ray isaacs

thanks for the suggestions. creating a section viewport in a separate design layer seems to work best for me. i could never get it to work before, now i know why...i was always expecting a section view, rather than a slice of the 3d model. one i figured out what i was looking at, i was able to view it correctly by setting the working plane, them saving that view. i guess that is as close as i can get to a live section...for now? i'm curious about the "cut 3D section" command. i looked for it, but couldn't find it. where is it? cheers, ray

i'm frustrated trying to design in section. vw (as i and others posted on the wish list) does not have live sections and the section tool is very clumsy. at the moment, i made section viewports, exported pdfs, then imported those pdfs back into vw and am drawing over the pdfs. that is kind of pathetic for computer aided design. does anybody have a better way of designing in section? i'm open for ideas. cheers, ray

dworks, thanks for pointing that out. the smoothing angle in line render options seems to be set to 0. when i change it--to 1, 10 or 90 for example--my vw promptly crashes upon re-rendering. any thoughts? ray

peter, overlying viewports is an interesting idea for a lot of reasons. i've been doing it in photoshop, without realizing that it would be a lot easier in vw itself. the problem in this case is that many objects in my model that sit on the ground actually sit IN the ground. so there would be a problem with the hidden portions...unless you know of a solution for that. dave, i experimented with turning off lines in the both the site model settings and the class attributes. doing it in the class attributes was more successful. however, with texture beds as roads, etc, the triangles are still a problem. strangely, in the polygon render mode, vw renders the edges and not the fill of the site triangles. so i either get a mess of triangles, or i get nothing. hopefully, there is a solution somewhere, or--failing that--there will be one in the near future. thanks for you input. ray

i am having difficulty rendering with a site model. in the fast and final renderworks modes it works, but i prefer the outline/cartoon look of the final polygon mode. unfortunately, the site model renders as unfilled triangles in the polygon modes and as triangles with fill in artistic renderworks cartoon mode. (images attached) is there a rendering mode that does not show the triangles, or can the site model settings be changed so that the triangles do not show? or is there another way to model the terrain? i'm open for suggestions. thanks, ray isaacs

yes, i think i understand the rationals for the screen plane. but, it is a pain in the neck. i'm told over and over again that the layer plane is the default. however, somehow i unwittingly keep ending up in the screen plane. it is a constant annoyance. if they need to keep the screen plane, okay. but, please stop hyjacking my work flow and taking it there! ray

the section cut tool may work for presentation drawings. however, as a design tool it is really clumsy. i wish vw would develop a more active and direct way to view 3d models in section. this would make designing in vectorworks much more effective. recently vw has taken a few clues from sketchup (push/pull, etc). check out the section plane tool! i use it more and more as i get frustrated with vectorworks. ray

i read in another posting that imported xyz coordinates as 3d loci where easier and faster to work with than stake objects. i have imported the coordinates. they are stakes objects (is that the default?). my computer is struggling to create a site model. i would like to convert the stake objects to 3d loci or re-import the coordinates as 3d loci, then try to make the model. does anyone know how to do this? thanks, ray

short update...after recreating the site models for all of my current projects, (dxf's in dummy files, simplifying all polygons mostly by retracing--very time consuming) the overall size of my vw documents was dramatically smaller...by a factor of ten in some cases, and the site models update in 20 seconds or less--compared to 5-minutes before. so the time invested upfront seems to be worth it. it also appears that the 3d modeling and rendering functions are working more reliably--we'll see about that. so there is hope. i wish vectorworks was more upfront about this. none of the diagnosis or suggestions came from their support people in two years of contact. they need to be more in touch with what we really need to do to get our work done. cheers.

add "retaining wall" tool to the list. it is a great idea and potentially a very sophisticated way to work with the terrain model. however, i would almost never design a retaining will the way the "retaining wall" tool does. instead, i use a complex combination of other tools: side modifiers, extrudes, solids, walls, nurbs curves, or whatever necessary for the situation. this is a long running issue i have with vw. they have a lot of good ideas, but there is a disconnect between the idea and utility. i'm hanging on for a while in hopes that things get better.

i remade the models for all for all of my current projects with dxf in a 'dummy' file. that solved some problems. however copying the shapes from the dxf yielded polygons that had 1000's of vertices. that seemed to be causing smoothing and some rendering problems. taking lots time (days) to literally trace the shapes as simpler polygons reduced the number of vertices to under 100, even less in cases. smoothing and rendering seem to work and model update is much faster. and the file size is way smaller. hopefully the time invested now will save crisis time when the deadlines roll around--which has been happening.

peter, thanks for responding. i just got a response from tech support confirming this. they too recommend a 'dummy' file. apparently there are two (related?) issues: the presence of the dxf file itself and the geo-coordinates, as vw doesn't like to get far away from the origin. seems that the former (dxf) confounds the later (coordinates). your solution is a way to get around this to some degree--i haven't really tested it yet. but long term, vw needs to fix this. 1. today almost everything needs to be seamlessly geo-coded as jurisdictions rely more and more of gis data bases. 2. dxf and dwg are industry standards in sharing base information. hopefully, they are working on this. ray

could it be dxf files that are corrupting my documents? in trying to move my project forward and trying to figure out why my documents are getting corrupted, i did this... when i opened a fresh vw file and imported a dxf file (attached "dxf base" ), the select working plane tool and push pull tool do not work on an extruded cube. when i create a viewport, export the view of the dxf as a pdf, open a fresh vw file, import the pdf, then create an extruded cube, the selection working plane and push pull tool work. it appears that dxf files are somehow corrupting my vw files. i checked with several dxf's and got the same result. in fact i've been suspicious of dxf's in vw for a while; this is the first direct test. i want to believe that the select working plane and push pull failures are symptoms of the larger problem i described in the original post (above). has anyone had a similar experience importing dxf files? looking forward to your input. ray isaacs vw 2012

:cry: I am having continuing and serious problems directly and indirectly related to terrain models. every vw document containing a terrain model sooner or later seems to be corrupted with a variety of tools and operations failing or crashing. the tech support people have worked hard to address individual cases. but, i am convinced that there is a deeper, systemic problem with the dtm. i can't imaging that i am the only user encountering this. is anyone have a similar experience? any possible resolutions?