Tamsin Slatter

Hi Islandmon - that makes perfect sense. Thanks for your help!

Forgot to add, I am on a PC, with XP and VW2008 SP2

I am struggling with understanding the variable radius pairs... can anyone help? I would like to vary my fillet so that it starts small, gets bigger and then gets small again along an edge. The edge is, say, 2000mm long. I would like 10% of it to be hardly any fillet (say 10mm), 80% say 50mm radius and the remaining 10% back to 10mm. However, after entering the first two pairs of informatio, I can't set the final pair (the set button is greyed out). So my resulting fillet increases along the edge beautifully, but will not decrease towards the end of the edge. Am I missing the point here? Some help would be great. Thanks

Hi I spend a lot of time training people and notice that if you are getting used to drawing accurately, it can be easier to draw out your shape first using the polygon or polyline tool for accuracy. You can then convert to walls using the Modify/Convert/Objects from Polyline command. But personally, I love the wall tool and use it all the time.

It's not useless!

You can use ANY symbol to define a plant now. Just drag any of the xfrogs onto the drawing, select them, then on the Landmark menu you can create a new plant. If you want 3d, just double click the plant to get into the symbol editor, choose 3D and drag a 3D plant (maybe from xfrog)onto the 3D locus that's sitting there. You can still use your symbols from v12 if you want to. Just open the file they are in, and export them all to the 2d defaults file that comes with VW2008.

i.e. Any symbol can be turned into a plant - it doesn't have to be in the 2D or 3D symbols files like in the old days.

You should be able to drag any of the xfrog or V12 symbols onto your drawing, then select them and use Landmark / Create New Plant. You can then define your plant as normal. Once created, if you edit the symbol which results in your resource browser, you can choose teh 3D part of the symbol and choose a 3D view from the Xfrog libraries - it should snap to the 3D locus. It's SO MUCH EASIER because you can just draw a symbol on your drawing if you like and then turn it into a plant. Tamsin

There are indeed UK Plants. For help on how to get the UK plant data on the system, email me.

Hi Guys Thanks for responses. Jonathan - I just wanted to look at the Filemaker Pro database, but it wasn't opening. Petri - I understand your frustrations, but the whole thing is still a HUGE LOAD better than it was. And better than hand drawing which is what my clients are used to. Yes filemaker pro is a relational database - whilst VW still has to access data through its text files. But at least it is now easy to create subsets of that data which makes the whole plant selection process much easier. I know the difference between a database and a text file (I spent many years working for Oracle as a database specialist). Anyway, before I get carried away down that route, in case anyone else is looking on the forum for a solution to a similar problem, the system was NOT working "as is". My filemaker pro database was failing to open - that was the problem. When choosing Open VW Plant Database from the Landmark menu, Filemaker Pro should have been starting up, but it wasn't. However, that universal fully tried and tested method of "re-install" fixed the problem and all is now working fine. Cheers T

PS, this is on Windows XP.

Hi From the Landmark menu, choosing VW Plant Database. I get the dialogue box which asks me where i want to store the resulting VW data and I choose the first option. Then click OK, then nothing happens. No error message, no crashing. VW keeps running, but no database appears. Any ideas? Thanks Tamsin

I can't get the plant database to open - I follow the instructions in the manual to access it, but although it seems to recompile the text files for me, I'm not getting the filemaker pro bit. Just nothing happens. no error messages. Any suggestions? Cheers Tamsin

P.S. If the object is hardscape, you have to apply the texture through a class for it to show.

Does the object you are rendering have a solid fill? This seems to be critical. Do you have anything set in the objects class? If the object is a wall, you will need to specify which parts of the wall take which texture. Hope that helps.

Hi Katie Thanks for answering this. However, if I use a final rendering on the layer which contains the lights, they glow beautifully. It's not the light objects that I want to see - but the light effect. Once this layer is combined in a layer link, the lights go dark! However, I have now discovered model view. This seems to do the trick, although my xfrog objects don't light very well - you can see the background of the image props. But it will do fine for now. For future reference, which is best in this scenario - Layer Link or Model View???

Hi Katie Thanks for answering this. However, if I use a final rendering on the layer which contains the lights, they glow beautifully. It's not the light objects that I want to see - but the light effect. Once this layer is combined in a layer link, the lights go dark! However, I have now discovered model view. This seems to do the trick, although my xfrog objects don't light very well - you can see the background of the image props. But it will do fine for now. For future reference, which is best in this scenario - Layer Link or Model View???

Hi I hope this isn't a stupid question. I have created lots of light objects. They render beautifully on their own layer. However, I have other 3d objects on other layers which I would like to include in my render. I have created a layer link. All included layers render. But my lights have vanished. Am I missing something obvious? Any help gratefully received. Tamsin

Hi Messing with creating new textures and I am puzzled over what the size fields in the brick bond shaders relate to. Are they real world? Are they page units? And what does the scale factor relate to? I have scoured the manual but failed to come up with the answer. Any help greatly appreciated as always. Tamsin

Hi Katie Sorry for the delay - I needed to find the time to upgrade. I'm now on 12.5.2 (71041) The upgrade completed with no issues or messages other than installation successful. I was on 12.5.0 when I first posted this. I'm afraid I still have the same problem: When I create a report, if I include my comments from the Scheduled Comments field on the "Plant" record, the data in the resulting worksheet is truncated at 64 characters. I have also tried creating a report using the User Comments1 field from the underlying "Plant Record", the same thing happens. It's a nightmare! I've done lots of work on my plant data so I can retrieve it and reuse it easily - and I can't! Thanks for any suggestions

Yeah I understand. I agree that it just isn't quite there. I think the framework is in place but now the developers have to do a lot more work to make this framework more usable.

Hi Katie Yes - just had a look at the sheet layer and yes - there is a line around the outside of the border which is on the edge of the paper size. Is this working as normal? I have no margin set for title block, grid lines are set to none. Border is not filled. If I set pen to None the whole border disappears. Any clues?

Hmm - yes, the whole thing is in a rectangle. The bottom right corner is the insertion point. There is nothing "extra" on this though. Not sure what you're getting at...

OK - fantastic. A big help. Cheers T

Hi When printing pages with a drawing border, there is an extra line printed outside the border. Presumably this is to show the page boundary itself but it doesn't look great. Is there a way to stop this happening and JUST have the one border line. I can export the file to pdf, open it with Illustrator and delete it, but this isn't ideal! Thanks