jmcewen
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Posts posted by jmcewen
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6 hours ago, MavenC said:
I often have 8 VW tabs open, working on 2D only. Loads of chrome tabs open and photoshop. Works fine other than if I’m working on 280-400MB file photo realistic rendered sections where it gets quite laggy on zoom and pan. Activity monitor shows the memory is briefly amber zone under pressure doing that and VW can go unresponsive but never crashed. Whilst it seems unified memory should help with this, the system requirements seems to suggest you need even more memory than before with the silicon chips?
Tabs upon tabs and apps upon apps! You sound like me. It is amazing how many chrome tabs we can deem necessary--or at least risky to abandon.
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Why do some areas' landing pages look different from the others? Wishlist, Known Issues, Feedback, Troubleshooting, and possibly some others show "Votes" and "answers" as opposed to the time and source for the most recent response. Is there a reason for this? I like the ability to see how recent a response has been posted, but i suspect someone needs the functionality of the votes being displayed.
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21 hours ago, Elite Exhibits said:
On a similar note to @VIRTUALENVIRONS I have had random issues similar to his attached screen shots above
Typically a blue grey color - with Open GL / Shaded & Image Props - see attached
Assumed that the RevderWorks Background Was the culprit
Image Prop Background.pdf 733 kB · 2 downloads
Peter
if you have the same problem but in a different color, I wonder if it has to do with a desktop appearance theme? Discussion of the quick preferences menu made me realize the quick preference menu highlight color is driven by the global Windows Appearance Theme Color ( https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/110894-2024-icons/#comment-496453 ) Maybe this is similar.
I don't know what is causing what you are seeing, but perhaps this bit of info might help someone who knows more about what is under the hood diagnose what process is responsible for this.
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21 hours ago, Cristiano Alves said:
Viewports / Render
Every time I attempt renders, I encounter an issue with their quality, especially when dealing with 3D models of spaces, particularly pavilions.
The colors always appear dark and washed out.
Renderworks Style-Realistic Interior Fast
From the videos I've watched on VW University, the objective seems to be adding lighting.
I've already added several light sources, using "Visualization -> Light -> Directional Light Mode," and increased luminous emissions, but it makes little difference; everything remains dark.
The best scenario I achieve is in "Shaded Mode," but even then, the screens are all distorted.
Shaded Mode
Renderworks Style-Realistic Interior Fast
Can you please help me?
Counterintuitively, if you have no lighting it will often look reasonable. I am sure I will not say this right, but once you add any of your own lighting it is almost like the default global light is shut off so it will not overpower your light unless you add something back in manually. Might this be part of what you are experiencing?
Also it appears that you are making video screens maybe? Have you tried applying a texture to them that includes the glow shader?
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3 hours ago, E|FA said:
Another RAM stealer is open browser tabs and windows.
This is what trips me up. I am regularly searching McMaster fro DWGs and STPs of hardware, Amazon for elements to incorporate into designs, all while digging for a texture to apply, then mining this forum for help and keeping Youtube open for a tutorial on a process i don't yet understand. Chrome definitely chews RAM. but the moment i close any tab is exactly the moment i need it again.
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On 2/7/2024 at 1:31 PM, Paolo said:
I have just released a plugin to create catenary curves.
From Wikipedia:
Catenary is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends in a uniform gravitational field.
It is essentially a "line object" plugin: click and drag to get the initial couple of end points on the XY plane.
Customizable parameters:
- Independent Z for both ends.
- Direction [downward (chain) or upward(arch)].
- By length or by sag methods: you can establish the length of the chain or the chain lowest (or highest) point.
- Buttons to extract a 3D polygon or a 2D polygon out of the PIO.
More info on my site page: Catenary Curve for Vectorworks®
I could have used this so many times in the past. Will be downloading. Thank you!
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7 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:
HI Kevin,
I am experiencing memory handling problems also with my new Laptop M# chip. I only have the base config. 18 GB RAM. I don't experience your problem, mine are all in Rendering.
For example. I know not to try to adjust a texture map scale with the slider. Instant freeze.
Another example. I know when memory is confused when the rendering window stops displaying the GI feedback and just spits the picture out a minute later. No crash though, but do restart.
Another example. in Rendering when I go to save as occasionally, the dialogue box is blank. I can save and quit.
I don't know whether it is Sonoma, VW's or a combination of both.
I am sure my experience is different because I am on a PC, but I know I can fully use 18GB of RAM with both hands and one foot tied behind my back. A lot of this is because I usually have a few different apps with heavy RAM usage open, but Vectorworks can take a pretty big bite of RAM all on its own.
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3 hours ago, Piotr Karczewski said:
To continue this subject I'm wondering if there is a way to fill in the mesh shape?
Or transform mesh to generic solid (Which will be working every time in every situation)?
- I do have a lantern form .fbx file which I wanto to simplify and convert to few generic solids.
