Cloud Hidden

After messing around for a while, it appears that I cannot add new layers or remove layers once I have created a linked layer set. Can't redefine that set. I get the dialog box, and select new things, but it seems to have no effect. True or false? Having said that, linked layers are quite cool and will save me lots of time compared to how other software did things. But I change my mind a lot and would prefer to be able to change the composition of a linked layer.

I know I can create an ellipse and trim away the unnecessary segment, but this distorts the curve when turning it into a polyline and especially flattens the ends, and then when I sweep the arc and turn it into a solid surface, it doesn't come to the proper curve at the end. Seems like directly drawing an elliptical arc would solve this and make the extra trim steps unnecessary. Example of squashed end of ellipsoid available on request. Thanks.

[Edit: removed first part of question regarding lighting.] And why do the jpgs from perspective view include stuff that is beyond the Perspective crop rectangle? I thought that was supposed to limit the image size, but the number of pixels height and width were a lot larger than they should have been, and the resulting picture was bigger, and therefore slower. I know that orthogonal includes all the objects, and perspective doesn't quite go that far, but it was bigger than the crop... [ 08-30-2002: Message edited by: Cloud Hidden ]

Hmmm... Xante AW1200... Guess more tests are in order...

Thanks, as always. So what's the theory behind line weight of 1? Does it work with the large format plotters/printers--you know, the kind I don't have? Does anyone else have that weight print fine on a laser? I like the fine lines wherever possible, but this is sooooo fine as to be unusable, and it's frustrating to have to change every default and every object. I keep thinking I gotta be missing something stupidly obvious.

Brain is saturated with switching to VW from something else, so apologies if the answers should be obvious or are clearly documented. Brain cramps are preventing me from seeing the obvious... 1. Using layers for different floors. Wanna see them in 3D and flyover, but only the active layer goes 3D....the others stick with whatever view they were in when active. How do I incorporate multiple layers into a flyover (or any other identical view)? Is this a job for sheets or parent layers or...? 2. Absent-mindedly created walls w/ windows in a layer w/o a Z and delta Z. Reassign them to a layer w/ Z and delta Z. Their Z values don't change. Even if I select the wall and set Z via Object Info, windows stay at ground floor level. What's the easiest way to move walls and associated symbols to another floor (layer) so that they acquire it's Z characteristics? 3. Created a floor with a stairway/balcony opening. The edge of the opening doesn't seem to wanna have a texture. What to do? 4. My walls need to terminate at the top of an ellipsoid. Asked before, and advice was to add and edit verticies. OK. Still giving me nightmares, because it's a guessing game with a NURBS surface where exactly the wall and surface intersect. Any hints to improve the process? Landscapers have that "drop to surface" concept that would be ideal here ("raise to surface"). Would I be better off skipping walls and just extruding them as solids? But then doors and windows and textures are a pain. Can working planes somehow help? Need some way for each wall to know where it meets this curved ceiling, so I have a clue about setting the Z on a vertex. Thanks for any ideas.

Thanks Mike. I'll try that. Here's more. Most of the classes default to line weight of 1. Even at typical architectural scale on an 11 x 17 Laser, that doesn't print thick enough for a normal human eye to see. Do I keep having to redefine all the classes to 6? Or set up a template with everything as 6? Any better ways? And what to do about objects brought in as objects that use a line weight of 1. How to get them to always be a 6? And even worse, some of them (kitchen appliances, for example) haven't seemed to use a 6 line weight even when I edited the class. What could I be missing? It's a pain to have the client ask where the frig is, and you say, "Right there, can't you see it.....oh never mind."

What's OIP? When I select the floor object, it's listed as a "floor" type, but there's only one texture option. Walls have 3, but not the floor. If a wall is in a layer and the layer has Z of 10 and delta Z of 15, should the wall be showing a Z of 10 or should it show a Z of 0 and then draw at proper Z as part of a linked layer? i.e., is the wall Z absolute or relative to the laer Z? If a train is going west at 80 mph, and a bus is going north at 60, ........oops, wrong forum... Could sectioning the ellipsoid surface along the wall help? Maybe give me the line to move each vertex to? Tried 2D section but the result wasn't what I expected. Gotta investigate more. Thanks for the help, Katie.

Actually, TS's suggestion works great. Haven't tried it for QT, but in renderings it's the cat's meow.

Is there any way to automatically include a copyright tag on each rendering exported and each QT created? It's such a nuisance to have to pop into Photoshop or whatever and modify every pict before emailing it off, just to add copyright 2002 blah blah........or to add an object that appears in the graphic and make sure it's sized and oriented properly to be seem.

>The ability to "thicken" a nurbs surface Be still, my heart...

