dbg
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I've nearly finished a design of a machine in 3D, and now I need 2D drawings of all the pieces in order to fabricate them. So far this seems a very tedious process. How should one organize things to make this easier? Or have I missed an "Export all objects to 2D drawings, each on their own sheet" menu command somewhere?
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What makes printing so difficult--how does it work under the covers?
dbg replied to dbg's question in Troubleshooting
Good suggestion. Unfortunately, removing the extra memory, reseating it, etc., nothing fixed the problem. So perhaps the trouble is specific to the PostScript implementation on the 5M (its own board with 2MB on it). Or perhaps that board is bad. But it prints everything else we throw at it just fine, photos, newsletters, etc. Puzzling. However, based on your suggestion I tried printing it on my Epson inkjet, and that works just fine. So I guess that's a workaround. Thank you! -
What makes printing so difficult--how does it work under the covers?
dbg posted a question in Troubleshooting
I'm using VW 12.5 for an extremely simple task: I'm trying to generate a floor plan for a house my daughter is buying. I measured the rooms and drew corresponding rectangles on one layer that I used as a guide, then used the wall and door tools on another layer, snapping to my guide rectangles, to make the floor plan. All works easily until I try to print. It's a simple document, 140 objects and a few layers (one layer is a grid of squares with various line widths to serve as graph paper). Except for walls and doors, the most complicated thing is a rectangle with white fill. OK, there's about 20 characters of text too. But when I print, it's a catastrophe. Nothing ever comes out of the printer (HP LJ5M with extra memory) even if I wait 10 hours--the printer just stays busy "processing". I try printing to PDF, and that goes very quickly and results in a tiny PDF file that displays fine on screen--but it too fails to print within 10 hours. If I change the dpi to 72 the document prints in less than an hour, but still preposterously slow for its simple nature, and the quality of course is awful. What works best is to do a screen capture, and print that. I tried generating PostScript, and it distills rapidly to the PDF, which again views fine on screen but can't print in finite time. Surely this can't be right--there must be something about printing that is weird with VW that I don't understand. Can anyone help? Is there any way to get the vectors and fills out to some other program that can print, like Illustrator? -
Leopard 10.5.1 with VW 12.5.3 not working with network home directories.
dbg replied to Will's question in Troubleshooting
I had trouble that acted very like this. I could get VW12.5.3 to run exactly one time after a clean reinstall (deleted everything I could find, reinstalled from CDs then updated to 12.5.3). Second and subsequent attempts to launch behaved as you describe. I memorized the serial number, I had to install so many times. I believe it was a permissions problem. I had added users to the Library, and the ACL's mere existence seemed to cause the problem. I cleared all the ACLs, using sudo chmod -R -N /Library and the next reinstall seemed to work. Running OS X.5.1 Server. It may not be possible to solve the permissions problem when using a network volume, I suppose, but thought my experience might offer clues. -
Designed machine in 3D, how best get 2D fab drawings of each part?
dbg replied to dbg's topic in Machine Design
Thanks for the help! All of these sound like one-time snapshot kind of operations, right? I.e., if I later have to make a change, I have to re-extract the surface and replace it in my 2D sheets, right? I was hoping there'd be a way to do it where the 2D cut plans would automatically update with revisions in the 3D model. I guess maybe one could do that by designing 2D/3D symbols for each component, so that the symbol would be the thing one revised. Not practical, I guess... and anyway I didn't do it that way. BTW I just got a Mac Pro 2x4, running OS X.5.1 Server. VW 12.5.3 seems to work (after many days of re-installs, not sure what finally fixed it. Probably some kind of permissions problem combined with old bits not getting deleted. Would launch exactly once after each reinstall.) Dave -
I've designed a machine in 3D, and now I need to fabricate it. The components are intended to be cut from plexiglas with a laser cutter, so I need to get each component drawn in 2D now, and eventually into Windows Corel Draw, which controls the machine. What's the process an experienced user would use for this task? Just copying and pasting into new sheets seems rather error prone as well as tedious.
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I'm having the same symptoms with a dongle version under Leopard. It works fine on my Macbook Pro, but fails on Mac Pro using Leopard or Leopard Server. It always claims the serial number is not valid, just as in the first post above. Once in a while I can get it to launch once, under Leopard on the Mac Pro, after a complete fresh install, but the second launch always fails with the serial number problem. Sometimes VW 12.5.3 has crashed, too, with a bus error at a low address.
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How label planks, with labels that survive cutting?
dbg replied to dbg's topic in General Discussion
I have found a possible way to label the planks that leaves them able to be cut, moved, and rotated as I need, by using images for fill. All I have to do is create 150 images containing the numbers 1..150 respectively, and use them for filling the planks. I haven't figured out how to use Vectorscript to make the images into resources and then how to identify the appropriate resources as the fills of each plank as I create it, but it looks like the key is the last parameter of SetObjectVariableLongInt (objectHandle,695,-6); where objectHandle refers to the last created rect. This must be documented somewhere. -
How label planks, with labels that survive cutting?
dbg replied to dbg's topic in General Discussion
When I group a text item with each end of the plank, I'm no longer able to cut it--I can draw the marquee over the selected plank/group, but there's no effect, it doesn't split. I tried adding callouts to each end, but they don't even stay attached when I move the whole plank unless I group them with it, and if I group them with it the plank becomes uncuttable as above. I do have architect, and tried the ID mechanism. Perhaps I haven't understood yet how to use it, but at present it seems that the IDs too fail to move with the plank. I have another idea, but haven't figured out yet how to do it. If I could make 150 different textures that consist of their own integer text labels tiling the object, that would work about right. But I haven't figured out how to create my own textures, much less how to automate doing 150 of them. Once done, though, I can see scripting the creation of an array of planks with appropriate unique textures applied. Any pointers where to learn more about creating textures? I've been browsing this site's Renderworks area, but no luck on the first few pages at least. And the VW help system doesn't seem to mention the topic. -
I want to experiment with arranging pieces of flooring material that are oriented, with tongue and groove on ends as well as sides. I need to keep track of the identity of each plank even after it has been cut, so each piece retains the original plank's label, so I can know how many planks were needed for a given layout and can keep track where the two ends went in the layout. So far I've only found one way to approximate what I need, by using gradient fill. I line up the max number of planks I expect to need in one loooong line and fill the whole assembly with one long gradient fill of multicolors. The individual planks do keep their fills when moved separately and when cut, and the cut edges lose their strokes so I can distinguish them. So long as I don't ever rotate any pieces, I can cut them as needed with the Clip tool, splitting at marquee. Identifying them is not easy, however, as the changes in color from one plank to the next are pretty small. I can do it by using a pixel color analyzer, but it's tedious. What I really want instead is to display the original plank number near each end of the plank, and have those numbers survive cutting and move with each end as it's placed. I don't mind losing labels on inner pieces that are formed when a plank is cut twice, which ought to simplify this problem. Also I'm only concerned with 90 degree cuts across the narrow dimension, not arbitrary cuts. So far I haven't found a way to have text stick to each end of cuttable planks in this way. Does anyone have any suggestions? Once I understand the mechanism, I'd write a VectorScript to generate a set of uncut planks to start from.