propstuff

April 1, 2004

Thanks for that info jan.

Personally I think Shift/Scroll for panning is more useful as it releases the scroll button for another operation, but if the scroll button was set to be the space bar (I *think* this can be done on my Logitech and Wacom mice) the ACAD behavior would be achieved (I think?)

cheers,

N.

March 31, 2004

An application which comes immediately to mind Katie would be the cut surfaces of sectioned objects. Note that; Re the recent discussion on another thread about "SketchUp", that App can apply different textures to at least the opposite sides of objects.

cheers,

N.

March 29, 2004

Eve, you said

quote:

But if the Zoom/Pan scrollwheel functionality of AutoCAD were implemented in VectorWorks, I would bee pleased.

I'm interested in this;

What Scroll/zoom/pan behaviour does Acad have in addition to VW?

cheers,

N.

March 26, 2004

I've found it to be enough for CAD. I have to pick up the mouse to "scoot" because there's not enough mouse travel occaisionally, but the amount has never been something that's irritated me. The pad size is about the extent of my wrist flex anyway.

cheers,

N.

March 26, 2004

Well, I don't know about Widows, but on my Mac, scrolling is up and down, Shift/scrolling is side to side, and Option/ scrolling is in and out, and I've set the scroll button to be Enter.

Does ACad have some other scrolling behavior apart from this?

N.

March 23, 2004

quote:

Try creating your road as a "texture bed" modifier.

Well Robert, now I remember why I was using polys to draw the site boundry and road. :-(

The Site Modifier tool in LM is such a sluggish, painfull thing to use it's practicly useless if you want any curved modifiers.

I did it anyhow and the result was a "road" which displayed much better, but the grid had holes in it again.

Changing the view options as previously discussed repaired the holes but the texture bed dissapeared (even though "process beds" had been checked when last used)

Result: I can have texture beds as long as I have holes in the grid but not without.

The DTM is still being randomly displaced and at the last update not only moved W.R.T the other objects on that layer, but the 3D grid had separated from the 2D contours by about 5m east and 15m north. IE in 2D it was where it was supposed to be, but in 3D was right out of whack.

Huh?

March 23, 2004

Thanks for that Robert, I'll give it a try later tonight.

What is causing the DTM to be displaced and lose it's location when updated?

N.

March 22, 2004

quote:

??? ?? ? ? ? ?? ??

Nicholas, I opened up the document you sent and forced a refresh of the DTM grid (I ran DTM Processor: View Options... and changed the grid spacing from 1M to 1.0M) and the "holes" went away. So I'm not sure what's going on there. I recommend you try such a refresh also.

I tried this and the holes also went away.

Unfortunately the DTM was also displaced about 20-30m from it's actual location. (with respect to the other objects on that layer) I seem to recall this displacement problem being described by someone else in another post.

quote:

As for the Send to Surface issue, this will work reliably if you do 2

things:

1. Make sure the polygon you are sending to surface doesn't go past the

edge of the DTM (your site boundary didn't go this, but your road did);

2. Make sure the number of vertices in your 3D polygon is not

excessive. (You can do this by setting your "2D Conversion resolution"

to "Low" before you convert 2D polylines with curves to 3D polygons.)

The road poly was originally contained in the site model but the DTM had been displaced by a previous refresh. }:-(

I deleted the 3D poly, brought back a copy of the original 2Dpolyline, set the conversion to low and the resulting 3D poly had exactly the same number of verticies as with the resolution set to Very high. (from 15 to 526 -almost all were at the curve where the roads intersect)

Using Filter Polys reduced this to 18 verticies but the display problems remained.

Ultimately the problem I'm having with these polys (the site surface poking through the polys) seems to be that they are not "following" the surface closely enough. IE; that there are *not enough* verticies (in the right places).

March 21, 2004

I use a wacom graphire (the cheap one)tablet and cordless mouse

The mouse has particular advantages over the stylus in that it has scroll wheel zooming and can be set to pressing the scroll wheel=enter.