WOW. I'm in the presence of genius. It worked perfectly, and perfectly easy, too. The perfect tool for the job. What an amazing set of capabilities--going from polygon-based CAD to this stuff has been eye-opening, to say the least. Thank you for all the itme you're saving me! So, while we're all here, maybe there's a better way to do another part of the process. I mentioned creating the two surfaces by doing the underlying curves separately and punching the holes separately (subtracting solids). Is there a way to use the first, outer, surface to create the inner one, and avoid all of the duplicate work? I can't just scale, be/c these are odd shapes and a proportionate scale would result in different absolute amounts, but I need equal thickness everywhere. The shell tool is the right idea, but it doesn't handle objects this complex.

Modeling some fairly twisted (not literally--just lotsa compound curves) nurbs surfaces. Too complicated for the shell tool to work. But I still gotta get depth, be/c a wall can't be that thin. So I decide to create another nurbs surface 8" smaller than the first. Works great. Double the work, what with the shapes to loft and the solids to subtract from both now, but at least I can now have an exterior texture that's different from the interior texture, which I wouldn't have had with the shell tool. But at openings, I need to connect the surfaces so you don't see the hollow space between the two layers. And some of the openings are compound curves (a big hole in an ellipsoid, for example). What's the best way to cover this gap cleanly? I don't wanna do anything that loses the different textures int v ext. Thanks.

Whatcha doing with ResEdit? The vast majority of Macintosh users should never have a reason to use it. On the other hand, if you have a good reason to be using it (such as translating some of the text in a program if the software publisher itself doesn't), I'd be curious to know. Realize that whatever changes you make will most likely be discarded when you install the next version of whatever you're changing. And StarGate's caution bears repeating.....you can really make a big mess of things using ResEdit if you aren't really careful.

Well I'll be a ...... Mighta tripped across that on my own in a month or three. Thanks. Set default for doc yesterday to no fill, so suddenly the surfaces weren't working like before, but I made no connection to the real causal event. I think that's how rat poison works, too.

Some days are better than others. This isn't necessarily one of those. What's it mean when a nurbs surface will only render as polygons? Or wireframe? Or whatever that is... Made 3 circles. Converted them to Nurbs. Turned them sideways, ala a slinky (really, a torus segment). Lofted them. The resulting nurbsy-looking object was listed as a nurbs surface and looked accurate. But it won't render as a textured surface. It just shows up as a bunch of lines...the right shape, but just lines. It was a lot simpler shape than what I did the other day. Am I missing something obvious? Same thing happened with a hemisphere segment.

>we've been waiting for 10 years Darn, and I'm impatient after one week! <G>

Won't I lose the "wall" properties by doing that? It is for 3D modelling...you're right, and thanks for the suggestion. But with all the iterations and moving of this and that involved in design, I don't want to lose any of my flexibility, if in fact that would happen.

Oh, and I'm awfully encouraged by the promptness of the replies. At a certain other unnamed site, some questions have been hanging out there for weeks and weeks. This forum works even better for me than bugging you on the phone! Thanks for the help.

Thanks, both. Not the easiest thing in the world, but sounds doable. I'm fine on not faceting the top edge, be/c I can usually hide any roughness by aiming to the middle of a 6 or 8" exterior wall thickness. The solids subtraction equivalent is what I used to have to do, and that was never really fun. Really would be cool to extrude to a nurbs surface, though...

Katie, I have a limit of one manual a week. Next week is the one for Architect. Thanks, both, for the answers.

My interior walls (both straight and round) typically rise to the height of the dome, which is irregular along the top...sometimes radiused, but not necessarily. What's the best way to create a wall that reaches the exterior surface, but doesn't protrude beyond it, nor stop short of it? It was really awkward to do this in DenebaCAD, and I'm hoping it's a tad easier here, but thus far I'm not sure of the best way. If there's no abra-cadabra command, then it's certainly a wish list item to allow an item to extrude to where it's constrained by another surface (NURBS surface, especially). Thanks. Jim

Where three walls join at a point, such as at 120 degree angles, I cannot get the three to join neatly. It seems that only any two will join and the third looks like it butts. Am I missing something?

>we can't make it go away. Hopefully some day the development staff will have an light day with nothing better to do than to remove that boundary from the animations so that us lil' chickens don't have to remember that on each one with each document. >Hmm ... hey .. does it ever snow where you are? About 10" a year. Talk about a fairytale setting... Hmmm...another feature for VW Climate--the snow simulator! Then you need a Season Animation, to show the structure as the sun elevation changes, and leaves turn color and fall off the trees, and snow falls and melts.......and that darn page boundary will be visible all year long! Arrrggghhh. <G>

quote: Originally posted by Katie: That gray box is always gonna show. It's the print boundary box. None the less, that gray print boundary box does not show up on exports, prints, etc. At least I know the name now. But why does it show on a solar animation? Clients don't benefit from it there. Heck, no one does...