have not had any problems (one hour so far). But I have yet to really test it. If I come up with anything else i will add it here.
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OK,
I uninstalled (and verified all registry entries were also deleted) reinstalled and the same thing is happening. Very frustrating to say the least.
Is there a way to kow (besides these kind of errors) that a file is corrupted?
Any other suggestions?
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I have not, I admit.
I will try now and get back to you after a test run.
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Hello Katie, Robert,
Here's the situation:
After about 5 minutes or so the program stops responding. I am not doing anything fancy just simple manipulation. I have recreated the problem in different files. Same thing.
VW is behaving like it has a corrupt object -- I remember similar problems in VW 8.5.
There is no warning or error message it simply stops responding. Is there a way to check for file corruption?
Are there any other known issues?
When this happens every other program I am running is unaffected. This machine is just a couple of months old and was built to be very stable and very fast.
Windows XP Pro updated
VW 12.0.1 Designer
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A better initial question may have been:
VW versus Revit.
I'd rather not support Autodesk but they bought Revit for a reason...
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I may not understand exactly what you are trying to do but I suggest thinking about it in a different way:
Instead of trying to create with subtraction build it with addition. If you can define the shape of the section you can then extrude it or duplicate a spiral array. Or simply assemble disparate parts and then add solid.
When attempting to define the shape of a 2d section remember to look in both the transverse and longitudinal planes.
If you can describe or send an image I will show you what I mean.
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As an owner of a design/build firm -- thanks for posting a great question (especially with its implications).
There are reasons why Architects have lost so much clout in the overall building process. Increasing complexity and lack of experience has created a profession of technical artists (I hereby claim that phrase) rather than master builders.
I learned to frame before I went back to grad school and at least at Berkeley the emphasis was almost completely on the art side.
I look forward to other's responses.
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3DConnection's space pilot desgined for two handed 3d manipualtion and drawing works in 70 other cad/ 3d programs.
http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/3a4.php
When will we be able to use it in VW?
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I have been thinking about something like this. It's a joy to know that it exists but alas it's not yet supported for VW...
See it:
http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/3a4.php
Does anyone know of a 3D input/navigation device that is meant to be used in conjuction with a mouse?
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aparently I am going to have to answer my own question... tech support listen up.
This taken from http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-12217.html
-- check out the heated debate that followed this posting.
if you are using 3D to pay your bills, if every minute saved is dollars saved, then quadro FX is worth its price. if you are student or 3D hobbiest, fx5900 or other nvidia gaming cards(dont try other brands ) is enough.
here is a list of a professional card/gaming card difference taken from a PNY presentation:
The customers expectations
The term professional workstation usually implies high driver and hardware quality, excellent reliability, responsive support, and high performance.
The expectations of workstation users exist because they have a different point of view when they?re looking at their computers. It?s a tool, not a toy, they have to work with it.
Their goal is to design, create scenes or demonstrate their work. Time is money, so they don?t accept crashes, baffling bugs or avoidable delays in workflow.
They don?t change their adapter twice a year, so they expect driver support for at least 2 years.
Because in most companies the purchased hardware has to be qualified, it should be available for a long period of time, no matter if it?s up to date
Public Opinion
People often ask for the differences between Quadro and GeForce adapters, because their technique appears to be very similar and their price is differntiating.
Even in CAD-relevant newsgroups there are many estimations of users telling that GeForce adapters work fine in 3dsmax, Inventor, AutoCAD and so on.
What people mostly forget, is that especially this similarity dropped the prices for professional adapters. NVidia?s concept worked for both, the quality and versatility of consumer adapters and the pricing for professional products.
But there are lots of differences, and NVidia spends ambitious efforts to create the perfect solution for both parties.
1.1 Hardware antialiased lines
A unique feature of the Quadro GPUs is to support antialiased lines in hardware. This has nothing in common with the GeForce full-scene antialiasing.
It works for lines, not for shaded polygons, without sacrificing performance or taking extra video memory for oversampling. Most professional applications support this feature because it is standardized by OpenGL.
1.2 Logical Operations
Another unique feature of the Quadro GPUs is supporting OpenGL Logical Operations. Those can be implemented as a last step in the rendering pipeline, before contents is written to the framebuffer. Workstation applications use this functionality to draw on top of a 3D scene, for example to mark a selection by a simple XOR function.
Having this function done in hardware prevents from significant performance losses like a GeForce Adapter would show.
2. The OpenGL Differences
On consumer and workstation adapters, OpenGL is used for different purposes:
Most common applications for GeForce adapters are full-screen OpenGL games.
CAD applications are working with OpenGL windows, in combination with 2D-elements
The unified driver architecture provides an optimized implementation for both, professional and consumer demands. While consumer applications have a quite simple request, bug-free functionality and performance over all, there are several optimizations for professional applications that would not improve anything in full-screen OpenGL. They only make sense for window-based OpenGL and are therefore working on Quadro-based hardware only.
They will be explained next?
2.1 Clip Regions
A typical workstation application contains 3D and 2D elements. While viewports display window-based OpenGL, menus, rollups and frames are still 2D elements. They oftenly overlap. Depending on how they are handled by the graphics hardware, overlapping windows may noticeably affect visual quality and graphics performance.
