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Gerard Jonker

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Everything posted by Gerard Jonker

  1. Hi JJ, The "feel" snap of the 3D cursor must be more or less the same that of the 2D cursor. Provided you are working on a G5 mac or higher. If you are working on a recent computer, but it seems like you are working on an steam driven model, you might benefit from replacing your VW folder. (iow reinstalling) Success, Gerard
  2. If NNA fixes the start point (0,0) for an "In Wall" rotated Hatch to the start point of the wall , I can do the rest myself. That would only leave the tilted walls, to be wished for. That would be fine, too. Mohamed and the mountain. Then NNA has to tell uys they can't do it and I will start a discussion on the NEN's techboard (Dutch Normalization institute) I really hate that solution. It is time consuming and inflexible. It "smells" too much like ArchiCAD that uses bandaids (The tool has a "LeukoPlast" icon!?!?!?) to fix all things they can't handle in the 3D model. Gerard
  3. That must be because we are so way off topic. Hey, that is my line! It does. Now, eg. in Singapore code compliance is checked using IFC data. While the graphic presentation does not count (Gerard: I still don't give anyone a "credit" for eyeballing blueprints), the data description has to be correct. Absolutely. Fortunately the written description is "stronger" than the drawn description, still you want as little misunderstandings on the building site as possible. Changing hatches from the standard is dangerous in that respect. Gerard
  4. Hi Mike, I believe I wrote that: But others don't want to give in too much to the incapabilities of the program. Next step might be they can't design tilted walls as the program can't handle that. Oops, the program indeed can't handle tilted walls. Back to polygons again. http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/images/2007/09/08/blueish.jpg Gerard
  5. Some do that indeed. For me, that defeats the purpose of having a wall. I can't make the symbols go into the walls, they have to float on top, meaning I need a white surface inside the symbol to cover wall and insulation. And, if I accidentally click on the wall with the stymbol insertion tool, the symbol will still be placed in the wall, under the insulation. Which brings me to another point on my wishlist: How much I would like to have a "Wall Inertia" button for a symbol. Believe me, you never want a toilet, or chair inside a wall. But you may want to move them against a wall. Image was edited in Adobe Photoshop to show the button I'd like to see added to VectorWorks. A simple extra button in the symbol insertion options dialog and an extra if statement in the code for the wall, would do the trick (I guess). This would go for Plug-In Objects, too. Thanks, Gerard
  6. Hi Robert, Yes!! We do, they are great. We DO use the features, but little to nothing of the content. Although I myself never use the DTM feature (ever been to Holland?), I understand others might need it and I don't mind paying for it as I probably use some other tool they don't. But if we look at the content, the story gets different. They are so American: None of the Door, Window, Stair, Campanile (?!), Fireplace, Column, Escalator plug-ins are useful to us. Even the metric Steel profiles cannot be used here. (I scripted those according to the DIN norm used, back in MC 4 and made them into Plug-ins when that became possible). The Roof tool would be great if we could use it here. But we can't, it is cumbersome in its use and it details wrongly on the ends. I'll give it another look and try to send you some suggestions how to make it work for us. Most of my clients even refuse to use the Wall Tool, at all, as they can't have it show a zigzag insulation. So they prefer to use my zigzag plug-in and then continue with rectangles or polygons to build the rest of the wall. See also the wish list I sent to Dan Monaghan about a year ago. (For myself, I adjusted the legend and use a cross hatch (stone) for insulation, just to be able to use the walls). So please, forget about the content of the libraries and focus on the things that are of general interest or on things that are architectural but of global interest. Make VW Fundamental truly fundamental, instead of Light. One of the things we could argue about are the Walls, they are architectural elements, but since they are so hard to make ourselves and probably most houses world wide would have walls, I'd prefer them in the fundamental package. Besides, I know somebody who uses them for electrical-board planning. I'll send you that wish-list off list. One of its items has been honored in VW 2008: a user defined backup location. (Yeah, Yeah, I understand, others asked for that, too. Don't spoil my dream: NNA built that according my wish, period.) Thanks for reading, Gerard P.S. I wish local distributors would finally acknowledge the fact that the dollar <> euro.
