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Andy Broomell

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Everything posted by Andy Broomell

  1. But let's not gaslight him... Vectorworks is NOT great in this respect. It's not possible to lock an axis of 3D movement in the same easy way that any other modern 3D program does such as SketchUp or Blender. The "T" thing sometimes works if you happen to be able to reliably move on that axis for a bit without other snaps getting in the way. But any sort of complex scene and this isn't really helpful and rarely works. (By the way, Mike, I'm guessing you're using a customized workspace which is why T is Trim for you. To see what key you should use instead or to set one up, go to Tools > Workspaces > Edit Current Workspace, go to "Keys" tab and enter a key for "Set Smart Point, Edge, or Vector Snap Lock.") That being said, Vectorworks desperately needs to add: 1) a 3D dragger for basic moving of objects in 3D space (I've heard talk of this happening in the future), and also 2) hotkeys to lock the movement to an axis without having to click on said dragger (like the arrow keys in SketchUp, or x y z keys in Blender). Sadly I haven't heard talk of this happening, but it's been often requested, and will be the only way Vectorworks will ever be taken seriously as a 3D app.
  2. Correct - I'd say any "functional" classes that are actually controlling sub-parts of Plug-In Objects (such as Ceiling-Main being used by the Door PIO) are understandable and should be kept. Another example is that the Plant tool seems to always come with a bunch of "Plants-XXX" classes which are controlling sub-parts of the plant graphics. So for me, the spirit of this thread is more about non-functional top-level classes that aren't necessarily controlling attributes of anything. But others might have differing opinions. That's always the hardest part with software design: finding a middle ground default that pleases everyone 😅
  3. Go to File > Document Settings > Document Preferences, Display tab, uncheck "Crop Perspective View."
  4. I've never gotten that to do what it sounds like it should do. But if someone else has made it work I'd love to hear about it. For me, auto-generated classes are typically coming in from symbol libraries via the Resource Manager.
  5. I've also frequently experienced the Trim tool not playing well with circle/arcs. Inconsistently, of course, so hard to file a bug.
  6. If you're trying to get a Blender file into Vectorworks, I've had the most luck using OBJ (Wavefront).
  7. I've often wondered.. does anyone use those auto-generated classes? Is there anyone that desires a class called "Furniture-Main" (for example) and actively uses it? I suspect Vectorworks has inadvertently caused hundreds of hours of unnecessary labor over the years for users to clean up class lists. I'm sure the original intention was to be helpful with auto-organization, but most users that I'm aware find it to be a paint in the butt. Additionally, my biggest pet peeve is that auto-generated classes are invisible by default in all existing Saved Views & Viewports. This trips up users constantly. I can't even count the number of times I've helped fellow users on this topic.
  8. Agreed. Note that in the meantime you can employ the Eyedropper tool to pick up and place attributes from one Callout to another (make sure "Plug-in parameters" is checked). However, this doesn't let you pick and choose specific attributes the way Style-based objects do. Updating Callouts to be Style-based would be a nice improvement, along with bringing them up to speed in other ways such as the ability to have character Tracking.
  9. No, but that would be a great feature for Vectorworks to add. I would find it particularly handy in things like Title Blocks and Data Tags.
  10. Vectorworks can do math: - (hyphen/minus sign) does subtraction + (plus sign) does addition * (asterisk) does multiplication / (slash) does division Various drafting conventions use a hyphen between numbers to indicate various things, but when in any Vectorworks field, it will always lead to it doing math (notice how the OIP doesn't show hyphens within values either). What you are currently telling Vectorworks is 24 minus half. Simply type a space instead of a hyphen and it should work.
  11. I'm guessing you're in 2023 Service Pack 4, which has an issue where curved 3D geometry is getting faceted to a lower level of detail in viewports. Do you have a different version you could try rendering in to see if the problem goes away? You can also try going into the symbol to play around with different object types, such as converting an extrude to a generic solid (some users have reported similar workarounds but I can't guarantee anything).
  12. That's only useful for applying prefixes or suffixes or replacing text. It doesn't re-number or do any actual sequencing. For example if you're wanting to renumber a range of sheets in order to insert a new sheet into the list, that's currently NOT possible except to do it manually. (It's oft been wished for on here though.) But it you wanted to change 1, 2, 3, 4 to 101, 102, 103, 104, that's possible with Batch Rename.
  13. Hi Matt, I've made a JIRA entry (VE-104236) and tagged you. It includes a 5 minute video demonstrating how Perimeter mapping used to work like magic when you needed a texture to "wrap" across surfaces, and how there's no current equivalent.
  14. Uncheck "Highlight" in the OIP and the red section will no longer be red.
  15. Indeed, I checked that "Lock tabs" option the second they added it! But presumably you can just separate some tabs into a separate palette, then lock everything. Set it and forget it.
  16. You would still be able to pull the Lights tab off into its own 'palette' - this ability was added a few versions ago. It could still feel like a separate palette if you want it to. And yes, there's also some complication with the fact that selected viewports interact differently with the Lights tab, but this could be improved as well since it's currently a bit esoteric. I like your line of thinking where this functionality would be transferred to the OIP to better align with how Class & Layer visibilities work.
  17. I agree that this is confusing. I've separately wished that the Lights and Cameras tabs could be docked into the Navigation Palette. Now I'm thinking they should just get rid of the "Visualization" palette name completely and make Lights and Cameras part of the Navigation Palette directly. There's no disadvantage to this, since these days you can rearrange, dock, and undock individual tabs at will. The problem with the current setup is that I often turn off my visualization palette to gain screen real estate, since it can only exist as its own palette. I would much rather just be able to dock the two tabs into the Navigation Palette. That way they'd be out of the way, but still be accessible if/when needed.
  18. Yes please! Already in the wishlist system as VE-102554 and VE-103993.
  19. It's a shame that Perimeter mapping was removed, because it was literally the ONLY way to do backdrops for film sets. Now it's an absolute pain in the butt to accomplish anything remotely similar, while it used to be a breeze. I'm talking 15 minutes vs 15 seconds. I should probably make a post or VE about it, because Perimeter should be restored as an option.
  20. I agree that it'd be great to be able to save Shaded render settings as a Style so that they can more easily be applied to viewports. In the meantime, once you have one viewport set up with the settings you like, you can use the Eyedropper tool to pick up those settings and apply them to other viewports en masse. Just make sure that only "Render Settings" is checked for the tool settings. This will pick up the render modes set for foreground & background, the settings for each, plus the Lighting Options (brightness, Ambient Occlusion settings, etc). You could also check Image Effects under the Viewport category if you want. I have this eyedropper configuration saved as one of my presets so it's available directly in the mode bar without having to open the tool preferences.
  21. I wish Vectorworks would make it clearer that there are "default attributes" which are the attributes in the palette with nothing selected, then there are also the "Default Attributes" which are a mysteriously stored set of attributes that you can save and recall at any point by using the little flyout menu. (I find this ability to be a bit esoteric and rarely used). I would vote for changing it so that new classes use the current default attributes in the palette, rather than the "Default Attributes" which are often unknown to the user.
  22. You could also use the Attributes Palette. Click the three dots to the right of the hatch, then uncheck and re-check "Use Local Mapping" -or- set the two Offsets to 0.
  23. Why can't I search for or even navigate to any gobo texture libraries directly in the Render tab Resource Selector? Here's the full Resource Manager: And here's the Render tab Resource Selector: If you search for "gobo" in the Resource Selector, there are no results. So you have to switch to the full Resource Manager, search for Gobo, Import the one you want, then switch back to the Light to apply it.
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