zoomer

BTW, is there a way to force Nomad to omit saving the redundant Point Cloud without the "VW" suffix in the name ? (the rotated one with Y axis up) I don't need/want that.

So I come to the question of what is the best way of Lidar scanning ? For my first Point Cloud scan attempt I heavily moved around with the iPhone and behind and under all things to avoid "data shadows". It looks like the disadvantage is that this way, iPhones location/position awareness may suffer and you end up redundantly scanning some important Faces like from Walls again and again. And for me it looks each time Lidar adds another layer of points over these Faces. And is it is not super accurate, these Layers do not happen on the same plane. If I watch my cropped cloud in a top view, I can see that for some Walls I have five or more planes of point layers. Therefore I did another test, trying to "mimic a Leica Station" or gimbal. Means I tried to not move around (impossible), only rotate the iPhone and scanning only radial. And I tried to avoid scanning things again. The result looks a bit more accurate and file size is much smaller but I have relatively few points. Which I would think is a good thing. But interestingly, planar face detection in Bricscad was even harder and planes less accurate oriented in space. Are there any other experiences and best practices ?

That works now. Was a user error/misunderstanding/..... I can snap to VW point cloud PTS points now. So I theoretically can also use Bricscad'S AI planar Face detection. In practice it is a bit more difficult and works by increasing error tolerances and expectable coarse results. Support said : The issue is due to the low resolution of the scan as well as high noise. Can't be, I have a current iPhone Pro 🙂 OK, Apple Lidar scan Point Clouds look indeed a bit different in quality than usual Leica Station Point Cloud scanned by a surveyor.

That is interesting. For me the cloud usage is hindering. I did not find Nomad under Apps to allow or disallow using mobile data. If Nomad syncs only over WIFI or USB-C cable it is ok, if it would stress my mobile data rate it would be negative. I do not use it either, too complicated for me. The other thing with cloud is, I scan a point cloud, end and save, I have to wait until Nomad send it to cloud. I wait until it synchs to the M1 Mini. Then I start creating Folders in VW cloud on my M1, start relocating and renaming things and for each action I have to wait again and produce necessary traffic. If I got that right, even renaming causes the whole file to be uploaded and synched over all devices again. I "renamed" the VW samples folder according my standards by just making it all upper case. Now in VW Cloud App I have 2 VW Samples Folders ....

Still, VW Walls can't be slanted. You can model it by Generic Solids and manually tag it for BIM/IFC. To make a proper Top Plan representation you can create a Hybrid from it. You could maybe even use a Roof (Face) object.

I do not actively (know how to) use Safari private browsing or use different Sonoma profiles. I thought about that or Firewall Settings or Add Blockers but it works flawlessly in Firefox and even with Safari, with any other Webinars I tried so far on VW University !? Maybe I should restart my M1 Mini from time to time, which I forget since I exited macOS Public Betas .....

I tried to open but got this :

Somehow that special Video does not play in Safari on my M1 Mini. (But I have watched it 2 days ago in Firefox)

So far only PIOs and Symbols can make use of Levels .... For mainly custom Solids geometry, Story/Levels are indeed useless. If you are doing BIM with mainly sophisticated stylized Level bound PIOs on Component Level, maybe similar repeating projects, VW Story/Levels, once pre set, can be a great help and time saver. But working the old school, less abstract, pre-Story/Level way, with Layer and Layer Wall Heights, in many cases may not be much less effective. It is more a preference of how you like to work. Since manual height overwriting in OIP works reliably in VW and is needed in both cases. Similar to Stair Tool, some hate it in general for its abstraction, complexity and on the other hand its limitations and prefer to model a Stair manually. I like to set up a Stair Style parametrically and reuse it, but get annoyed when it can't make it look the way I want.

AFAIK for Point Cloud and Room Plan Mode you need Lidar. (iPhone Pro, iPad Pro) But Photogrammetry should work with standard iPhone too (?) Looks like the Point Cloud Points in VW are snappable. (Somehow by PTS export to Bricscad, I can't snap to/access the points, other to other PTS files !?) Or you can create a DTM from the PC. (You better reduce the data or create a few Stakes manually from the PC) Photogrammetry has initially no scale. There are a few good Videos on Nomad and working with Scans on VW University.

