Biplab

Do you really need a loft for this? Or sweeping a trapezoid shape (0.5" at the top and 1" at the bottom) would suffice?

The rotate 2D and rotate 3D tools have been consolidated in VW12. Depending upon the selected object(s) - whether they are 2D or 3D, you will get different mode bar options.

It is difficult to say what's going on without looking at the file. Are you exporting solids and if so have you tried tuening on "Export Solids as Surfaces" flag? You may want to send the file to the following e-mail address: biplab@nemetschek.net Thanks.

Kevin, I think this may be a limitation of our rendering system. And this happens in design layers too when the objects are too far away from the origin. Or if the image size is too large. The size problem is no longer there in VW12 though. Are you using 11.x?

I am not sure if you all are experiencing this: I drew a sphere and then drew a rectangle on the top of it. I created a viewport. Rectangle is the crop. I then turned the pen off or changed the rectangle to an invisible class in the Edit Crop mode. I went back to design layer and moved the sphere far away from its original place. Come back to sheet layer - and the viewport is gone - although you should still see the selection handles at the four corners. If this is the problem - then it is working as designed. The crop determines the bounding box of the viewport in this case and the crop is invisible. Remedy: Make crop visible or add some annotations - like a drawing label - which would indicate the existence of viewport.

3. What you are doing is copying a section VP. But what the message means that you cannnot "cut" a section VP. There are 2 ways to create a section VP - by drawing a section line in the plan design layer or by drawing a section line on a viewport that is in top/bottom/right/left/front/back view. If you draw a section line on a section VP and try to create another section VP using Create Section Viewport command - you will get this message - which is different from copying the section VP and repositioning the section line instance.

1. You can edit the attributes of the Section Style class to control this. 2. Make sure that the objects you are trying to section are in a visible layer and visible class in the section vp. 3. What it means that you can't create a section viewport from another section viewport.

LightWork rendering engine is multi-threaded but for only a few rendering operations - e.g. ray-traced rendering.

Use the 3D reshape tool to drag a vertex of a rectangular NURBS surface with Z constraints ON.

In the Loft Creation dialog - there is a check box called "Closed" - you need to check that.

The above link may not work. Here is a working link: http://www.nemetschek.net/renderworks/features/photorealistic_rendering.php

Please send it to biplab@nemetschek.net

Please send it to biplab@nemetschek.net

I have no idea how the curve does not pass thru the loci that you snapped to in interpolation mode. May be somebody can send me a file and I can take a look. I guess I still do not understand the problem after all these mails.

Sorry, I can't reproduce this problem. I created 3d locii at the vertices of two rectangular extrudes. Then I used the NURBS curve tool - first mode - the interpolation mode - and clicked on the 3d locii. The curve generated does pass thru all the locii. One thing you should notice and be careful about is that as you click on the locii, the smartcursor cue "3D locus" should appear on the screen - only then you can be sure that you have actually snapped to the 3D locus points.

NURBS curve tool has 2 modes - the interpolation mode should give you what you are looking for.

Can someone send me a file that exhibits this behavior - preferrably before everything goes south. E-mail the file to Katie at tech support and she can forward us the mail. --Biplab

In the constraints palette, double click on the Snap to Object button, and click on the Snap to edge points check box in the 3D Snapping dialog. This is a preference now - so if you turn it on - you don't need to do anything in subsequent sessions. Turning this on would make edge end points, mid points, along points (if you have along points ON) and circular edge center point snapping.

I am not sure but may be you should use Split tool with Split by Line mode (2nd and 3rd mode).

I think the way to achieve this in VectorWorks may be implementing a feature like "Replace Surface". What you do is you select the planar star and ask the spplication to replace it by a cylindrical surface. I am thinking of adding it for a coming release.

Sorry, I don't think it is possible currently in the modeller - this is a limitation of the fillet tool.

If the path is continuous - i.e. you have fillets at the corners, the extrude along path should work. Take alook at the chair example for inspiration at: http://www.nemetschek.net/3dpowerpack/tutorials.html

VectorWorks never works with absolute tolerances. In general the tolerance is ~= length of the diagonal of the bounding cube of the object * 1E-5 - which is quite low. For a die with width and breadth and height = 1m , bounding cube = 1m^3 - the tolerance is going to be 1.732 * 1E-5 ~= .02 mm. Hope this gives you an idea.

This is the explanation - I am not making it up. In any case, I could not think of any solution for this problem. If your view is fixed, then you could convert the NURBS curves to polygons and then increase the thickness of the polygons to make them float over the surface rendering.

Contours do lie on the surface within a reasonable tolerance. The problem is that when you render the surface, the surface is tessellated (tringulated) - which approximates curvy/wavy surface with planar triangles - thus the facets are slightly above or below the actual surface - hiding portions of the contour lines.