Benson Shaw

Arrrrg! Why do these modules persist???!!! (Really? No greenwall in Architect?) Could the company soar by offering ONLY designer with its various workspaces as customizable presets? (ok, Edu and a low priced Fundamentals are also needed). Could the price point adjust to mutual profitability and affordability by abandoning the engineering efforts to kill or limit cross over features among the modules? Market Vectorworks as the most comprehensive CAD package out there. Acknowledge and encourage the trending integration among design disciplines. (right, so when I'm in charge, the world will bend to my will) (snort!) -B

That should be in the VWX Preferences>Interactive Appearances, but I can't find any control for the marquee box. @Anyone know path to change the marquee color? Mine is a light gray border with a light gray transparent fill. You could try changing the Interactive Appearance Setting for General-Background-Top/Plan so that white objects have a difference. I tried wioth a light blue, but it doesn't help very much. Good luck! -B

Glad you found it. I said "Layer" pull down. I meant the Active Plane pull down. -B

Do what Pat sez. It gives points only on the contours, as you requested. Probably lots of them. If the selected spacing misses some sharper contourq curves, add a few extra loci by hand. A similar approach is to create, in a new class or layer, an array, over entire site, of 3d Loci on layer plane, via the Edit>duplicate array command. Choose xy spacing values to optimize the count. Send to surface. Call the xyz values into a worksheet and export csv. None may land exactly on the contours, but will be evenly distributed over the site. If that’s any advantage. -B

Looks like you inadvertently set a working plane. Click the drawing into Top/Plan via the menu bar Layer pulldown. if that is not working make a screenshot showing palettes and all the drawing area borders HTH -B

I think you can zip it and upload, or hack - change the extension (eg to dwg or other) and upload. Put a note for folks downloading to change it back to kmz after download. -B

@ben@gibson.co.nz I get same cylindrical loft in your test.vwx file. I wonder if problem is the file itself rather than those curves? Anyway I tested several ways: Deleted all other objects. Moved curves to origin, etc - No joy with Loft no Rail. New NURBS curves of similar shape, same location, or if moved close to drawing origin produce the same result in that file. I did make a proper loft in that file by converting the NURBS to 3d Polys, then convert those to NURBS. Best result, though . . . Copy/Paste in Place the two NURBS curves and into a new blank vwx file. They loft as expected. Loft mystery! -B

Probably not related, but I think this is true for current and previous versions . . . Old thread seems to allude to this, as well in orthogonal view, the zoom view maxes out at the interface of an object. The zoom virtual camera cannot penetrate from outside of a room, through a wall, thence into the interior of the room. Zoom does not penetrate any surfaces. in perspective views, zooming can continue through walls and other objects to reveal drawing content on opposite side. That peeling effect may represent the zoom virtual camera encountering/penetrating the surface. Maybe the cursor box is sort of a bubble with leading surface somewhat ahead of the zoom “camera plane”??? The cursor bubble does not rescale with the layer scale, or rescales disproportionately. Surface conditions (line work, fill etc) existing in the small gap between front of bubble and camera plane are visible until the zoom plane fully contacts??? or? -B

Just to address the OP "how to" question for this particular example of fine blacksmithy: Pickets and decor panel are symbols. I applied the texture to both faces of an extrude, and nested (stacked?) an untextured extrude. This replaced the edge surfaces which disappear from the image mask texture. Also provides Hidden Line lines . . . Also tried it with texture on a flat 3d Poly outline of the decor panel. For the hidden line, I stacked an untextured NURBS surface with the holes and outline. Here's the Hidden Line: All that is still rather time consuming. Especially aligning the textures with Attribute Mapper. It looks a bit clunky, too, especially the thick extrudes. Maybe a combo would look better - some modeling, eg the deformed rods at sides and sweeps for the finials. Or fillet the edges where round stuff should be? Dunno. -B

