Cris with no H

Like Michael, I've often added a disc of geometry w/ the Constant reflectivity and no shadow casting. I add it directly to the instrument model, though, rather than as an accessory.

Contact Steve Shelley. He may have one or can build one for you. It'll be 2011 compliant, too.

Lucas, I have to agree with the Fit Walls To Roof command workflow here. It is FAR easier to create some temporary 3D geometry, tell the walls to fit to it, then delete the geometry than to go to the shenanigans involved in the other tactics mentioned. I don't even want to go into the possible problems you set up for yourself using the Wall Recess like you did.

Does anybody have a decent library of standard base and wall cabinet symbols, a la Home Depot/Lowe's, that kind of thing?

And be sure that your 2D portion is NOT assigned to Layer Plane.

Hey, I'm having trouble activating 2010 on a fresh Snow Leopard install on a netbook. I'm connected to the internet and have no firewalls turned on. But the activation error message thinks I'm not connected. I recall having this problem once before, but don't remember how I fixed it. Anybody have any advice? Cris Dopher

Kevin, can you post the script here? People are still running into this problem on a regular basis. Cris Dopher

Is there, or has there ever been, a perspective or warp tool? I seem to recall a long time ago a tool similar to Sheer, but that took an object or group of objects and let you warp it much like you would in Photoshop's Transform. Thanks, Cris Dopher

I think the main problem is, you've been trying to make this conversion while INSIDE a symbol - the big one that includes everything. Conversion should be done from regular model space, not from within the editing space of a giant symbol. Select any symbol you want to ungroup and choose Edit>Convert>Convert to Group, or ctrl-K. You can then Ungroup as normal. It is misleading to talk of AutoCAD equivalents in VW, as it is missing many of the dichotomies of VW (2D/3D, classes/layers, etc). In this case, it misses the difference between groups and symbols. They have one construct for both: the block. Likewise, they only have eXplode to convert things downwards to simpler entities, whereas we Ungroup groups and Convert to Group higher-order objects like Symbols and PIOs.

Giving the instrument a Purpose is even more helpful, as that gets dumped into the light's name as well.

It's still a problem, though. I appreciate that an instrument takes on the Position's Z height at initial insertion, but I SHOULD have full manual control over the Z height...and I don't.

The Lighting Positions have gotten extremely "grabby" and have become a headache for many of us. The fact that we talk about ungrouping Lighting Positions so as to get our work done should ring alarm bells at NNA.

Could you post an image so we can see what you mean?

Did you accidentally delete your Label Legends folder? Do you still have Label Legend symbols inside that folder and not floating around elsewhere?

Michael, I too wish Light On would return to the OIP. I don't care if it's just a shortcut to the Viz Palette in the sofware's mind, but the Viz Palette is a PITA just to check one beam here and there. Cris Dopher

Try setting your smoothing angle to something like 15 or 20 degrees.

If you don't need to edit the dimension after you've placed it, you could just Convert to NURBS, then give the new group a Z value as needed. Cris Dopher

I seem to recall there is a missing DLL file in Win XP that 2009 needs. It should have been put in with the installer. Have you tried updating to SP2? Maybe that contains the fix. Also, perhaps one of the NNA moderators could provide a download link for that missing DLL. Cris Dopher

I'm not really sure what you're asking. Can you restate the question? Talk slowly, I'm pretty stupid this time of night.

The fix worked on MY INtel Core2Duo. But it did take a restart of VW. Cris Dopher

This post comes a little late, and I apologize for that, but I wanted to alert the community to Vectorworks classes being offered at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. The Department of Visual Presentation and Exhibit Design offers Vectorworks I and Vectorworks II this semester as night courses - 3 hours once a week for 16 weeks. Vectorworks I is largely about the 2D and Vectorworks II, which I'm teaching, gets much more into the 3D, as well as some of the finer points of the 2D tools and document and resource management. The courses cost NY state residents less than $300. If you're interested, please contact Professor Lawrence Langham, the department chair, at 212 217 5482 or email him at LAWRENCE_LANGHAM@fitnyc.edu. Thanks, Cris Dopher

I'd suggesting looking at the Fill of those objects in the attributes palette. Perhaps they are mistakenly being assigned No Fill, which will keep any texture from rendering and let you see the object ONLY in wireframe. On the other hand, perhaps you could prompt your school to join the 21st century and upgrade its VW license?

There is a drop-down menu in the Import Single DXF/DWG dialogue that lets you choose whether AutoCAD objects should be imported as 2d only, 3d only, or both. It is possible, though, that the AutoCAD draftsman did not put any 3D into the file.

This is a known bug. I believe the engineers are working on it. Cris Dopher

There ARE, however, screen re-draw issues with your curtain too, Andrew. Strictly speaking modeling, here, for a flat curved surface, I'd simply extrude an arc or polyline of the right shape to the right height from plan view. An arc will end up a half-cylinder shape when the extrude is filled, unfortunately, so using the Extract tool from the modeling toolset will let you take off just the curved shape. You can then delete the original extrude. Using polyline, though, avoids this problem.