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Tom Pearce

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Everything posted by Tom Pearce

  1. Hello All, Tom Pearce here — the often negligent distributor of interior xs / interiorcad for the US. You can contact me — Coronal Studio — for a Demo Version of interiorcad. Tom @Coronal.net The interior xs / interiorcad Version 2023 F5 was released on 15 June. You can view the interiorcad Manual at: https://conf.extragroup.de/im/2021 The Manual has a section on accessing Release Notes, but it is not currently current. If you have interior xs / interiorcad, you can normally access the Manual by selecting interiorcad Help on the Vectorworks Help Menu and below that on the same Menu is interiorcad Release Notes. This is valid when used in Demo Mode also. They have been a little slow in updating these.
  2. This would be an absolutely huge improvement in my workflow, which seems very similar to that of Bas.I work to manage this day in and day out.
  3. Some thoughts: These Move Objects Keyboard Shortcuts, aided by Matt’s very simple, but powerful Commands are a valuable part of my workflow. Thanks again to Mr Panzer!! I try to always exit the Vectorworks Preferences from the Edit Tab. That way, when you use the keyboard shortcut to open Vectorworks Preferences, you are already in the right spot to make changes when you are not using the values stored in Matt’s Commands. Since there is only one editable field on that tab, you even find the value already highlighted for you. Stay aware of your Active Class setting. Miss-keying these shortcuts can navigate your drawing. You will likely notice if you change the Active Design or Sheet Layer (Mac ⌘-↑↓). You might be less likely to notice a change of Active Class (Mac ⌘-←→). Some users coming from a Graphics background often like to set the Nudge capability to the Arrow Keys alone. I always caution against this in a CAD environment because of the possibility of inadvertently modifying your drawing. If you drop your doughnut on an Arrow Key, you may have violated the integrity go your drawing without even knowing it. :- ) Keyboard Shortcuts are an important aspect of making Vectorworks your own. That’s the way to be productive (and enjoy your work). A word of caution, though: Having passed the 70 year mark, and having used Vectorworks with keyboard shortcuts for 20-some-odd years, the repetitive stress takes its toll. Be gentle on yourself and your keyboard.
  4. Clint, Your situation speaks highly of Vectorworks and just how far they have come with the concept of working within one powerful and versatile application to move from initial design concept through to construction of the built world. Our expectations are well beyond that of others, especially in the woodworking industries. For instance, I'm not familiar with this "Sketchup" application that you mention. :-) Vectorworks is truly probably the best application to really facilitate design, rather than just allow the user to draft. interiorcad has been at the forefront in all this development and is working to remain there. More explanation below? Cabinetmaker can utilize polygons for editing the cabinet shape as viewed from the top, front or side views. It cannot currently use polylines with curve vertices. I'm not on the engineering team (which is a good thing for everyone :-) ), but based on ongoing conversations with the German software engineers, I know wonderful things are in the works. The extragroup team is working on features just as fast as they can write the code. Whenever I submit a list of capabilities important to our US market, virtually every single one is on their list. extragroup introduced Custom Parts in version 2012, revealing the focus of the visible move into the future. (You will not currently see them in interior xs.) They have been invisibly laying the groundwork previously. As Custom Parts become fully implemented and then incorporated into the Cabinetmaker, we will have a tremendously powerful tool. This represents a time consuming restructuring of interiorcad from the ground up. I am convinced that it will be worth it. Let me explain a bit, at least according to my understanding. ? ? extragroup is an extremely capable company. This change was made necessary essentially because of their high competence and demanding standards. The restructuring was required because they were ahead of the Vectorworks curve in rendering texture mapping to more realistically depict our woodworking complexities. I am revealing no secrets here ? convert a cabinet to a group and you see the structure of 3D polygons that were necessary to give us that appropriate texture mapping. We are now in the middle of the conversion to optimize the Parasolids modeler. Then one might consider the user interface. Look at the sophistication of the editing dialog boxes that enable us to intuitively edit the minutia of detail in cabinet construction. (This might not be quite so obvious the the beginner just beginning the climb up the learning curve.) (And every one of us has run up against the inevitable wall of configurations that cannot be specified parametrically. At least then we are working within Vectorworks!) These guys are working out there at the forefront to build a modern Vectorworks experience for us. I happen to believe that they will continue to lead the way. Clint, this is by way of saying "No, you can't do it all with interiorcad right now." That doesn't keep Vectorworks interiorcad from being the software of choice to some very pleased woodworkers who very much enjoy using it to do work within its capabilities.
  5. I think I've found an answer: I can assign the ?dummy? exterior wall to a special class, which I can make invisible. This works for a simple T join, which is the most common occurrence.
  6. Jonathan- Please see previous response to Ray
  7. When we got viewports, we got the ability to design exterior walls for, say, an apartment building and then bring in interior units as modular DLVP?s. I did that in 2009. How do I do that in 2010 and have the component wall joins work? Before, I could create the wall joins of the interior walls to dummy exterior walls and then delete the dummies. The join configuration of the interior wall did not change and presented just fine as long as their DLVP was above the exterior walls in the stacking order. Now that I have a more capable modern wall network technology, I can?t find a technique to allow me to get this capability. The documentation states that the wall heals if the Auto Join Wall Preference is turned on. That made me think that turning it off would prevent them from healing. That doesn?t seem to be the case. It heals. What am I missing? -Wall styles have a core designated and the same fill hatch.
