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Marc Pitman

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Posts posted by Marc Pitman

  1. I have to agree. I had to turn the font down to the same size, 7 pt arial, but that is not a good solution since text is barely readable at that size. There is plenty of room for a much larger drop down box or use a scroll down menu. Nemetschek, please fix this annoying problem.

  2. I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 266 MHz PII with 320 MB Ram and Windows 98 SE. I use VW with Renderworks and VA and have found the computer to work just fine. I believe that RAM is probably the most important factor in a laptop. I originally had 192 MB and upgraded that to 320. I have not come close to using all the ram since upgrading to 320 but I did encounter some difficulty at 192 MB, but only when running another program at the same time like Word or MathCAD.

    My Dell has an ATI Rage LT Pro 2X with 8MB of RAM. I would guess that the better the display adapter, more memory, 4X vs 2x, etc. would enhance rendering with renderworks. I would suggest getting the best display adapter available for whatever computer you purchase as well as somewhere between 192 and 320 MB RAM.

    The Dell Inspiron 7000 (now 7500) series is a bit heavy if you plan to take it with you everywhere you go. Dell even advertises it as a portable desktop.

  3. I have not been able to get all but the I- beam and Channel Structural tools to work. All of the other shapes and the tubing tools will not allow me to edit the size in either the pull-down menus or the object info palette. I am also using a pc with Windows 98 and have upgraded to VW 8.5.2 and VA 1.0.1.

    I contacted tech support and submitted the problem to the bug list but they were not able to duplicate the problem and did not offer any solution that helped. Were you able to get the tools to work? If so how?

    [This message has been edited by Marc Pitman (edited 06-20-2000).]

  4. I have exported drawings as vectorscript and then used a text editor (wordpad) to extract the information I needed. I used to use the export as text as well to export 3D vertex data to use in other programs, now I use export Vectorscript.

  5. I had similar difficulty on a PC using VW 8.5.2 with Renderworks. After experimenting with an extruded cube I found the following to occur. If the line thickness attribute for the cube is set to class thickness than the hidden lines will render invisible. If set to a specified thickness I get dashed lines. I tried this with a wall and found the same thing to happen. I hope this helps.

  6. I had never noticed this problem until I read your description of it and sure enough it happened to me too. I too couldn't seem to get it to stop by changing costraints. But then I found that if I moved the mouse, ever so slightly, after pressing the button but before lifting up on the buton it would create a bezier Vertex. I then tried drawing a polyline quickly once again, but this time I made sure that I fully released the button before moving to the next vertex. This time it didn't cause the switch in vertex type. This is on a pc so it might not be the same as the Mac version. Perhaps changing the sensitivity of the mouse pointer would help if this is indeed the problem. I'm guessing on this.

  7. I have discovered that VW's is limited however for the price it does a fair job in creating dtm's. One of it's major limitations are in the number of survey points that it can handle. I have been told that it can only manage 3000 to 4000 points which seems partly true. I have however created a model with over 38,000 points by first creating a model with a subset of the total points and then repeatedly added groups of points and used the recalculate command after each addition of points. This is very time consuming and certainly not a cost effective way of doing a dtm but it can be done. Somewhere around 38,000 points VW didn't want to work anymore. Admittedly this is a large number of points. Other programs are available that will model larger numbers of points and they do it much faster, and they cost a lot more.

    I have gotten into the habit of checking only the 3d triangle view option (uncheck all other 2d & 3d options until the model is created). This seems to speed things up and has resulted in greater success for me when creating large models.

    Don't pay to much attention to the progress meters if the model is large as they do not mean much. At times I have thought my computer was hung up but have found that if I wait long enough the dtm would be produced. Be patient.

    As far as complexity and rendering goes I have had fairly good success with VW. Of course the greater the number of points you have the smoother the model will look if you use 3d triangles. With the mesh option the smaller the mesh the better it appears. I have used fairly small mesh openings, disregarding the "this will result in..." warning to get smooth surfaces. Be very patient if you do this as it to will take time.

