grant_PD

If you look at the VW fundamentals manual under "plug in objects" you'll notice that the manual refers the reader back to "creating symbols" when discussing the "convert to plug in object" option for symbol creation. Follow that trail to "symbol creation" and there is no option for "convert to plug in object" listed. Only the old "convert to group".

I love very much Spotlight's light fixtures. However, I can't figure out how to control a light's intesity once I turn it on. Is there somethinig I'm missing?

I seem to have better luck halting a render on a Mac than I do on a PC. Usually on a Mac holding down the ESC key will stop a rendering in it's tracks. But on a PC I often can't get the render to stop. Is there something that can be done about this?

I've noticed that the autosave function will slow down the rendering of a project if the render function falls between autosave cycles. I'm wondering if renderings can't be set to override the autosave cycle.

Nurbs will add to rendering time. Models that do not make use of symbols will add to rendering time as well.

I'm using Norton antivirus and have it running all the time. EXCEPT when I'm ready to do performance heavy renders and batch rendering. I then shut it off completely as it will greatly affect rendering times. I let the windows firewall allow for checking of the VW program for serial numbers and such. But I'm not networked so I'm no help to you there. Also of note: if you've got autosave turned on it will also affect rendering times. Mine is set for 5 minutes. On a rendering taking more than five minutes, or if that autosave falls within a rendering, I notice a significant pause as the processor tries to figure out what to do.

I guess my question is: Which is more processor intensive radiosity or raytracing? I spent a lot of money getting dual processor machine to improve Renderworks' raytracing. Is radiosity comparable to the amount of processor power needed by raytracing?

So radiosity isn't supported in dual processing? Isn't that a processor intesive procedure?

As far as I know, unless it's reserved by the operating system you can change it up in the workspace editor

I think I understand the problem. You'll want to make each of those cross sections into nurbs and them place them at the correct height and rotation at their cross section. You'll then want to loft curves to get them all to make the correct shape.

Is it the page size? or the page break?

Dual processors are a huge improvement for rendering times. Doesn't really matter which platform ( I use both ). High end graphics cards are a must if you're going to be doing any OpenGL work because those processes are handled by the graphics cards. Ram these days is easy- get a gig. Going higher than that I hear will give you diminishing returns, because of your processors ability to address ram past 1 gig. I've yet to substantiate this... I had my computer custom built (xi computer, they're online) and they specialize in optimizing computers for CAD. It's a great machine (dual AMD processors, gig of ram, raid setup, high end graphics cards) and I feel that it performs as well as the G5 dual 1.8 I have at the office.

I think the key thing here is to continually let VW know that there are many of us out here who would really relish the ability to have network rendering capabilities.

how is it then that if someone gives me a file that has say, a truss in it, and if I don't have spotlight that object will be uneditable? All I want to do is do the same thing to my own custom objects...

yes this topic has come up before. PDF's a way more useful than a line drawing, but not nearly as useful as the file itself. I think what some of want to see is sort of like a workgroup reference: the ability to email a file to someone that they can look over and work with, but keeping some propriertary stuff unusable.

With Acrobat one can lock the file so that it is for web viewing only, and although you could print from screen grabs it at least is a discouragement. I think what sparky is really asking is if the actual file can be locked. If I sent a file to someone who had VW and told them to use the viewer, they could still open the file in VW and take stuff out. I know that if I send a file to someone with say, a truss in it, and they don't have spotlight, then the truss appears but isn't editable in the IOP. It would be great to be able to do AT LEAST that with my custom made objects. As of right now, I have two versions of my files: one that is in house and the other that is outgoing. In the outgoing file I remove all my textures, custom scripts, unused items, etc. so that I'm not sharing all of my hard work with the world.

Until 12 ships.... A simple workaround is to assign backlit objects a constant reflectivity, so that their luminosity isn't affected by other lights. Yes one can add point or spot sources behind transluscent objects, but it adds to rendering time and requires a bit of tweaking. In my experience the backlit materials never have the punch they would have in real life.

I've discovered that the work around for this is to begin resizing by dragging the cursor on the corner of the bounding box, then hit TAB and enter in the dimension you know you want to achieve up on the mode bar. This will constrain that dimension, and after that one can hold down the shift key and the resize window will snap to a proportional fit.

got it....

When entering new dimensions in an objects' info pallette, I'd like to be able to check a box to have the other dimensions resize proportionally to the new dimension. That way I can scale up an object and be accurate AND proportional.

I've used both MAC's and PC's to generate reliable pdf drawings. There have been some instances where the drawings showed up without text in title blocks and other places. In my experience the following has ALWAYS been true when this has happened: The page being printed has been one that has an extraordianary amount of excess complexity (ie, I've converted a perspective line drawing into lines or something to that effect), or my print output resolution has been too high (300 is fine for prints, why go higher?). My understanding is that Acrobat, when forced to take up large amounts of resources to emulate a print, will "dump" the page after it maxes out the resources allocated. Correcting one of the two above situations recitfies this problem.

I like how one can grab a bunch of lights and "gang" them together into a symbol. The ability to control their intesity as one object is a great timesaver. Can this idea be furthered, and allow for the ability to control the beam/spread, dist falloff,and angle falloff as well? Eventually I'd like to see a virtual "lightboard" pallette, so that after the model is made and lit one can sit back and adjust lighting levels like a lighting designer.

All of the gobo textures come in in quadrants, and when I insert them into a gobo projector I get all four quadrants. How can I isolate just one of the gobos supplied by each gobo file?

I'd like to see the display gray other objects or color shift somehow when editing nested objects such as: groups symbols annotations inside viewports. I love being able to show others while in groups, but when I'm showing others, I'd like to see the others visually change to remind me that I'm inside a nested object. Or, the reverse would be helpful. If I'm inside a nested object, perhaps then the nested objects could turn red to while the others remain the same

Here's another approach: Make a black and white grid (4 white squares in a square formation, with black border). Make a mirror texture and set the transparency to image, load the above image. Mapping this onto a sphere will create a mirrored surface that is broken up into little squares. the mapping will automatically taper the grid as you get closer to the poles.