[Mechanical animations]

check out Animationworks

http://www.ozcad.com.au/otherproducts/vwaddonsAW.html

path animator (no VS to learn;just draw a path), rotation, transparency etc Modest price.

[Out of my depth: what to show in a demo?]

Petri,

I have a theatre space modeled with lit scenery for various acts arranged into classes layers and saved views.

You can have that if you want it.

N.

[CMYK Color Shifts... Why?]

why does VW allow me to enter colors as CMYK if it's going to change it to something else anyway?

Because it's not VW that's changing them, it's Apple's colour picker.

This apparently is one reason that Adobe uses their own colour picker and not the computer OS colour picker.

[CMYK Color Shifts... Why?]

A very reliable source said that the Apple colour picker does/can not use CMYK values.

So whenever you enter a CMYK value the OS turns it into the nearest RGB it feels like.

I.E you can't actually use CMYK colours with any program which employs the Apple OS colour picker

How's that for unexpectedly crapulous?

[conic sections]

i looked on Vector Depot as you suggested propstuff, but no such luck unless i overlooked them.

here is the link.

they might be helpful

http://macnauchtan.com/software/VectorWorks/vectorworks.html

I can't remember how to use them............

N

[conic sections]

On Vector Depot there used to be a series of scripts for generating Conic Sections, but I haven't looked there lately.

It was some years ago.

N.

[any way to set 3D Object Opacity (vw 2008)]

Put the ground into it's own layer and set it to Grey visibility

Set visibilities to show others Turn on stack layers.

Ground will then be translucent.

N.

[How do I insert a door in a curtain wall?]

thanks

[How do I insert a door in a curtain wall?]

where do I find the"curtain" wall functionality in VW?

I can't find it in the help.

thanks

[Foundation Best Practice - And Adding Rebar?]

The repetetive unit tool might be of some help

[Advice]

Will it be available on Thursday? In my system I believe it will.

Don't be silly Petri,

You're going to have to upgrade to an llc to run 2010 on snow leopard.

[Elliptical walls?]

There used to be a link at Vector depot for a series of scripts that generated conic sections, sine waves etc.

It doesn't seem to be there any more but here's a link to the bits ;

http://macnauchtan.com/software/VectorWorks/vectorworks.html

[Elliptical walls?]

we are still blissfully far away from perfection on the building site, so if the deviations are under 10mm it is (still)acceptable and therefore usable.

"Blissful Imperfection"

you should copyright that one, although I suspect Shakespear might have beaten you to the concept.

A total (cumulated) error of 10mm might be OK but with the rapidly increasing use of pre-fab steel components for complex geometric buildings the individual components would need a much higher level of fidelity.

A 1000mm steel beam will not fit into a 990mm hole. {:-O

[Elliptical walls?]

If you reduce the major and minor axes by 200 at each end you get a new ellipse with a new set of foci.

My recollection is that the 2 ellipses cannot be parallel.

If you exactly offset an ellipse so that it is parallel, the new curve will not be a true ellipse but will resemble an ellipse.

I just looked at wikitopia and it seems there are many ellipse formulae........

[Elliptical walls?]

well, it must be more than 30 years since I last did maths that involved more than my fingers and toes, but I seem to recall that 2 ellipses with the same centres but major and minor axes reduced by an equal amount can never be "parallel" around the circumference except at the location of the axes.

IE a curve parallel to a given ellipse will not be itself a true ellipse.

(x^2/something)+(y^2/something)= something..........

[Vectorworks 2010]

Rhino for Mac is in beta testing. I have played with it a little (no Rhino experience before) and it has some nice features. It is, however, quite a different workflow. Its probably well suited for industrial design of products,

KM

I've also been using the Mac Beta of Rhino.

Even the beta can do with ease modeling tasks that VW cannot manage at all, let alone reliably.

But thats what Rhino is made for.

VW engineers have to produce an Architectural/Landscape/Theatrical/Mechanical cross platform do-it-all ...and stay abreast of the competition, and try to satisfy the inevitable endless wish list of users .......like me.

I find Rhino's workflow clunky, but it has the conventional 4-view modeling space that I would love to see in VW. The command line interface is, well,.... command line, but it's modeling functionality is far above VW's.

I'm really quite comfy in VW but I would dearly love to see Biplab and the team let loose on the 3D modeling abilities instead of having to spend their time dealing with tedious wall junctions etc etc for architects...........

but that's just me.

[Elliptical walls?]

How perfectly? It was a few years ago, but the VW oval and a 2D-representation of a conic section were anything but a perfect fit. The discrepancy was significantly more pronounced when the sectioning angle became more acute.

Hi again Petri,

After our conversation about the subject of ovals and ellipses some time ago......

I did a quick test with a very flat oval and measured the sum of the foci to oval points in a number of places.

There was an error but it is small. About 0.05% of the expected size.

Hope you're keeping warm there at the North Pole

[smoothng out a curved polyline]

Note the Poly Smoothing command does not actually "smooth" polys unless they are corner verticies to start with.

What it actually does is *Convert* the vertex types to the chosen option.

[Softer Shadows]

Note, using HDRIs as visible backgrounds are not to bad for exterior architectural models if the HDRI is a sky and has some sort of horizon.

For Product, using an HDRI of an interior to light the piece can give very good lighting effects but is close to impossible to make the piece "sit" in the interior.

Unless the HDRI photos happen to be shot from exactly the same orientation, focal length etc etc as the model is viewed from, the scale and perspective will be ALL wrong.

as for Ambient light, I generally start with it off, but usually adjust it depending on the particular HDRI and its orientation.

N.

[Softer Shadows]

There are many free HDRIs on the web.

It sounds like you've already found how to use them.

note you can use any background as a background (or none) and a separate one for the lighting. Set this through View>Lighting>Set Layer Lighting options in the Environment Lighting tab.

N.

[Softer Shadows]

Hi Bruce,

If you're lighting Product then you can pretty well throw away all the usual "photographic" lighting setup and use an HDRI background for lighting instead. MUCH better lighting effects for a reasonable increase in render time. Then add an extra light object or 2 for accents.

[Unfold Surfaces Error]

When it comes to complex 3D work involving rotations, vectors, & arcs , I always

program to the full 10 decimal places .

Do you mean that (for example) if you want something to be 100mm long you actually enter the value as 100.0000000 ?

N.

[Unfold Surfaces Error]

I was under the impression that the underlying calculations were always done to the max decimal accuracy and that rounding only affected the display of numbers. (?)

[RESET EXPORT PREFERENCES]

Well,....... it seems like it should work, but then my whole puter's been on the blink lately.

I suspect it's the aliens.

Good thing I have my aluminium foil helmet on to keep out the mind rays.

[RESET EXPORT PREFERENCES]

Excellent try JBC!

but no luck for me here.