    I change the dtm class settings for either the DTM-triangle 3d or DTM-mesh classes, whichever is applicable, so that it has a fill color before rendering and then adjust the lighting by using the set sun position command. I would suggest using the open-gl rendering method until you are ready for a final rendering and then use the render bitmap tool and renderworks.

    I'm not certain what exactly you mean by closing the sides. There is a posting dated 01-18-2000, on page 5 describing how to put sides on a dtm like the ones they show in the manual. It's rather tedious and I've had difficulty getting good results but it will work if needed.

    I have used both Macs and Dell computers as well. For personal reasons I prefer the Dell but either computer should produce the same results as long as they are set up properly. The more RAM the better, on my Dell I have 320 MB but so far I haven't used more than about 140 MB (according to Norton Utilities System Info)during processing of a model. I would imagine a 1GHz machine will solve much of the time problem but a 266 MHz machine allows you to take a stretch break while the dtm is running.

    Although it doesn't help right now, Diehl Graphsoft has announced that a land development program is going to be available in the future. I would hope this would include better dtm.

    [This message has been edited by Marc Pitman (edited 03-30-2000).]

  8. I also had this problem with Minicad 7.x. using Windows 98 on a 266 MHz PII and 192 MB of RAM. I found a utility program on the web that frees up memory when available ram reaches a user specified level. The program is called Mem Turbo. It is an inexpensive program that seems to work well. I'm not certain that it is necessary with vectorworks, as I don't seem to have the same problem with VW locking up memory as I did with Minicad 7.x. If you are interested in Mem Turbo check their web site at: http://www.memturbo.com

  9. I had to quit Vectorworks for the first time due to low GDI resources since upgrading from the first release of Vectorworks. My screen began to lose fonts and palettes began to disappear. Today I tried to draw just one window from the andersen library and then render it using Renderworks and that produced a warning. I have 320Mb of RAM and an 8MB video accelerator. I'm certain this is sufficient as I had rendered much larger and complex files while running several other applications as well, before installing VA. According to the information I've read this problem usually only occurs when running 16 bit applications. Using Norton utilities system information I discovered that a 16 bit Vectorworks application 6.22 KB in size is running , in addition to the 32 bit Vectorworks application. What is this 16 bit application for? I'm fairly certain this Low GDI resources problem has only resurfaced since installing Architect. I've been using 8.5.1 for a couple months and hadn't noticed it.

    Marc

  10. The problem occurs with Norton utilities on or off. I have an ATI video card with the latest Dell approved driver, the hardware acceleration is set to full, I'll try backing that off even though it had worked fine up until installing VA. I turned off the programs running in the background. There were two anderesen window libraries uploaded in the Object browser, this is the first time I have used this feature, I'll try deleting library items to see if it makes a difference. Thanks

  11. Tom,

    Thanks, I must be one of those who defy averages, for using either the trim tool or command resulted in far less than 9 of 10 successes. However I'm now able to get it to work with lines just touching just as you described. In the past I had such poor luck using trim that I assumed you had to have the cutting object cross the object to be trimmed. My mistake.

  12. I just installed Architect and was very disappointed to find the pull-down menu for the sizes on structrual shape tools didn't work (or even appear) accept for the I (S shape) beams. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Also since installing architect I am once again getting a low GDI resources warning from Norton utilities with only Vectorworks running with a drawing less than 100 kb in size despite having 320MB of RAM. I used to get this with the first version of Vectorworks but the problem went away with later version, until now.

  13. I believe your problem may be a misunderstanding of what intersect means. In the case of the Trim tool and Trim command, the cutting object must "interesect" or pass through the object that is to be trimmed. A line or object that touches put does not cross another object does form an interesection and therefor cannot be used to execute either the trim tool or command. Thus you have to extend the cutting line or object through the object to be trimmed. A tool that would trim to a line as you described would however be handy.

  14. I have also experienced memory problems on a Mac G-3. I now use Vectorworks 8.5 on a P.C. and had experienced similar problems until I installed a program that manages physical RAM, a program called Mem Turbo. Since using Mem Turbo I have not experienced any problems. I'm not aware of a similar program for Macs but it may be worth looking into. With any luck OSX will solve all of these programs. I am glad that this forum is now available as now I know I'm not the only one who has had problems like this.

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