I find this much faster and easier to drive than the stylus for most work. The stylus, however is good for freeform polys.

I would not get the Graphire again as it's reduced resolution compared with the Intuos means that when zoomed out it jitters a lot b/w one "increment" and the next, 'specially with smart cursor snaps.

Very anoying.

cheers,

N.

March 21, 2004

I made a polygon to indicate a property boundry and sent it to the surface.

It failed to go to the surface as it often does, but sat a distance above the surface.

To force it to go to the surface I updated the Site model and when finished the 3D grid had multiple holes in it.

Very unattractive.

The holes where nowhere near the poly used for the boundry. Just random.

How can I get rid of them and how can I stop it happening again?

N.

March 7, 2004

Hi Pamela

Firstly, in my limited experience, it seems that (although it manages straight lines ok) the DTM engine implemented in VW does not cope well with more than the simplest of curves.

Testing your problem, I made a ?flat? site, placed a stake object by doubleclicking on the site. In the dialogue box I set it to be a site modifier.

First problem: it was not made as a site modifier and had to be manually changed in the OI palette. :-(

Then I placed a fence around it.

Next problem; the Site Modifier tool in LM has a hernia if a site modifier has more than about 4-5 curve verticies. I?ve given up on it and use the Convert to Site Modifier command in VWA (Australian version).

This tool converts curved site modifiers into multiple corner vertexes, and when testing, a ?complex? curved site modifier -converted into OVER 3500 corner vertexes by the Convert to Site Modifier command-, updated FOUR TIMES FASTER than an equivalent 10 cubic spline poly done with the LM Site Modifier tool.

Again :-(

So this is the result: note that the Fence has constrained the site modification , but that the DTM has cheerfully put in straight contour lines where there are supposed to be none.

Repeating the same procedure -datum and (overlapping) fence; then update -two more times (modifier depths increased for clarity) produced this result.

So this is the result: Presumably more "freeform" fences would produce a more freeform result.

Note; the straight parts of the 2D contours don't seem to appear on the 3D mesh. (?) I.E. it seems to work.

of course; all this is on my slow old machine: YMMV

HTH,

N.

February 27, 2004

Anthony,

this may sound like a pain, but if you ensured that you took the points at definite "contour levels", the contour lines could perhaps be turned into NURBS curves and Lofted.

(?)

cheers,

N.

February 22, 2004

I seem to recall reading that the DTM engine that VW licenses can't cope with vertical faces.

Try off-setting the top of your retaining wall back just a little and update the model (?)

As you're using DTM's; have you any experience using the site modifier tools? (read my post"is the site modifier tool broken?)

cheers,

N.

February 20, 2004

quote:

you should be in a 2D conversion resolution of "low" when using the tool, if you're using curved edges.

As I said:

quote:

Even with the 2D &3D conversion turned to Low; using the site modifier tool to draw the original polyline (about 8-10 verticies) was like drawing with an elbow dipped in mud.

Hi again Robert.

quote:

If you see a slowdown such as you describe, it's time to quit VW and re-launch it.

I do this on a regular basis Robert, but with this it makes no difference.

Freshly re-booted, freshly opened file; the Site Modifier tool doesn't work.

Using the Menu command to turn the a polyline into a site modifier, with 10 times as many curve verticies, it does work even after VW has been open and working for hours.

It really seems like it's the Site Modifier tool that's the culprit.

N.

February 19, 2004

quote:

you need

(a) a rotational axis

(b) a profile

well I haven't had time to try the various new rail options with the 3D tools, so I'll put my hand up for being dumb.

If the tool is revolving the profile around the rotational axis; what is the path doing?

N.

February 19, 2004

Recent problems with adding site modifiers to a DTM led me to experiment to find the source of the problem.

Attempting to update the site model either gave error messages or, after hours (literaly) of processing time worked, but resulted in the file size going from 2Mb to 24Mb by putting in a small pond!

