BLINK Design

OK, I am experiencing a brain freeze! All isometric views in VW default to 45-45 degree views with respect to a vertical z axis. In the viewports, you can select CUSTOM VIEW and then the window (attached) comes up. A simple 15 degree rotation along the Z axis is desired and I cannot manage this. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

<<<'Walls-New' for new walls 'Walls-Existing' for walls to remain 'Walls-Demo' for walls to be demolished>>>> To this I add a Walls-'Existing to Remain' LAYER. Why? Because on occasion that new DOORS straddle or overlap the wall cuts and the new door cannot be inserted on the edge of a wall nor into two separate walls at once. Also, I like to show the dashed demo lines on new plans which means that that new walls that occupy the same location as existing walls create overlaps and graphic confusion. For the sake of the RCP and ELECTRICAL PLANS etc. that use the plan as a backdrop, an entirely new plan is the easiest way to go. BEST ALTERNATIVE: Convert all Walls and Doors to be demolished to 2D.

Further to this request, given the mechanical portion of the software, this ought to allow for multiple objects to be rotated about an orbit point like rotating gears for example or even more complex objects relative to a working plane. I have a client who specifically has requested this so that he can test his designed for tolerances. I have had to advise him that VW is primarily an architectural tool but then this begs the question, why is there a mechanical component given this argument? Architects do not generally use this so the feature ought to be available for people that do...

Where can I find this info? In the release notes that will come out on Monday as well the big secret regarding who VW teamed up with to include an entirely new solid modeling engine with 2009. In previous releases for example, a wall still considers itself solid when a window or door is inserted. This is not the case with the new engine which resolves jamb issues and (curved) wall connection issues. I learned this on the phone with a VW Tech on 10SEP08. I understand it is not available online as yet. Yes, you heard it here first! LOL

I spoke to James Wilson on the phone yesterday (VW Tech Support) and he confirmed that the worksheets will have editable cells including pop out list options for each cell. He said it's now almost like Excel....

Wouldn?t it be nice if every object including walls, trees, cars etc., could have a reference in the OIP that situated it's bottom most point relative to zero or a height of the user's preference? Real nice! Maybe walls with uneven bases could have two points indicating each corner. I have spent innumerable hours zooming and aligning walls that come out of alignment while fiddling with site models and many other tweaks that happen along the way. The technique requires setting the view of a building on a site nearly level in order to notice where they do not align and then giving the wall a unique color and then setting it to an elevation view. If a wall is 2" too low for example, the color is the only way to find it in elevation view unless it was obviously skewed and preselected. If the model is far enough along, starting again is not an option. Knowing the bottom height in relation to an absolute level would save hours of time. Thanks...

How nice would it be if the positioning of the SAVED VIEWS in preparation to create an animation along a path could be achieved in a manner similar to placing a light? Real Nice! Trying to use the walk through tool in wireframe, if intending to truly walk through at eye level, is next to impossible. Too many lines, too little control. If the SAVED view were linked to a 3D point with a controllable height, that would take just a few moments to set up and be easy to adjust. I realize that animations are not a feature that is frequently used, but many VW users said that about the schedules too because they were difficult to manage. Now that they work well, users use them. Clients love animations and they work very well on webpages. Thanks...

How nice would it be if the resource files were searchable and the labels could be made bold or colorful? Very nice! I realize the items are embedded within files, but a text file that directs someone to a location rather than a the file name alone would save some time especially as the resources and textures and lights and trees etc. expand. I also realize that a .pdf file exists that outlines the contents, but it's not linked to the location of the resources.