But the only thing that I could done was transform mesh to 3d polygons which is not useful at this time.
The classic workaround here is to select a single face, use the push pull tool to move it 1" (or any fixed distance that is easy to remember and type quickly), then use the push pull tool to move it back to where it was originally-- again, only if the mesh is watertight to begin with. I do not know how this changes meshes to solids, but for some reason it does most of the time. on a really intense mesh it migh tstilll crash for you though.
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Late to the party, but is this something that could be solved using the tapped hole tool from the Detailing toolset? It is a tool I never use because accurate thread geometry is rarely important to me in my modeling, but it seems that Vectorworks may be more amenable to geometry that was created in Vectorworks.
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A lot of good suggestions. I hadn't considered asymmetrical scaling of a symbol. This seems closest to my needs. Thank you.
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Pulled the trigger and upgraded to 96 gb at 6400. It was the right choice. My RAM usage graph is looking much safer now.
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Is there a Unistrut tool or anything similar? I assumed there would be one in the detailing section with the assorted tubings, but I did not find one. Is it hidden elsewhere, or does it just not exist?
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21 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:
That was the option I wanted.....thanks.
Would be fairly easy to put it into a macro on a stream deck or something similar. It wouldn't be worth getting a stream deck for one command, but if you are looking for shortcuts for a lot of things like that, it could be worthwhile. Let me know if you are interested and I can help you out.
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51 minutes ago, Mark Aceto said:
Check the yin & yang circle that's black & white in the screenshot (on mouse hover) but will be blue & white if it's selected:
It is actually the global accent color of Windows set outside of Vectorworks at Personaization>Colours>Accent Colour. Thank you, because trying to figure out what you were talking about with the blue made me realize that i could change this from the super electric red that buzzed my eyes every time I looked at it!
Also I just realized that my Windows preferences menus use British spellings? Was it always like that? Is it just me?
Edit: typos
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10 hours ago, Ross Harris said:
Wow! I've not seen 24gb sticks before... Just checked my usual retailer and there they are! They certainly weren't there a month ago when I specified a rig - most sets are on back order so I presume it's a recent development/availability here. There's more 96gb sets coming through than 48gb though, and not to stupidly priced.. which is great for ITX builds with only two slots, which I'm keen to do
Which makes your issue puzzling cos they should be interleaving... 🤔
I just built a 14900k/4090/64gb rig late last year to run VW+Interiorcad and Enscape with with two 42“ monitors for a colleague... It doesn't break a sweat; Interiorcad can can be heavily taxing with a buildings worth of fully detailed cabinetry on top of piping out to Enscape for real time rendering.
Is there anything loading at startup that's sucking the life out of the machine?
The 96 makes more sense than 48. Most use cases for 48 could scrape by with 32 or can afford the little bit extra needed to reach 64. There is a much wider gap between 64 and 128 that I think more people will find worthwhile.
I haven't had huge slowdowns or lockups, but I do broadly keep an eye on resource usage. I have hit 75% capacity quite a few times, and haven't necessarily been in my biggest baddest drawings.
Mostly, I am trying to avoid plunging over the cliff several steps before my toes are at the edge. I fully recognize the First-World nature of my problem. A few years ago when I was at a regular job at a regular office, I would not have even seen this as a potential issue. But now that I am out on my own I want to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of the tool that represents 65% of my income while also making it as reliable as possible.
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15 hours ago, Ross Harris said:
It's probably not the ram clock that's the issue... 48gb is an odd number, meaning that the two sticks are not a matched pair and can't read and write in interleaved mode. Which as far as I can recall means it writes to both sticks simultaneously - when it can't there is a reduction in speed.
I'd look at getting a matched pair of ram sticks with the rated clock speed for your CPU. Matched pairs go up in multiples - 16gb, 32gb, 64gb etc.
If you've not overclocked, DDR5 5600 or higher(assuming the board is a DDR5 board) should do the business.
We've got two matched pairs of 32gb DDR5 5600 for 64gb in our 13900k rigs and they are flying with multiple acrobat docs, photo viewer, chrome tabs and occasionally YouTube running.
It is 2 sticks of 24... It sounded funny to me too, but sticks come in 24 and 48 now. All the major players are making it now-- Crucial, Corsair, GSkill, though it is still less common. And it isn't only budget minded memory. There is some really high end stuff out there. Here is what I currently have: https://www.gskill.com/product/165/374/1680070678/F5-8000J4048F24GX2-TZ5RK
And I am looking at kits of 64 and 96 (2x48). If I find the right person to sell my old RAM to, and if I buy 5600, then it might not cost me much at all.
But I will take the speed advice. That puts me squarely in a more budget-friendly territory.
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I am in agreement with both sides here. A large part of my job is nowing how things were originally intended to work so I can find the most appropriate off-label use for them.
Some times you need to start with a box in order to think outside the box.
