christian

Katie, Klaus & Lynda Thanks for your help. Christian

A company located in Hampshire UK is looking for some VW training. Has anybody got any suggestions. Christian

I have found that converting as much as possible to NURBS reduces the file size. Also avoid sweeps at all costs! - unless you convert them afterwards. Christian

Katie Do you want the bitmap I was trying or bettes? Christian

Katie Thank you, I will send the file. I am sure that VW11 is better, but that is not the point. If you bought a car and the windscreen wipers did not work, would you expect the manufacturer to fix them, or would you think it reasonable to have to buy the next model if you wanted working windscreen wipers? Christian

The Fillet Edge Tool only works in very limited circumstances. Why has it not been fixed? There seem to be plenty of posts letting you know about the problem, many from over a year ago. Is there a patch? Will there be a patch? If not, why not? Christian XP Pro VW 10.5.1

Katie The imported image was a bitmap. Would I get better results with any other file format? Christian

This is similar to the post below. I have a black & white logo in bitmap form. I imported it into VW 10.5, hoping to be able to use the trace bitmap tool to convert the logo into lines. When I used the ‘Trace Bitmap’ tool it simply out-lined the whole image i.e it put a rectangular frame around the entire image. I am sure that in the past I have been able to do this. Any ideas where I am going wrong? Christian VW10.5

Sorry, I disagree. I have just tried with both the PDF creators above and also another one. None of the results are very good for a model rendered in OpenGL or Renderworks. They are OK for B&W 2D stuff. I got better results by exporting an image to JPEG and viewing it in Internet Explorer, though it has to be said that this isn't very good with 2D stuff. I got the best results from making a Quicktime movie. A file rendered in Renderworks and saved, cannot be viewed in the Viewer in the 'Renderworks' rendering. This is a pity. We all work for clients and need to be able to show them our work as well presented as possible. We need to be able to email files and images to our cients and know that they are seeing what we wish them to see. VW should address this problem. Why can our clients not see models rendered in Renderworks on the Viewer?

Mark If this is a driver issue, why am I able to render some drawings in OpenGL and not others? I take your point about upgrading the driver, but I am loath to do it, the last time I did this it caused mayhem and I ended up reverting back to the original. Is there anyway to fix a corrupted file? Thanks for adding that to the wish list.

I have just worked out the answer to my question 2. Only took me half a day! Convert as many of the objects to NURBS, particularly 'Sweeps' and 'Extrudes along a path'. It reduces the file size dramatically. In a test file with 13 components, I reduced the file size from 4.48Mb to 0.68Mb. The objects then convert to Hidden Line, even on my PC. Katie - Is there any chance of VW showing an objects' size in KB in the Info palette? It would be very useful when modeling. Christian

1. VW crashes when I try to render certain drawings in OpenGL. This does not affect all my drawings, and those drawings that it does, I can render in RenderWorks. I assume that VW is corrupting the files. I have noticed it happening from time to time in the past. Beyond copying and pasting into a fresh file, does anybody have any ideas for getting around the problem? 2. I am trying to convert a model to hidden line rendering. The file is only 4.6Mb. Every time I attempt this VW comes back to me after half an hour and tells me that I don?t have enough memory. I have been able to do this with much larger files in the past. The model is symmetrical, so I have tried just selecting the right side components??..same problem. I know that I should get some more RAM and a faster PC, however I live in a remote location, RAM(except the sheep variety) is days away and a new PC is weeks away. Any suggestions for ?get arounds? in the meantime? Christian VW10.5.0 W2K SP4 550 Mhz 392 RAM

BaRa Thanks for the low down. Christian

BaRa Sorry to be slightly off string, but you sound knowledgeable. How would you say that Rhino and VW compare? Which is good where, and visa versa which is bad where? How do you think Amapi, FormZ & Ashlar compare? After your post, I took a look at the Rhino site, ........very interesting! I am freelance and much as I love VW, I am looking for something a little less constraining than VW, but it must be accurate, quick to learn and suit a free lancers pocket. Thanks

IMHO 1. 2D is very good. Accurate, intuitive and easily edited. 2. I don?t know AutoCAD very well. The company I was working with considered swapping to it. I went along to a couple of lessons and came away with the view that it was in the Stone Age compared to VW. AutoCAD seemed clunkier and much harder to master. I couldn?t understand how AutoCAD had become so ubiquitous. VW is very simple to learn. No complicated commands. 3. I use VW in the way you describe. I design furniture and these days beyond the very basic concept I go straight to VW, either in 2D or 3D. There are a few limitations on the 3D side, but with each new version they are reduced. The only area that I can see that AutoCAD is better, is that AutoCAD is so common that everybody can read the drawings. VW can import/export DWG & DXF(and a load of other formats), but it?s not the same as creating the drawing in those formats. Christian

Fredrik Thanks, that's what it was - I knew it would be blindingly obvious Christian

Bryan Good idea about the Classes, but it turns out that they are all set to visible. The drawing was imported all into one layer. I copied one part of it into a layer that I had created and expanded the scale to clarify something. I don't think that the problem lies in the import. In fact I tried the same thing in another drawing that I hadn't imported and got the same results. I'm sure that I'm missing some setting somewhere.

I'm sure that the answer to this is blindingly obvious, but I can't figure it out. I have a drawing with 2 layers, each in a different scale. I want to be able to see and print both layers clearly. At the moment one layer or the other is always greyed out I have gone into 'Layers' and checked that both layers are 'visible', I have tried all the different transfer modes, I have looked in 'preferences'.........nothing doing. Any ideas anybody? I don't know if this is relevent, but the drawing was originally imported from a DWG file. Christian VW10.5 W2K SP4

Thanks for the advice - The stuff that I am wanting to import are simple 2D component drawings, but lots of curves & radii. Christian

Does anybody have any advice on the best way to import a Vellum draft drawing into VW10.5? Many thanks, Christian

Is there any way to open a ClarisCAD document in VW10.5? Thanks, Christian

I thought that the purpose of the Convert to Generic Solids command was to reduce file size in order to speed up rendering and viewing a model - the trade off being that the resulting models lost some of its manipulability. I have tried the command and it seems to do almost nothing ? a 3 Kb reduction in a 9Mb file. What is this command supposed to do and under what conditions does it work best?

I had been thinking about screen, but you seem knowledgable on both.

Kaare Thanks for the reply. I do not understand what you mean by increasing and reducing the image files - please could you clarify. The other thing. What about gently curved lines or diagonal lines in 2D. Will a better graphics card make them smooth, or will they always be jagged? Christian

Katie, are you out there? You would know the answer to this one. I don't want to invest in new hardware only to find out that I still have the problems Christian