I think Assigning (multiple Stories is the easiest thing and applicable in 98% of buildings. Just @digitalcarbon screenshot looked a bit like it may either not have further Stories or if that these may look similar chaotic. So in the 2% where Stories may not help, I think @line-weight proposed to use a single Story anyway to have access to Levels. Sometimes it is, sometimes it may not. E.g. if you just have a singly Story defined - you do not need "default" Levels. You can assign Levels directly to Story and don't get the mess when changing Level Zs afterwards.

A Story is mandatory to have access to Story Levels. And with Levels you can add some useful parametric control to make later changes easier. OK, VW's Story Level Settings Design is the worst of all option available to make later changes in Levels any comfortable ... But the more a project tends to go from completely chaotic to more boring standardized and more changes/adaptions while design expected, there comes a point where the unnecessary tedious Story/Level setup starts to bring an advantage. I basically like Story/Levels or parametric in Arch Modeling in general, so I set them up wherever possible, even when renouncing of it would likely be a bit faster at the end. But it always depends on the special project and is a personal preference.

When importing USD files from VW Nomad iOS App, (which are deeply hidden in a nested group orgy) I would love to see Component Edit Palette to appear - wherever on screen VW decides .... But unfortunately CEP does not happen to help managing deep nested grouping

I think Room Plan needs more AI. I would like to pay for a Room Plan that : - allows you to initially set a UCS and Origin at a room corner - lets you set tolerances in dimensions, where it forces all rectilinear Mesh Vertices to sit on that grid (e.g. 5 mm or a full cm) - let's you set tolerances in angles (e.g. 90° lock to force every Face to align with standard planes) and or e.g. 7,5° tolerance to force to allowed angles when having rotated Walls - recognize Stairs and create simple Cubes with riser height, representing each tread. I can easily force all above features in Bricscad after import. Nevertheless there is no way to convert those important Nomad "Meshes" to Solids. I do not really get the 3D Face content inside the Mesh Container. Room Plan('s AI) should do a basic Mesh Modeling tutorial first. Yes, Faces of Meshes can't have holes like CAD Solids. And if Room Plan does everything by adding Cubes, beside the problem of missing planarity because of accuracy over distance, OK. But it would be so much more helpful if Room Plan would learn proper Mesh Modeling. When it detects a planar Face from a Wall, it should take care of that single Face (or Cube) and just look at its limits when reaching its corners and other touching Walls. And if it detects an opening in the Wall, just do 2 vertical and 2 horizontal cuts to define a valid Face/Cube tessellation - extrude that resulting opening Face inward. Or better, for the Wall Cube, "bridge" the opening Faces of both sides and add an extra Cube inside to represent the Window inset or even its geometry.

Basically I think Component Edit is useful. I seldom see it as it is only meant for when in Symbol or other Edit Modes. But I think it should be part of the top bar. Like View Perspective or Render Mode. I don't use these all the time also. But when I need it it's there.

I have a similar but far less complicated basement situation at a sloped site. I divided Foundations over 2 Stories, the lower Foundations with Walls on top in between, the upper Foundations and all Walls starting from there. Then there is an extra non standard Foundation, so it will get its own (Wall)Style anyway and so it can also get its own Level. Everything else that does not match gets local overwriting in OIP. In your case it is a bit difficult. Generally it looks more like custom modeling with Solids. For IFC's sake you may want to put it on a Story and use VW Walls or just tag it manually. You can use a non level bound Wall Style for foundations and base Walls. But you can also add 30+ of your Levels to assign them manually to Walls in OIP, in case this can help organizing your modeling. I did so in some cases where I had not enough data of existing and had to correct some of the levels later over time when modeling. This was quite handy as when you adapt such a Level, all related bound Walls will update automatically.

