hollister design Studio

I was having some difficulty with this too and @jeff prince helped guild me through the process. The following is an amalgamation of his and my words. To Create your image with alpha in photoshop: take a photo of a real plant with my camera. Start with a blank psd file with a transparent background. Paste in the photo you took or found on google (bing seems to have much better plant images... YMMV) Remove the unwanted pixles by erasing them, revealing the transparent backgound OR - I like to remove pixels by 'creating clipping mask' and erasing on that layer... then I can paint back in details I might have over erased. Save the psd and export a png file with its built in alpha channel - you can use 'quick export as PNG' this still saves alpha by default. On to VW! To create the image prop you do the following. file > import > import image file select your image which has the alpha channel In the top 'import as' menu choose import as a resource Use PNG compression and check the box for alpha remember that you changed this to 'image prop'... I often forget and the next time I want to import an image I can't figure out why my site map image isn't showing up on my cover sheet... I do this far to many times. To put it into your Plant Symbol: Edit the style of your plant symbol Go to visualization tab click on the 3d Graphics section - > create from image the image resource you created earlier should be available. Hope this helps!

You are very polite. Many (maybe most) of VW end-users will at the very least START using scripts by downloading someone else's creation. The Help Pages should be very clear about how to download, save, and active. I really can't believe that the first entry in the help pages isn't what you just wrote. Thank You!

@Jesse Cogswell OK... I've tried to figure this out myself and am not getting anywhere. Plus my google-fu is failing me. I downloaded your script I put it in my plugins folder I restated VW and looked in my plugin manager Yay - there it is! ... now what? How do I actually use it?

@Tom W. Thanks Tom

Issue: Is there any way to edit this 'story bound' out of them without Architect or Designer? I've noticed that many of the symbols in the Vectorworks Libraries insert with a red error message in the lower right corner of the screen. "this symbol is using a story bound that does not exist' These symbols cannot be snapped to a location in the Z axis (they snap fine in X and Y) and auto snap to Z=0 on the Layer. They can then be adjusted in z by the move command, OIP, and/or dragging and snapping into place etc. Note: If they are copied and pasted they return to zero z again even if in a group with other objects.

@C.T @Mark Aceto As far as I've been told you also can't program or change the temporary shortcuts (like MMB+Ctrl for temporary flyover, and MMB or Spacebar for pan, and Spacebar+pause+Ctrl for zoom). It seems like you can only make shortcuts for the tools themselves, but these interfere with whatever tool/command you are presently using, and so are less than useful. And even then are limited to what you can use for the shortcut. It would be VERY nice to be able to program/ self determine all of these temporary shortcuts. This must be possible - they did allow this for the new 'smart options' and 'quick search' - which are temporary and can be called during another operation without canceling the current operation. ...but this is probably a much more complicated tweak than us mere mortal/non programmers/end-users will ever know or understand!

I've found that editing Auto Hybrids in the edit window often leads to odd results and occasionally leads to VW freezing solid... I do try and not create them until I'm fairly certain that the design is solid. But when producing drawings for client approval I need to be able to have top/plan drawing (that are not transparent.) I'm currently using the 'convert to group' command - which oddly seems to result in not a 'group' but a 'generic solid' - and then reconverting them back into Auto Hybrids after changes. Is this the best workflow for editing Auto Hybrid objects?

I will keep this in mind in the future. I do often draw the polygons in top/plan with the site model off.

@Boh copy that -- I was looking under the 'select similar tool' settings by mistake.

@markdd What are the setting on the eyedropper to copy class visibilities? That sound SO useful.

@Landartma I've been using 3Dpolygons on the Site-DTM class for my grade modifiers around retaining walls. @Tamsin Slatter has a couple of videos on how to use them - really handy for describing grades around a retaining wall. You can set a discrete elevation for each point and can add, subtract, or modify by simply using the 'reshape tool'. As for modeling, I've been going back and forth with extrudes (I hate that they are transparent in plan view), Slabs like @Tom W. showed, or the wall tool. I don't tend to do curved walls so I've not much to add there. I like that clean concrete look so I design with no batter (at least not on the front plane), but have occasionally used the 'Add 3D Object to Slab' command to get some old-school stone walls drawn up.

