IanH

Thanks all

I am having problems fitting triangular panes of glass into the bell end of this conservatory - see attached. If I draw in plan view, when I then rotate the panes by 30 degrees to match the pitch of the roof, the won't fit into the holes left for the panes of glass. As the panes of glass are extrudes, it wont let me resize them in situ. Any suggestions please? Thanks Ian

A timely post. I am struggling to make this work. I have a courtyard and I am only interested in what is in the courtyard. See attached picture. I want to show only the area within the courtyard. I have created an area representing the buildings and cut this. I select the site model and go into "edit group" - I see no reference to "enter group" and I assume this is the same. I then paste in place the cut boundary. This appears as a solid that occludes the stake objects. I then exit group. When I hit update on the site model, it remains the same. Any ideas? Could it be because I have a pad (same place as building) and the man holes are pads? I am looking at the proposed site model. I have looked at Jonathans video and I think I am doing it right, but obviously not. Also, how come the flow arrows are not going all the way to the top of the plan. There is more than 1000mm gap here so I would expect to see arrows here. Its also my first dtm used in anger and I was wondering about the best way to mark the manhole covers. They are obviously a flat object at a known height and part of the existing site. But I find that I need to set them as a pad to make them have an effect on the site model. Thanks

I just want to check that I can perform a dual version install and, more importantly, uninstall of one or the other keeping the other installation intact. I have dongle versions of student 11.5 Landmark + Renderworks and full retail 2008 Designer + renderworks. I already have the 11.5 installed on my Windows XP laptop and want to see if 2008 will perform OK so I don't need to worry about saving files in the correct format before I use my laptop. If it does, I will uninstall 11.5, if it does not, I will keep 11.5 and uninstall 2008. Obviously I will need to use both dongles. Are the installations kept completely separate or when uninstalling one of the installations, will it damage the other? Finally, is there a standalone utility that can convert VW2008 versions back to earlier (ie 11.5). If I do end up running dual installations, I would like the the ability to convert 2008 files to 11.5 without having to do a save as on my main machine (Vista). Laptop is for use at college so is covered by student license and I believe that my 2008 license covers me for use on two machines if only one is used at a time - which is forced by the dongle anyhow.

The problem with not being able to print when using GDI that was introduced with SP2 has been resolved with SP2 build 82613 that is on the web site. I think the original SP2 release had some missing files. But it sounds like this is not what you are talking about?

I have had confirmation from NNA that the unable to print problem was a problem with the original SP2 Build (82099) and fixed in the new SP2 package, build 82613. [edit]SP2 installed and printing with transparency seems Ok[/edit]

BUMP I'm particularly looking to see if a solution to the 'non printing issues' when using GDI+ has been implemented yet. Is this the same as the first issue in the readme above and how wide spread is it?

Yes. It was me. In the end, due to a moment of madness when I bought a Vista PC (actually its not bad at all) that forced my hand to upgrade, I went for the full license as I will cease to be a student hopefully in the summer.

What is the status of the issues that were initially reported with SP2 - in particular the printer issues ? I went to load SP2 yesterday and the readme stated the following issues: One of the reasons for me to upgrade to 2008 was the transparency so the workaround for turning off GDI+ is not an option as I am actively using transparency. However, Im particularly after the plant library updates, so SP2 is of interest to me. I just want to be able to make an informed decision on whether to update to SP2 in particular whether I will loose to ability to print and with transparency after updating to SP2.

Hi Tamsin What renderer are you using? It may be worth trying another renderer. I will have a try later. However, i'm not entirely sure that pads are meant to be visible. I have always thought of them as an invisible 'hand' that squashes the terrain flat. A massed model should render though. I just did a quick test and it rendered in OpenGL and renderworks plus others.

Apart from the legal implications of doing this, its huge. I doubt there would be few, if any, email providers that can handle a file of this size - its 344MB / 256MB for Mac / Windows respectively. Are you sure you are downloading the correct version?

If you are using a PC, change the 130 printer port so that it prints directly to the device rather than spools. I had as you had, and, whilst I am not 100% that this is the cure, printing direct to the printer seemed to fix my incomplete print problems. On Vista (which you won't be using since you are using VW11.5, the option to print direct to the printer) is under the advanced tab of the 130 print properties. It may be the same with whatever OS you are using.

Sorry. Due to the break, I have not been following the SP2 printing issues. Has this now been resolved with this build, or are we still awaiting a further update to sort the non printing on Windows systems that was introduced with SP2 ?

So is this a confirmed issue then ? Is it confined to this printer or will other (HP) printers have this issue - I have an HP Designjet 130nr printing via network connection - Using XP drivers as no dedicated Vista drivers. Running Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

I would like to have the option to set class attributes by a class hierarchy. So a class can have the attribute as per its parent. This would allow attributes of a whole set of classes to be changed simply by changing the attributes of its parent. This would also apply to the visibility of the class. So selecting a parent, or subclass, would allow all objects of the child class to be made invisible. Apologies if this is already implemented - couldn't find it in 11.0 and have not looked since. If anyone had a workaround suggestion, it would also be appreciated.

I configured my DJ130 to print direct to printer (Windows) rather than use spool file - seems more reliable.

