Horst M.

Hallo James, In the Transparency Channel of the Material in VW2011 you can set the refraction. As far as I know it effects the Light that goes from the Scene towards the Camera, unfortunately not the beams of the Lights. (would be cool, to develop optical systems...:-) AS VW2011 has the C4D Render Engine, there is a Technology called Caustics built in, but this must be enabled in the Lightsource to emitt Photons. I didn't find that section in the LightSetup of VW. I attach some Images what kind of effect you get in C4D with Caustics.

I rembered, that read something about that, and found this in the kowledgebase: http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/646/File+Formats

Hallo Nik, I had once an effect like that (with VW2010), and got rid of it by reducing the PixelxPixel size of the Image to something lower than 2000x.... I didn't explore that in depth, because I didn't need a resolution above that size for my renderings. Are you shure, that there is no "invisible" geometry between the Camera and the Extrude showing the Image? It's hard to believe, that the C4d Render Engine does that by accident.

Interiorcad is made and manufactured by Extragroup http://www.interiorcad.org/home There is a Website with distributors http://interiorcad.org/index.php?id=183&no_cache=1&L=1

Good guess! I put the Roof faces on an extra Layer containig nothing else and it works! The extra roof layer makes some sense, as the Comand doesn't ask for the Roof face object itself, and starts as a brave little App to figure out to which geometrie on the Layer the wall could be fit... :-) So may be during the Beach Ball Time, the Programm was not stuck, but trying hard to match the wall under some of the 327 Chairs or whatever. Thanks for the Input, saving me Copy and Paste Time between Files!

Thanks Dan, for directing me to find the right Submenu. A bit hidden. I don't really understand that it is not labeled as "Global Illumination". But hey, its there, and that is what counts. After I found that now, and played arround a bit more, also with exporting to C4D, I must say that the new render engine is a real big present, as it is what Maxon previously sold as "The advanced Renderer" as an upgrade to the basic render engine. So, what is now built in C4D is the same render Engine, that is built into C4D Visualize! Yes, it is a giant Step forward in Rendering Speed and Rendering Quality.

Hallo, I'm working on a 3d Model for a Venue with Gable Roof on top of a Gable Roof (sorry, I didn't find the correct Term, but there is an image attached) to make the Walls fit the Roof, tried the "Fit Walls to Roof Command, and found the Programm getting Stuck (Beachball turning more than 15 minutes) and I had to terminate VW with the OSX command. The same in 2010 and 2011 The Roof and the Wall(s) were on the same layer, and I indicatetd the Layer of the Roof faces for the "Fit Walls to Roof..." Command When copied I just the Roof faces and the Walls to a blank file, and Tried again it worked. Any Idea why?

The sample above is rendered Open GL. The sample attached is what BW2011 does with "text along path" Objects in FQRW and Custom Renderworks.

Hi Gerrit, You have the C4D V11.5 Render Engine in VW2011. The Main difference to C4d is, the reduced capabilties of the VW built in Material editor compared to C4D. After some testing I had the best results in C4d with a 3ds Export from VW2011. It was the only method to get all components in a usable way from VW to C4d. But then it was really cool. If you decide to go for C4d as the Render App. you should at think about C4D Visualize to be able to do Sketch renderings and also use global illumination, which is producing wonderfull realistc results. RW2011 doesn't have this capability anymore. (i wonder that nobody complaint about that loss).

"Text Along Path" in the Text Menu should do what you want

One can use video Files as Texture resources in C4d easily and therefore use Video Material fo the Virtuall Videoscreens . ESP Vison is very helpfull to save Prod. time for big Shows with lot of Movinglights and very little prod. time. to setup the VW File for ESp is still a bit challenging for the first time.. :-) I these days we are working on a ESP Setup for a Perfomance with 4 Universes. The main advantage is, that we can preprogramm the Lightboard. The Lightboard controlls the Virtuall lights.The whole Stage design is done in VW, then the File is exported to ESP and and the Lightboard is connected to the Computer by Network to controll the Virtuall lights. The images attached are C4d Samples. The Images on the Screens are just jpg Fotos of a previous Performance, but they could be changed to Movie Files anytime.

During experimenting wirh the "stitch trim surfaces tool" in VW2011 to create solids from nurbs surfaces, I saw, that after performing "stitch trim Surfaces" to some nurbs surfaces the result is marked as a CGS solid in the OIP but if I cut it or sutract solids from that Object I see that is not a solid! it is just a Hollow! thats very terrible.

