panthony

Sandking, I?unlike my Helsinky ?wild-man? Finish compadre` ?Petri the impetuous? and the infamous ?V-I `l..sandmon? along with the Great Retondo ?Pete? ?.have not even touched the surface of 3D depths to which these VW 3D pioneers have gone before all of us amateur rookies?. The pictures above?..I?ve shown only a few of the 3D items I created in reference to home design. VW has provided a means by which I am able to add any objects I feel are necessary to accurately describe and communicate my design intention to the personnel who will use my plans for construction. This includes many interior as well as exterior aspects. I as a regular practice do not include a complete 3D framing construct (fully framed buildings in most cases are not necessary), however many framing and also finish objects are inserted that assist to portray section and elevation presentations. I prefer to take full advantage of the 3D systems to give me an additional look into the virtual structure to see how all of its loads are distributed to the foundation. This takes more draw time to make sure that building sections and elevation details can eliminate field confusion in construction. Most importantly my reliance on a computer system to generate a building with all of its many aspects stops at walls, windows and doors. There are just too many variables to consider allowing an automated program to consider drawing them for me. However, a system that empowers the designer to present an accurate model including ways to display the variables is an extremely valuable asset. VW has such value to me as a building designer. I take full advantage of the tools available in VW for building very complex roof structures with ceilings, lookouts, beams, trays, pans and cathedral construction options as well as many interior and exterior foundation, framed wall, floor and stair components. VW provides in some cases (i.e. stair and roof tool) ways to build simple components but when you need complex solutions the 3D array of tools is there to provide a means to build a very intricate model. The big question?. and it may be apparent from your original discussion?.are you and your peers looking for an easier and quicker way of drafting production? Is that the reason for their non-use of VW advanced 3D tools?not enough time? Were you just making conversation at the local waterhole and VW was the only thing you had in common to talk about? Is your corporate structure allowing its employees the time necessary and essential to learn advanced techniques? Do they provide training or are you left on your own? Are you an old dog, comfortable with your current 3D system that is ?good enough? and ?gets the job done? as opposed to learning a new system which will take too much time and effort? Did she dump you because of your 3D ineffectiveness? Disclaimer: If I have for any reason stepped on, embarrassed, harassed or somewhat inferred to be associated with persons located anywhere on the seven continents not to exclude anyone close to or in direct contact with equatorial New Guinea and Denmark including the land of California?please excuse me. I can?t help myself. Pete A.

I do

360 degree's to a circle...divide by 12 = 30 gives you the angle of segments. Duplicate array centered on point.

I have a routine that I try and stay consistent when entering data concerning roof faces. I always draw the poygons in a clockwise direction and, when promted for the roof face axis define it also in a clockwise direction so that when the arrow pops up it is always pointing in the proper direction as a default so that I do not need to adjust it's position. I don't know if that has any bearing on the problem at hand with the double lines visible on the rake fascia but I do not have any issue with it appearing on my roof structures unless I break from my procedure. Pete A.

Daomun, You may find that in attempting to use the 3D reshape tool you will not be able to exactly line up 2 points on the "Z" axis with each other in the same plane. This causes an issue in display. Your method is quick, simple and will get the job done but lacks precision with tight tolerances and if you don't mind things being a little off....plus you still need to reshape both the lower and the upper wall to avoid the wall extent plane. Pete A

Nigel, You must create multiple walls in order to achive the desired results. Mat and Katies' method will present itself as show in the picture below (right). You can see how I created an set the "Z" height of the door wall to the exact height of the door. This will eliminate the wall extent plane from showing up through the opening. Also...the upper wall should be placed on another class so it can be made invisible in 2D viewport. Procedure: Place the lower wall...set the "Z" height...insert the door. Cut the wall at both sides of the door. Place the upper wall in 3 segments...go to a 3d view select the segments and adjust the "Z" height. Pete A.

wezelboy, What version are you running? Pete A.

Ahhhh...Petri has wisdom in his keystroked prose. As long as creativity is pursued in architectural design the non-standard will persist. CAD software companies need to concentrate on the standards...like multiple component wall types and real-world framing which by the way...buildings, regardless of their creative designers are pretty much all built with standard products. Out of the last 25 or so McBabyMansions I've completed I have not had the opportunity to use the stair tool....Ok only a few were standard....most of the stairs have been so non-standard that it has been quicker to build them in solids...add records...then finish. Pete A.

Larry, You will need to edit the workspace and add the tool to the menu. There is the Cut 3D and Cut 2D section available. Pete A.