Vectorworks is like the Mac and Autocad is like the PC. VW maintains a reasonably intuitive interface and gets a little better and more usable with each release. Autocad is a staple with many missing features that cause it to remain more functional than usable if you understand that difference. My gripe with VW has been the 80-90% excellence and the 10% nightmares like the former one-way worksheets and attaching straight and curves walls as well the tendency for wall components to come undone! Just today I learned that the new modeling engine has solved the wall connection problems and v. 2008 created the 2-way spreadsheets. 2009 allows for menu pulldowns within the spreadsheets! The point is that Vectorworks (Nemetcheck) is remarkably responsive and have still managed to keep their prices down. Yes the upgrades are uncomfortably pricey, but the core is half the pice of it's competitors. I taught basic VW at a local university in Los Angeles for several years and had a 100% conversion rate until they graduated and could not find too many firms who used it. The accreditation board opted to drop the course to be more viable. Vectorworks is now offering the software free to students like Autocad did 30 years ago. In a few years, Vectorworks will be like Apple is today with it's usabilty, attractiveness and desirable results and the new firms will use it from scratch.. Autocad, well, will be rather like Vista I suspect, desperately reformulating and remarketing itself as it takes it last gasp before final submersion. I cannot speak for Revit, I have heard very good reviews from PC Users. 2009 comes out Monday...It's new modeling engine is a secret until that time!

This is somewhat ridiculous I feel. A viewport ought to be class neutral and annotations ought to be classable. VW has this backwards. The number of times that I have found myself trying to select a viewport to edit a crop is very frustrating and a waste of my valuable time. Turning on the classes in the Navigation Pane makes no difference so I am being asked to turn on the classes within the viewport in order to see or select the invisible crop? I spend more valuable time carefuly selecting classes to get the view I want and then have to turn them all back on to crop the viewport. that's just wrong. Am I interpreting his correctly? Come on VW this is a simple fix I feel that has been overlooked as it was not resolved in 2008.

Terrific...thanks! While we are at it, what about inline walls as the attached image shows as well?

I realize that VW cannot join components with curved walls which for me is a glaring and obvious problem that needs resolved. The graphical results of these situations is not acceptable. Shall we not use curved walls? Has this been resolve in VW 2008? Thanks for any input.

Precisely! I am unpracticed with NURBS primarily because I struggle to figure out how to place 3D points precisely in space in order to create the planes in order to loft them. It seems a catch 22 and I seem to have a relative brain so once I get out there in space I feel a bit disoriented. For the 'nearly correct' solution I extruded to the highest point and tilted a cube to subtract a solid at the proper incline but it did not meet the main curve evenly. See the image in the FINAL post. Thanks for the thoughts...

Establishing a centerline from an incomplete poly was the problem (this model is the prototype from which the product was to be constructed so the degree of error was extremely tight) as well the end condition flare out and up. Extrude along path for the end sections would have taken dozens of manual attempts to get it correct given that it has two uneven curves as sides and it's top was slightly inclined. Thanks for the example....

Gerrit, I for one am not a great fan of viewports with two exceptions. One those occasions when you have to convert a plan to a different scale, for example, to place it onto a smaller scaled site plan, this is when viewports are terrific. Also, for presentation purposes including rendered, 3D images. previous versions could not render more than one model per layer so you have to take images and reimport them. I am somewhat old school where I like to mouse down and grab what I see before me. The idea that the information is located elsewhere I find tedious and even redundant especially with detail sheets that I compose on a Saved View so why repeat the same information in a viewport? Some people have opted to draw at 1:1 and then scale the viewports but I find tis maddening to have a chaotic sheet of non scaled details that are accessible by 2X clicking a viewport When I create a detail, I choose a scale and I design the drawings and notes to fit into a particular sheet format. I am also very very line weight conscious and the weighted line weights to me is not enough control. I am not prepared to defer the manual and mechanical aspect of drafting for digital equivalents that do not offer the same results. Said another way, I wish to exploit the advantages of digital technology that expand upon old methods, but not replace old methods simply to conform to the new medium. From 12.0 - 12.5.3, I have yet to have SECTION VIEWPORTS available. My workspace always states that this cannot be added. This was the primary reason I purchased the upgrade at that time...No solution from NNA on this...

What worked, albeit clumsily, was the removal of all unnecessary handles and the conversion of any polylines into polygons. Polylines would not combine with lines! A 2nd problem emerged though when I was creating the receptacles. Once an extrusion has been made, or a solid subtraction as is the case with this model, what object types can be manipulated cohesively from a corner rather than an entire extruded surface only? I have no idea how to drag the corner of the one object down to meet the corner of the other. (See the second image). These objects are made up of hundred of little 3D polygons that describe the curve and each are flat on the top. To pull the corners of each facet down one by one is not a reasonable solution and it's not accurate. To plot the points in 3D space to loft them is exceptionally difficult because I need to construct the object first to know where the points are in space to create a smooth curve. The reason this it's not level is that I used the solid subtraction method to slice off the top portion of the curves at an angle. The chords rise up towards the round ends for a distance of about 1" to accommodate the inner receptacle. There are other program more suitable than Vectorworks for product design I realize though my request here is reasonable given that buildings include moldings and sculpture and furniture as well. Thanks for all the input!

