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Chris D

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Posts posted by Chris D

  1. I hate the Attributes Palette with a passion. I've argued this before on these boards, but it is now high time that it was shot and buried!

    I mean, it's so deprecated that it's now shrivelled up into a shadow of its former self anyway, just look at it besides the 2008 version (2012 on the right):

    2qntfdt.png

    You can't even see if your lineweight is set by class anymore! (try it!) But this is just cosmetic...it doesn't need fixing it needs annihilating!

    In the CAD world it was an annoyance that line colour/style/weight was separated from the other attributes of an object, but in the BIM world it is surely heresy!

    The attributes palette should be folded into the Object Info palette where it belongs. CLASSES should be what determines an object's properties 99.9% of the time. We should not be using MacPaint style little palettes to set colour and lines of individual objects.

    Having the attributes palette separate just encourages people to use it instead of selecting the right class. And I don't buy that 'it's people that shoot people, not guns' argument.

    Fine, ok, you can have a tear-off palette if you want it, but it should not be separate by default and it should be better than the crappy little thing in the 2012 version anyway!

  2. I find that new wall types are sufficiently distinct from existing walls anyway on most projects. Demolished would be a dashed outline of the wall only.

    Interesting how people tackle phasing or 4D though. We usually layer for existing, demolished and proposed. No idea how we'd go about it in a BIM workflow within stories though...?

    Does IFC have a 4th dimension?

  3. I would recomend using them. Once you have set up all, it's very easy to use and it's a lot faster. The sheet number and name can automaticly be filled in, very good when you want to renumber your sheets. In combination with a worksheet, you can fill in the title blocks very fast!

    Thanks Dieter. Do you use Drawing Registers (issue sheets) in Belgium? http://needleandmortar.com/wiki/Drawing_register

    Can these be created on a Worksheet?

  4. When a viewport is made, it looks at the this original origin to position itself on a sheet layer.

    Yes my colleague had drawn the building at the real world Ordnance Survey coordinates, when it is better to model at the origin and then reference to the OS position.

    Odd that there is a feature to centre the Sheet Border on the Page Boundary, but nothing to centre an automatically-created Viewport in the same place!

  5. These tile objects are odd...the stud positions can be controlled to an extent in vertical walls, but flip a wall horizontally and they behave differently! They also don't behave at all at wall joins.

    Tiles might be clever but I'm not sure they are wise...we don't need further abstraction...we need a framing tool within the wall type. I'm surprised that a North American company like NV Inc hasn't made this a priority as most of your houses are timber framed.

  6. You can draw a section line (in elevation mode) to mark and automatically create interior elevation viewports.

    That sounds enticing but is it true? I mean, say I had a space with four walls around it...could I just throw a four-way elevation marker on like below and get 4 viewports of the internal elevations of that room?

    jrvcsg.png

    The help files are not really helpful...is there a way to use the create section viewport command to do this?

  7. We're trying to model a relatively simple building with a curved curtain wall than runs up several stories. No compound curves, nothing fancy...should be able to do that right?

    - When using Stories we want the WindowWall tool to be storey compliant so we use storey height spans. How do you get it not to duplicate the transom (horizontal mullion in US speak) at floor level?

    - Why can't you set Transom and Mullion independently. They are hardly ever the same section in reality. We want deep mullions and skinny transoms. This can't be done right?

    - Why can't you turn off the top/bottom transom, like you can turn off the first/last mullion?

    My own conclusion...by the time you've learned the tool, learned of its limitations (practically everything), moaned about it on the techboard, tried a few workarounds....you're better off just drawing the bloody thing in primitives. BIM? hah.

  8. You know, one of our guys came back from a BIM seminar last week announcing that Sketchup was the future of BIM. We all laughed. Then today I googled 3D models of UK kitchen cabinets. Yup right there in the Sketchup 3D warehouse...full UK kitchen units range in standard sizes:

    http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=2dfae1545547790d65224ccd01ad35d4&prevstart=0

    Now Sketchup is starting a long way behind Revit in BIM functionality, but how far behind Vectorworks is it?.....

  9. Oh, you americans with your funny kitchen units. I love that the default content provided with our UK copies of VW is american style cabinetry, but in metric dimensions...what's the point of this??

    Can we do better with the next release please.

    [Comments about our local distributor doing this are not welcome]

  10. I think this again illustrates a point about BIM that I've said before...BIM is all or nothing:

    In 2D, lines and arcs can draw anything you could ever want to build, but in the BIM workflow, if your door tool can only do a very limited range of doors, the workflow breaks down and you're in to workarounds - non-intelligent, non-parametric, non-reporting, different-scheduling dumb symbols made from primitives. That then isn't BIM.

    So, despite it's miniCAD origins...CAD for the smart sized firm...etc etc...you can't do BIM on the cheap and Nemetschek should recognise that. If you're going to sell a BIM tool it has to do the job.

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