michaelk

Not sure if what you are trying to do is model the brick or use your hand renderings... You can easily use your hand renderings to create wall textures. Just create a new texture using your rendering and apply it to the appropriate side of the wall. In my experience, adding windows and doors to walls can cause the texture to jump around. (There's probably a way to stop that behavior - I just haven't found it.) Because of that, and because it's often useful for other reasons, I sometimes extract the wall surface and put the texture on the extracted nurbs surface. Then put the nurbs surface in a class of it's own to control visibility. Just remember to bump the nurbs surface away from the wall a pixel or two or .01". If you want to apply the brick detail in 3D, it depends on what version of VW you are using. 2010 will allow wall projections to be added. But it may be simpler to just create 3d symbols and insert them on the surface of the wall. See examples

I've had good luck using word or excel (or pages or numbers) to create text. It's much easier to format. Then turn it into a pdf and reference it into the drawing. I agree with you. Trying to large amounts of text w/ VW is not very productive.

Especially confusing when "Non Rotating" sound like exactly what you want

Go back and edit the fields of the label legend manager. Put a check mark in the "Right Reading" column next to the channel field

I must be misunderstanding. Thought you wanted the channel to follow the back of the instrument. What were you hoping for?

Edit the fields of the label legend manager. Unselect "Non Rotating" (bottom of the dialog box) hth michaelk

With the ceiling, you might try using a texture w/ constant reflectivity. Just using a white color in a rendering always looks grayish. I found Dan Jansenson's book (The Renderworks Recipe Book) helpful getting started w/ renderworks. It's due for an update, but I don't think anything in renderworks has changed since the last edition came out. http://imageprops.com/ hth michaelk

I think you're right, Pat. I think Peter & Matt are talking about something like the attached. Being a mere tinkerer and dabbler at these sorts of things, I did it with blue symbols. I'd love to see it done w/ a PIO. Not that I have any need for it myself, I'd just like to see how it's done. michaelk

Would a blue symbol do what you want? It would insert as a group of the objects you want and be resizable as a group. Example attached... hth michaelk

If you create a symbol from geometry in multiple layers, all the geometry gets sucked into the symbol, which is placed on the active layer. Original layer assignment of each object is lost. Not sure if you are trying to control floor visibility on the site plan... Option 1... If you are trying to just put a building on a site, and don't need to control layer/floor views, then that should work. But you'll want to create the symbol from a duplicate of the building geometry, to keep very bad things from happening. Depending on how you use Layer Z values, it might collapse everything down to the first floor. See Option B Option B... If you need to control floor visibility (or if all you floors fell down when they lost layer information), you might try nesting symbols. Make a symbol for each layer of each building. Create a Class for floors 1 through 5 and assign each symbol to the class. Don't assign the objects inside the symbol to that class. Just the symbol. Then make a symbol for each building that is composed of all the floor symbols. Now you can insert the building symbol and turn floors on and off by class. There may be some fudging around w/ z heights of symbols, depending on how you use layer Z values. Not sure if you wanted to, but you could still reference the symbols from other documents if needed. Probably not a perfect solution (I bet it leaves a line at every floor break), but it should work. hth michaelk

Interesting... Do you have the same Altman symbols?: VNSP, NSP, MFL & WFL?

Keep in mind that I could be totally wrong about this... But I think the way is used to work, and probably still does, is this: Text data inside the symbol geometry are placed inside the symbol relative to the center of the the symbol. (or maybe the insertion point. not sure) The result is that smaller symbols will squish the interior data closer together. Text data outside the symbol geometry are placed at the same distance from the edge of the symbol geometry as specified in the label legend manager. The result is that larger symbols will place exterior data further from the center of the symbol - but the same distance from the edge of the symbol - as a smaller symbol. Not what you are looking for... michaelk

I think the answer is "no". You can't edit the position of the label relative to the two-fer object. At least, I've never figured it out. But I don't use that tool very often. michaelk

In the Navigation Palette, Layer tab, set Layer Options to "Show Others" or "Show/Snap Others". Set all the layers you want to view to visible. Make sure Unified View is on. hth michaelk

Tools>Label Legend Manager>(Select Legend)>Edit Fields> Select "Non-Rotating" hth michaelk

Select the lamps you want to change. Modify>Assign Legend to Ints hth michaelk

Try the Altman PAR symbols. They will have clamps and look correct in 3D views. The US version has VNSP, NSP, MFL, and WFL. Don't know if the UK version is 60, 61, 62. The US version has the Cantata Fresnel & Cantata PC. But no profile. You might have to make your own. hth michaelk

You probably have the fill attribute set to "none". A white fill on dimension object w/ ASME Dim Std will do what you are looking for. hth michaelk

Islandmon In what way do sections conflict? michaelk

I've also noticed w/ this file that the one or two of the design layers sometimes go to different views - even though Unified View is on. The problem seems to be w/ section viewports when changing settings in the OIP.

Export>Image File...> Export Area - select Marquee Click Draw Marquee. Draw a marquee around the camera view Set the resolution, dimensions and file type. hth michaelk

I'm have a strange rendering problem that I've never seen before. I'm hoping someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Situation: 1. Floorplan VP on Sheet Layer. 2. Create a Section VP from floorplan VP much later.... 3. Set background rendering of section VP to Open GL or Fast Renderworks. 4. Set foreground rendering to hidden line. On the section VP I sometimes get a strange result of a hidden line rendering over an Open GL (or Fast Renderworks) rendering from below. see picture. Changing the ambient light level in the VP seems to cause it. Once it happens it sticks like that. Updating doesn't fix it. The fix seems to be changing the render options to background: hidden line, foreground: none, update, and then change the render settings back again. I can predict when the problem is going to occur, because the render times get very long... On this file I've been getting a lot of crashes described as "out of memory" problems. I haven't had that problem before. Machine is maxed out @ 4G of ram. Other drawings are not affected. Any ideas? michaelk

I'm able to insert instruments in your file using the inst. insertion tool. Works as expected. If I move the Frankenstein instrument you had inserted or force a refresh it pops back into a 36?. How did you get the Franken-leko to appear? You might try deleting the label legend folder and creating a new label legend... Maybe there is some weird corruption there. michaelk

Wow. You might have your label legend inside a symbol definition... or.... something strange. Can you create a file w/ just one misbehaving fixture inserted and post it? michaelk

Can you post a picture or file that shows the problem?