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Posts posted by line-weight
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If there are certain objects that you can't apply a material to ... then surely the whole concept is broken.
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Are the going to repeat the Q&A session for the next two time zone repeats? May be interesting to see if similar questions are answered/asked there.
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haha, that was my question which the moderators reformatted into a more polite wording than what I sent!
Indeed, we need more than incremental updates.
To be fair, the answer seemed to imply that they do recognise that things need to be sorted here, and that this is coming (but how soon?)
Interestingly the answer also seemed to imply that it was tied in to a re-think of how these elements interact with walls.
I got the impression there's some level of re-engineering going on in the background. But we really need some more confidence that this is happening with some urgency.
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3 hours ago, Helm said:
All I want at the moment is a file format I can send a client that he can read in 3D and comment on. What should I use.
send them the VW file and ask them to download the VW viewer?
https://www.vectorworks.net/support/downloads/vectorworks-file-viewer
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15 hours ago, elepp said:
To an extend we all are already doing it. I think it's a level of degree when it comes to standardization. The most extrem I have seen so far is from Katerra: LINK
They provide a software for architects/developer that starts with site analysis, down to choosing your faucets.
Do they actually provide anything other than a video of an imaginary system that seems to bear little resemblance to reality?
As an architect it's great to see their idea of the "design process"
- draw polygon around site
- dump some buildings on it
- choose roof shape
- choose taps
- job done!
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I keep my classes in 3 basic categories:
2d-xxx-xxx
Materials-xxx-xxx
Objects-xxx-xxx
2d is mainly line types (elevation lines, cut plane lines, overhead lines, etc etc) sometimes with fill defined. They are used mainly for annotation, any 2d detailing, and also as attributes for section viewports and so on (so, my cut plane line is the same whether it's a manually drawn 2d section or one generated from the model
Materials are for what the name suggests. Set up with textures, hatches etc so that things appear as I want them whether I'm looking at the 3d model or a section.
The objects classes tend to be applied to container objects (which contain elements that are placed in the appropriate material classes).
In practice I find the objects classes are mainly used to control visibility, for example when I want only to see structural elements, or don't want to show any furniture, and so on. I'm considering ceasing to bother defining things as "walls", "cladding", etc, but just have a tiered system that's based on construction sequence (substructure>superstructure>insulation>services>finishes>fittings or something like that) because almost all the time, that's how I want to control visibility.
I think that sometimes there can be "over-classification" at the object level - but realise that it may be useful for those producing reports etc from the model.
I have the luxury that most of my projects are relatively small scale and only me working on the drawings.
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1 hour ago, CipesDesign said:
There is only one reason I can think of. One (or all) the tool(s) were deemed inadequate so they decided to create an new one to deal with it. Turns out the new one is also inadequate. It's like if your were to throw a bunch of random herbs in a soup pot, hoping to make it taste better. And it doesn't. So you throw in some more.... etc.
Hopefully the analogy doesn't go so far as to mean you can then never un-stir the soup, or we're in trouble.
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Is there actually a good reason for slabs and roof faces to be different things?
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And by the way, as far as doing the "precise" details in 2D - I often see these done by importing a crazily over-detailed frame section from a manufacturer, resulting in a messy, hard to read drawing that often fails to actually understand or communicate how that frame needs to interface with the opening. It looks "detailed" but the important details aren't there.
In actual fact, a simplified version of the window frame profile is often perfectly adequate and also clearer. So, I have now done a few window details where I've modelled the window in 3d (from scratch) - but only to the level of detail really required. I've found that this can then be used as the basis of pretty good interface details, cut directly from the model. Actually it doesn't necessarily take all that much more time than fiddling around with multiple 2d drawings manually - the big downside is that it's not parametric, so there's more work when you have to adjust the window size, or have multiple windows of that type. A decent, fully flexible window tool that would let us use our own profiles, get everything set up to the level of detail that's actually necessary, and then apply that to a number of different configurations is what I'd like (not something that asks me whether I want "prairie style", whatever that is).
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2 hours ago, Helm said:
we want it to look right in elevation, close at least
Even that's a struggle with the current tools.
It's actually impossible to get many window configurations really to look right in elevation.
But even when you can get "close" enough in elevation, the process to get there is slow, painful, and full of unexplained bugs. Ever spent some time chasing your tail around the "lock sash" routine in the "custom sash" options in an attempt to get things the right size and in the right place?
Sometimes it's literally faster to model from scratch with some basic extrudes.
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46 minutes ago, Christiaan said:
To be fair the new barn door config added to the door tool is very well done and hopefully a harbinger of things to come.
I don't really agree. It's another example of "add something new" instead of "fix the broken old stuff".
I'm pretty sure that a vastly greater number of people would have benefited, from the time put into making a new configuration, instead having been put into fixing just some of the things that are wrong with the basic door types. It's much more likely that a building will have 100 basic hinged doors and one barn-type door, than the other way around.
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Whatever the reason, it seems clear VW don't want to discuss the window and door tools, why they are not maintained and why we aren't allowed access to the distributor-specific versions that ave been developed.