When a window has no overlapping windows, the entire contents of the color buffer can be transferred to the frame buffer in a single, continuous rectangular region. However, if other windows overlap the window, the transfer of data from the color buffer to the frame buffer must be broken into a series of smaller, discontinuous rectangular regions. These rectangular regions are referred to as ?clip regions.
GeForce Hardware supports just one clip region, mostly sufficient for displaying menus in OpenGL. Quadro GPUs support up to 8 clip regions in hardware, keeping up the performance in normal workflow using CAD/DCC applications.
2.2 Hardware-Accelerated Clip Planes
Clip planes allow sections of 3D-objects to be cut away so the user can look inside solid objects. Looking inside objects is particularly useful for visualizing assemblies. For this reason, many professional CAD /DCC applications provide clip planes.
The Quadro family of GPUs supports clip-plane acceleration in hardware?a significant performance improvement when they are used in professional applications. Tests 6 and 10 of the SPECopc Viewperf MedMCAD-01 Test define a clip plane, and are useful for quantifying the performance benefits of clip-plane support on the Quadro2 family.
2.3 Quadro Memory Management optimization
Another feature offered by the Quadro family of GPUs is Quadro memory management optimization, which efficiently allocates and shares memory resources between concurrent graphics windows and applications. In many situations, this feature directly affects application performance and so offers demonstrable benefits over the consumer-oriented GeForce GPU family.
The graphics memory is used for the frame buffer, textures, caching and data. NVIDIA?s unified memory architecture dynamically allocates the memory resources instead of keeping a fixed size for the frame buffer. Instead of the remaining frame buffer memory being wasted because it is unused, UMA allows it to be used for other buffers and textures.
Especially when applications require much memory, using quad-buffered stereo or full scene antialiasing, it becomes more important to manage the resources efficient. The table below contains different constellations on GeForce and Quadro hardware showing the advantage of this effectiveness, both have 32MB on board
2.4 Common problems solved with Quadro drivers:
Two-sided Lightning
Quadro hardware supports two-sided lighting. Objects which are not created as solids may show triangles from their ?back-side? viewing the objects from the inside.
Two sided lightning prevents the diffuse and specular lightning components from dropping to zero when the surface normal points away from the light source. As a result, these ?backward-facing?triangles remain visible through all viewing angles.
2.5 Hardware Overlay Planes
The user interfaces of many professional applications often requires elements to be interactively drawn on top of a 3D model or scene. The cursor, pop-up menus or dialogs appear on top of a 3D-viewport. These elements can damage the contents of the covered windows or affect their performance and interactivity.
To avoid this, most professional applications use overlay planes. Overlay planes let items be drawn on top of the main graphics window without damaging the contents of the windows beneath. Windows drawn in the overlay plane can contain text, graphics, and so on?the same as any normal window.
The planes support a transparency bit, which when set, allows pixels underneath the overlayed window to show through. They are created as two separate layers, nothing has to be blended together. This prevents damage to the main graphics window and improves performance. Likewise, clearing an overlayed window to the transparency bit and then drawing graphics within it allows user-interface items to be drawn over the main graphics window.
Clearing and redrawing only the overlayed window is significantly faster than redrawing the main graphics window. This is how animated user-interface components can be drawn over 3D models or scenes.
2.6 Quad buffered stereo
The Quadro GPU family supports quad-buffered stereo; the GeForce GPU family does not. Quad-buffered stereo is an OpenGL functionality, not depending on special stereo hardware to show the effect. Two pictures are generated, both double-buffered, one per eye. Displaying is done alternately or interlaced, depending on the output device.
Many professional applications like 3ds max, SolidWorks or StudioTools let users view models or scenes in three dimensions, using a stereoscopic display. It can be done by a plugin, like in Solidworks, by a application driver like MAXtreme in 3ds max, an external viewer like QuadroView for autocad-based products or by the application itself. The use of stereoscopic display is to have an overview in complex wireframe constructions, making walkthroughs much more realistic and impressive or simply to improve the displaying of proportions in large 3D-scenes.
Stereo support on the Quadro GPU family significantly benefits professional applications that demand stereo viewing capabilities.
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I am splurging on a new workstation and need to know if Nvidias Quadro FX line is worth the huge price increase vs. the GeForce 7800. Both cards would be doubled up in an SLI configuation. The fill rates/ memory bandwidth and are better in the Geforce???
Thanks in advance.
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Thanks Robert.
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Does anyone know of a good source of standard architectural details. I have been patiently waiting for the AIA to send me Architectural Graphic Standards on CD-Rom (for $425 minus 10% for members) only to find out that they won't be able to ship it for another week.
That has forced me to do what I should have done before... ask the good folks here.
So -- does anyone know of a good source of standard details that can be easily imported into VW? Picking through previous jobs/cannibalizing other projects doesn't save much work when they have to be adapted anyway.
Any suggestions...
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There is a far simpler way to do this.
Change the default selecvtion in the export dxf dwg dialog box from classes to layers then check to export invisible layers.
I frequently do this with 20 layer files with no problem. Just make sure all the classes you want to export are visible. I must say that I don't know how this works with saved sheets though.
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VW Ver. 10.5
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Katie,
I have tried but I can't find the pattern that triggers the problem.
It has occurred when rotating wall segments (cntr L), adjusting wall cavities, and moving walls while holding shift to maintain alignment.
Any ideas.
Lag Bolt?
in General Discussion
Posted
Yes thanks ray.
It would be great if a lag feature was added to the fastener tool! Hint hint katie.