christian

Forgive the ignorance of this question. In my drawings, gently curved lines, diagonal lines and OpenGL rendered models appear to be jagged rather than smooth sided. I had assumed that this was caused by my ancient steam driven hardware and that if I upgraded and got a halfway decent graphics card that all would be smooth as a baby?s b***. However from reading some of the posts I am getting the impression that this is not the case and that OpenGL does not support Anti-Aliasing (whatever that means). Can anybody answer me? Will upgrading my hardware give my OpenGL rendered models and my lines smooth edges? There?s lots of negative stuff on here about 10.5, so much so that I was reluctant to upgrade. Anyway I finally upgraded a couple of days ago, because I needed a new toy to play with???..FANTASTIC. Christian VW10.5 W2K SP4 PIII 550 Mhz 394MB

This forum makes upgrading to 10.5 seem a little risky. I am currently on 10.1.2 and I am wondering if it's worth upgrading. Is there anyone out there, running W2K, who has recently upgraded to 10.5 and is happy with the results? Or should I wait for the next upgrade? Christian W2K SP4 PIII 550Mhz 392Ram

I have constantly struggled with the Blend Edge tool. MikeB, the great and wonderous oracle on all things VW, suggested that Blend Edge works better with lofted shapes than with shapes created in other ways. i.e. create a cylinder by lofting 2 circles, rather than by extruding a single circle. This has often helped me in 10.1.2 - try it. Haven't dared to update to 10.5 yet. No doubt we will have to pay for an expensive upgrade to get a working tool that we paid for in the last expensive upgrade. Christian

Peter & Nic Thanks for your advice.....I will check it out. Christian

I have a presentation to do. I need to show a collection of furniture. Each of the models is rendered in Open GL and I will need to be able to ?fly? around them. I am familiar with all the tools, however I suspect that I will have to do this on a relatively low specification PC. Has anybody got any suggestions as how I might optimise the files and, or models to make the process as smooth as possible so the client doesn?t spend most of their time staring at Vector works while it re-renders? Christian

Katie This problem occurred with any file over about 4.5Mb, that had been saved as an OpenGL rendered model. It would also happen if I tried to render a similar sized file, that had been saved in wireframe. I have not been using transparent textures. The only lighting I have set is the sun and ambient. I think I have resolved the problem. I hadn?t contacted you yet, because I have thought that I had solved the problem before and it then re-occurred. I have gone back to the NVIDI site and downloaded the earliest certified driver that I could find ? 29.42. This seems to have sorted it out. I tried drivers 45.23 & 40.72 neither of which worked. This problem only affected VW, I have another application that used OpenGL and there was no problem with it. What might concern you is that these drivers are common to many different NVIDIA cards and are supposed to be fully backwardly compatible, although of course the problem may be limited to just to my particular combination of card and driver etc, etc. I don?t know where the problem lies, with NVIDIA, or with VW, but if it is with VW I hope that the above helps you narrow down a problem. Christian

I updated the drivers on my graphics card last week and ever since VW is constantly crashing with runtime errors when I attempt to render in OpenGL. I have tried reverting to an earlier driver and although the problem is reduced any file over about 4Mb still crashes. Does anybody have any ideas on how to resolve the problem? Christian VW10.1.2 W2K SP4 PIII 550Mhz 392Mb RAM NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64

Sorry - I have worked out how to do it. You can just grab the side and move the whole thing up. Christian

The lower grab handles on my Object Info Palette have disappeared off the bottom of my monitor and now I cannot reduce the size of the palette. I have tried docking and undocking. Any ideas anybody? Christian VW10.1 W2K SP3

Mike Many thanks - missed that one! Christian

I have extracted a curve from another object and I am unable to manipulate the resulting curve any further. I want to cut it at certain points. I have tried the following: 1. Making another solid and then using the Subtract Solid Command. 2. Using Project and trim tool. 3. Using the trim command. Any other ideas?