Even with the 2D &3D conversion turned to Low; using the site modifier tool to draw the original polyline (about 8-10 verticies) was like drawing with an elbow dipped in mud. The program struggled for several seconds after placing each vertex and at each the screen flickered and froze before resuming. The resultof the modify, as I said, was a sad failure.

Then I tried with the same file using the polyline tool to draw the shape, and the Convert to Site Modifier menu command to make them either the fence or the pad.

Even with over 50 verticies in both the Pad and Fence, regenerating the model took about 15 secs and added 100Kb to the file size. IE: it worked properly.

Further testing yielded the result that whenever the site modifier *tool* was used, it didn't work.

Has anyone had experience with this tool?

N.

February 18, 2004

It might be that the jumps between animation frames is too great.

As you have a shiney surface as you've noted, the lighting is different from every direction the transition from position to position might need to be smoother. IE more frames/sec.

Just a guess.

N.

February 18, 2004

Can anyone decipher this usefull message?

I've been working on a DTM and for the most part it's all been working well. Then I added a site modifier pad and fence, and upon modifying the Model everything ground to a halt.

After a looong time watching the Spinning Beach Ball of Death I got the Miscellaneous Error (20,2) message.

Huh?

N.

February 18, 2004

Can anyone decipher this usefull message?

I've been working on a DTM and for the most part it's all been working well. Then I added a site modifier pad and fence, and upon modifying the Model everything ground to a halt.

After a looong time watching the Spinning Beach Ball of Death I got the Miscellaneous Error (20,2) message.

Huh?

N.

February 15, 2004

Thanks Robert,

I'm on the Industry series and a Custom workspace, and when I put the Landmark tools in I didn't actually look in the "Architect-Site" palette in the Workspace Editor where those tools are kept.

I still can't find, in the Landmark Manual, the bit where the use of the Road Tools is described.

Can you help?

cheers.

N.

February 14, 2004

Hi again Robert,

quote:

Locate your intersections (Roadway-Tee objects) on your site plan and adjust their height (z-values) to the surface of the DTM.

They way you say this sounds like there is a "Roadway-Tee" object (tool or command) that exists in LM somewhere. When I read the manual I found a reference on page 4-12 to "joins in sections" of roads which seemed to relate to the joins b/w straight and curved sections of roads, but I couldn't find any reference to intersections at all let alone a "Tee" object.

Can you tell me which page of the manual I should be looking at?

cheers,

N.

February 11, 2004

I'm trying to add a road with 2 intersections to follow the contours of a DTM (up hill and down dale).

The Road tool doesn't seem to support intersections, and i've tried using;

Polyline>convert to 3D polys>Send to surface>Move 3D: Z=200mm >change class to site Modifier; then put a fence around it.

This "sort of" works, but the road doesn't follow the terrain properly.

How can I do this?

cheers,

N.

February 10, 2004

First, have you run the "Repair Permissions" in the Disk Utilities?

Then try this;

Right (ctrl) click a VW file, select the Get Info option, go to the "Open With" option, select the program or browse for the new one if you don't see it, and select the Change All button.

HTH,

N.

February 9, 2004

I've been trying to apply a Pad and Fence modifier to a DTM.

After some time of the Spinning Beach Ball of Death I get an error message:

"Miscelaneous Error (20,2) has occured"

I have succesfuly tested the file with a simpler Pad and Fence and everything goes OK.

What does (20,2) mean? and what can I do to stop it happening?

N.

February 7, 2004

Hi Bruce

While on the subject of Bounding boxes.....

For a simple rectilinear object, the bounding box (and subsequently the dimensions shown in the OIP are the same as the object.

If however the object has Bezier or Arc veticies, the bounding box extends past the object to the verticies and consequently the dimensions in the OIP are not those of the object.

This makes re-sizing and control in general a real pain.

Could this be addressed also??

cheers,

N.

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