SacSurfin'

I have been trying to compress a symbol to email to you, so I've added as many of the same colored objects together as I could and then converted them to Generic Solid and my file size went from 12.6 MB to 19.3 MB. I understand the reasoning behind ridding the objects of editing capablities to compress and it should logically downsize my file but it doesn't. I'm stumped, is there certain restrictions I don't know about? Thanks for any help, Brian

I created it, I spent quite a bit of time on it.

Trying to place a symbol from another file into my project. It imports fine into a brand new file and some other files I have. But certain ones give me the error message.

Yes, When I first installed Vectorworks 11 it automatically changed all my files to Vectorworks 11.

eleven

I have been having problems importing some of my symbols into certain files and it says Format for plug-in objects named NNARough cannot replace existing regular format with that name and these can't be renamed. The entire operation is canceled. Now does anybody know what this means and how to get around it? It makes some of my symbols useless. Thanks for any help

If you go under the organize menu there's is a option called custom selection which lets you choose all of any one particular type of object.

Also, do you have any idea if there's a point where you can have to much memory. The new G5 (The Beast) can hold 8 Gigs of memory, and I wonder if I would ever even possiblily need that much and same with video card memory? I feel there's probably a ceiling on what would be useful and what would be wasteful. Thanks,

I've tried everything I can think of, I've purged numerous times and can't get rid of anything else. These are very detailed 4000 sq. ft. homes and with all the nessacary plants to build the scene I'm stuck. I've also deleted all detail from the home not seen in the shot

I have been working on the rendering for some clients of ours with are relatively large average 140-200 mb. But after a number of quick check renders the background starts to change to black and my grass plane also. I reboot and all is well for a few renders then once again things start going black. It's very annoying, coupled with the time it takes to do a final render. A few hour project turns into a day or so. Any suggestions?

Well it's not a problem anymore. Man , the Mac G5 is a beast, two hours is now about twenty minutes. All hail Mac

Being used for client's full color brochures they are rendered at 300 dpi and 9.5 inches wide while using a skydome and actually somewhat transparent windows with reflections. It takes about forty five minutes to a hour and fifteen to render then anotherhour at the least to export as image. They are all at least 30MB files and some get up to about 60MB dependent on the size of the house and the trim/props. Adding image props for scenery makes rendering almost impossible.

Not naming names but previously modeling using a different software package I've noticed that before modeling mostly for animations at 29.97 frames per second with multiple effects and raytracing my render time for a ten second clip or basically 300 frames seems to take about as long a one frame vectorworks render. It takes basically two hours to render my image file . PowerMac G4 1.25 GB memory

I believe that works with one file but to compress my somewhat large elevations into one file would set the size in the hundreds of megs and make it basically impossible to render

I currently use vectorworks at my place of employment, and have to render usaully at least 12 photorealistic elevations a job, and render times kill me. Perhaps adding the option to choose as many files as you like, set all export settings for whichever file type required and choose the sheet from each to render. Then go home and let the computer go to work. If all could be rendered over night time per model would be decreased tremendously. Thanks,

For texturing my roof tile I've found that setting the map type to plane and selecting the top face to texture is the most accurate depiction I can get but for some reason while using the rectangle in the mapping window to texture sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it mirrors. I have attached it to to the botom face since that would technically be mirrored from the top face, and it works sometimes and other times it looks right until I go to rotate then it mirrors itself and I can't get them to all have the same oriented texture. It seems like there's no way to get it right since you can never yourself mirror or flip the mapping rectangle and there doesn't seem to be a pattern, like the tile's angle or rotation. It just happens at random.

For texturing my roof tile I've found that setting the map type to plane and selecting the top face to texture is the most accurate depiction I can get but for some reason while using the rectangle in the mapping window to texture sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it mirrors. I have attached it to to the botom face since that would technically be mirrored from the top face, and it works sometimes and other times it looks right until I go to rotate then it mirrors itself and I can't get them to all have the same oriented texture. It seems like there's no way to get it right since you can never yourself mirror or flip the mapping rectangle and there doesn't seem to be a pattern, like the tile's angle or rotation. It just happens at random.

Or the possiblity of giving an option to what some programs call an instance, which is when an object is copied, an option is given to instance or copy, an instance changes all copies when original is changed, wherein a copy doesn't. This would come in handy for many copies of the same object, if one is resized or re-textured or changed in any way , the others all change to.

For instance to make say a refrigerator, You make a rectangle and assign different numbers to each side. You assign the refrig. front picture to the front number aloong with the refrig. shape Opacity Mask and put side pictures on the sides and rear picture on rear, then presto a 15 minute frig. This could work with alot of things and could cut down modeling time tremendously. Cutting down on the amount of time spent trying to offset and measure object to have material map right.

Some of the 3d design programs I have used include an ability to put different textures on same object. The ability to number faces individually and assign different textures to the individual faces would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, Your idea works great. Thanks Peter Brian

I've made the 2d poly and have extruded and duplicated the array and grouped my row of tile but it's the rotation of the tile in top view that changes all three axis rotation values, I rotate 45 degrees then the tile and roof pitch no longer match, and usaully the z-axis is a little off center also. They work fine in a perpendicular settings, it's just the 45 angled roof tile that bother me. With a roof pitch of 22.62 I rotate the tile in F, B, L, R view to 22.62 but after rotated in top view to 45, it becomes more like 25 or 30.

I've been trying to use Vectorworks for adding roof tile to corners of roof, and have had nothing but problems. To match the roof pitch I rotate from a left or right view, then I rotate 45 from top view and when I go back to front view my tile pitch is no longer the same as the roof and usaully the Z-axis has rotated a little too. How come when you rotate 45 from top it affects all three; X,Y,Z axis's. Besides the roof, the perspective renderings look great. Any suggestions? Is there any way to do this in Vectorworks in a reasonable amount of time?

Mapping textures now is only done currently at the object level, making it very time consuming to adjust the offset and rotation to the copies. The ability to view the object , rotate and offset accordingly, and affect the actual texture instead of only the objects mapping would be great. Right now I have simple symbols containing multiple tiles lined up for the roof edges, They're longer then needed so I can just ungroup and delete those tiles I don't need. So I use these same symbols for all my roofs but the texture and color are always changing and to go in and adjust the offset and roation on a couple hundred tile to make them look real takes forever.

Putting roof tile on roof edges currently is very painful and time consuming. The tiles are rotated to match the pitch in either the left or right view then rotated in top view to match roof angle, but when they are roated in top view, the pitch rotation changes and alot of the time the Z-axis roation changes to. Making it impossible to get and accurate angle for the tile. The ability to convert the roof to 3d lines and a copy along path function would make this easy. I currently have to use other software packages to create any good roof tile.