  7. Hi Robert, That would be so great. A VW Fundamentals that had all the Architects version's technology like walls staying joined together when you move one of them, Batch Printing Batch Export PDF Import Scaleable PDF Rotated Plan View etc. But no Architectural content, It could be a Fundamentals for an other Industry. Even for an Industry NNA hasn't anticipated yet. In other words, keep VectorWorks Fundamentals fundamental, without slowly turning it into VW Light. Thanks, Gerard
  8. There used to be a 4000 pixel width limit. The height limit was a lot larger, never ran into that. This limit dated from the pict file format that had this limit built in by Apple. It wouldn't surprise me if that limit still lingers about. In Strata Vision, we used to rotate the camera 90 degrees so we could render wider pictures at a height of 4000. I had just bought a Quadra 700 so render times were hardly an issue anymore: 8 to 10 hrs typically. (no Radiosity of course)
  9. Hi Charles, Does that mean Arc and Rect are obsolete from now on? Gerard
  10. Paul Simon, Graceland, The Boy In The Bubble. I prefer the "Classic" dialogs over the modern, but I am so afraid one day I'll find the "Classic" dialogs are obsolete and I will have to redo all dialogs. So against "will and thanks" I am an adopter of the modern dialogs.
  11. They don't need that edge. Working day in day out with the code is all the edge they need. We have to pause our scripting every now and then, just to go out and earn ourselves a living. But it comes close to what I was wondering: The SDK is open to everybody (read: a very select group that masters C++). Using the SDK we can (could) build event-enabled tools with mode bar buttons. So why is there a call to VS? Are NNA programmers still using VS to build Plug-Ins, too? And why limit the use of that call to NNA only? BTW, The online version of the documentation is maintained by Charles Chandler, too.
  12. Not really. Most changes were for the new colour scheme. As you say, the PIO's are relatively immune to the Rotated Plan View as they are drawn in their own secluded space. I have to update a few separate scripts that place PIO's that is it. Before I started updating those scripts I thought it would be a good idea to understand the Rotated PlanView. Hence my findings. Gerard
  13. Mike, You are looking in the wrong place. Charles Chandler wrote a beautiful piece on VCOR (VectorScript Wiki) About how to open dialogs and do other things from within PIO's. Glance through the explanations, then quickly grab the examples. Put your whole PIO code in a separate procedure and you're off. (page opens slowly, give it up to 15 seconds): http://www.vectorlab.info/index.php?title=Events Gerard
  14. mmm. Thank you Raymond, but Petri is right. Not the most beautiful proza I ever wrote. Let me try again: Drafting in VW 2008 is just great. Period. A little bug here 'n there, nothing serious. The program feels as stable as 12.5.0 (more or less). Now for scripting. Let's forget all the Rotated Plan View stuff for a second or two: Nothing really changed. Almost all your VW 12.5.0 scripts and Plug-ins will still work. But when you start writing a new one, things get trickier. Start with a new file. Then after a few hours of opening and closing the editor. You decide to send the test file to a friend, so you save it. Exit VectorWorks. The Save command is not effected, only Save as... takes a wrong turn. (I use BBedit for the long run, testing portions of code I like to do in palette scripts, using the option-double click to edit.) Next, we'll start operating on objects in a Rotated Plan View. Now you understand why I needed all these hours of testing scripts and why my writing is getting "coherently challenged": 1 place a Locus on (0,0); 2 Place another Locus at some point in the document, as long as it is not the origin. 3 Page menu, Set Origin..., at the second locus 4 Rotate Plan View. {not too much though, say 10?} Now it looks like this: 5 Run the following script, trying to draw a square and a circle between (0,0) and (1000,-1000): arc(0, 0, 1000, -1000, 0, 360); rect(0, 0, 1000, -1000); I got a circle alright, but it is not starting at (0,0) and the rect is not a square, also not starting at (0,0), as you can see in the image below: Silly me, I forgot to use ScreenVecToModelVec. Let's try again: procedure test; VAR A, B, C, D :Real; BEGIN A := 0; B := 0; C := 1000; D := -1000; ScreenVecToModelVec(A, B); ScreenVecToModelVec(C, D); arc(A, B, C, D, 0, 360); rect(A, B, C, D); END; Run(test); And this is what we get: The rectangle is a square this time, but the circle is now an approximation of an ellipse. Note how in the case of the circle, its Top Left corner seems to be misplaced in both occasions. It misses the spot with about 10? both times, the first one is +10? the other one is -10?. (pus or minus the PlanView Rotation). Sigh... Hoping GWB will not even think about hiring me after reading this post, Gerard
