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Cloud Hidden

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Everything posted by Cloud Hidden

  1. Used Entourage Figures for the first time with the latest version and they render with all sorts of missing body parts. Has anyone else noticed this? I've had to find drawing files from past versions and copy the figures from them. Those render properly, even when the file is updated to the 2009 version. I've reported it to tech, but curious if anyone else has seen it or knows a fix.
  2. GMM, you captured it perfectly, thank you. The second example is the one I encountered that led me to pose the question because, for all I knew, I was just missing something. [Feel free to ignore: Yeah, I know I can roll my own, but at some point that defeats the purpose of objects that are convenient to modify. For example, I'm using 6 columns. I show the client one way, and they may want to try a different shaft, base, capital, taper, and then I'd have to start from scratch rather than just click an option, etc, etc. Gotta create my own columns because the column object isn't texturing right, gotta create my own windows because they don't render right in round walls, etc. That really cuts into the work that gets done in a given day. So does writing rants. ]
  3. Having trouble with textures on a square column. There's no way I've found to specify how the texture is applied, such as we can with the Mapping dialog on other objects. The result is that the texture is proper on the front and back of the column, but not on the sides. Know what I mean? Any advice? Thanks.
  4. Yes, I've submitted it. That's what I meant by writing that I reported it. I did include a file. It was the same bug submit email addy which I've used in the past and from which I've had acknowledgements on other items. Have not looked into custom symbols. Without over-self-analyzing why not, it seems like too much work for something as elementary as windows in walls that I expect should work right in a high-end CAD system. Also, I used to write scripts for some of the curvy stuff I do, but with every new upgrade, commands and such would change and so scripts would no longer work and I'd have to reinvest time to figure out why and it stopped being worth the aggravation. I lost a bit of faith in customizing.
  5. I continue to be vexed by windows in round walls. Almost every project I have uses them. But windows in the walls leave crazy artifacts that screw up renderings, so that I gotta remove the jamb and sill for each window, and then put another window in the identical spot (but not "in" the wall) with the desired jamb and trim. But all of that messes up the plan view, so I have to make changes between the renderings and blueprints to make each look right. And even then, the trim looks dumb because it does not accommodate the curve of the wall. Extends the design process by a ridiculous amount. This has carried over from the prior version to this paid upgrade. I've reported it to tech before and after the upgrade without a response. After wasting hours today again messing with this, I needed to vent and my wife and kid don't care about windows in round walls, so this bbs is it. Argh.
  6. For me, the keys seem to be to set the jam _depth_ to zero, Use Wall Depth unchecked. But if I need to have exterior trim, then I have to duplicate the window to put a second symbol in the same spot, but not as a wall symbol, and then set the wall depth to what it would be if I checked Use Wall Depth, and then set the trim. Sheesh. What it comes down to is that in a radius wall, wall depth is buggy, and the workarounds are a nuisance. But at least there are workarounds. Thanks for the feedback.
  7. Thanks for replying. I tried jamb thickness to zero. Tried zeroing everything else that was accessible. Unless I missed one, what shows is just an oddball effect of the symbol not being well thought out for a round wall. It's a shame you need to segment the round walls to fit an opening. I don't have the latitude for even that workaround--I need half round endcaps (35'D give or take) on a building and they'll have 10' wide arched openings. Segmenting that would completely change the look.
  8. Trying to show a simple, plain, arched opening in a radius wall. Create the wall, insert the door, select "Cased Opening". But seemingly no matter how the attributes of the cased opening are set, a rendering of the wall/opening shows what looks like a jamb protruding from the convex side of the wall. Any ideas how to get rid of this? Don't want anything there but a shaped opening in the wall. Thanks...
  9. For an ICF wall, for example, it'd be nice to join the concrete core. More than nice, imperative. Without this, it looks like the concrete doesn't join for a wall that intersects a radius wall, which is a big mistake. Takes more work to clean that up that it does to draw the wall.
  10. >I am thinking of adding it for a coming release. That would be wonderful! And thanks to the other people who have looked at this and offered workarounds.
  11. This was exactly one of the things I had tried, figuring it might be close enough. Unfortunately the solid subtract gave me a "we can't perform this operation" error or whatever it was. Thanks for thinking about it though!
  12. I spent more time searching, and found the same question posted two years ago (by ME, no less!) with the answer that it cannot be done. Unless something's changed, that seems to be where it sits.
  13. One object is a cylinder. I turn it into a shell of whatever thickness. I want cut a big hole in that shell. The hole has a specific shape. Let's pick a star pattern. Now if I draw the start pattern flat, when I project it onto the ball, the star pattern will be distorted (in 3D) because of the curve to the cylinder. For example, if the cylinder is 10 units diameter and the star is 10 units across, with projecting the star, it'd cut through the full width of the cylinder...not what I want. But if the shape is wrapped around the cylinder, it'd only cut through 1/3 of its circumference. Which combo of tools will let me cut the star shape in the cylinder accurately? Thanks. [ 03-15-2005, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: Cloud Hidden ]
  14. Unfortunately, Heliodon is not available for purchase. Hey Nemetschek! Anyone out there? Any suggestions? The good news is that there's a tool out there handled by one of your distributors that does the very exact thing that is needed to improve a weak feature. The bad news is that I'm not able/allowed to buy it. Catch-22? C'mon NNA, there's gotta be some way through this conundrum?!?!
  15. Thanks for that info, Jonathan. Alas, I'm but a mere Yankee. Can you explain why/how the country versions differ? One would think they'd be synchronized. Why doesn't/can't the US version include the Heliodon? And hey, Nemetschek, any acknowledgment that the animation interface is...I'll be kind...awkward and dated, and could use a bit of freshening?
