AndySand

To use islandmon's suggested procedure, it's necessary to locate at least three (n) NURBS shapes inline and separated by 1/n the distance of the twist length. Each of the shapes is then rotated by 30? with respect to its neighbor. I found I was using the wrong tool to generate the geometry. The best tool is Duplicate Along Path. It works for very complicated cross-sections.

Thanks islandmon, this did exactly what I wanted. However, I tried to use the OFFSET Tool to work as advertised to generate the "move". The Help file states "NURBS surfaces are offset by the offset distance along the surface normal direction", which would appear to be an ideal solution. In my VW2008, the tool magnifies the NURB surface profile by the amount of the "offset" in the same working plane as the original. Perhaps I misunderstand the Help description, or maybe I chose the wrong tool.

Pat, the procedure you provided works for a right circular cylinder, which I appreciate your clearing up. However, that was not the problem I'm trying to solve. The shape I want to produce has an asymmetric cross-section. I used the twist drill as a simplified example. Another simple example would be a 1" x 1.5" x 3' iron bar, put it in a vise and twist it. The cross-section is always 1" x 1.5" and rotated around the longitudinal-axis. If I could extrude while rotating, I'd get the shape I seek.

The solid object I want to draw closely resembles an ordinary twist drill. I find nothing in the archives addressing this question, nor any suggestions in the Vectorworks Help files. I can easily create the cross-section of the object in 2 dimensions, but none of the Extrude or Sweep commands will rotate the object about its centroid along the Z-axis. Placing a 2D or 3D locus at the centroid doesn't help. Nor can I subtract a "spring-shape" coil from a right circular cylinder -- Can't compute... Perhaps I'm working in the wrong solid modeler and someone can set me straight.

VW 10.1.2, Mac G4, dual 1GHz, 1.2GB ram, OS X 10.2.6 When I attempt to use downloaded Workspaces, I find two very curious alerts that show when I add the 2D Selection tool to a revised tool palette. The first appears if I add the 2D Selection and then give the item a key shortcut -- "The following items are no longer part of VectorWorks: 3D Selection Pan 2D Selection Zoom in Zoom out" The second shows if I omit the key shortcut and succeed in creating the workspace. I bring up a new drawing pane and then I click on the 2D Selection tool and get this message -- "This internal tool has been removed from this version. Please remove this tool from your workspace and check the documentation for a new way to accomplish the task." I found these alerts show when attempting to use Workspaces downloaded from the NNA site. The most recent was Dialog Builder 4 . There is, of course, no "new way to accomplish the task" mentioned in any documentation I have found. A programmer wrote these alerts -- they are not a bug. Did I stumble upon a chunk of an unpublished revision of VW?

VW10.1.2, G4 dual 1G, 1.2 GB, OSX10.2.6 Just tried Dialog Builder 4.0b4 and it doesn't work, big time. The most serious problem is, on my Mac, it can't be shut down. I have to Force Quit VW to get out of the DB4 workspace. A lesser problem, but likely a symptom of the same incompatibility is that there is no way to place only one blank dialog box in the VW pane. While not grayed out, the selection arrow icon cannot be selected -- a message is given that the proc it represents has been disabled -- with the result that every click adds another blank dialog box. I note that the last modification dates are typically in 2001 for the various parts, suggesting that NNA has elected not to support DB in a timely manner. So my question is this: is there any plan to update Dialog Builder to make it work with Jaguar, let alone Panther?

Sorry, I apparently didn't make myself clear in my starter message. My onjective, if it's attainable, is to add *new* sizes of square tubing to the Pull-down list of available sizes. As an experiment, I removed the file Square Tubing - inch.txt from the VW10 Data folder. Upon activating the PIO in VW, I got a message that the *required data file could not be found* AND, I was able to display the pull-down menu list of available sizes in the dialog. My next experiment was to substitute a modified line changing only the size column in Square Tubing - inch.txt, which produced the message *that size is not available* when selected in the still present pull-down list. Experiment 3 was leaving the size column as it was originally, but changing all the dimensions columns to different numbers, thus: 1.5 x 1.5 x 0.1875 1.000 1.000 0.0960 0.09605. Selecting the 1.5 x 1.5 x 0.1875 size in the pull-down list resulted in drawing the 1 inch square tubing. So the pull-down list is evidently hardwired and can't be changed. I was hoping some clever chap had figured out how to defeat the lock on the pull-down list, other than to write a replacement script.

VW10.1.2, G4 dual 1G, 1.2 G ram, OSX 10.2.6 It's hard to believe this is new, but "Search" turned up nothing. I use a customized tool palette that contains, among other items, square tubing. The smallest listed size is 1.5", and I want to add smaller sizes. I can create a custom size by filling in the blanks in a dialog -- that ain't the good life. I can easily edit the data file, SquareTubing-Inch.txt, but the added stuff doesn't show up in the dialog. I must be missing a critical step. What might it be?