Fairfax

The duplication of window and door records in the schedules had me head scratching too. I have a design layer which has viewports in it, so that explains it. What to do about this though? In previous versions of VW I would create a "model" of the building with layer links, but this is not an option any longer...

Hello, Is there an easy and/or clever way to do bay windows in VW 2008? Thanks, Graham

Katie, I am trying to create a shingled house with shingles on the roof and I would like to do that with textures, for realism, and, in the long run time savings (hopefully). Here is the best I have gotten so far: www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering.jpg Since then, I have tried switching to final quality renderworks on the lower viewport but am having the problem I describe above, namely, the brightness is inconsistent between the design layer and the viewport. The file is rather large, I don't know if I can email it. Thanks, Graham

Hi Peter et. al., I am having a problem. I have set up a design layer which is a model of the house, with layer links to bring in the floor, walls, roof, etc., each from seperate design layers. I have four suns in the model layer, one pointing straight at each side of house and set to four different classes ("sun north," "sun east," etc.) I set the ambient in the model layer to 50% and the brightness of the sun to 50% and render with "final quality renderworks." Here's what I get: www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering2designlayer.jpg Now, when I create a viewport of the same layert: www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering2viewport.jpg Yes, the class for the "sun" is on in the viewport! Beyond this, I have some questions: 1) What do you use for shingle and roof textures? I used the "roof tiles" option from VW and struggled for a few hours before discovering that I had to adjust the width and length up quite a bit to seen anything. The values listed there seem kind of random - do you have sizes you like for 1/4 = 1'-0" 2) Where do you place your suns?

I don't think that's it. Here's the design layer, "final quality renderworks," layer ambient 50%, sun at 50% brightness, casting shadows: www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering2designlayer.jpg Here's the same layer through a viewport: www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering2viewport.jpg Anyone out there work for Vectorworks? Care to keep a customer? Thanks, Graham

Okay, I tried using other options in Renderworks besides "Artistic" (which gave me a grey background) and in all other modes, the rendering is just a few lines, you basically see nothing. Here is my "best" ouput so far, with two viewports layered, "Hidden Line" above "Artistic Renderworks": http://www.remodelguidance.com/clients/111calumet/testrendering.JPG Why is this so elusive and difficult to achieve? Thanks, though, for all your generous assistance. Graham

Peter, That's a beautiful drawing! Care to outline your techniques for posterity? Thanks, Graham

Okay, I made new textures for walls and roof using "Roof Tiles" (which had to be scaled up quite a bit) set both colors to white, and put a sun facing straight at each wall @ 0 degrees of elevation with brightness @ 100% and set ambient brightness on each layer concerned at 100%. I then used Artistic Renderworks Rendering on Cartoon setting (with another viewport set to Hidden Line Rendering pasted directly on top of it to fill in the lines omitted by Artistic Renderworks). Things look reasonably good, but the body of the elevations are still grey! What next? I do appreciate all the help and input on this, but can VW add making this very common requirement EASIER to the wish list???!!! Thanks, Graham

Sorry, where exactly do I find "Roof Tiles?" In the resoruce browser under exterior finishes, I find many colors of roof tile, but not one that looks b&w. Thanks, Graham

I am using VW 11.5, so I guess I have to suffer for the time being. Increasing my suffering is the fact that selecting "Save Viewport Cache" in "Document Preferences" does not seem to stop the viewport from reverting to wireframe when I edit the annotations - any advice?

I created a texture for lap siding which is just horizontal black lines on a white background. When I show and elevation with Artistic Renderworks, the background is grey, not white. Do I know need a "sun" for each elevation? How is that done best?