  16. Solar animation cycles through the hours of a single day. The twist to that is cycling through the days of the year for a single time...12 noon, for example, so I can see the effectiveness of an overhang in preventing solar gain. This beats doing individual renders and stitching them together. While we're on animations...it's a nuisance to remember to delete any existing "suns", be/c the animation adds a whole new one. Some sort of notification would be useful: "It appears you already have a sun set up with lat/lon...shall we use that one or ignore it and create a new one?" It stands to reason that if we're doing a solar animation, we've already done a static rendering and might already have a sun with proper lat and lon. Having to re-enter all that is redundant. It's also irksome that the time stamp uses the default font/size, in that it's not something one thinks to change prior to starting the process...I just wasted a whole night's animation process be/c I forgot to up the default size from the 9 pt I was using for dimensioning. And while we're at it, how about a normal file dialog for saving the movie...naming it so that it only goes into the application folder is soooo...antiquated.
  17. I've used that pref button in the past...what I didn't notice before reading another answer just now is the "All New Documents" radio button. It's not like they really hid it...but I'd not needed to look for something like that before, and just overlooked it. Talk about wearing blinders!!! Thanks for answering.
  18. Since the last upgrade to VW, the callouts default to a max width of 0, instead of 2". And I have to constantly reset this. Ideas? Other than that, I like the convenience.
  19. Dave, This thread is the only explanation I could find anywhere on how to make these work, so thanks for that. I would never have guessed on my own that an invisible 3D polygon was needed to be able to make a VR of the inside of a room. I tried a 3D vertex and other objects, but not a 3D poly till I read this. A few thoughts. First, it's nice that this implementation can do both the outside and inside of objects. Other times I've used QTVR, it was only geared toward insides, with an orbit point in the middle of the room looking out. Your "camera" seems opposite, rotating around a center object. Gives flexibility, though it took awhile to catch onto the conceptual model. What's not nice is the speed. It took forever to do a 36 frame 360? rotation of a bathroom. Something I noticed is that VW does that as all individual pictures. When I used DenebaCAD for QTVR's, it worked by rendering just a slice of the picture at a time. It'd draw a vertical slice of the screen, scroll right, draw another slice, scroll right, etc, until all done. That was a WHOLE LOT faster than all full-screen renderings. I could get smoother VR's in less time, be/c the gradations were a lot smaller. To get smoother VR's now, I'd have to do more frames which takes too much time. Is my description of that clear? Is there a technical reason why that approach wouldn't work here?
  20. LinearDim(x, 0, x, y, 0, 3, 1, 512+1024, -120); It doesn't seem to matter what the last argument is set to, it won't offset the text when using ordinate dimensioning. Have to go back and move each by hand. The argument does work for DimTypes. k := EllipseEllipseIntersect(tl1, br1, tl2, br2, p1, p2, p3, p4); When intersecting an oval and a circle that only have two overlaps, it's always returning 4 for k, and two of the points (including p1) are really wacky. I end up having to loop though all 4 to first see if they're within a bounding box before using them, be/c I can't trust the return value. Anyone with similar results?
  21. Since most of my posts in this area are gripes, I'll try to balance that with praise for VS. It is saving me hours and hours of work. Sometimes I use it to create a spheroid and then squash it into an oblate, and it was always hard to get the exact height when doing this manually. Now I can automate it, and better still, have the script calculate the physical limits on the oblate-ness, lest I try one that's too flat for my app. The script makes it sooo easy to experiment with stuff that manually was a pain. The latest is a script that's saving about 3 hours a pop. I have a hemisphere (or oblate), and need to calc the material patterns--they look like segments of an orange and are called gores--that are sewn together to make the spherical shape. Old method was an old cad program that would output a file with the necessary technical data. Could import that to a spreadsheet and work out the numbers I needed. That software doesn't work anymore. In one day of scripting (why didn't I think of it before...duh!), not only can I now get the numbers, but also get them shown in useful units (spreadsheets don't do so well with ft and in), AND draw the gore pattern with all the cut lines properly dimensioned. From 3 hrs of work to 1 minute! So, while I will continue to gripe about the things that don't work, or change...thanks for making VS available and keeping it going. It's critical to my work.
  22. Here's another one. I used to be able to use NurbsSetPt3D to turn a nurbs hemisphere, for example, into an oblate sphere. Now I can confirm that the points are in fact set, but the surface no longer shows as oblate--it stays as a hemisphere. First, this is ridiculous. It's not a way to work, especially be/c my time to fix this cannot be charged to anyone, and is just a big loss for me. Second, I don't see an obvious solution. If I could change the points before, and that created the right shape, but now doesn't, then what the heck do I do next? Interestingly, in the OIP, the height is correct when the Show Vertices box is checked, but is incorrect when that box is not checked. It used to be correct under both circumstances. Does that give any clues? What controls the height of a modified nurbs surface? Is there perhaps another way via scripting to change from a 40'D hemi to one 40' at the base, but only, say, 18' in height? Edit: Found a workaround. I had to rewrite the script to create a new nurbs surface and transfer the point, weight, and knot from the old to the new, and then delete the old. Makes me wonder why the old surface wasn't right, since it held all the right info. Whom do I invoice for the three hours of lost time be/c something that used to work no longer does? (Excuse the sarcasm, it's frustrating to lose the morning over this.) [ 11-23-2004, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: Cloud Hidden ]
  23. So THAT'S what that thing is for! Sometimes you don't even know what to look up in a manual. Thanks...
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