But it is good not to be shackled to those original intents. Fortunately the community here finds 100 solutions to every problem (and sometimes 100 problems with every solution😉.). We can be sure to find many uses for our tools.
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4 minutes ago, Cliff Ribeiro said:
Hello,
I'm working on a project and when I choose to render in shaded all is fine, but when I choose any renderworks style, the image renders, then jumps to an ugly pixelated version at the end of rendering. My truss turns a light blue, and all objects have jagged edges. I have chosen custom options and have everything set to very high and still have issues. Any suggestions? Everything was working fine, until it wasn't....
Are you sure you waited for it to complete? What you describe sounds like it was still processing. It figures out where shadows are and where reflected light will be , then slowly resolves to completed quality starting from the center of the screen and spiraling out. It can take a while-- sometimes a really long time depending on geometry, textures and settings. Very high settings make it take even longer. generally i run a test on medium before running final on high settings, and make sure not to turn up settings you do not need. And if you move the view at all while in a renderworks style it will just start over.
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I kind of thought I was the only one that ever used grass shaders...
I had a project last year that I used the grass shaders to make fur textures on some Halloween-themed cars (cars dressed up as spiders and werewolves, etc.) Those renders took forever but looked great! Sidenote, grass only grows on the side that faces up when you apply the texture, so I had to chop up the hairy parts, turn them all so the grass would grow in the correct places, then turn each part into a symbol to lock in the "up" orientation, then re-turn and reassemble the parts. It was a great solution at the time using what I understood at the moment, but there must have been a better way.
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12 hours ago, Tom W. said:
Yes the question is asking 'Is a Design Layer what an object is?'
15 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:Think about it in relation to Classes.
The Layer is the _______ of the object
The Class is the _______ of the object.
These explanations make sense, and the content of the question is valuable and valid, but that is a horribly unclear way to test the understanding of the topic.
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How much does RAM clock matter in Vectorworks?
I got a new desktop at the end of the year (specs in signature.). It is all stock as I purchased it still. It is super fast compared to my old laptop (also in signature) while doing focused work, but I am running into some problems multitasking on it because of RAM capacity. When I have web browser open with several tabs, and Photoshop going to edit some images for a texture, and a YouTube tutorial showing me something I don't understand yet(all this is common for me) it chews through my RAM pretty quickly compared to my huge pile of relatively slow RAM on my old laptop.
My MOBO only has 2 RAM slots, so my options are limited. The MOBO is meant for overclocking and gaming enthusiasts who value speed but don't generally need huge RAM capacity. I cannot find RAM to match my current clock in a 64 or 96GB kit, but I can find it at 6600mt/s.
But is the 6600 mt/s necessary? Am I just as well off in VWX with even slower RAM. I got a great deal on the desktop, but it still cost a chunk of change. I will be happy I can save a few pennies on a slower clock without sacrificing much performance in my primary purpose.
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10 hours ago, Benson Shaw said:
Grouping objects for work, then ungrouping is another quick isolation.
I do this constantly on crowded geometry. If think I will need to exit the group then return a few times, I often add a shape to the group off to side and out of the way that I can use as a doorway to reliably re-enter the group rather than accidentally double clicking something else in the way. When I am finished with the isolation I delete the extra object.
I always thought I was doing some amateur workaround and that there was surely a slick process to get around my problem. I am glad to see the real pros do this, too.
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Anyone tried the Huion pen displays? It looks like it may be a decent value proposition if the Wacoms are out of reach, and most reviews I read are saying the gap in quality to the Cintiqs is shrinking. Sometimes it is hard to tell if reviews are just fanboys, though (for Huion or for Wacom.) Huion just released a 27" 4k model for about $1500 less than the 27" Cintiq 4k pen display.
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16 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:
My apologies, I have had contractors in my house all day. The information by the others is spot on. I thought I would run up the NURBS version (surprise surprise).
Is this what you are thinking?
If it works you can have it.
In my mind, the 2 branches each taper from a full scale truncated ellipse, maintaining the same profile. Forgive my sloppy screenshot markup-- I am posting from my phone.
1st branch is made by the red rails, the 2nd is made by the blue rails, and that thould form a neat miter line at the green line. Of course the rails would be more neatly traced from the elevation to follow the true profile, and the green miter line would terminate at the break line just below the split.
Bending Solids around curved (filleted) corner
in Solids Modeling
Posted
This is the way that will have the least chance to go wrong in my mind, while also maintaining a lot of edit ability. You are allowing VWX to do fewer calculations for the same result
This method absolutely works, and I love the deform tool. However it also has a tendency to fail when you need it most, or your clicks are imperfect. This is the method I would use if the geometry is more complicated than shown, or if the panel was not a simple rectangle in elevation
This way works as well. In my head it feels like more steps, though I realize it is probably about the same number of clicks. We all have stocked different tools in the top drawer of our toolbox!