Kevin K

yeah, it is tough......but somebody had to do it. 🙂 I am a fortunate guy to live in a place like this, I must say.

Cinema 4d ( and Vray) does allow for some stunning photorealistic renderings. I personally use c4d with Vray, in conjunction with VW primarily for interior renderings. I won't elaborate why in this missive. That said, VW Renderworks does do a more than adequate job for most Rendering projects. In a perfect world I feel it makes sense to have C4d and VW. Just my two cents. Regarding Renderworks, check out the attached Exterior Rendering I just created featuring a home I am currently designing. I live in French Polynesia, so I placed the residence into a local environment scene that I created. -Kev

Two requests. One is minor but the second is, to me, fairly huge, and has been for years. 1) the minor issue is that when using the clip cube tool on a 3d site model the site model/topo is always hollow. Meaning you can see just the 'skin' of the object. Seems to me it should read as a solid object. 2) This is the major item that I have brought up for YEARS. As it turns out, I do a LOT of 3d modeling and Rendering. The issue is that for doors and windows, especially trim, if you use a wood grain as a texture on the trim it ONLY goes in one direction, which would never ever happen in reality. Meaning vertical trim the wood grain would go vertical and the horizontal trim pieces the grain or texture of the trim would go in the horizontal direction. It must be very difficult for the programmers to achieve this, is my thought, because it never gets resolved in any versions of VW. To me, as fabulous as VW is, this one thing really cheapens the product. There are workarounds, but they take a very long arduous time to create. Obviously, if one uses a solid color, etc for trim there is not issue because it does not utilize a texture. Again, it is the pesky grain direction of a wood texture that becomes the issue. So....I am pretty sure this is a moot point, but it would really be good if this issue could be resolved. Really good 🙂 Any thoughts? -Kev

Yeah, I was freakin out too when VW 2018 was crashing when trying to open any file, like what Rob mentioned. I too use InteriorCad. But the SP 5.1 totally resolved the issue, thankfully. Life is good again 🙂

Why didn’t I think of that, INDEED!, Brilliant solution! Thanks for the heads-up.

Gotcha. if you could perhaps be a bit more specific or post an image and try to explain what you wish to achieve, I would be happy to assist, as I am sure others here would do the same.

Jim Can't read your mind on this, but are you alluding to just setting up a plan view, and using 'perspective' as opposed to an orthogonal view?? Like the attached file? I lowered the resolution a bit, but you get the gist, I imagine. IF so it is pretty easily achieved.

Regarding Standing Seam Metal roofs: Just wondering if anyone has figured out a better way to create flashing for a hip roof? Pertaining to a metal roof in particular, the 'surface array' tool works wonders for instantly creating the standing seams for a metal roof, but the metal flashing on the hips (and valleys) presents a little challenge. What I current do to address this is to: 1) use the select working plane tool to highlight the sloped roof. 2) draw a rectangle on the edge of that plane at the intersection of two roofs that would act as 1/2 of the flashing. 3) extrude that shape ( about 1/8") 4) mirror that object to the adjoining roof and 'add solids" to join the two so the flashing appears, as it would in reality, into one object and raise it a bit in z space so it sits on top of the standing seams. It is actually a fairly quick process and does work quite well, but again, just wondering if there is another methodology that may save some steps? I attached a file to demonstrate the situation. Thanks

Yeah, no comfort at all 🙂 No worries....Just putting it out there.

Zoomer 1) I created the basic tapered shapes using 'tapered extrude' tool. 2) Then used the 'shell' tool to hollow out the solid object. 3) created solid extrusions where the openings are then 'solid subtracted' to punch holes on the basic object. 4) created the windows I wanted, then had to 'ungroup' them, then rotated that group to fit the angle/opening as I said....a royal pain. Bet you are sorry you asked 🙂

I realize I am probably dreaming to expect this to be included in a future VW version, but it would be quite the time saver. I have designed several Projects that include angled walls. Meaning they are not perpendicular to the ground plane. They have a slight angle. It becomes a royal pain to place doors and windows within this scenario. I know this is a bit outside the box and that not many structures/residences would employ this particular design element. I ( hopefully) attached an example of what I am referring to. A residence I recently designed.