  15. Hi Charles and Charles, Most of my commands still work I had some minor fiddling to do in about 10 of the 250 commands I made over the years. (I still ship them all, if you don't, there will always be someone complaining) That is a wonderful piece of work. The colours in VW, but also the article. Thank you Charles! This has been causing some headaches though. To save myself some time testing I thought I could use a shortcut: Unrotate the plan, unshift the origin, do my stuff and then move and rotate everything back again. In their wisdom, NNA is forcing me to take the Rotated Plan View head on. For now they disabled setprefreal(93,A); - A bug you say? Naaah, you are just being modest. BTW, I love VW 2008. It is quite stable, as long as you are not scripting. Testing / editing scripts will eventually bring the program down, but not before making you question every previous result. As a few test runs before death kicks in, you get some really strange results. But for day to day drafts work it is just great. Thank you NNA, Gerard
  16. You are still using MESSAGE. That means that the first selected PIO set the message to TRUE, then the next one, that may be not selected, sets it back to FALSE. The message is updated so fast that you don't see the TRUE. Hence my suggestion to use ALrtdialog, the code freezes with every dialog and only continues when you hit OK.
  17. Higgins, http://www.orangedust.co.uk ships throughout all of Europe. All of the industries, too. Send an e-mail to rw@orangedust.co.uk to get a pricelist. Website is a bit outdated. I help Richard with the support and most of the included Plug-ins are mine. Gerard
  18. Change MESSAGE(SELECTED(thePIO)); to AlrtDialog(concat(SELECTED(thePIO))); and you will see it works.
  19. You may have to consider the possibility, they want you "Dead Nor Alive" Sorry, sorry.
  20. The handle isn't easily found. From the top of my head, not tested: if (gettype(fsactlayer) = 68) or (gettype(fsactlayer) = 89) then begin hd := fin3d(fsactlayer); if not selected(hd) then begin hd:=nextsobj(hd); end; if hd <> nil then message(concat(hd,' = the door!')); end; This code is only for VW < 2008 in VW 2008 you can select multiple doors, so you will have to store the handles in an array.
  21. I laughed because Holland is as 2D as it could possibly be. The concept of a bridge is a plank across a ditch. How flat can you go. And I mean flat, not low. Even in a 2D world, the bridge would hardly be recognized as you can't stand on the railing and pee down into the water. Which is, up to a certain age, the ultimate 3D use of a bridge. Sorry girls, boys only. Long dark evenings in Finland? Over here it gets dark and rainy a little after six.
  22. Can't wait to see your 2D bridges! (Sorry, sorry...) LOL
  23. Duplicated and skinned to give it some thickness: Gerard
  24. Hi Keola, I have two commands that can do this for you. Roads are often described by two curves, 1 from the top showing the bends etc. The other is a projection on the roads axis. I made a clumsy combination command that makes 1 3D polygon out of these 2 2D polygons. But it is polygons only. I'm not sure it can handle verticals as they are quite rare in roads. The other command solves the projection problem, at least for the viewers at infinite distance. I called it skew 3D (it doesn't really bend) it projects the skyline to the curve (or vise versa, wich would show you a city on a perfect sphere mountain). I use this one to build 3D bridges. I build the models straight and only as last action I sort of bend the bridge in the its vertical curve. (again 3D polygons only). This is the "skewed" version 1 Cut up the profile in small bands (2x clip surface) 2 Convert to 3D polys in front view 3 2d curve in top view in front of it 4 Skew 3D command 5 Decompose 6 delete all vertical but the first and the last 7 compose. Gerard
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