MikeB

You can only edit symbols in the active document. So make sure the symbol you want to edit is in to the active document then use the pulldown menu on the resoures pallet. look at the bottom of the list and you will see the active document listed, don't browse through your hard drive for it, you need to select it at the bottom of the pull down menu. Then you should be able to edit. Also I don't think you can edit by double clicking. you should have an edit button on the right side of the resourse pallett. If you dont, expand the window so you do, and use this edit button. If this dosent work, I don't know. Good Luck

They dont actually change position. What it looks like to me is that they dont change at all. they are a graphic to represent the lights that is independent of the zoom so no matter what they always appear the same size. I've just gotten used to it and the only way to know if your lighting is corret is to render the image anyway. One thing I did find that is usefull is to not display the lights as objects when you render. You do this in the document prefs. Good luck

Make sure the objects have a solid fill. you need to check the individual objects as well as the classes the objects are in. Its best to set the individual objects fill to use the class fill and then edit the classes. you can also apply and change materials throught the classes in this way.

I've suggested this too. It would be great if the symbol next to the layer name in the pull down menu that indicates the 2D / 3D orientation would also indicate the layer color.

You can only snap to layer that are the same scale, so you can have multiple layers and snap between layers but they all have to be the same scale.

The best way to do this is with a worksheet. You creat a new one through your resourses pallette and it works like Excel. Good luck

I'll give you a couple words of warning in relation to workgroup referencing. 1. Dont draw in a referenced layer. If you update it your changes will be lost. 2. Dont change your origion or the placement of your printable area. It will screw up the alignment of referenced layers. 3. Remember any changes made in the origional document of the referenced layer will show up when you update the reference. 4. Dont change your file names or the location of the referenced files on your hard drive. You will lose the references. I also found on the positive side that you can change the class attributes of objects in the referenced layers, It seems that updating the reference does not affect the class attributes. Good Luck

If I understand what you want corretly I sound like you are talking about workgroup referencing which is available in VW 8.0 on up. It allows you to reference individual layers from other drawings into your active document. Is that what you mean?

We've messed around with this and finally gave up. Our standard procedure now is to render with the background set to black (I found things render better with a black background??????????), and then export the rendering as an image file. Then we open the image in Photoshop and select the black background, delete it and insert one of several sky pics we have on file. It works great and VW dosent have to render the sky itself. You can change the color or the entire sky is seconds. We also use Photoshop to add people, trees, context. etc. We really only use VW for the building. If we want the sky to reflect in the windows of the model we set up a billboard out of the view. set it far enough back that it wont interfer with the shadows from the directional light, and then light it seperately with spots. Good Luck. And really there are a thousand ways to do this you just need to find the one that works for you.

No we use 8.5.2, I haven't found a way to do this, Is there one?

I noticed on the plug in doors that the jamb and door get put in the same class while the trim gets put a different one. This does not work well for applying materials through the classes. In common architectural practice we will paint the jamb and trim the same color while staining or painting the door another color. Could you either seperate all three of these elements into 3 seperate classes or combine the trim and Jamb into one class instead of the door and jamb. Thanks

I think this is a wish list item. We typically render complex images that take several hours to render on screen. I usually set this up at 5:00 and go home for a few hours and then come back around 9:00 to export the image. It would be great if there was an export command that would make this a one step process. So basically I could have the wireframe on screen and VW would both render and export. Thanks

In the resource palette if you use the pull down menu that defaults to the VW folder, at the bottom of the pull down list you should see the title of the active document (the drawing you are currently using). This is where you select the active document to access its symbol library. You dont browse for the active document. OR You can also access all of your symbols from the object browser. You can locate this in your palettes menu. Its kind of a simpler resourse palette. Good Luck

We have this problem all the time. Unfortunately the print area seems to be related to the paste in place command, the alignment of 3-D objects in different layers, and the workgroup referencing. It would be better if these items were only related to the page origion and not the position of the print area. Anyway we haven't found a way to do what your asking. The undo command does not work, and neither does the saved sheets. I hope Diehlgraphsoft either knows something I don't or they are going to fix this. Its really annoying.

With some 3-D objects when I use the command key to duplicate I get a run time error in the VW exe file and the dialoge box says "abnormal program termination" and windows quits VW. Does anyone understand why this happens? Also some tools group mode keys will occasionally display black, along with the saved sheets and zoom tools in the lower left corner. I have a GW2000 P3 800 W/ 256 mb Ram and a G-Force N-Vidia 32 Mb Card with the latest drivers. Thanks

Sorry Typo It should say we run Mac's

WE run Mas's here with the latest beta version of VW and have the same problem. It seem relatively random and is quite annoying. It does appear that the text changes size, even on plots. If you select the text and choose 9pt it will visibly change size, but over time it will change again. So I don't have any answer. Hopefully Diehlgraphsoft will solve this soon.

I agree this would be incredibly useful

It would be nice if we could apply a shader to an object that also has a image texture applied to it. Thanks

I don't know if this will help but we have always had trouble printing documents with "geneva"text in them. They either crash the plotter or the computer. Its especially difficult because when you create worksheets and insert lines into an existing worksheet the default font is geneva. Also we've had alot of trouble with helvetica that is made italic in VW. It either won't display or will crash when plotting. Good Luck

8.5.2 didn't help but I turned off my virtual memory and I haven't crashed since. This is fine most of the time but when I open several documents or I'm working on a complex 3-D model I have to have Virtual Memory on so it's still a problem.

I though of something else. Under the document perferences click the raster render tab and then click the engine options for the ray maker rendering engine. Be sure under the anti-aliasing section that you have "smooth edges and textures" selected.

Yes Ive seen this. It happened to us with brick material maps. The problem we had was that we weren't printing the rendering at high enough resolution. Try changing the printing resolution in the document preferences under the raster render tab. It defaults to 72 which is too low. But honestly we have had better results by exporting the image and then importing it again as an image file. I know it sounds backwards but if you print a rendering from VW the program has to do all the calculations over again to generate the printer information. If you export it as an image file and then import it back into your drawing to print you eliminate the need for this. And if you want to reprint the same image it takes alot less time if its an image and not a rendering. Good Luck

I use VW on both a G4 400 at work and a P3 800 at home. I can say the program seem to run virtually the same on both machines but the display ability of the mac seems to be better. Honestly either system seem fine but if I had to choose Id buy the Mac

In Render Works I tried to use the mercury shader as a mirror to reflect light. It will reflect images in the object that has the mercury shader appled to it but it will not reflect the light off of this object onto other objects around it. Am I expecting too much from the Raymaker Engin or am I doing something wrong.