@Mark Aceto I'm on a wacom so I mostly pan with MMB (my second pen button). Honestly with the number of times I mess up my OIP menu selection by hitting the spacebar to pan, I should just completely abandon that workflow. Plus I've found there is more of a 'pause' between hitting the spacebar and it taking effect than panning with the MMB. I'm also always making a copy of the currently selected object when I'm ctrl+spacebar zooming... I wish there was a (quick) way to zoom without the spacebar - I would LOVE for an Alt+MMB zoom!

I was afraid of that. ...in this usage I wonder what was wrong with using the down arrow to, you know, go down...

When I change a setting in the OIP - say the scale of a viewport - and then want to PAN to a different area of the screen - the action of hitting the Spacebar doesn't PAN it 'undoes' the change I made in the OIP. This is a bit frustrating. It seems like hitting the spacebar is advancing to the next option in an OIP dropdown. How do I turn this behavior off?

Many objects in the group where assigned to screen plane. Which is odd because when I imported from AutoCAD a couple months ago (this is the project floor plan I received from the architect) I went though and converted everything to layer plane. In my archived files everything is layer plane. In the current file, all of a sudden everything in this group is screen plane (excepting one object.) I tried changing everything back to layer plane. When I selected everything, the Plane option was not avalible. So I selected with 'select similar tool' by object type and changed to layer plane that way... but some objects (converted dynamic window and door blocks from the autocad file for example) wouldn't allow me to reassign to layer plane. I eventually gave up. I made the file usable again by ungrouping and making the floorplan a 2D symbol. This sits just fine on the layer plane. I'm still unsure as to why it flipped back to screen plane on me. all the popups hints about shortcut keys also came back resently... as if VW reset itself somehow. @Pat Stanford - I'm wondering why 'screen plane' exists outside of Sheet Layers? Is it a left over from when people printed from design layers? Is there any issue with just setting 'Plane Mode for Planar Tools" to working plane only?

@Pat Stanford I don't seem to have the Plane option on my OIP for group objects. I only have Class, Layer, Delta X, Delta Y, X, Y and the Box Position indicator. ...plus you completely whooshed me with the Gene Kelly ref!

I just opened a project file and the 2D floor plan is stuck to the screen plane... I opened the same file, but a backup from a couple of days ago, and this is not it's behavior. In both file the floor plan is on Layer 'Exist-plan' and in Class 'A-BLDG-GROUP' In the older file the group containing the floor plan sits nicely on it's layer plane with everything else on that laver when I'm navigation in 3D. In the current file the group is suddenly stuck to the screen plane even though everything else on that layer is behaving as expected. I tried copying the floor plan group from the old file into the current file, but it sticks to the screen plane too. Any thoughts on what I did wrong?

@markdd and @Tom W. I had the insertion tool set to 'align symbol left mode" instead of 'align actual insertion point mode' I thought I was going crazy! I do miss the block editing space in AC. I liked the menus for direct control of things like insertion points was just clean, easy, and - oddly for AutoCAD - intuitive. Plus dynamic blocks! I really miss all my dynamic blocks.

I was inserting a new symbol I made by duplicating and existing symbol this morning. The insertion point is to the bottom and all the way to the left of all geometry. When I edit the symbol, it is centered on the origin point, which is how I had understood the insertion point to be set. Is there another way to set the insertion point?

@jeff prince ...it was text size... How embarrassing -- what a great way to control visibility though!

I have the box checked under Site Model Setting/2D display. I've checked and unchecked and turned layer visibility on and off... Any ideas? Also, what's the best way to do a 'roll over' elevation check? I would have thought that the stake tool or the grade tool would have 'live updates' in the OIP or even better at the cursor.

Top of wall / bottom of wall info is so important.

@Kevin C at this point Onedrive does seem pretty platform agnostic.

Take my upvote, we are completely on Onedrive as it's native to Windows.

Yes, I do love the magic wand, but selecting from the class list would be a nice option. Even more so from the Resource Manager... I'm always right clicking on the resource manager and expecting to be able to select the objects in the design layer.