I have read through these postings, and some questions for me remain. There seem to be two options for adding "texture" to a building elevation: 1) In hidden line mode, using hatched polygons in each elevation's viewport. Questions: How does one achieve this besides tracing each surface and clipping holes in the resultant polygon to show the windows, trim, etc.? This is very tedious and difficult, especially since in viewport "update annotations" mode, the drawing is displayed in wireframe, so you have to sort through and ignore all the walls and objects behind the one you're tracing. Is there a way to get hidden line rendering of the building "in front" of the hatched polygon? 2) Using renderworks, with textures applied to the walls and/or roof. Questions: How do you export as a greyscale pdf? Does anyone have a source for good shingle and siding textures that will render like line drawings rather than photos? In particular, I am trying to show 1x8 "teardrop" 3 drop siding on two projects and shingles on another, and asphalt shingles on the roofs. Thanks, Graham

Oops, found it, in file/preferences/vectorworks preferences/display: worked like a charm! Thanks!!!

Where is the the "adjust flipped text" preference found?

Perhaps a stupid question, but how does one get stair data to be properly oriented when a stair must be rotated 180 degrees? i.e., how do you get the text to not be upside down and/or backwards? I am using VW 11. Thanks, Graham

Thanks for the input. To answer, respectively: 1) Interesting idea, I will try that. 2 & 3) Requires the construction of a ground plane, which seems quite difficult in the case of sloping site to get accurate, but I may explore "at my leisure." ;-) I welcome further direction/comments on this process. Graham

I am hoping for a simpler method to create a 3D foundation on a sloped lot. What I have been doing is using walls which I contour on the bottoms to the grade lines. All well and good, but the "ground" is transparent, so to avoid seeing the foundation from other walls in an elevation, I have found I need to create a solid-filled, no stroked 3D poly for each elevation, to mask any foundation which might appear from another side of the building. Then, I have to add the grade lines in as annotations to each elevation's viewport. Sound convoluted? I agree!!! I am using VW 11.5

I may be able to help you out - been doing a lot with 3D. I'm in Marin. Graham graham@remodelguidance.com

Hello, I have been humming along with a drawing (thanks in part to helpful posts here) but have now reached a point where I can't seem to add anything new to my Viewport Annotations. That is, when I enter the annotation editing mode, I can type text or draw a line, etc., but it immediately disappears when I finish. I CAN copy an existing element and paste/edit it. Any thoughts?

I like the use of classes to turn off the windows and doors in floorplan, allowing it to be used for structural drawings. I found out that doing the beam symbols in Viewport Annotation is not a great idea - you often need them in several viewports, so better in the design layer in another class as Peter suggested IMHO. My engineer pal suggested that he likes to se beam and header extend over the trimmers, so I've been using three lines (2 wall caps and a center line). I group them and stretch to fit. Thanks!

Peter, thanks for all your helpful insight. Do you have a good technique for header and beam lines? I had to draw three lines for each one, one for the actual beam/header and two as "wall caps." It wouldbe great to have a plugin object for such things, but I haven't looked in to creating such a thing. BTW, I started with MiniCAD and am still trying to train myself to use viewports instead of the reflex to layer links. Cheers, Graham

Thanks for the responses. The idea of using classes seems like the way to go (at least at present), save the error in header lengths, but structural views are not often dimensioned anyway in my experience. Peter, for the sake of argument, why do you put your beams & headers into your model as class objects? Wouldn't it be easier to just add them to the structural viewport as annotations,or am I missing another application. I think it would be great if window and door objects had a "header" mode, though you'd have to have a programmatic means of switching to that.

I am getting more involved with the Engineering aspects of my designs and was wondering if anyone had a good (read simple/fast) techinique for generating structural wall layouts from architectural designs. Typically, I need to take the walls from the architectural model in plan view and replace all windows and door symbols with lines across the openings to spec headers and beams. Ideally, I would like to have these dynamically linked to the architectural drawings. Thanks, Graham

Setting the wall stroke by class or manually makes no difference, when the layers are collected on a new layer with "Creat Layer Link," all the walls lose thier stroke and fill and default to white fill and solid stroke - there is no way to alter this on that layer. What am I missing here? It seems like a bug.

Hello, I cannot seem to get the stroke or fill of walls to transfer to a new layer when the walls are brought in with "Creat Layer Link." It matters not whether I assign the styles by class or directly. This worked in MiniCAD, what is happening? What is the workaround?