  8. Ray? I have and use a keyboard shortcut, but Add Surface isn't exactly what I want. I don't want to change to the 2D Selection Tool and then select both objects in order to use it. Again, think about how easy the Clip Tool is to use and count the actions. Kevin? Decision Point: New tool for some continuity with existing interface or Modifier key for streamlined interface ----- I think I like the Modifier key.
  9. The value in what I'm requesting is in being able to, for instance, add a rectangular area to an existing object by simply two clicks. Or one I often use is to fill in an area to make an L-shape into a rectanglular shape. Think how much easier it is to use the Clip Tool than to draw an object and then Clip Surface. The mouse clicks add up.
  10. I?d like to be able to set the Pillar to get its height from the layer Delta Z. I think, then, that one would argue that the Architectural and Structural Heights should also. (Pilaster?) I?d actually sometimes like to set Floor Thickness to the layer Delta Z, also. The Floor is so valuable to quickly create a simple hybrid object without creating a symbol. For new users, it would almost be worth duplicating the tool with another name, such as Hybrid Extrudy Thing.
  11. I?d like to be able to set an anchor point when copying and pasting. This could be thought of as adding a ?repeat? option to the Move by Points tool, when the Number of Duplicates is set to 1 and Original Object is set to Retain.
  12. I?d like to be able to set an anchor point when using the Scale Objects command.
  13. I?d like to have the option, in each linear or angular entry field of the Duplicate Array command, to repeat the duplicates in the opposite direction of the value entered. If the request were a linear array with Number of Duplicates = 2 and Offset of 3?, the result would be five objects, all on 3? centers, with the original in the center. One might argue for a similar capability for the Move by Points and Offset tools for consistency and functionality.
  14. I?d like to have an Add tool to complement the Clip tool in the same way the Add Surface command complements the Clip Surface command. I could certainly put this to use often.
  15. I'd like to have a variation on the Distribute portion of the Align/Distribute command that would enable one to ?disperse? the selected objects with an equal stipulated distance between them. One application of this might be to arrange kitchen cabinets of different sizes, aligned by their top (aligned max y) and touching each other (interval 0), beginning at the left (anchored min x). I could happily use this several times per week.
  16. In the Workspace Editor dialog box for VW 2008 to edit any workspace, there is a button in the bottom left: "Export Workspace to Text File" I am currently working to finish a FileMaker runtime solution to map the assigned Keyboard Shortcuts in that text file to a graphic layout of the keyboard. I will make it available to the community. I find this diagram to be immensely helpful for myself and as a training aid. In the past, I have done them manually, so you can imagine just how happy I was to see this new feature and to watch the diagram appear almost magically.
  17. Please provide Workspace access to Edit View just like Save View. Currently, the only access seems to be via the View Bar. For those of us who are truly crazy, it would allow the Scroll Bars to be hidden. To claim the maximum screen possible, I typically draw with no rulers or palettes visible other than Object Info and Commands.
  18. Could the Name Field also be displayed on the Shape Tab? Often, that is the only field needed from the Data Tab, and it would save a lot of time to have it mirrored on the Shape Tab. [ 08-13-2004, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: Tom Pearce ]
  19. Katie, That's it precisely. That would be a tremendous time saver. Thanks, Tom
  20. It would be great to provide access to the class visibilities of Viewports in the Classes Dialog Box by a button as is currently provided for Saved Views.
  21. In our new found power of Viewports, it would be great to be able to navigate back to the Design Layer with the appropriate visibilities set. A good way to do this might be an option to automatically create a Saved View when a Viewport is created. The model for this would be the Create Standard Viewport in the Industry Series.
  22. Another Offset Tool request I have is for an option (like the Mirror Tool) to delete the original.
  23. Alexandre, If all you need is arc vertices, you might try: 1. Duplicate (in place) 2. Set Smoothing to 'No Smoothing' 3. Offset 4. Manually set vertex radii with addition or use Smoothing With other vertex types, it only approximates, often poorly so. Regards, Tom
  24. Gustaf, We?ve been using the spiral tool lately to plan out some volutes for a curved stair rail. We usually work on free standing furniture, so this is new to us. It seems that the spiral tool approximates an involute, which, in non geometrical terms, is what would be generated by the end of a string unwinding off another object. The form that we usually think of is unwinding off a cylinder. Pardon, those of you who already know all this better than I. You can take advantage of VW?s method of approximating with bezier points to your advantage. One can define the resolution of the control points. Generate a spiral to your liking, maybe with some experimenting. Set the segment angle to 90? for a square result. Un Group and Un Smooth to change all those bezier points to corner points. You might have to clean up the ends. It seems to my uneducated mind that VW?s involute method leaves some anomalous shapes at the ends, but works well between. Hope this helps. BTW, does anyone have experience with drawing curved stair rails and their transitions? Tom Pearce
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