I would like any information you may have regarding the following: 1.) Looking for Slab(Roof Object) parameters passed to the object. Export to VS does not give any usefull object information to populate a worksheet. 2.) Is it possible to get the length of a 3D polyline passed to a worksheet...trying to figure a way to genterate HIP and VALLEY measurments. I build all of my roof structures with the "Roof Face Tool" Thanks, Pete A.

I infiltrated the Alien Spacecraft and found that they had slipped a little checkbox in the "Edit Wall Style>Textures>Use Left Texture for Entire Wall" hoping that unsuspecting earth creatures would use the quick way to have textures wrap all surfaces of a wall (Like a CMU Block wall) and they would all go crazy... and after ramming many nails into thier forheads, jump from the cliff that thier fathers said everyone else was jumping from.... than the aliens would eat all the carrots from fertile earth. The moral of the story is there is something up with the "Edit Wall Style>Textures>Use Left Texture for Entire Wall" Check Box. Pete A

Robert, I found out that I need to type a ' before and after the __NNA...hidden record data. But that is really not the most serious problem...I even went to the NNA site and downloaded the latest version 61447 which did not correct the =WALLAVERAGEHEIGHT math error. I have a wall 12" in length...96" in height that is tell me the average height is 8'6"...Completly mind warping and I cannot come up with the math to figure out how it is achieving this result. Talked to tech support and they are stumped...

And what type of intergalactical math is being used for the WALLAVERAGEHEIGHT Function. I have a wall 3.5" x 8' high with an average height (per the cyborg function) that says it's 8.6'. Huh Pete A

Why is it that if you use the worksheet provided by NNA populated with wall criteria the worksheet displays correctly.... However...if you try and make your own painstakingly typing each and every character exactly as it appears on the default NNA worksheet it does not function. What beats it further is you can copy/paste the data from the NNA WS and it fricken works! Stumped, frustrated and on the verge of insanity. Pete A

Thanks Islandmon.... I never bothered to look in the index...duh. What I have been doing is taking an empty file...dropping an object than exporting to a VS file to find the parameters passed to the object. What I have been finding though is some of the variable params "names" are not passed in such a way that you can send them to a worksheet. Any suggestions..... Pete A.

Is there a comprehensive list of parameter settings for all objects within VW in order to locate and report in worksheets? Thanks Ahead.... Pete A.

Pete, I found it! This may be a bug... The phantom objects are real. Take a simple wall...2 lines...6" apart and 12" in length with a 12" height. In plan on a design layer there are (5) objects that you can snap to...the (4) perimeter lines and the center line. Now take that same wall in a viewport...you will find another line that runs diagonaly the distance of the wall and directionaly dependant on the way the wall was inserted. Run your cursor over the wall off center from the wall and you will pick up the diagonal object in that wall. Put the wall on an angle and the system runs those control lines outside of the wall!...those are the points that I am picking up. Only in viewports though...and not on any design layer. Those control points(Phantom lines) were not present outside of the walls in 12.1 this is exclusive to 12.5. Move the viewport to line it up on the sheet layer as I do often and the problem phantom objects seem to get worse. It's in the viewports and not on design layers. Viewports are where I do all of my dimensions...I think that inserting dimensions to the design layer may be a good option until this is resolved in viewports because I can't take the time to keep zooming in and out to find the right points. Pete A

Marc, It's good to see another CA moving to VW... Just like other software systems you have learned in the past VW will take some getting used to however, you will see a more refined logic to the system than other popular CAD products out there. As you become profficient in VW you will never go back...just stay the course through the learning curve. Auto-classing does exactly what it says....VW will automatically place items on hard coded classes as you insert objects regardless of the active class. The important thing for you to observe though, is the list of classes....they all have visibility settings and if your room object is dissapearing than the auto-class it is assigned to must not be visible. Check there first... Pete A.

Pete, You hit right on the nail! I was having some trouble with a wall that would not blend in hidden line properly. I found that is was off on one end somewhere between 1/32" and 1/64" which could only be viewed in a tight zoom. I found that the point the cursor was snapping to was arbitrary floating in space but consistent in that the same arbitrary point was at each corner of my model. When I moved the model to the left this distance the ghost snap point was no longer an issue. This led me to believe that there is an active background grid system in use even when you do not selet the grid setting. This really only showed up at the viewport stage of design when I went to add notations and dimensions to the elevations. I could live with a simple line to cover up in an elevation but where is made a difference was on the floor plans since my tolerance is set to 1/64" the cursor was grabbing that ghost point and it took about an hour to locate and correct. I am really only concerned for accuracy...and if my settings are what they need to be in order to produce to my standards of quality. Pete A.

