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Andy Broomell

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Everything posted by Andy Broomell

  1. You know, basic working in the program 😉 But yes, this seems to be the most common trigger for me. Render, change something, renderfail.
  2. I kept X-Ray as B as well in my custom workspace, which I remember because the tool helps me look "B"ehind things 😆
  3. Still experiencing it in 2018 as well, particularly when going in and out of groups while picking up and dropping attributes across objects inside and outside of the groups.
  4. Oh wow! Wait, why did they rename it from "Sheet Border" to "Drawing Border"? 🤔 It appears that when you add a new "Drawing Border - Old" object it actually lets you use it. So if the old tool still exists, why is there no way to avoid the forced conversion of old titleblocks to the new style when double clicking them?
  5. On my machine when I open files converted from 2017, I can change data in the Data tab of the OIP, but the moment I double click the Sheet Border or try to make any other change, it won't do so without forcing a conversion to the new Title Block Border. And looking in my workspace editor the old Sheet Border tool isn't even listed. (All tools)
  6. I think one of the main failures in the transition to the new 2018 title block is that Vectorworks disallows you from using the previous version. Especially during this first year when people have been discovering the new tool's numerous issues, it would've been nice to be able to fall back on the old version when necessary. A year of overlap would've been wise.
  7. Being able to continue working should always trump the re-rendering of the preview area in the Edit Texture dialogue box. For example, just now I wanted to edit the density of a texture that utilizes the grass shader, so I click Edit Texture, then I have to wait for the preview area to render before I can actually do anything. It's a fairly dense grass with an image base, so this takes about 30 seconds. Then I have to go into the actual grass shader so I click edit for that. On this pop-up it takes another 30 seconds to render the square preview area on the right before I can change any values. I want to make it 90 percent density instead of the current 80, so I type "9" and it automatically starts re-rendering. Once that's finished, it then accepts the "0" that I typed, after which it re-renders again. Once that's done, I can finally click OK on the grass shader settings. Then it has to re-render the preview of the main Edit Texture dialogue box. Once that's finished I can finally hit OK. It rendered FIVE times when in reality I didn't actually need to see any preview. I don't mind the automatic preview rendering as a general concept, but it should never prevent you from typing or from clicking OK, for example. Editing this texture should've taken 10 seconds, but it took 3 minutes.
  8. Ah yes, the ambient lighting under View < Set Lighting Options will change it for OpenGL in all your Design Layers. But it won't change the lighting option on any Sheet Layers, because as a general rule when you a create a viewport it now has its own independent lighting settings. So if you change the Design Layer lighting options, it'll never push this change to existing OpenGL viewports. One thing that might save a bit of time is to change one viewport, then use the Eyedropper tool to pick up the Viewport Render Properties from that viewport and drop it onto all your other viewports. Alternatively, if you use Renderworks Styles (Not Custom Renderworks), changing the ambient lighting for any one viewport changes the Renderworks Style resource and therefore pushes that change to all viewports using that Renderworks Style.
  9. Default meaning it starts at that percentage each time you start a new file? I believe you can just set it to 61% then re-save your template and should then be the new 'default'. I don't think there's a way to make it the default across existing files outside of changing it manually in each one.
  10. Are you using 2018 or an earlier version?
  11. This would be SO helpful. There needs to be a way to change ALL text instances to a particular font, plus it needs to tie in to 'font-mapping'. For example, if I open a file started by someone else and they used CrazyFontCondensed, when I open it on my machine it's mapped to Arial for display purposes since I don't have that font. Then as I'm working I add new text blocks with the Arial font natively. If the file goes back to original computer, half of the text now maps back to CrazyFontCondensed, and half stays as Arial since that's what I used. As far as I can tell, there's currently no way for me to force the entire document to actually just use Arial and get rid of whatever stupid font someone else may have used. And as I'm working, I don't know which pieces of text are being mapped (invisibly, under-the-hood) and which pieces of text are actually Arial. All the text just shows 'Arial' as the font being used. There definitely needs to be a better way to confidently control fonts in a file.
  12. I remember this happening a lot many versions ago, but haven't really seen it recently. Is the geometry really far away from the internal origin of the document? If you place and activate a RW Camera, does it also cut off objects in the camera view?