Desired graphic product can drive this, but the design typically needs description for client and for construction in either graphic form or a fab sample, or both. Someone will have to do this work. Many crafters are highly qualified and motivated to drive such design work. Others, might not be willing to provide the effort. Time for some search may be required, or depend on established working relationships. In terms of rendering a concept/design, a masked texture is quick. Can be from a readymade image. but . . . A 3d or 2d drawing of even one section can be used to make the texture and help determine weights, fastener positions, physical properties, material lists and more ( textures can’t do that) . Depending on model detail, design options can be explored - cross section of various elements, twist count of the balusters, positions of and number of shoulders on the arrow points, diameter of scrolls, etc. Portions of the drawing can be adapted to describe conditions at stairs, inclines and curves. I’m suggesting there can be advantages to creating a model. Detail level may vary. -B

@Kevin KNice, low overhead (LOL) tile roof! I think, usually, no need to choose the Extract tool pref for Create Planar Objects. If the Planar option is checked, the Extract process creates a 2d polygon oriented on the roof plane. If Planar pref is not checked, the Extract creates a NURBS surface oriented on the roof plane. The subsequent Array Surface command returns same result either way. At least for this roof. Maybe there is some situation where the 2d poly is the better choice. Anyway, I like this for the tiles. Thanks! -B

Should be OK, but kinda inconvenient if layer scale set so that objects fit in the page boundary. Many hassles with this dwg. -B

Text strings, text blocks, text objects are often used to mean same thing, although text string is more often used to describe text in worksheet database or spreadsheet cells. So, here, a text object is intended meaning. Here is a workflow: Open the file dwg in a new vwx file. Verify that units are as expected via File Menu > Document Settings. Top Plan view. All layers and classes set to visible, Layer Options and Class Options set to Show, Snap, Modify Others. 1. Select All, Fit to Objects - OIP indicates 594 objects. There is a mass of objects near the drawing origin marker. 2. Drag a selection marquee around those objects near the origin - OIP indicates 585 objects 3. Edit Menu > Invert Selection. This deselects your marquee selected objects and selects everything else. OIP indicates 9 text blocks. 4. If you are curious, Fit to Objects to see 9 text objects. All are empty, and set to 0.0 point size. 5. Delete these 9 text blocks. This should have removed all the trouble makers, but it didn't. Do the process again . . . 6. Select All and Fit to Objects again. OIP indicates 585 objects. Drawing displays a tiny drawing border with other geometry. 7. Marquee select the area around the little drawing border. OIP indicates 576 objects. 8. Edit > Invert Selection again. OIP indicates 9 text blocks (again???). Unclear why these did not select in the first go. 9. Delete the 9 text blocks. 10. Fit to objects. This reveals the objects in and near the drawing border. Note that these remaining objects are 400000mm from the drawing origin. Vectorworks does better near the origin. If no need to exchange files with others who expect this geometry to be same place each round trip, I suggest move all this as a group so that the drawing border is centered on your drawing origin. Stakes make things disappear because the design layer imported as 1:50000. Stakes default to 12pt which is massive compared to the site geometry. I set layer scale to 1:100. Use the Advanced Import settings to preset layer scale. Everything measures mm where it should be m (fence segment is only 5mm long?). You may therefore want to group the site geometry and scale it up by factor of 100. (1000?) Before scaling, convert all the symbols to Group - the elevation markers (crosses), tree centers, tree canopy markers, etc. These are symbols which do not scale or relocate relative to other geometry. Select all the geometry, then Modify>Convert>Convert to Group. Do this several times in case of nested symbols. (Or do this with via Advanced Import settings) Your stakes will come in at better scale. Prior to rescale, separate out the drawing border elements and place them on a sheet layer. They are proper scale, I think. Site geometry stays on the design layer and gets rescaled. Make a sheet layer viewport of the design layer items. Select viewport scale so that viewport fits in the drawing border. OK, Post back as needed. -B

Maybe the symbol is problem, rather than the OS? Did the class of the wall hole component of the cabinet symbol change name or shut off? Or did the wall hole geometry somehow change so that it is not fully penetrating the wall? If possible, post a file containing the cabinet symbol and a wall that refuses the insertion. We’ll test it. -B

One way is to model the individual components as extrudes, Extrude Along Path, sweeps, etc. If multiples are needed of a component, create symbol of it and place instances. Then make assemblies or sub assemblies of the components. Place assemblies in the model and duplicate, mirror as needed to surround the ceiling. Post back if help needed for modeling the components. -B