CARMELHILL

The next example shows the differenc eif you like to do rendered line elevations. Getting rid of those joint lines between floor and walls is impossible unless you use the AEC floor tool. I also use that tool to add seamless vinyl siding corner boards without a joint seam between 1st and 2nd floors. Buit rendered elevations take a long time to do because the render times are crazy and the 3d model needs to be perfect. Time and money for me are better spent elsewhere.

The hidden line render example is attached. On the left I used AEC Floor Tool, on the right I used polygon extrude.

From what I remember, I changed to the AEC Floor tool because when I did a 3d model and used the hideen line command, or did a rendered/line drawing elevation, the extruded polygon would add a line between the floor and the walls instead of showing a seamless plane. When you use the AEC tool the wall below, the flor above, and the wall sitting on it will all look like one unit that is not cut up by needless annoying lines. I'll try to attached an example in a following post.

I forgot to update my profile..... VW Architect 2010 sp2

Is 2010 unstable for anyone else, or is it just that I'm using drawings borders that I created in previous versions, and 2010 can't open them without frequent crashes. This would really suck because I don't see myself spending the time to redraw every border, every detail, every image prop, every texture, every automatic schedule, and every other resource I've accumulated in the last few years. I would have thought the program would have been designed to open older drawings - seamlessly. Or am I wrong here. I loved 2009 sp5. Holy crap that was a stable version. But I hate to go back to something when I just spent $600 to upgrade.

Sorry guys, I grew up on Windows in grammar school, high school, and college. And Dell was always the most solid and stable platform. So now, by default, I am continuing to use it with my business. Too late to relearn something new. I know that tidal wave of Mac's is coming. Everyday Mac is gaining market share while Windows continues to scratch it's head. Life sucks.

I want to add some trim around some windows and some vinyl siding vents that are a specif color from the manufacturer. Trying to manually get the color to match on the VW color wheel and custom color area is too time consuming and almost impossible to get it to look right. Is there an easier way of using some kind of eye dropper tool outside of VW to import a custom color. My fastest way right now is to make a color swatch in Photoshop and import the color as a flat matte texture. Annoying, but is that the only way to get an accurate color of a real world object?

How do you get a high hat to show up in a final renderworks image? I've tried point a spot light up at the ceiling but it sounds like there should be an easier way. Do you put a cylindrical hole in the ceiling and place a point light right there? I've seen Cheif Architect renderings that look so good with high hats. VW must have a simple way of doing it.

Can I tell you how many times I get a stupid contractor asking stupid questions like, "can I leave out the rebar", or, "I didn't know rebar was required". A lot of contractors don't own a copy of the Residential Code of New York State (based on International Code). So if I don't put a detailed rebar specification into the foundation wall note for that unbalanced structural basement wall, then the rebar won't get put in. The code has a prescriptive chart, showing height of ceiling in the basement, compared to the height of the grade outside the wall, which all determine EXACT rebar sizes, amounts, and spacing. It's not designed by some other engineer. How pathetic have we become that we need engineers to hold our hands for everything. Have architects been degraded to mere "designers of interesting curves and fanciful dreams"? And if the cheesy cheepo architect/draftsman decides to just put "rebar to code" or "as required" then you'd BETTER be available day and night for stupid project bidding questions.

Ah, still nothing on the company website. I still don't understand how you can take pre-orders and promise delivery within two weeks on the web seminar if you don't have any info available. Nothing. What gives?

I think it made sense. It's been very stable and I like all the tweaks.

I only caught the last half of the Web Seminar on 2010. Sounds interesting. I am amazed that the program is supposedly ready to ship in a week, but there is not a hint of any information on their web site. How can you have a product shipping without any info on your own company website?

I was using this today to set up some automatic elevations heights. My old way of using this tool was to auto-set the height. But that makes you play around with the reference height, up and down by a few inches, until you get the height to display that your looking for. Today I used the control point for the first time. The control point is sort of like telling your bench mark where in the y axis of your paper space is your reference marker. So if you want the elevation bench mark to display and elevation of 25', you need to grab the control point vertext and place it at 25' in the vertical y axis of your drawing. The easy way of doing this is double click the single line tool, type in a horizontal line of anything....10' long, it doesn't matter, and instead of place at next mouse click, give it the coordinates of o for x and 25' for y, then OK to place it. Now grab your bench mark control point vertex and place it on that line. No your bench mark will display 25'. Mkae a note, if you copy one bench mark and move it to use as a nother bench mark elsewhere, you will have move the control point back to the proper elevation in the y axis that you are referencing.

