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mmyoung

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Posts posted by mmyoung

  1. Hey brudgers,

    Yeah, thanks. I meant to mention that but it probably didn't get into the notes. After you make the loft, you have to convert it: Modify > Convert > Convert to NURBS. I think that'll work. Then you should be able to push it around with 3D Reshape. Which is somewhat of a bear, unless you have the work planes working in your favor.

    One of the niceties 2010 is that although the functionality is the same, the plane are easier to see when you are installing them.

  2. In the Solids Modeling section, a user inquired about making shapes in VW that are similar to things Zaha Hadid likes to make, so I posted a rough primer. Not an award-winning model, but it shows some of the possibilities for making shapes by lofting simple NURBS profiles.

    People have asked about things like this often enough I thought I'd post it here, too.

    To follow the sequence, go to Saved Views and you'll see a numbered list of frames.

    All the best ?

  3. Hi Heppy,

    Here's a rough primer on the shapes you mentioned. It's not that difficult, but it take a little time, same as any other NURBS modeler.

    Follow the sequence of Saved Views to see what was done.

    Take a look a Silo and modo (or 3DMax, if it's affordable) to investigate what you can do with forms like this in subD.

  4. It sounds like you might also benefit from dimensioning your drawings in viewports. Make a viewport, then in the Navigation palette (Window > Palettes > Navigation) click on the Sheet Layers icon. Right-click on your viewport and choose to edit Annotations.

    From here you can add dimensions and text, and it will scale to the page rather than the drawing, which usually is more convenient that dimensioning on the Design Layers.

  5. Seems like it would be really, really helpful to have conic sections here, yes? You don't need them every day, but when you do need them, it's a lot of fiddling to get something you ought to be able to dial in pretty easily.

    Or a little formula section where you could make a catenary or a cardiod, things like that.

  6. The use of classes and design layers is a matter either of personal workflow or shop standards. I don't have an iron-clad set of rules.

    You can make class data 3 layers deep, by hyphenating the classes like this:

    superstruct-wood

    superstruct-wood-fittings

    superstruct-wood-trim

    superstruct-steel

    superstruct-steel-beams

    superstruct-steel-fasteners

    superstruct-steel-tubing

    They show up in the Navigator just in a long list, as above. But in the Tool Bar dropdown, they reveal a hierarchy:

    -superstruct

    ----wood

    -------fittings

    -------trim

    ----steel

    -------beams

    -------fasterners

    -------tubing

    ..

    Design Layers can be scaled, rotated, and rendered independently. They allow you to have several, complete drawings which share classes.

    This can become insanely complex. It's useful during design investigation, because you can put a lot of information onto one screen and manipulate it in big chunks.

    Extract what you need to present in Viewports.

    ..

    You can layer Viewports on top of one another and adjust the visibility of each, put "scrim" layers between them (objects filled with white at different opacities and so forth) which allows you to reveal exactly what you want.

  7. I believe we need STEP import/export support. This has become the standard for the machine and tooling design industry, so it would be very nice, perhaps necessary, at least in the MD module. Third party translators are not that common, especially for Mac. I've been using Concepts Unlimited (port to it via SAT, then translate to STEP. Concepts will also read an STL file, so you can check your work).

  8. It's worth it, I think, to be on the upgrade path if you run Apple gear at the moment. & the new tools are thoughtful; the 3D enhancements were immediately helpful. Nothing earth-shattering, but good work flow enhancement. I would like if they would leverage the Parasolids engine a bit more, especially in filleting, and in allowing us to elevate the degree of interpolated surfaces and add knots, so we could add surface detail on the fly ? but I think that sort of thing coming.

  9. Yes ? I suppose I could dial this in a little better by saying we generate fairly fine grained, hand-surveyed or GPS information, in which we like to get resolution under a meter where it's necessary (or possible) for storm water control. We'd like to take this as a point cloud into an interpolated surface.

    Does Landmark do this sort of thing? Say, from an Excel spreadsheet?

    A couple rendering attached to show you approx. the level of detail we're trying for.

    thanks again ?Michael

  10. We're developing soil stabilization and storm water management methods and I'm thinking of adding the Landmark module.

    Does anyone have DTM examples he or she could share? Trying to figure out if we can build models of very fiddly terrain with tight granularity, perhaps from a point cloud.

    Many thanks

  11. Dang it worked, Ray. THANKS. Still a little tiny bit of faceting... all of it should go away. My old copy of Concepts Unlimited used the Spatial Tech engine, which is not as good as PS ? and it would render perfectly (though using a special setting which made things go slowly, but it was pretty neat).

  12. Something I've been sruggling with for a while is how VW renders curved surfaces. At it finest resolution at Final Quality RenderWorks, the model has nasty faceting.

    If you render the attached sample, you'll see it.

    The Parasolids engine and RenderWorks can be leveraged to do much better than this, I think (at the expense of speed for a final render, but that's not so bad). It seems like this might be improved soon to take advantage of VW's new 3D muscle.

    As it stands, it keeps me from using VW to do presentations for things like this!

    Thanks very much.

  13. If you Modify > Convert > Convert to Generic Solids, will it work?

    I Ungrouped your solid subtraction, deleted the cube you used to section it, then selected the blue object and converted it. VW now identifies it as a Generic Solid. Will that fly with your 3D printer?

  14. File > Document Settings > Units: "Exact as fractions / Non-exact as decimals" has never seemed to work for me. Is it broken, or am I missing something?

    Eg.: I have "Exact as fractions / Non-exact as decimals" set, and I dimension something: It reads as 1-1/4". I know this is mistaken, so I set it to Decimal and it reads 1.301", which is correct.

    I thought that if it was set to "Exact as fractions / Non-exact as decimals" set, it would have read out 1.301". And if it was 1.250" it would have read 1 1/4".

    Is that right, or is there some additional setting I need to mind?

  15. When I make a 3D section, VW leaves a section line in the originating layer, creates a sheet with a section viewport, and everything works well.

    However, if I want to make a viewport of the *originating layer*, in which the section line and section marker appear, the model appears, but the section line and section marker do not.

    I'd like to make a sheet that contains the section viewports along with a viewport of the originating layer, in which the section lines and markers appear.

    - My workaround is to make a PDF of "current view" and import this PDF into the layer with the section viewports. It works, but it's unsatisfactory for a lot of obvious reasons.

    - The attached file shows this condition, which works, but the PDF does not function as a true viewport, with control over annotations and so forth.

    Probably there's something reeeeally obvious that I'm missing...

    Anyone got an idea?

    thank you ??

  16. Islandmon, thank you. I was hoping you would look at this.

    Great suggestions, of course! We will examine it again in light of these, and I'll re-post when we find out how this works it out.

    Do you have time to take a look at it if I backsave it to ... (I forgot what version you like)?

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