line-weight

Beware that this may cause 2d components to disappear elsewhere in the drawing, where you don't want them to disappear.

@MMGD I don't know if things have changed in the past couple of years since I was looking at this last, but there are a few things to look out for as far as external monitors (specifically their resolution/size) are concerned, when you're dealing with MacOS. I found this article helpful the last time I was working out what monitor to get. https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/

My strategy has been for a while to buy macs second hand. The price you pay can be significantly less than what you'd pay new, but macs tend to be pretty reliable and keep on going for quite a long time, so my perception is that paying the premium for new is not necessary. Don't dismiss the mac mini. Obviously it depends what you want to do in Vectorworks but unless you want to do a lot of rendering, a fairly modestly specced mac will be perfectly capable. I'm still running fine on one of the first generation M1 minis. 16GB of RAM. I work with 3 monitors. I do, sometimes, run into memory issues but only when dealing with unusually (for me) large files and doing certain operations. Day to day, navigating around quite complex models in shaded view works completely smoothly. I don't think I've ever noticed any significant fan noise coming from it (I have with earlier mac minis). For sure, when I next replace the computer I'll be aiming for quite a bit more RAM but at the moment the memory issues are more of an annoyance than a major issue. On the question of desktop vs laptop, isn't it the case that you pay quite a high premium for that portability, for similar specs? As I already have my monitors & keyboard etc and work in such a way that my setup isn't really portable anyway, I tend to stick to the desktop path. An option worth considering is the combination of a mini/studio with an ipad. I've been considering getting an ipad pro to let me be more portable, that could also function as an extra screen/drawing tablet while at my desk.

Yes, that's one of the things I wondered, whether a point cloud is actually the right thing for a topographic survey. There's quite a lot of "stuff" - trees, paths, steps, outbuildings etc so actually it's quite handy to have the point cloud because I can use it to check all sorts of little details but spot heights + positions of main features was all I asked for when I initially got quotes. The survey company seem to mainly do internal floorplans so I wonder if they actually don't quite know what they are doing with this kind of thing. It's quite a tricky site with a steep slope across it.

The surveyors who did my survey told me: This is the first time that this has happened with the cloud data, I’ve sent the files to Leica to ask for their help

Well, I don't think I'll be using these guys again.

Yup this basically.

Is there any limit on how many fields I can have in a single record format?

So - going back to the original survey I was provided with - the more I looked at it the more I could see there were quite big problems with it. I went back to the survey company and they fiddled with things and sent me a revised version of the point cloud. Actually we did that twice and it improved a bit each time but there were still various ghost images that were displaced by quite large distances. Eventually they accepted that it wasn't good enough, and went back to site to re-do it. The new survey is quite a bit better. There are still places I can see displaced ghost images. Not sure if you'd always expect a little bit of that, or should a properly done lidar survey be completely clean? Within the point cloud (imported into VW) there are areas where the points have colours that clearly aren't the colours of the objects scanned. Fore example blue points on an area of red tile-hanging and yellow and red spots within tree foliage. Does this indicate anything particular?

I've found that the "linear material" tool in the 2d detailing set nearly gives me what I want: if I set it to "board" it basically gives a pair of parallel lines which take the "pen" attribute and then fills between them with the "fill" attribute. This means I can make a "linear material" object where the fill attribute is the basic "line" I want to appear and then by over-riding its "line attributes" I can make yellow lines either side of it appear or disappear. This works with data vis. The only problem is it doesn't give me quite the graphic appearance I want.

Sure - but I'm trying to avoid having to make two line types (one with highlight and one without) for each line type I currently have in the file.

I could potentially live with the linetype appearance. However, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case that I can alter components of the custom linetype using data vis (even though I can give those components a class). Another possibility I'm investigating is the "repetitive unit" 2d detailing tool. It repeats a 2d symbol along a line, and the components of that symbol can be classed. I can switch the "yellow background" component of those symbols on and off using class over-rides per viewport. So I can have one line type and turn the highlight background on and off. I've not yet succeeded in getting the same to happen via data vis, though.

Getting a bit too complicated for my abilities, I fear!

I manages to make something similar ... line type just made up of a yellow background rectangle plus black "line" rectangle: And I realised that each of those rectangles can be given a class. So I made a "yellow background" class and made the background rectangle from that. I then hoped that this would mean that in a design layer or in a viewport, I could then make that "yellow background" class visible or invisible and using it as a way of turning the highlighting on or off. But it doesn't seem to work unfortunately.

An added complication is that I'd like to be able to apply it selectively to a variety of different line types. For example, I'd like to apply it to one or more lines here without affecting their basic colour. I think that even if I could simply over-ride with a special "highlighted line" line type, I'd need to make one of those for each of the various line types that I want to highlight.

Yeah I was just trying that myself! My conclusion so far is that it's too subtle though. Also, is it an attribute that can be adjusted via data vis?

In a sheet layer viewport, I want to take a line like the one at the top, and "highlight" it something like what's shown at the bottom. To mock this up, I've duplicated the line in the design layer, made the duplicate thicker and yellow, and then placed it behind the original line. It's possible to do something similar using the viewport's annotations space. But I'd really like to be able to do this (or something like this) to selected lines in selected viewports, using data visualisation. Any clever ways of doing this?

Do you have any objects set to invisible (including things like components of walls or roof faces) within the model you're looking at? (By the way, when I first started using VW properly in 3d, instead of doing my 3d stuff in sketchup, I found it incredibly frustrating and came close to giving up a few times...it did get better though - stick with it.)

Could it be that the top surface of your plasterboard is overlapping ever so slightly with the bottom of the rafters? I can reproduce something similar if the top of the plasterboard is just 1mm too high. There is a kind of cheat in this situation: press B on your keyboard which will give you a kind of X-ray zone where you can see things in wireframe. If wireframe can see the corner you want, then you can usually snap to it, even if you can't in shaded view.

Note that if you want to keep the object as a collection of flat faces, make sure that all the faces you add are triangular. As you can see at the end of the recording, if you adjust the vertice of a face with more than 3 vertices it will make it into a curved surface. Screen Recording 2024-09-09 at 10.11.51.mov

Yes, you just need to change settings in the subdivision tool. I would go with the subdivision method, much easier & faster to adjust than anything that involves converting between object types.

I should start using them too.

The x-ray feature (press B) is very handy in this kind of situation! Like others, if I want to draw guidelines on a working plane, I tend to use 2d objects. Partly because they are more visible, partly because you can be quite sure they will actually be on the working plane. If you draw a 3d polygon it's possible to inadvertently snap to something that's not on the working plane.

This works until you start losing detail in other things where you want it. "Per object" crease angle would be handy...

Generally easier said than done.