Hi Matt, yes it's a bug, and it's anoying. But the Method with the duplicated viewport ist the only Way to work arround this Problem. And for me its better than waiting or just missing 3d Dimension and text capabilities. Besides that I'm pretty shure, it is the only method to use the 3d Text in FQRW without having the Problem with pixeled and unreadable text in 3d.

Hallo matt, I have the same experience with the VW2011SP1 Trial The 3d text doesn't show in Viewports in line render mode. In FQRW and other Render Modes the Text is unreadable up to 600 dpi because of Pixelation. My solution was: duplicate the viewport and allign the copies set the upper viewport to WireFrame Render Mode and make all Classes execept Dimensions invisible. make the dimensions Class in the rendered Viewport invisible ---> The dim. text is readable and 3d dimensions in VW are no longer a dream! juhu. example attached

I tried it, and for me it works in VW2011 as it does in VW2010. The first page of a pdf. document s converted to an Bitmap image if I import a pdf as an image resource into VW. I can use this Image resource as image fill for 2d Surfaces. In VW2010 and VW2011 the same way and result. regards Horst M.

Hi, Ive just tried arround with your file. Funny: As I opend it the first time, the OIP was showing "3D" I changed to Screen and after I did that once, I couldn't get this "3D" back. I can now select between "Layer" an "Screen" ... Besides that, your 2d Polygon beaves as I would expect If I select "Screen" in The OIP the Objects gets glued to the Screen for every chang of 3d View If I select "Layer" your 2d Polyline is like lying on the Floor of the Plane if "layer Plane" is selected in General

I agree, It is not nice to throw Users with older Versions of VW out. I know and meet people which have older Versions of VW. Last year I had a Set Designer in our Venue who worked with VW8.5 on his G3 Psimo! With my Powerbook Titanium (550MHz:-) hosting VW 11 to 12.5 I could make him happy, but it was a lot of extra work for me, the one who upgrades to support the one who doesn't. During this period, and because my Family was missing the Powerbook "MusicServer" on Top of our Stereo, I had the idea to "steal" "VW export to older version" plugins from the depth of the Pluginfolder of like VW 2008 and discovered that this export functions are part of the Main App and not located in the Plugin folder. I had to buy an Ipod to solve the Problem. Not shure if ths helps in other Cases as well.

Ooops... Is there a default setting f?r the Way texts are improted from dwg? Where? ? sometimes I feel so ... Blind! Sigh!

Ray, that did it! Thanks! Will I ever lern to look, see this Checkboxes and think about their use if have such a Problem? I also need the Text mostly for my orinentation (which isn't too good as you see), so I also deleted the texts most of the times. But those Architects have once in a wihle the tendency to put usefull informations in this Fields.... With your checkbox method had this 2500 text boxes aligned, and just the texts inside symbols weren't effected, which is no Problem. Thanks again. by the way: 2011 does it right; saw that today as i was testing....

The Textboxes behave completely normal, if I scale the Text, change the position I was shure that other users have the Problem also, at least sometimes. So I'm a bit surprised. May be it has something to do with the way the texboxes are created in ACAD, bcause it happens just to some Files (approx. 30%), and it happens to Files from different Sources, so it is not caused by one Supplier. I tried many things with the Sclaing of import, but I had no succes until now.

I've tried your suggestion. unfortunately no change if I change the Font. I tried also to edit the Font Mapping for the import no change. The text boxes are still 5 to 10 times longer than they must be, an therefore all over the drawing.

Hallo, If i import dwg Files I always have the Problem that the Text fields are way longer than the text inside. This leads all the time to unwanted selection and to a disaterous look in bigger Zoom States. Is there a possibility to "shrink" all the Fileds to the size needed by the text except selecting each text Object and adjust it manually?

Shure, My 2011 trial is still valid a couple of days. You can mail me the File, or a download Link if it is too big. Regards Horst M.

Kaare, I tried what you describe with a sample Polyline. It worked with a "slight" increase of verticies. Before the conversion the Polyline had 7 after converting to a Polygon I got 1281 Verticies. Seems to be the famous "Lehman Brothers Algorithm" behind that Process.

There is a Checkbox in the OIP. If it isn't checked you can close the polyline by checking it. It seems to work even in VW2011....