Can we crowdfund getting some third party ones written? I reckon a lot of people would be willing to pay for them, if they were decent. And developed in close consultation with real world users. I would pay.
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Is this the most up to date one?
https://www.iso.org/standard/69130.html
It hardly encourages everyone to follow these standards, when they are not made openly and freely available, but you have to pay a large-ish amount just to see a PDF that tells you what hatch to use. Especially when you suspect it'll refer you to multiple other standards, each of which you also have to pay for.
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speaking as a UK architect - I'd be quite happy to have it dictated to me and others (including product manufacturers/suppliers) which hatches should be used for what! It would save us all a lot of time figuring out what's what on construction drawings.
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1 hour ago, _c_ said:
The most efficient workaround I have for solving the problems described above is
- create a wall only for the insulation above
- create the class for the insulation above
- create the needed wall holes with a special tool (I need proper IFC and Wall Features are too difficult to edit / map to IFC)
- load by reference in another file dedicated to plans: override class attributes as needed
- load by reference in another file dedicated to sections and elevations: override class attributes as needed
This grants perfect plans, perfect sections, perfect DWG exports, perfect IFC export, perfect quantity take offs.
AND no maintenance whatsoever.
So this also covers other issues, such as efficient and instantly usable backups.
I refuse to annotate sections and viewports but -for a few corrections- because
- I seldom can have 1 file for one project
- don't want to be burdened with transferring annotions across viewports
- don't like obsolescent viewports
- need an archive politic that meets our requirements
etc. etc.
If you are managing to make this all work, that is a very impressive technical achievement. It seems that making it work requires some specialist coding skills and perhaps the resources of a larger company... things that not all of us are able to have, unfortunately.
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What you say makes sense @Dubman.
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55 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:
If we look at wall sections, there is no material in our office that we show as different hatches in different cuts. We have made them the same. In my option a wall section is a diagram and the hatches have a KEY that tells you what the material is. We seldom would want to try and get a hatch to accurately display geometry. For repeated elements like studs that would show up in a plan cut but not a section cut, we draw those separately.
So the ability to separate plan cuts from section cut fills is not high on my list personally.
I'd say I tend to agree with this.
It would however be useful if certain materials could hatch parallel to their orientation - primary example being sheet materials like plywood.
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To be clear, when I say horizontal section I mean literally a horizontal section - not one involving any hybrids or 2d symbols. So if a door is modelled correctly in 3d, it will be correct in my plan.
However you're quite right, this sets me up with lots of annotation, for example door swing lines. This may seem crazy and would be for larger projects, but for the smaller type of projects I do (lots of non standard detail) I've decided it's the "least terrible" option for now. It's less time consuming for me, than fighting with plugin tools.
Unlike you I don't have to worry so much about IFC and so on - I just need clear accurate construction drawings.
I hope that some day the time will come that I don't have to have this kind of home-brew solution.
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That's a great example of a real world situation that VW can't currently deal with properly.
My solution here would be probably be to create the inner insulation layer either as a separate wall, or as directly modelled solids. I then make my floorplans as horizontal sections to allow me to make the cut plane where I want it, and for it not to section that inner insulation layer.
For the dashed "something overhead" line, I would add this manually as an annotation in the sheet layer viewport. I've not yet found a reliable way for VW to automatically give me dashed "overhead" lines in the right places. So I give up on that and do it manually. Of course, this means I have to keep on top of any updates by adjusting the viewport annotation as necessary.
Very interesting that you have written your own code to produce window and door plugins (I see a door frame with a stop on it - hooray!).
If individual users are writing their own code to make usable doors and windows it makes it even more ridiculous that VW still cannot supply us with this as a basic and fundamental part of the programme we pay for.
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You could effectively have tags, by allowing objects to be assigned to more than one class. Would there have to be some kind of hierarchy though?
(Tag/class A says "visible", Tag/class B says "invisible" - which one does VW go with)
This is effectively what many of us do with container objects... container has one class, things inside it have others.
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I'm still testing this - but it might be that duplicating the troublesome saved view, and then deleting the original, might be a workaround.
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2 minutes ago, Rick Berge said:
Hi @line-weight,
Current code has changed a lot since then, so unfortunately I'm having trouble finding any workarounds for you. It seems no one had filed a report on this until 2020sp2, so it was fixed in 2020sp3.
Thank you for your reply.
Good to know it's already been recognised as a bug, and fixed.
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^^^this
VW urgently needs to have a decent sized group of people who are currently practicing architects regularly producing construction drawings for real jobs working closely with their software designers, giving detailed feedback.
The focus and direction of things does not give me the impression that this is already the case.
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A few questions regarding drawing and hatch issues
in Troubleshooting
Posted
The car I think looks like wireframe because VW is drawing lines at the edges of the facets on a mesh type object. There should be an option to change the smoothing angle under Hidden Line render settings. If you set it to 5 degrees or so, that usually sorts this kind of thing.
Unfortunately the window tool can't do reveals. So you have to draw them manually. There are lots of things about the window tool that don't work properly.
Others may be able to help on hatches. I mostly avoid them because of the kind of problems you're having.