Hi Franklin Thanks for the help but I have already downloaded one of your symbols and dissected it for ideas - didn't find what I was looking for though. As a student and startup garden designer, I'm looking at putting my own style on things and was just looking on how to do things with my own style of graphics. Thanks for the offer anyhow. PS. I found that a combination of plant line and vegetation line (with clouds) gave me the look that I was looking for in that assignment.

Does this work for items containing colour bitmaps? I used a coloured image fill and the only way that I could find to print the sheet B&W was to specify it in the printer driver.

I would like to apply object transparency to the fill only. From what I can see, transparency is applied to the whole object. So my wish is for a different % of transparency to be applied to the line and the fill - or at least, be able to turn off transparency for line style whilst applying transparency for occluded objects under the fill. Unless I have missed something, at present, you need to have two duplicate objects, one with transparent fill, no line and the other with no fill, no transparency and stacked accordingly. The other item on wish list is, instead of/in addition to true transparency, have occluded objects having a different line weight and style.

When I open an image (import etc) there is a long delay before anything happens. This is particularly noticeable in the open dialogue box when preview is ticked (which is a pain to untick because of the delay when the dialogue box redraws / clears the preview pain. The images are not small, but not large either - say 100-300k - certainly Photoshop would load them instantly whilst VW is taking tens of seconds. I was experimenting with PNG files so not sure if it only affects these. An example png is here. I would hazard a guess that the time delay is not noticeably dependant on file size - ie a 300k files does not load 3 times slower than a 100k one. If need be I can do some timings but I was wondering if this was a known issue. Tried search to no avail. My VW & PC details are below and everything (drivers, service packs etc) are kept up to date although not sure about video drivers but even so they will not be more than a couple of months old.

To add to my request. As a garden designer and student who has spent the last 4 years 'perfecting' ones own style of drawing, it would be nice to still retain this style within VW. VW is heavily promoted to Garden Designers in the UK via Computers Unlimited and I have spoken to a number of garden designers at these presentations and elsewhere. There is still a great deal of apprehension of CAD and one of the main reason is the loss of ones individuality of style when using CAD - another is the loss of the concept of space when using CAD too much within the initial design stages. The latter is easily corrected by reverting to good old soft pencil, but the ability to tailor the look of CAD, even with the improvements in VW 2008, to make it less computer like, still does not go far enough that a design retains the individual designers own style without a huge amount of additional work. For many clients, the quality and individual style of drawing can be the deciding factor when choose one designer over another even at additional cost. CAD can greatly enhance quality (as in correctness and accuracy), but the loss of individualism is lost in the process. Until CAD is taught from the start of a garden design course and its take up is nearly 100%, there will always be a large emphasis on hand drawn and rendered plans, and even then, I believe that a designer with a distinct and likeable personal style will feature high in a clients preference. It would be so nice to be able to easily combine individual hand drawn and rendered elements with CAD without having to work within the constrains of layering and additional packages such as photoshop. For this reason, I would like to see VW support the import of images with alpha transparency without having to resort to complex work arounds. If this became possible, I can see the take up of VW within the garden design community to be greatly increased. In the mean time, as a student, I will try and adapt my style to the tools available to me. But unfortunately, for commercial work, this would not be cost effective.

... all in the Design Series manual chapters 9 to 13.

When using the fade from edge and void centre options of the stipple tool, the fade can look fake - you see the stipple fading to a mirror of the outline and also density stepping, again, in geometric shape. It can be very difficult getting a good effect of density and fade. Control of density could have a finer level of control. I would like to see more control over the fade out of the stipple to the centre of the object. I would also like an enhancement to the plant line tool to allow the plant line to be executed 'n' times. Whilst I realise that it can be manually run 2 or 3 times, this does not work when having a solid fill as the fill of repeated runs will obscure earlier runs. It is however necessary to have the plant line obscure the planting edge. I can only see that this can be achieved by running the items 'n' times and taking a copy of the 'n' plant lines. Then the originals must then be added into a surface and made solid but with no pen colour. Then paste back in place the copied plant lines and select no fill, but correct attributes for pen. Finally, I would like to see the vegetation cloud style being available to work in a similar way to plant line. The user would be able to select how much cloud overlapped the planting edge. At the moment, the cloud appears (mostly) outside the planting edge and you also need to select multiple objects.

I just realised the flaw to my plan - how do I mask the image? Otherwise, ittespective of the 'active portion' of the image, its going to show as a rectangular shape. The image is hand rendered, so cannot be generated by computer - the png was a quick experiment of alpha transparency. Garden designers spend many years perfecting their own style of hand drawn symbols and rendering and I can see why they are unwilling to move to CAD when all this personalisation will be lost. 2008 seems to have gone some way to producing a hand drawn style, but its not personal. If NNA made mixing CAD and hand drawn images easier, im sure alot of garden designers negatives to this product would go. It would be a feature that would sell many many more products. But it must be possible, as I have seen some commercial products that would on paper appear to do the same. Image props would seem to be the closest, but they seem to be 3d only. Garden designers submit their work to clients mostly in 2d plan view. Im just trying to find out how to achieve the hand rendered look, without being constrained by layer ordering and clipping to make things work 70% of the time rather than 100%.

I would like to be able to import a png (or any other supported graphic file) that contains an alpha mask and display it with variable transparency on a 2d plan.