Pete, Thanks for the reply... I took a little more time this morning (had a dead line last night when I noticed the issue) and did a bit more experimenting with the snap tolerances. I think the entire situation is with the tolerance. Common sense would dictate that if you draw a poly 10' x 10' in a snap to grid of 1/8" by didging a start snap then entering the distance to the coordinate display which provides the end snap location your poly should follow the default tolerance set up at the beginning..and it does as directed from the default set-up. However the looser the tolerance the less accurate the hypotenuese is within the equilateral poly which mathamatically should be 14.142135' but if you measure with a 1/8" tolerance you will be off and inaccurate with your dimension. OK...so now is the time for all of the anti-impieralistic nay-sayers to yell out hoooohrah! Now that we have gotten beyond the metric (boo-hoo) lets move on to the decimal equivalent tolerance provided in the set-up tolerance dialog. I have my display tolerance set to the tightest settings available in the display side as I want to be as accurate as possible in placing objects within model space. My dimensional tolerance is set to 1/16" and the decimal is set to three digits for both angle and raduis dimensions. Since I do not use a grid I have never bothered adjusting its settings...which default to 1/8". Herein lies the situation. All along I think my tight tolerance display settings have been at odds with the grid settings even though they should not bear on my display because I have not activated the grid. I believe there has to be some kind of a background grid in order to define the location of space in a CAD environment...in other words the 0'0" location is relative to all other points in space in all three dimensions otherwise dimensioning would be moot and we would all be in a Picasso reality. By selecting the hypotenuese line in the poly it diplays as 14'1.7056274848" which is correct as the decimal equivelant but if you dimension it to the 1/16" it shows 14' 1-11/16" which is 14' 1.6875" and .0181274848" off. I know that the ability of a carpenter on a cold winter day with gloves on to have a tolerance greater than 1/4" in the field is a pipe dream....so why am I being so crazy about this....well if you design building with multiple angles within its perimeter you will find that a loose tolerance will screw with your ability to dimension accuratly. Your dimensions will not add up! So here is what I have done....set the grid to .0000000001" with my dispay as tight as possible and my dimensions to a 64" and try desperatly to layout my buildings with stable angles.....and this may help solve my problem. ....Stay tuned to this thread as Pete moves down under in hopes of finding sanity in Aussie metrics..... Pete A

I have noticed in this last project and since loading 12.5 that it is extremely difficult to snap to object points without zooming in very close to find the snap point. I have not changed any settings and I do not use the grid. One thing I realized with this last project is the cursor wanted to snap to a consistent point that was .0539181584" in the "X" direction at all locations while in annotation of a viewport. I did turn the grid on and to my suprise the grid was exactly the same distance off as my problem snap distance. I ended up moving the model over the distance and the problem corrected. My question...is there some grid still active in the background that is causing this to take place. I have been having this issue since 12.5 and notice it most often when tracing walls over a grey/snap others setting to the layers. They are always a fraction off if I do not zoom it tight to find the corner snap points. Any suggustions or am I missing some setting. Thanks Ahead.... Pete A.

George, I found it! The tool must be written to the exe but in my workspace it is under Text>Text Along Path. Looks like you need to manipulate the results to achieve desired look but once you get the hang of it...it is easy. Thanks for showing a good way to display a phrase of text... Pete A.

George, Sorry....I do not have "Model>3D Power Pack>Text Along Path" Command Availabe, neither is it in any script. I am running Architect with RW 12.5...what am I missing? Pete A.

Use Duplicate Array around a center point (use a circle as a guide) with a letter that you make a symbol with the bottom of the symbol touching the center point of the the symbol origin. Don't forget to turn the text into a poly before making it a symbol this way it will orient properly around the circle. Pete A.

Islandmon, You are correct in that using wall records with standard data does report what I am looking for....however, I may have multiple walls on a class with different attributes which would require multiple records being attached. I use three classes for all of my walls...which keeps my class definitions down along with my level of stress. I have been using a type of your system but would like to see each wall contain its own definable data input on the front end...this way I can have my cake and eat it too....plus it will allow standards with individuality. On another note....In your escapades around the USVI if you come accross some 8 sided post & beam homes...I designed several of them in the last couple of years. Pete A.