Tamsin Slatter

Yes the modifier is a separate object to the wall although it is formed around the wall or network of walls. I usually send the modifier backward to hide it behind the wall on the plan, select both and use Move by Points to move them with precision.

The retaining wall site modifier creates pads all around the wall, and you can control the elevation of these pads so that the soil is retained just as you want it. Under the wall, the modifier creates a flat pad, which is slightly offset from the edge of the wall, so that you don't get modifiers touching at different elevations and consequently get some of them ignored. The pad for the parking area should be inside the retaining wall, but not touching the modifier. If it DOES touch at the same elevation,you will receive an error message, but in fact, it won't make any difference to the result, because it is touching at the same elevation. Where you have two points touching (in plan), but at different elevations, one set of points will be ignored. Hope that helps

Hi Steve No - it's really difficult to get to these parts to do any sensible mapping. The way around it is to either ungroup the stair (not desirable as it forgets it's a Stair), or you could use the Extract tool to extract a planar surface so that you could just put the texture on there. Nice to see you again last week. Hope that helps T

To add a texture bed that displays a texture you have to create a class and assign the texture on the Other tab within the class definition. Then, on the Object Info palette, assign the class for the texture - not the object class field, but the field further down the palette. You'll see the one I mean - can't remember the exact name as I don't have VW by me right now. But that will fix it! Hope that helps

Sorry - dinner got in the way of my reply! Yes, Peter has given you the answer. Texture beds are for painting textures on the model. Pads are for changing the elevation of points on the model.

It may be that you have added an elevation to the Texture bed. This is not necessary. Set it back to 0 and see if that makes any difference... You cannot apply a texture directly to a pad. Hope that helps

Hi James Give us a call on 01488 658580 and I can, at least, talk you through the process and point you in the right direction. Cheers Tamsin

Hi Try the Window > Palettes menu - from here you can open any palettes that you have accidentally closed. Hope that helps.

Which version of Vectorworks are you using? It is possible to scale individual instances of symbols. Just select the symbol and on the object info palette you can change the scale type - symmetric or asymmetric. Then, you can choose scale factor for each direction. Alternatively, you can reshape the symbol on the plan. Hope that helps

I'm glad I was able to resolve it Ran. I knew I had seen the problem before but it took me a short while to remember what caused the problem. The issue is that there is an extra plant record present in the file attached to the Landscape Area itself. If you place the Landscape Area into a different class from the plants themselves, and then exclude that class from the selection criteria for the worksheet, the extra row is removed from the results. All the best

Yes, it's been a symptom of the summarise facility for a long time. If you summarise the results, numeric values such as price, height or spread will also be summarised. But you can add the sum to numeric columns and the worksheet will then display the original entered value.

Emailed reply. The issue is caused by the SUM function being applied to the Latin Name column. Because there is more than one instance of each plant, Vectorworks is also summing the height data. If you add the SUM function to the Height column, this will reverse the process. Have sent you an email with screenshots... Best T

Hi Roger Why not send the file directly to us on support@vectorworks-training.co.uk? We'll take a look for you. Cheers T

Have you installed Service Pack 2?

Hi Ran I believe this is a bug. I have already reported it to Nemetschek a few weeks ago, so hopefully it will be fixed soon. It seems that the sketch is not carried through to the viewport for fills. The outline of an object remains sketched, but not a fill or hatch.

Hi Ran You can change the sketch style settings for individual objects by selecting them and clicking the Render tab on the Object Info palette. Then, you change Sketch to No Sketch. You can't set this for a class, but if you have classed objects, you can use Select Similar to select all objects in a specific class with one click and then change their sketch settings. The same applies to layers. For the viewport issue, select the viewport and click Classes on the Object Info palette. Make sure that Plants-Component-Color Fill is visible. Hope that helps

Using absorption within the Glass transparency shader is nice. You need to set a thickness for the absorption, but it means that the glass looks different as it's thickness changes across the surface and the viewing angle.

We made a movie on working with glass - take a look at here: http://www.vectorworks-training.co.uk/buy-vectorworks/training-for-design-vectorworks-training-gifts/ It's the fifth movie from the top on the page...

Glad I was able to help.

It depends on which hatch you are using, but this might be to do with the hatches themselves - some of World scale and others (like concrete, blockwork etc.) are page based. Therefore, they are always displayed the same, regardless of scale.

If your roof faces aren't highlighting, could it be something to do with your Interactivity preferences? Go to Vectorworks Preferences and click Interactivity tab. Is Tool Highlighting checked?

Why do you need FIVE site models???

HI Send to Surface works only on a Site Model. However, if you create a Site Model and change your Document Preferences to turn on Mesh Smoothing, you might get a better presentation AND get all the other benefits of a site model (presentation, cut and fill, model before, model after).

Of course, if I were really using 50 instances of those cubes, the best way would be to create a symbol... 50 duplicates of anything is not efficient on resources.

Good question... Just did a quick test and 50 x 1m cubes in mesh result in a file of 287K. The same file using the Nurbs to Generic Solids option results in 508K file. So Mesh is more efficient!