  13. Hypothetically if it's in the Libraries<Defaults<Templates folder, it should appear in the dropdown list when you start a new file. Vectorworks pulls this list of templates from within the Application folder, the User folder, and the Workgroup folder, all which have the same subfolder structure. Make sure that the template is saved as an .sta file (via file<Save As Template). If you're wanting Vectorworks to automatically open a blank file upon start-up using your template [a feature which I don't use because I more often work on existing files rather than starting new projects from scratch], go to Vectorworks Preferences < Session and turn on "Create a new document at startup". I believe the file has to be named Default.sta for this function to work.
  14. I've found with perspective viewports in particular, that the same viewport will at times allow me to grab the corners/center point, and at other times not allow me to grab them. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. I could have 5 viewports on a sheet, all created via the same method, and at a given moment some will be grab-able and others won't be. Then later a different combination of viewports will be grab-able. It's odd.
  15. Also note that you can use the Attribute Mapping Tool to interactively scale and rotate the hatch directly within the object. (This modifies the numbers in the same place as Alan's screenshot, just via a different method). And the blue text of the hatch name in the Attributes Palette indicates local mapping has been applied.
  16. Fantastic! I've been having the same issue lately with perspective rendering viewports that have lots of polygons (such as numerous 3D figures). If I leave the viewport in wireframe I literally can't navigate my sheet layer anymore, because it tries to redraw over and over and over. So I tend to render it quickly in OpenGL just to make it stop.
  17. I'm pretty sure favorites always go to favorites. So if you want something to show up under the workgroup section of the RM, try putting the files into Z:\Library\CAD\Vectorworks\Vectorworks Workgroup Files\Libraries\[any folder name you want].
  18. You don't actually need to use the walkthrough tool at all. Within the RW camera tool you just need to make sure that the camera height and look to height are the same. That's currently the only way to get two-point perspective, though it'd be nice to also have the option to tilt the camera up or down slightly and still have the option to keep verticals parallel. BTW, on the topic of the walkthrough tool - note that you can place a RW camera, then with it activated, use the walkthrough tool to move your view around and have the camera "follow". And conversely, you can use the walkthrough tool to find a view you like, then place a RW camera and click the "Match Current View" button. (Or if you have a SpaceMouse, that works like the Walkthrough tool regarding above functionality.)
  19. I think you can only choose to make classes Visible/Grey/Invisible across all existing Viewports/Saved Views, which is fine most of the time. But say for example that you have a class for 3D figures that's on in some of your rendering viewports, but not in your plan or elevation viewports. If I wanted to then create an additional class, say for lights to illuminate those 3D figures, I'd duplicate the figure class so the lights are only visible in the viewports which already contain the figures.
  20. I tend to Duplicate only when I want the new class to have matching Visibilities across all of my viewports as an existing class. (Or if I want it to have the same class attributes/textures). Otherwise, creating from scratch is fine.
  21. I know I've posted in this topic a number of times, but this is honestly the most frustrating bug I've ever encountered. Absolute hindrance to productivity. This happens an average of 5-10 times a day (granted I do a LOT of rendering in one day). Each time sets me back probably about 5 minutes, once you add the time it takes to realize the bug is occurring, save the file, close Vectorworks, restart, hit render again (which takes longer now because nothing is cached), and get your mind back into point it was before you hit this roadblock. So let's say I lose 30 minutes a day. There are three people rendering in the studio where I'm currently working. We all experience this issue (on unrelated files, started from different templates, with different workspaces, etc). Between the three of us that's about an hour and a half a day. Or 7.5 hours lost for the week. We're in the 19th week of the year. So far in 2018 we've probably lost 142 hours of billable time. That is many thousands of dollars lost because Vectorworks can't fix this bug. Sorry to rant, but we're already in SP3 and no signs of change ☹️ (Can I send an invoice to Vectorworks for the lost time?) 😁
  22. This would be incredibly useful. Surprised to see the ability used to exist; I've never been able to change the opacity of the viewport in recent memory.
  23. And make sure to also rotate any of the other three shaders (Reflectivity, Transparency, Bump) that happen to be using an Image.
  24. Just spitballing an idea with no testing whatsoever... What about exporting a DWG, opening this in Illustrator, then either saving an image from Illustrator or just opening the Illustrator file in Photoshop which will rasterize in the process? Not sure if that allows for not anti-aliasing somewhere in the process...
  25. Submitted a bug earlier today, but figured I'd post here to see if anyone else can replicate the same issue. Add a Foliage object to a design layer. Go to Nav Palette and right click / duplicate. This causes my Vectorworks to crash every single time, even in brand new files.
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