jdthatcher

Is there a way to change what the style of emmiter is in the fixture. Spot,Drectional, etc. To try and get a different light effext out of it?

You bring up an issue that I have thought about as well. It seems that most lighting has basic parts. One is the source. A given. Two is the reflector type. Three in most case is the lens or lack there of. Four would be the enclosure. It seems that building custom fixtures would be easier if you could apply some of these basic choices to the instruments. Especially a reflector type. This is no substitue for the light info. But would be a great way to make the creation easier and then work with the light info. Many times I am just looking for a light source that is close in output, representative to it's physical shape and want to see a quick render. I rarely use this as the beginning and the end for lighting deisgn. That's what ESP Vision is for.

What about even having a seperate window or engine for rendering so you can continue to work? This would save having to have a second machine all time.

I wish that there was some sort of font veiwing size and preview. It seems like the process takes a lot of time. It seems that a few versions ago you could select the text and then scoll the font selection box and it would change the text as rapidly as you changed the font. With the addition mof the most common fonts used for fonts I saw this go away. However I think that some sort of font viewer would be better and a very useful tool.

I am using regular windows. I can not tell you what the error message was completely. I was at that point in a rush. The last installation that I did, took the cd out just about the time it would have given me the error message. Vectorworks appeared to install and it opened. What I noticed is that all of my libraries where not installed. I will try the complete install soon and report back on the full error message. Is there a direct contact to request a dvd installation disk?

I have a Sager Dual video card laptop, operating Windows XP Home. It also has a AMD Turion 64 Processor. Is this a compatable system with Vectorworks. My license is VW 12.0.0 Designer Upgrade. Currently it gets to the final phase an says that it is going abort the installation. I have done it 3 times, using the 3 disc installation kit. Please help..

Make sure you are in Top/Plan View.

Just thought of an idea. This might fall into the wish list area, but I will post it anyway. Could there be a slot of say 12 blank user defined colors that could be changed and accessed from the attributes window. Similar to the way that if you select hatch a user can create a custom hatch or select one that is already on the list?

I know that there must be a reason that the color pallette in Vectorworks is so limited. I just can't figure out why that is. I think it would be a nice to have the ability to make cutom colors easier than the current way. Does anyone else see this limiting? Is there a reason that it is not as flexible as other graphics programs? I know that I can create custom color palletees and import and BLAH, BLAH.

Maybe it should be a visiblity option and not a layer option?

I like having the flexiblity to change the viewport independantly from the design layer.

That sounds correct. The option of how a layer is grayed or it's level of transparency would be useful. I am PC based. However the overlay layers affects any layers that are below. I want the grayed type effect, but with some options to choose. i.e. level of transparency, retain color and change opacity.. The class option is one that I have been using by duplicating layers and changing their class to match what I am looking for. This starts to duplicate too many objects and requires much management to keep track. The types of drawings I work with for feature films are ongoing and change constantly throughout the project. So having tools that you can apply or change are better than creating more classes, layers and objects. The management begins to take away from the goal at hand.

Sort of on that same note. Would there be a way to gray a layer but keep a grayed version of that color?

Wow. Thank you for answer to the question that I never asked.

Really. That's good to know. In the designs that I am doing I don't work with regular lighting positions. Thanks for that heads up.