jamesmise

Thank you. That explains it.

I've noticed that some objects in my DLVPs don't render in Open GL. I draw furniture in a separate file and use DLVPs to reference them. This keeps the class clutter to a minimum in my main drawing. All of the furniture renders fine in Fast or Final Renderworks and also in wireframe. But I lose some pieces in Open GL sometimes. Any ideas? Thanks.

Can anyone explain the practical use of this tool? I can't find anything about it, not even in the help menu. But it looks interesting.

The "none" class is your best friend. When in doubt, put it in the "none" class. Class it when it needs to be classed. Someone mentioned red paint or pine wood as classes. I would use textures, not classes, for these categories. So if a kitchen cabinet and a bathroom cabinet are both pine, they can exist in different classes but use a common texture. Edit the texture and all objects using that texture will be updated. I also have a materials class, sub-grouped into wood framing, glass, steel, plywood, hardware etc... If I build a cabinet showing the wood framing, plywood skin, countertop, hinges etc., I can select all these objects and group them. It is the group that would use the class "Lower Cabinet". Otherwise I would end up with a ridiculous amount of classes like this: Lower Cabinet-Framing Lower Cabinet-Plywood Lower Cabinet-Hinges Upper Cabinet-Framing Upper Cabinet-Plywood etc. etc. etc. Groups are a great way to hide and unhide stuff, even within objects. I also design a lot of furniture for theatrical sets that I've designed. I've found that designing the furniture in a separate file greatly reduces the class clutter in my main document. I import these pieces as design layer viewports on a layer called "Furniture".

The disappearing objects happens to me too sometimes. It might have something to do with your specific graphics card. You zoom with the mouse wheel and some of the objects disappear. But zoom in or out another click or two and they come back. When it starts happening, try re-opening the document or restarting the computer. I've found that closing the file and opening it again cures many nuisances.

I'm probably crossing over the line into Photoshop with this one, but it would be nice to do some airbrushing over the top of a rendering. Sometimes in theatre, we like to age things or distress them a bit. Right now, I export the rendering to Photoshop and do some touching up. But when my model changes, I have to repeat this process. Maybe include some other filters for adding character to a rendering. Especially important in theatrical rendering.

The current logging system could use an upgrade. It would be nice to find the total time spent in a specific file, instead of Vectorworks in general. Also, if no tools are clicked in the file for a period of time, the timer should stop. So when you go to lunch and leave your file open, you aren't logging that hour on the clock. This would really help when billing clients.

Thanks for your time. I've been wrestling with this from time to time for over a year. I'll play around with some IES data. Currently I have a 3-foot wash unit hanging behind a ceiling beam, on a 38 degree tilt. (There is no room to change the focus of this instrument. It will have a straight shot) Yes, I can draw the instrument and draw my 15 deg. beam spread and all that. But it would be so much easier to place the instrument, turn it on, and show the director and lighting designer the light spill on the set walls. This has worked with all the Source 4 instruments. If the lighting designer wants a specific shot, we could do it the old fashioned way and plan the shot with a section view and plan view. But its so nice to see the shot by hanging the instrument above the model, turning it on and rendering it. And then I blow them away further by inserting the exact gobo and gel color they want.

That's a good idea and I will start doing that. However, it doesn't help if you want to turn off one or two classes within a layer. You would have to reference the same layer several times with various classes visible in each instance of that same layer. For my situation, this might actually work because there are only a few variations of each layer that I need. But for a big project you might need many different copies of a layer, each with its own class visiblities selected.

2 questions. So we have hundreds of instruments in the Spotlight Entertainment library, every brand and model you can name, but they don't have IES data for anything that doesn't put out a round beam? The instruments in the attached screenshot are a Sellu64, 36 degree S4, and a varilite. Are you saying I can do something with the data on the Selador to get it to render more accurately? Also, could someone share the steps on importing IES data. So far I can't find instructions on that. Thanks for your feedback Michael.

Thanks. Unfortunately this type of instrument cannot be created in Vectorworks yet, no matter what the IES data says. Vectorworks only uses a single point source for lighting instruments. Here is a picture of a Colorblaze 72 from the Vectorworks library. In reality the source is 6-feet wide. But as you can see, the result is nowhere near what the actual beam of a Colorblaze would be.

I share the frustration. All design layer viewports have the same appearance in every sheet layer viewports. If you turn off a class in a design layer viewport, it will be turned off in every sheet layer viewport that includes that design layer viewport.

Can you post a file?

Any of the design series products, Architect, Spotlight etc.. give you many more useful tools. And I consider most of these tools to be "fundamental", but I guess they need to dangle those carrots in front of you to get you to upgrade. It worked on me! A simple tool like "rotate the ground plan" is not included in Fundamentals. Also, "select similar" where you can select objects by chosen attributes. The extra tools are a must. I cannot speak for tools specific to Architect only as I use Spotlight.

There are many to pick from in the Google 3d warehouse.

Thank you Mike! Redefining a view is a little easier than trying to type the same name exactly. Too bad there isn't a redefine option in the saved views section of the view bar. That would be convenient.

This problem seemed to occur when I referenced the same file many times. I'm desiging a living room/kitchen scene. All of my furniture has been drawn in a separate file and brought in as design layer viewports. This keeps all of those furniture classes from cluttering up the organization of my main drawing. It seems that after I created 6 or 7 viewports from my furniture drawing, the viewports started acting up. Some wouldn't render in open GL. The solution was to make a 2nd Furniture file so all my viewports are not coming from the same drawing. The chairs, sofa and tables come from one file. The kitchen cabinets, refrigerator etc.. come from another file. Also, remember anytime things start acting up, first try closing and reopening your file. Or try restarting Vectorworks, or even your computer. This has helped many times.

When I adjust the 2nd Beam Angle of a lighting instrument, the beam is drawn correctly (as an ellipse) but the rendered light of the primary beam angle is the only one shown. I'm trying to make a custom instrument that is actually a 3-foot by 3-inch LED wash fixture. An ellipse pattern throw would help me simulate its performance. What exactly is the purpose of the Beam Angle 2 and Field Angle 2 if they won't render? See attached image.

I'm not sure why some of my design layer viewports render in open GL and others don't. They render fine in fast or final renderworks.

I have a very basic graphics card and VW 2012 runs fine. I'm wondering if I upgrade to a top notch graphics card, will I be able to rotate with fast renderworks and retain the rendering while I rotate? Or does fast and final renderworks always switch to wireframe when rotating?

Answering my own post. I did read that Renderworks styles do not render 2D objects. I also found that when one layer is rendered with a Renderworks style, the other layers will not show up if they are rendered in other styles. I wanted to use Renderworks Artistic Taper Thick Black but it won't render my image props. So then I decided to make my image props black and white, place them on their own layer, and render them in Fast Renderworks. But the two render methods won't work together. Still trying.

I use lots of image props in my designs. But if I want to render a rough sketch in Artistic Renderworks, none of the image props show up. Any ideas? Thanks,

I noticed that Windows Skydrive is a free program with 7GB of storage.

And when I'm in a viewport and select "Edit design layer", why isn't the working plane that was active when the viewport was created available. If I'm going back to edit something in the design layer, wouldn't I want the same working plane?

You cannot assign a certain layer to activate on a page when you select a viewport. You could activate a layer, select a viewport and then make a saved view. That view will give you what you are asking for. For me, assigning all my viewports to the class "none" works well. There isn't really a reason to have viewports assigned to different classes, except maybe with design layer viewports. Hope this helps.