Monadnoc

Yes, indeed.

Is it actually a 3D Polygon or is it an Extrude? I don't think you can change the "thickness" of a 3D polygon. That's why I rarely use them, I always Extrude to 0" instead. It creates a flat object but allows for greater flexibility later if you do decide you want some thickness to it. But the resize arrow is a different issue. I run into it also. It seems to go away and come back but I'm not sure why. Maybe a graphics card driver update or something or OS updates. But it fluctuates over the years. Mine right now is misbehaving, I can hardly resize things. A few months ago it was working fine. But about 6 months before that it wasn't working at all. That lasted about a year. I wish I knew what causes it.

I think OSX 10.8.5 is Mountain Lion? Since VW 2011 isn't supported under Mountain Lion, I doubt VW 2010 is. Most likely just due to incompatibility with your OS.

The way to do this was addressed in this post (scroll down towards the middle of the post): Tree Transparency post

Thanks. I use Xfrog also, only the C4D plugin. It is a great program but it is terribly over-complicated and does create huge polygon counts. Unusable in VW without serious tweaking.

Very nice renderings Altivec. I'm curious, where did you get your plants for the scene? I too agree that for 90% of the renders needed for an architectural set of drawings you can get perfectly good results from within VW with Renderworks, and the speed and efficiency it brings to the workflow can't compare to outside renderers. And for most jobs, speed is of the essence. You always have an impossible deadline looming over your shoulder. I wouldn't dream of using VW without Renderworks. I also agree with Grant about C4D. It gives higher quality renders and it is way, way faster than Renderworks. Plus there are just some things that Renderworks doesn't have that C4D does. And for that other 10% it is critical. That's why I would recommend using both. And like Grant, I have been wishing and waiting for VW to make the two programs more integrated. Both directions. And seamless. Then they will make a team that can't be beat.

Thanks. Lighting is the key to any good render, whether it's in VW/Renderworks, 3d Max, Maya, C4D, or whatever. That and high quality textures (which this render doesn't have). Also, to get your attachment to display in the body of the post, after you do what Jim says, view your post in "regular" mode, click on the link and copy the path/address in the address bar, go back to your post and edit it, then in the edit view click on the "enter an image" icon and choose the first option, non-floating image I think?, and paste in the copied path/address. Once you close and view it in normal mode your image will display in the body of your post. It will be a smaller version if your linked image is fairly large.

I explained that (very briefly) here (at the bottom): http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=194156#Post194156 You need to include a panel from a library before the circuiting tool will work. Very unintuitive way to design a tool.

Very good instructions for tweaking the HDRI for interior. Thanks. And I agree that Renderworks can give very good results. Since they've switched over to the C4D engine I have been able to get images that look almost as good as C4D, and sometimes just as good. I'm very happy with it. Here's an old image I did a few years ago (sorry to post it again for those of you who have already seen it). It is an exterior scene, but everything in it was modeled in Vectorworks (except the plants, they were modeled in C4D and imported into VW. The grass was modeled in VW) and rendered inside VW with Renderworks. The one big shortcoming is the funky square edges and corners of the "stone" building. But this was done in VW2011 which does't have Displacement Mapping. If I were to do this in VW2014 I would use that to fix it. And note, I made this scene intentionally dark and a little harsh. It was the mood I was going for. And as an aside, I too started out using Strata for my VW (MiniCAD back then) renderings. I loved it. I was bummed when they stopped supporting that workflow. I even dabbled with Artlantis as a solution, but am now much happier using Renderworks from inside VW or C4D outside.

For EAP I have had situations where the path was created (accidentally) in the wrong class, while the final EAP was in the correct, visible class. This causes the EAP to disappear even though it's in the correct class and that class is turned on. I would have thought that by putting the EAP into a class, the root path would automatically get put into the same class, but apparently it does not work like that. I now make sure the path and profile are classed correctly before creating the EAP. Then I usually have to put the final EAP into the correct class again, as VW has the annoying habit of putting it automatically in the active class (or else I have the annoying habit of not changing to the correct class before I create it). I would much prefer that VW automatically put things like that into the class of the root object it is being created from. In the case of multiple objects, it would be the class of the first object you clicked on. This would save me the time of constantly classing objects twice. Especially for creating Groups.

Yes, I agree. Explore the MEP tools, they'll help for all MEP stuff. Especially if you're doing it "by hand" now. The Electrical Panels to use with the Circuiting tool are in the VW Libraries > Objects - Building Services > Electrical Panels The way the Circuiting Tool works, they really should be a tool included in the MEP palette. Makes it not very intuitive to use, but that's VW.