I absolutely love Room Plan. I think dimension accuracy is pretty decent. But my problem is the quality of the Meshes. I mean the simple boxes from furniture are good. But everything more complex, like 4 touching Walls of a room or a Wall with a Window opening are a Mesh-mess. There are simple inaccuracies like Wall "connections" not meeting at the same point. More annoying are that the "boolean-like" construction of a Wall with a Window opening has slightly non planar component faces. And the organization of the Meshes itself. Some Meshes include a set of independent Volumes. I am not able to create any Solids from these important Mesh Elements, like Walls. And I had hoped that Room Plan would do an "idealization" and simplification of the scan. Like forcing everything reasonable rectilinear into a XY, XZ or YZ plane and round ugly numbers to a full cm and such. Is there any room for improvement from VW/Nomads side, or does Apples API not allow better Meshes ?

I have only scanned a single Point Cloud of a room so far. AFAIK working with even single point clouds or photogrammetry in VW always meant - scaling - rotating - aligning - cropping When I stopped scanning I got a warning that I will no more be able to continue scanning. Which I didn't want, but I also expected that Nomad that way would do some magic to keep location of the scans synchronous. But how could you realistically align PCs or find a special point to align both PC ? As soon as I zoom in a bit I lose overview. What do you expect to do with the PC, or better how do you create VW geometry from it, by creating a DTM from it ?

So that sounds like your memory pressure graph is still all green (?) So there should not be any lag. You can try if that helps but I agree, can't be a solution. It would have been easy if your memory would have got yellow/brownish .... We could have said you have too less memory/weak computer. And very likely it would work fine on a 128 GB Mac Studio. But if memory pressure stays green, I see no Mac limitation reason for VW suddenly starting to lag after exceeding a certain number of Spaces ....... Maybe you can send your files to VW Support, that they can check if everything really works as designed.

I read of issues where repair/update failed in a loop because the Updater insisted on first closing a running VW - which could not be closed as there was none running .....

When you have your project opened and it starts to lag, open Activity Monitor, Memory Tab and watch the memory pressure graph at the bottom. As long as the curve stays green, everything should be ok. But when it switches to yellow it will get slow and you will need more RAM. Easier said than done as there is no option to increase memory afterwards or my M1 Mini even was already maxed out with its only 16 GB offer. Does not necessarily mean that VW Spaces are the culprit. Could be that you exceeded the limits with your project in general. E.g. maybe when deleting 20% of the building, it may run fine - with Spaces. Or maybe that Spaces are memory hungry and work inefficient.

Not sure if there is a workaround. Yes, Selection is "X" key. I usually have keystroke "X" assigned to my Mouse Forward thumb button. (Fit View to Backward) And/or assigned to various 3DConnecion or Wacom input devices buttons.

Not really. As as it disturbs so much in screenshots render modes. On the other hand, Tools > Show Origin, that perfect shymarker is an often used feature for me. And I never understood why it is only available in 2D top plan. RGB axes are just to large and colourful. And to complicated to control their visibility. But it could be worse. Bricscad has a small nice RGB axes option ..... that usually marks 0,0,0 But first you can't snap to the origin and second, when panning/zooming the View away from origin, the marker will jump near to left bottom of the view and make you confident drawing near origin, no matter if you are 20 m or 3 parsecs away from origin ......

Should work fine as it works well here for decent project sizes even on my M1 16 GB Mini.

That is good to hear. I always preferred VMWare overall. But at that time frame it was unfortunately always overall slower and realistically not usable for professional 3D CAD work, at least wit Microstation. I am sure public ARM switch on Windows will not be as fast as with Apple. I do not really follow the Windows X86/ARM emulation nor Parallels/VMWare progress but would be excited when Windows-only Apps run reasonably on Windows ARM emulation and even VMs. Or VW running well on a Windows VW on Linux. While testing Windows 10 in a Parallels VM on Mac (during Apples most bad hardware offers 2012-2020) I was also sure I could easily switch from Mac back to Windows ..... No need to care for most hardware drivers, BIOS updates, ..... and super fast boot times. Once testing real (BTW great) PC hardware, Windows looked a bit different and I also tried Linux but decided to suffer a bit longer with Apple. At least since M2 or M3 I feel confident my patience with Apple was wise.