You traced the entire object! Awesome effort. I was not in a position to upload the file due to proprietary constraints. Yes, please send me the Reshaper as a test as I know this problem will arise again. I am wondering if Reshaper also helps with the other problems that I am posting below with the final model. Thanks!

tguy, excellent point. I will check the snap to grid although I have been using the smart cursur to identify end line correlations.

RGyori, the only time I selected the interior shape was after converting everything to lines and attempting to compose the whole thing. The program crashed after about 20 minutes! Normally only the desired lines are selected.

Hello Pat, I am not using v. 2008 though was advised by the VW techs that upgrading to v 12.5.3 would do the trick. There was no difference. Hours have been spent thus far using the techniques you have suggested including selecting two adjacent objects and visually noting that the handles were precisely overlapped. Maybe breaking the object up into smaller pieces and then using ADD? Vectorworks?

After carefully zooming into the intersections of the arcs and lines which occurred where the arcs end (in order to close the 2D shape), I discovered that arcs and lines cannot be composed, only lines and lines or lines and polys. I overlapped the handles using the smart cursor with great precision and trust me, they DO NOT COMPOSE! If I convert the arcs to either lines of polygons, the enclosing endlines compose (close) but the remainder of the arc is broken into hundreds of small line segments that must be composed as well! Attempting to close all these lines at once crashes the program and composing shorter segments of the lines (which used to be arcs) converts these short segments into individual polylines which once again cannot be composed! The goal is to have one 2D object that can be extruded as a solid, including it's face and not just the edges. See the image below.

After attempting to install the upgrade from 12.5.0 to 12.5.3 twice, a notification indicated twice that the installation was successful though no upgrade occurred. I verified this through the 'About VectorWorks' menu item both times. I am operating a Mac G5 with operating system 10.4.11. Any ideas?

Katie thanks for the response. No success as yet. First, the Project tool does not give you and heads up that it works. i clicked and clicked and clicked waiting for some signs of life and then realize that the nurb has slit the sphere and became a group with three nurbs surfaces actually. From here I deleted the lower part of the sphere. I created a rectangle and extruded it 1" and placed it below that truncated sphere. Using the same Project tool in all three modes, I got no result selecting the extrusion first and the nurbs surface second. I am not sure what to expect as I am having a hard time relating to this approach. Let me ask a dumb question. When and why would you use a nurb for a regular geometric shape as opposed to creating 2D shapes and converting them to the appropriate 3D type?

The need to do this keeps coming up and I have been unable to figure out how to map a line to a surface thereby creating a new 3D shape. I am not referring to mapping a texture but literally having one line follow the contour of a 3D object. Considering that walls can be instantly fit perfectly into an irregular roof for example, I suspect there is a way to do this with any 2D or 3D object? Specifically, a simple example would be to lay a circle onto a sphere so that the circle follows the contour of the surface of the sphere. I am aware of the SEND to SURFACE tool for topography, but this only works when you are using site modifiers. Any ideas fellow VW users?

This is a modern mystery Christian. When I first came to Los Angeles, I decided I would work only for Mac firms using Vectorworks. No source would divulge who these creatures were including Architosh who had just polled the entire US asking the same question. They speculated 20-30% but that figure is high in LA so I think it's high for the US as well...for architects and interiors designs, especially the one brainwashed to beleive that Autocad is the best program in town due to concensual comfort zones. I successfulyl initiated a VW course in a local university which was termianted three years later because the accreditation board said this does not adequately prepare students for the workplace! What? Autocad wins the sheeples choice award yet again! The other stickler in the US is that the US arch registration exams are given on a neutral computer platform that is so much like a PC that it's mind-numbing to call it anything else. The application is like Power Cad and is rather cross-platform. This battle has been raging for years now too so I suspect that at some level Mac users are getting their voices heard, me included.