My understanding is HDRI is really for exterior scenes, not interior (but I'm no expert, for sure). It is basically a big dome map around your entire scene. Like a big sky. I don't think you can get that dome inside a room. You can use it if you have a lot of openings (i.e. windows) allowing plenty of light in from "outside". But even then, to get it to look right you need to tweak the settings very specifically. You also need some sort of lights inside the room to supplement the HDRI source. It can be done, but in general you are creating a really, really long render time for not much benefit. For interior scenes concentrate on the other types of lighting, there are plenty of tutorials out there on setting up good lighting for interior scenes. And set the Indirect Lighting bounce to "Interior, 4 bounces". Longer render times but it will produce a nicer final render. For exterior scenes you definitely want both Indirect Lighting and HDRI lighting for it to look good.

Use the Polyline by Point on Arc (Set start point) mode to draw them. It does exactly what you want, no switching modes for the "valleys". It is the fifth one in from the right. At least in VW 2011. Click once to start, click once at arc top, click once at valley, click once at next arc top, etc., No dragging between clicks. You may want to set it so it has no fill. And switching to Spotlight would be a downgrade. Designer has everything Spotlight has and more. It is a combination of all the specialty modules. It has everything. And for what it's worth, I'm one of the few people who think the Polyline tool in VW is actually easier to use, and edit, then the one in Illustrator. Especially to edit. If you zoom in really close in Illustrator to move a point you can't grab the handles, they're off screen. You can do finer shaping in VW. But that's probably because I learned the VW tool first, so it imprinted itself on my brain.

Totally, submitted this recently. Thanks much.

Just to clarify, it's not the classes for the viewport that need to be on, but the class that the viewport itself is put into. Select each viewport and see what class it's been assigned to (and layer). Of course, if the viewport is missing, it makes it a little hard to select it. You need to make sure all classes and layers are turned on for that Sheet Layer. So with your Sheet Layer active, deselect all viewports/everything, then switch to the "Classes" tab of the Navigation Palette, and turn on every single class in the file. See if anything pops back in. If that doesn't work, switch to the "Layers" tab and make every layer in the file is visible. If neither reveal your viewports, something really strange is up. I always try to put the viewport on the main layer for the view that is always going to be turned on (like "Mod-Floor-1" for a first floor plan viewport). And then always put it into either the "None" class (which I always leave on), or more usually (and more in keeping with AIA standards) put all viewports in a "G-Anno-View" class. Or just "Viewport". But it sounds like you may be dealing with something altogether different and unrelated to viewport/layer visibilities. Either a bug or a corrupt file. By the way, it's a little off topic, but I would love to have autoclassing of viewports directly into a class of my choosing. I am always going to want all my viewports to go into a distinct, separate class for viewports every single time I create one (just like dimensions go into the dimension class). I get tired of having to do it every single time manually. Plus sometimes I forget.

It's documented in the Cinema 4D manual/help. It's a function of how C4D works, not VW. It's standard operating procedure for it. It doesn't embed textures in the file, it always links to them via a path that you specify in the preferences, or by default, the "tex" folder within the project folder (that's why the file sizes are so much smaller). Anytime you want to save any C4D file to another location, you need to use the "Save Project" option to assure the textures are there and in the right place. Or else manually move/copy them. Of course, I'm using C4D R12 and VW 2011, so it may be something entirely different you're talking about.

Possibly you inadvertently put one of the viewports into a class that is turned off.

Transparency from Photoshop will not be imported. You'll have to redo it inside Vectorworks when you create the Image Prop. You can also fix it after creating the Image Prop by editing the texture (right click texture in RB and choose "Edit" > Transparency > Image Mask > Edit > Transparent Color Mask (you may have to click on "Change Image" and reselect your image file to activate it) >click on the white background on the "Source Image" thumbnail). That's a very short explanation. If it's too confusing I can post a more detailed one.

Are you sure the class is set to use Class Attributes (Use at Creation)? Are you sure the object is set to use Class Attributes (Make All Attributes by Class)?

Same with me. I tried it at work on a Windows 7 computer with Acrobat Reader and it displayed the grey lines. They looked like concrete joints all thorough the parking area.

That works for me ...

It displays fine for me, no grey outlines anywhere. Although in Preview the text was gone. Text displayed in Acrobat Reader. I'm on a Mac.

Now with the Displacement Mapping capabilities of VW, I wonder if you could do it with a texture using a clever displacement channel?

The short answer is yes.

Yup, that's the monkey wrench I was talking about.