I might be mistaken, but i thought you could still do them with Open Gl renders. See my attached rendering of an elevation I am working on.

Nope, that still doesn't work. Sure, it will show the column label in the worksheet, but how do you get the label to automatically show up on the construction floor plan? There is no check box for "Show Label" in the Object Info pallette like there is when you create joists from poly. It's silly to require you to go back and manually label your columns with the simple text tool. It creates the possibilities of errors and omissions.

Thanks Wes. I took another look at it. For some reason it didn't work on my first try. Worked this time. Must have been a late night SNAFU.

I want to do a structural framing plan. You can show the structural joists with their lables which will correspond to the labels in a worksheet/farming schedule, but why can't you show the label of the columns. There is no checkbox in object info pallette for that option. You shouldn't have to type it out manually next to your column. That defeats the purpose.

If you can't find your install CD, you can search for older versions of Quicktime at: http://www.apple.com/support/quicktime/ They also call it applecare. I haven't tried reinstalling the older quicktime version yet to see if it'll fix my problem. I'm working in the field today.

Anyone else having problems with their Quictime VR Panoramic and VR Object exports when using Quicktime on a Vista 64 bit machine? I've read elsewhere that Quicktime Player has problems on Vista 64 bit.

I didn't hear anything about VW 2010 taking advantage of 64 bit program. I did ask Tech Support before buying my computer and they said they had no plans to rework the software. But the advantage of larger RAM makes me a beleiver in Vista 64. My only complaint so far....I can't get Favorites to stay in my Resource Browser. I had them but they keep disappearing. Trying to work it out but I might send an email to Bug Submitto see if this is a know problem that they have duplicated.

Well I have the machine and it flies. Dell had some kind of a special on RAM. I got 32 instead of 16. It's the most expensive system I ever bought for an upgrade....$4500. But it flies. The limitation of 3 gig addressable RAM for Windows XP makes up for the slightly slower speed of VW 2009 in Vista 64. The Ram makes the computer fly. Only one driver issue that I resolved pretty fast. I have to upgrade my Quickbooks from 2003 to the new 2009 version but that was an expected problem. I also had to upgrade my Strucalc from 7 to 8 because the 7 version wouldn't run on Vista 64, it would have been OK on Vista 32....ok, bad luck on that one. But the upgrade license was only $150 So back to work. I love my new signature.....

I took the plunge. My new 64 bit Vista system Dell will be here soon. Dual quad core Xeon processors, 32 gig of Ram (16 was thrown in for free), 1.5 gig ram on the the Nvidia Quadro FX4800 video card, and some other goodies. This machine should fly compared to my 5 year old machine. I think I'll only have to upgrade my accounting software. Quickbooks 2003 won't run on Vista from what I've heard.

Let me try attaching the image again.

I've been playing around with creating some great 3d symbols for renderings by get a single point perspective phot (straight ahead shot) like you see on Bestbuy when buying appliances, and using that to creat a texture that I map to an extruded object. So far the results are great but they make the files very large. I might have to reduce the image quality of the texture. Unfortunately they don't draw any lines when doing a hidden rendering, so they really are only for visual presentations. I attached one, I think, if I did it correctly. Has anyone else done this or is this a dead end?

Can someone either post or email me direct, carmelhill@optonline.net a few examples of what they are doing with the worksheet portion of Architect. I've been using since Minicad 7 but I'm starting to think I am not using the program to it's fullest. I only use worksheets for the Door and Window Schedule plus a very basic one to calculate required Light and Ventilation Calculations. Other than that, I think I'm working in the stone ages compared to others. And if you coould post/email an example of a full budget or bill of materials I would be really impressed. Thank you so much. Someone helped me out, PAnthony, with automatic sections and elevations and that was huge, so I already know I need to explore this program more fully. Especially after 11 years. Thank you.