mmyoung

Did you check in Preferences > Display under "Selection Indication?" If "Animation" is turned on, you can get some weird effects that are not always evenly modulated. I leave it off, usually.

Move By Points works well for me in 2D drafting, But in 3D, it always leaves a duplicate "ghost" object when I have "Original Object :: Retain" unchecked. Once I use Flyover and just nudge the model, the ghost disappears. Drives me bonkers... I keep having to check my settings to see if I'm leaving a real duplicate or a ghost. :: Also, Dear NNA, please reinstate the Option-Duplicate function. That's really useful. Thx Michael Young 2008 SP3; OS 10.5.4; Intel iMac Machine Design & RW

Good dynamic constraints would go a long way towards making real machine design functionality. It's not easy to implement well, though. The new release of Shark FX has a very good implementation, with dynamics (you can move the bits around in real time), but you soon discover that even when it works perfectly, the logic center in your left hemisphere may have betrayed you somewhere. Takes a lot of thought to set it up correctly. The one in VW is not very useful.

I always wanted to mix rendering styles, rendering one part in wireframe, for instance, and the rest in a solid style. Now it's happening unbidden and I can't seem to stop it. Does anyone know if this an effect I ought to be able to control, or has something gone haywire? thanks VW 2008 SP3 b88670 Intel iMac 2GB; 10.5.4

Hi Ian, It's a new, native viewport.

Thanks for the advice. No luck so far. I built a new file of imported parts from the faulty one. This is turning out kind of nasty. Some of my objects are now rendering as wireframe, both in vp's and design layer, while the rest of the model is rendering true (OpenGL, hidden line, etc.). I always wanted that effect and didn't know how to create it! Now I can't turn it off. Actually, I'm going to put this in another post, as a separate issue. I'm going backwards in revisions, trying to find a file I can rebuild... arghh

I think I have a corrupt file, but I thought I'd check to see if I was doing something to cause this: - I cannot select or move the viewport by clicking on its inhabitants; I need to click on the border. - Once I get into it, it won't accept dimensions. Is there something that could disable a viewport in this way?

You're great, Pat. You should appear in the Resource Browser. It would be pretty handy if we had a column in the Classes and Layers Nav panes that listed stats. Cool. Thanks for the tip on rolling my own. ?M

Is there somewhere look in VW at how many objects are in each class or layer, without going to each one and doing a select-all? thanks

Incidentally ? what other categories of filleting problems have you run into, so I know what to look out for? It'd be good to catalog them. Dang, I love VW, and things like this are all the more frustrating because of my general affection. To be fair, this is actually a tough problem, and though Spatial has solved a lot of it, it can even trip up programs like FormZ and Concepts (now Shark!). But I think there ought to be a short list of common solutions, like this one, which are just routine and listed in the product literature as solvable.

Thanks for all the replies and symphathy! My workaround (export and solve, then import it) would have cost me a $bundle if I did already own this other bundle. I don't know what someone would do to solve this common situation if he or she couldn't port it to another app. I'm looking into (haven't done it yet) converting to a mesh and seeing if I can cobble something up. Curiosity, mostly, but also to see if it's a viable workaround.

This is brilliant. Thank you both very much.

It's fairly commonplace for me to join a cylinder to a piece of rectangular bar stock with a 100% weld, which I indicate with a fillet. If the width of the bar stock approaches the diameter of the cylinder (I'm selecting Tangent Entities), VW won't perform the fillet, or it "works," but it looks terrible; there's a nasty-looking patch where the fillets join. So, I export to Concepts Unlimited (which also uses the ACIS kernal, but a better version), perform the fillet with no problem, then import back into VW. Is there some additional trick I can use? It seems like such a simple thing, which other apps do well. I even tried breaking the stuff into NURBS surfaces and using Create Fillet Surface, but no luck. ?Michael Young 2008 SP3; 10.5.4 RW & Machine Design

If I use Stitch and Trim to make an enclosed volume by intersecting two NURBS surfaces, is there any way to make this into a solid? ?Michael Young VW 2008 SP3 MD & RW; OS 10.5.4

It's working for me. I tried to torture it, but it hung in there. Periodically, VW seems to get overwhelmed and stops doing something, but usually restarting it fixes this. I'm working on 10.5.4 as well, on an iMac with SP3 and Machine Design. I know how frustrating things like this can be, so I thought I'd at least let you know I'd tried and it was working so far. ?M

Also... It seems like even after you delete the offending objects, the file will not recover full use of Flyover on any layer. It remains kaput.

Interestingly, if you move the boxes around without using the 3D Selection Tool or the perpendicular constraint, but instead just drag objects with the regular Selection tool in the different ortho views, the Flyover Tool is not affected. That's how I usually do this sort of thing, and it's why I never noticed this before.

I submitted this as a bug, but I wondered if anyone else has this experience, and it is to be expected: - Make a rectangle, extrude it. - Make smaller rectangle, extrude it. - Move the extruded boxes together in Top/Plan view, so that they overlap. - Go to Flyover and rotate into a 3D view. - Use the 3D Selection Tool with perpendicular constraint to move the smaller box upward a bit, so that it still overlaps the larger one, but its bottom is no longer level with the larger one. - Subtract Solids. :: The Flyover Tool will no longer work in Interactive Origin mode (though it will continue to work in Object Origin mode, Ground Plane, or Working Plane mode); no matter what further modifications you make to the model, including working in other Design Layers, Interactive Origin mode will no longer be available. Is this to be expected? Michael Young v2008 (SP3) OS 10.5.4

Here! Here! I agree.

Just wanted to thank everyone for the replies. Huge help. ?Michael Young

The other objects in the Solids palette are pretty interesting as well, all parametric (you can specify several of their features at creation and edit them in the OIP). You can bring in the whole Solids palette, do a screen capture of one of the icons in the Workspace Editor and haul it into Photoshop, make it 26x20, and use it for the icon. All new to me and pretty handy ? especially the parabolic solid and the box tool. ?Michael

Yeah, I do sometimes drag things into other layers or classes, but it's tedious and takes attention I don't want to give it. I was hoping I could just hide/unhide things. It seems like an obvious feature, and it's in the other apps I use, so I wondered how people got around it in VW.

Is there a way to hide things in the design layers? *Frequently* I want to do that. I make do by locking something or moving it with the Move tool a specified amount, like 6' or something, to get it out of my way. Is there an easier way? thanks ?Michael

It sounds like you want to investigate the Split Tool, the one that looks like a little X-acto blade. You draw it across a whole collection of things, and the part you want to delete goes away. The Trim tool, as it says in the tool bar when it's selected, just trims the span of a line between the lines that intersect it, whatever their selection state.

Ah ha. Thank you