Andy Broomell

Yes, the problem is that when any Light object is inserted into your document (including the one embedded within a Spotlight Lighting Device), this causes the "Default Light" to turn off / disappear. There have posts on this forum requesting control over this for years, yet nothing has been done about it. It's particularly problematic with Lighting Devices since there's a Light embedded in every single one that you don't have much control over. For now, try adding in a Directional Light to use as work light. Of course, this remedy is plagued by the fact that OpenGL can only display 8 light sources at once, and there's no control over which 8... So no perfect solution unfortunately. If control isn't given in another way, at the very least Spotlight Lighting Devices should be programmed such that the embedded Light objects are universally placed on a class that can be made Visible or Invisible, while retaining the rest of the Lighting Device geometry. That would you could turn off that class and get back the Default Light.

Is this what you mean?

Is there any way to make Vectorworks remember the size of the application window from one session to the next? It seems to always reset itself and it's driving me batty 😅 "Save Palette Positions" is not the answer.

With viewports you don't control the render properties with the View menu. Instead, select the viewport and in the Object Info Palette find the "Background Render" dropdown and set it there. This is because each viewport can have its own render settings. What render mode are you using? You may also have to click the "Background Render Settings" button to further determine the settings you want. For example, with OpenGL this is where you can turn color and textures on or off. Let us know if this helps or if you have any other questions 🙂

Here are a few thoughts... I recently learned that 2D Components only work when Background Render is set to Hidden Line, which means you can't combine a Background Render of OpenGL with a Foreground Render of Hidden Line and keep that custom 2D linework. Here's a wishlist request to change that. So the decision you have to make is the trade off between having shading (OpenGL+Hidden Line) -or- having 2D Components but no shading (Hidden Line only). Of course the workaround is to have two stacked viewports, one set to OpenGL and the other set to Hidden Line. Then you get the best of both worlds but have to deal with two coincident viewports. If using both OpenGL+Hidden Line, make sure OpenGL edges are turned off so you only have the nice, crisp vector lines from Hidden Line. In Hidden Line render mode, the colors you see are the actual pen colors of those objects. If you go to your Design Layer and use the teapot dropdown to switch to Hidden Line you'll see that those colors are indeed present (the same colors that appear in Wireframe). You may be used to the OpenGL "edge" lines which always appear as black regardless of pen settings, but those edges are not vector-based. When using a Hidden Line viewport, one quick way to override all these pen colors for that specific Viewport is to select it and choose "Advanced Properties" in the OIP, then check the "Black and White Only" option. Note that this will also affect objects in the Annotations of that viewport (which bugs me since I like blue dimensions, but that's how it's programmed). Regarding the grey walls in OpenGL, this is due to the "Default Light" that exists in Vectorworks (the one that provides shading when you're actively modeling in your Design Layer). There is no way to select or modify this Default Light (though it goes away the moment you add any Renderworks Lights). But in your case, you should be able to simply select the OpenGL Viewport, click Lighting Options, then bring the "Brightness" slider all the way up to 100% and re-render. This should cause all angled surfaces to show up as white (but will likely cause your roof to appear white as well). By the way, I also recommend turning on Ambient Occlusion if you don't already have it on; this will still show up to provide some shading even when ambient brightness is all the way up. Experiment and let us know what you come up with! 🙂

Clip Cube and Camera - Image 1 As of VW2019 Sheet Layer viewports can display Clip Cubes, and each viewport can have its own Clip Cube... so this could solve your issue. Horizontal Section - Image 2 With this approach you should be able to select the Section Viewport and in the OIP find the "Projection" dropdown and change it to "Perspective" then alter the "Perspective Distance" to change the amount of perspective. Let us know if either of these approaches solves the task at hand.

I've found this to be quite buggy as well, particularly if the RM is floating and set to auto-collapse.

In addition to the points above, check that the "Crease Angle" under OpenGL Options isn't set too low. Should be around 70 or so.

Mostly repeats of things above, but here's my checklist: Templates: Classes, including: Class attributes None & Dimension default colors and lineweights Design Layers and all their settings, including: Design Layer scale Design Layer elevations, stories, etc. Sheet Layers, including: Sheet size Title block borders Saved Views Resources in Resource Manager Symbols, Textures, Linetypes, Hatches, etc. Tool defaults (conversely, these can be removed via Tools > Purge > Special Record Formats) Dimension standards Everything under File > Document Settings Document Preferences Unit settings Options for render settings, including: OpenGL settings (quality, show edges, etc.) Hidden Line settings (default smoothing angle) View > Set Lighting Options Turn on Ambient Occlusion Active Class & Active Layer Initial view when the document opens All objects in drawing And probably more… anything that’s “in” a regular file is saved into a template.

You can pretty much do this already but it's not super obvious. If you're in Annotations and right click, you can actually access the other three Viewport Edit options (Crop, Design Layer, Camera) without having to exit Annotations. If you choose to edit Design Layer, it'll give you the "Return to Viewport" button (even if that option isn't selected in the regular Edit Viewport dialog box, which is great). Plus, if you right click on a particular object when you're in Annotations, you're taken to the Design Layer that object is on. Give it a shot and let me know if this is what you're looking for.

Interesting that it only applies to drag & drop and not double click insertion. Good to know, thank you! For what it's worth, my goal is simply to set up a template for others to use that's hard to mess up. I actually just leave TBBs on the None class, but in some other people's files I've recently seen a number of TBBs on the Dimension class (which was surely Active when the TBB was inserted) and therefore the borders were blue 😅

I've gotten odd extra lines like this in places where they shouldn't be more than once over the last week. Thought it was a fluke at first but now that I see you're having the same issue I wonder if there's a bug in there somewhere...

Is there a way to set a Title Block Border object to always insert onto a particular class once it's been saved as a Style in the Resource Manager (like a red symbol)? For example with regular symbols, under Symbol Options you can choose a class for that symbol to always insert onto. How can I do that with a TBB Plug-In Style? Currently it always inserts onto the active class. @Nikolay Zhelyazkov

I learned today that 2D Symbol Components (Front/Side/etc.) are only available when Hidden Line is set as the background render mode. I often use a background render of OpenGL (with colors and textures off) and a foreground render of Hidden Line, but with this arrangement I'm not able to utilize Symbol Components 😞

When you make custom symbols, they are no longer "Window" objects, so "Plan Wall Offset" isn't an option: But it should be!! 😁