ray isaacs

roger, what is it that you are trying to do? your picture looks like the texture bed is working as intended. you mention elevation. texture bed may not be the right tool if you are looking to alter the elevation, or construct a concrete or stone pad with a thickness. maybe you need to use a combination of a pad with a slab or the hardscape tool. cheers, ray

thanks, patrick. seems like the problem i'm having is of a different nature. ray

patrick, did you try rendering in fq renderworks? the reason i ask is that the same thing happened to me recently in open gl. when i subsequently rendered in fq renderworks, i saw that the mesh smoothing was no longer working. when i removed the most recently applied site modifier, both mesh smoothing and open gl functioned as expected. i still don't know why. sent the file to vss tech support and haven't heard back. ray

that was it. thanks, michael.

thanks, michael. that's what i needed.

when i want to drag and edge or endpoint and hold down the shift key, 95% of the time i get preset angles (45, 30, etc) rather than perpendicular, parallel, tangent, etc., which is nearly always what i really want. can angle be somehow turned off? if not i wish this would be changed. ray

smart edge is not working in 2014 under any circumstances, including fresh vw start, new file, simple rectangle, hover over edge. same process works in 2013. is it just me, or are others experiencing this? cheers, ray

darrell, up til now, just templates. but, maybe we should look into standards. are they created and saved like templates, libraries, or something all together different? ray

yes, we wanted to do this just yesterday, as we began creating a new set of templates. it would be not only a time saver, but a better way to manage our internal documents. ray

jim, your work is appreciated.

yes, jim, i realize my request is very broad; and that is intentional. over the last few years the featured " improvements" to the dtm have been basically inconsequential, while year after year we struggle with the same problems. i simply want vw to make the dtm a priority. for those who work in larger scale environments, challenging sites, and/or complex land design terrain modeling is fundamental. while i am by choice a daily user of the vw dtm, i need it to be a lot better than it is. i have sent vss tech support many, many documents with specific terrain modeling/rendering problems, including two last week (not including the separate shp file issue). in the last year+ you and michael have responded to some of those--and i appreciate that-- usually with a suggested work around or telling me that the file was sent to the engineers. however, many issues seem to persist. (i say "seem" because i haven't worked with 2014 long enough to experience everything yet. in addition many specifics have been discussed in detail on this forum, including peter's request above. other discussions have included vertices counts and complexity, roads tool, and so on. i will continue to do this, and am sure others will as well. but, we need to know that actions on the vw engineering side are being taken. once again, thanks for your attention. ray

this is becoming my annual wish: a substantially improved dtm tool. in working with other modeling software, i continue to believe that vw has the best concept for a terrain modeler. but, for the last few years its development has been neglected. maybe now with the core modeling and visualization improvements of 2014 implemented, vw will give needed attention to the dtm. as i right this my computer is hung because of the dtm, and this is an all to common experience. while a good concept, the current dtm continues to be painfully slow, clumsy, non-intuitive, not accurate enough, and seems to become easily corrupted. please give this valuable tool the attention it deserves. ray

seems like some progress is being made in terms of gis integration. and this is important especially as this becomes more common and expected at administrative levels. one thing that we would like to see is a less complicated way of staying geo-referenced. yes it can be done. but, we find it a bit confounding to keep track of original coordinates, which layers are geo-referenced and not, files--such as dwgs--that get imported with different coordinates, and THEN the whole problem of 3D MODELING AWAY FROM THE ORIGIN--which requires duplicate models and moving things great distances. cheers, ray

that's good. seems like some progress is being made in terms of gis integration. in our practice that is really important. we hope vw will continue to improve the interactivity with gis, especially as this becomes more common and expected at administrative levels. one thing that we would like to see is a less complicated way of staying geo-referenced. yes it can be done. but, we find it a bit confounding to keep track of original coordinates, files that are geo-referenced, files--such as dwgs--that get imported with different coordinates, and then the whole problem of modeling away from the origin. in fact, i will add this to the wish list right now. thanks, jim, for your assistance. ray

jim, did you look at the second shp file i sent? i'm thinking that this problem is actually resolved in vectorworks and my problem was in the first shp file itself. cheers, ray

yes!

thanks, ian. i wanted that so many times!

jim, i'll echo what i said to you in a recent email exchange: your presence here on the forum, along with dave, wes, robert and others has dramatically changed the tone of discussion throughout the forum. what was only a few weeks ago gloom, doom and hopelessness, now is optimism, cooperation and appreciation. i hope folks higher in the company leadership up are taking notice that openness and transparency are good for everyone. thanks again. ray

yes, this is something i intended to add to the wish list. the texture workaround is more complicated than necessary. a simple fade to nothing in the gradient settings would be great. my work around is to fade a very, very dark, saturated color to white, then make the object or class very transparent. this has limitations of application and will not work with white, as ian is trying to do. cheers, ray

sure will, jim.

steve, first of all, "pflanze" is german for plant. second, i used the vbvisual tool yesterday with no problems--placed a bunch of trees exactly as i wanted to. also added some new trees to the default library folder. have you checked to see if the vbvisual folder is in there, in the default folder? (not at my computer right now, so i can verify the exact tree, also can`t verify the name of the tool right now.) cheers, ray

thanks, jim. that's good to know. i'll try that. i still think it would be great to be able to reference files without have to convert them. some things we need are scattered over many folders and needed spontaneously. plus converting everything can be a management headache. please consider allowing referencing of at least the most previous version or two. cheers.

jim, i understand what you are saying about overlapping viewports for presentation. but, as christiaan says, working on a project is a different situation. the edges add a lot of clarity to a "quick" visualization, along with a better reading of perspective (yes do prefer perspective) and depth. and i do think that they are a lot better in 2014. i just wish they were thinner. ray

thanks, mike. it did the job.

yes, they are too think, especially when zoomed out.