This may have been addressed before so excuse the redundancy if that is the case. Is there a quick easy way to view the rotation of an imported spherical HDR background in relation to a specific RW Camera view? There is of course the option to 'rotate' the HDR but it seems to be trial and error until you get what you want for any specific perspective view. Thanks

oh yeah, once you do what I had suggested you do need to replace the existing texture in the file or create a new texture using the edited image you had created. Just FYI. You may already realized that.

Yeah, that little maneuver was always a bit arcane to me as well. Maybe call tech support and see if they can shed light on it. In the meantime, what I have done to facilitate what you wish to do, is to : 1) just make a rectangle, square etc convert it to a 3d Poly. Make sure you are in a top/plan or top view when you draw the shape. 2) apply that texture you want to edit 3) put it in top plan or top view and render it in open GL 4) then in file menu select 'export image file' and choose the 'Marquee' option and draw the Marquee. fill in the dialogue box as needed and make sure the dpi is plenty high. Then obviously open the file in photoshop or some image editor and tweak as needed, You may have to mess with the settings a bit but I have had great success with this method. It actually goes pretty quick once you get the sequence down. I too would be interested if you find out how to actually use the 'extract image' tool. There should/must be an easier way.

Ethan Not so sure about creating a report as you mentioned, but I use this great program for billing and invoicing Clients which keeps an efficient simple record of time spent on a particular Project. I am a Mac person so it interfaces really well with the Mac Calendar program. It is called 'OfficeTime'. Personally, I could not live without it. Google it if you wish. t does work on Windows machines as well.

Ray Can't thank you enough for the script. Worked like a charm!! If you find yourself in my area of Tahiti lunch is on me!!!

Not sure if I am in the correct forum for this, but I often import DWG files where the person uses a custom font size....like 8.8 instead of just using 8 or 9 pt sizes. In attempting to do a custom selection to select all fonts of that size so I can globally change the size to something from planet earth without the decimal sizes, i was not successful using the typical criteria to facilitate what I wish to do. I imagine there is a script master out there who could perhaps point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

Hey all...I may be in the wrong location for this question, but was wondering if anyone knows how to construct a script that would select a number of 3d polys which all had the same 'z' value? I am a VERY long time VW user but admittedly am not a script wizard. This has to do with something I am dealing with relating to site model creation. I won't bother you with details at this point. Thanks -Kev

It would be very nice to have the ability to include customized muntins WITHIN a given area of windows, not just included within the transom areas. This happens in real life with, for example, Craftsman Style windows, where there are muntins in the top portion of the window. In 2014 it is now possible to do this for doors, but not windows, which is curious.

Wanting to be a cutting edge guy that I am, I downloaded Mavericks yesterday, which went seamlessly, but then today noticed that VW 2011 would not even begin to open....which is not the best thing for me as I work for and with many other designers and architects....who use different versions of VW. Then I opened a file in 2014, and was stunned at how friggin clunky and slow it worked when rotating and manipulating items. I am a very long time user and Trainer and very up to speed with the program, so this is not something I am just making up. I was just shocked at how horrid it was. I would have thought for sure that Nemetschek would have tested the program ad infinitum with Mavericks as it has been coming for a long time now. Perhaps that is not the way it works...but....right now, if possible I am going to sprint back to Mountain Lion if possible. I suppose that will be a bit of a debacle coercing my Macbook Pro to go backwards like that....hmmmm Be warned before taking the leap to Mavericks.... It will turn your VW life upside down at this juncture seems to me.

This post points out the flaw in the way VW applies, in this case, the direction of the wood grain texture, on all window and door trim, sash and jamb elements. The texture is applied to all elements of the object, in one direction only. Is it only me who has brought this Rendering embarrassment up in the past? It truly does cheapen the Rendering aspect of VW, big time, in my view. They just can't seem to fix it, which is beyond my comprehension. I know it can be done, because, as you can see in the attachment (hopefully I did this correctly so the attachment show up) showing a VW Window and a cabinet created in InteriorCad (which as many know, works right inside VW), that InteriorCad absolutely addresses the grain direction of the wood textures around its vertical and horizontal members. So..........my thought is, if InteriorCad can write the code to facilitate this, why can VW not??