Smoothing angle I have experimented with the smoothing angle and however I set it, either I end up with too many lines defining a curve or I begin to loose the outline. Component Intersections Where one component is inserted into another, i.e. the rails going into a chair leg. Hidden Line Rendering will often not show a line at the point of intersection. Groups Hidden Line Rendering does not appear to work on grouped objects. Everything has to be ungrouped and as a result the file grows enormously, doubling in size and more. Making a file of even a single piece of furniture very unwieldy. At the moment the only way to achieve reasonable results on curved models is to set the smoothing angle to a slightly smaller angle than necessary, then ungroup everything, then convert to lines, then ungroup again, and finally manually delete the lines you don?t want and insert those that Hidden Line Rendering hasn?t managed.

A Blend edge tool that actually works would be handy. Another thing that would be good is a 'stop' button that would halt whatever operation was current. Some of the tools are very processor intensive, such as rendering, it would be useful if these could be stopped without shutting down the app and therefore potentialy losing work. I am always in advertently hitting crtl+shift+D which sets off rendering, rather than crtl+alt+D!

Katie Is there any chance of a patch for the blend edge tool? I have tried taking the same base shape and either extruded it, shelled it or lofted it and the tool still cannot blend the edges. Christian

When are Nemetschek going to get this tool working as it should? 1. It often doesn't work. 2. The criteria under which it will work don't seem to be published. 3. It regularly crashes the application. I'm sure that there are workarounds for all the things that I need to do, but that is not the point. The tool should work as advertised.

Blend edge tool fails on the second face of an object. I create an extruded 'potato chip' solid and then try to blend the edges. Thsi is what I do. 1. I create a closed polygon with the Bezier curves. 2. Extrude Z to 0mm. 3. Convert the shape to NURBS. 4. Edit the shape by increasing U & V degrees to 2 and move the central set of U vertices to ?50mm in the Z axis. 5. Shell Solid with thickness of 100 6. Blend Edge top face with 50mm radius 7. Blend Edge bottom face and it fails ? changing radius etc doesn?t make any difference. If I create a similar shape through intersecting extruded solids I have no problem with the blend edge tool. What am I doing wrong and what is the get around? How do you add images to this forum? VW 10.1 W2K

Thanks Katie

I use VW10.0.1, which I bought in the UK. Can I download the 10.1 update from your website, or do I contact the distributor who sold it in the UK?

I have some drawings created on a PC with VW10. When viewed with the PC version of the viewer they are fine. However, when viewed with the Mac version of the viewer the blue grid is visible. I have looked all over the place, but I can't out where to turn the grid off. Any ideas anybody.

The solution to the problem is that you have to adjust the percentage alignment of each section. The tool works fine, but the manual could be a little more explicit.

I am having problems creating a tapered curved tube. Initially I used 5 sections, but the shape, although sweet, was not precise enough. I then added further sections to increase the accuracy. When I did this the resulting tapered curve was kinked. If I started the lofting from one end I would get the kink at the other, and visa versa. I have tried reversing sections and changing alignment percentage, neither gives the right results. Has anybody got any solutions?

Curves in drawings that I have exported to DXF open in AutoCAD 2000LT as polygons. I have tried different settings, including increasing the resolution - any ideas?

Mike It's not the radius size, but it could well be the initial geometry of the object. I tried a couple of different options, but nothing as convoluted as your suggestion. What is peculiar is that for a given 'bent plank' I can put a chamfer on one side, but cannot put a radius (with the same settings) on the other. Christian

MikeB That's right Thanks for the advice. You have saved me hours of tinkering. I know that there are other ways to skin that particular cat, but it's a detail that I use all the time, and if I could get the tool to work it would be very useful. I'll wait for that elusive V10 before I play around anymore. Katie - send the man a mug, t shirt, fast car etc. Christian

Thanks for the help. The 'plank' that I want to blend the edge on is bent in the other axis, imagine a steam bent plank. Since I posted I have successfully gone through the entire operation using a chamfer. No luck with a radius, just crashed the app. I will wait for VW10. I have ordered the update, but they are not yet shipping in the UK. Grrrrrrr.... Christian