lineweight

I'm getting weird stuff happening with my wall joins on curved walls. In plan, it's a nice clean connection. In hidden line, apparently my joins are blowing through the wall. :\ Anyone else experiencing this?

Pat, thanks. Somehow something got out of whack. I used the "Align Layer Views" and everything worked out.

Hi all, I am working on a school project. I was at school, working on it, shut off my computer, went home, opened it back up and in that time span, VW 2010 decided to become finicky with snapping to layers below each other. More specifically, I have 3 layers: A diagram layer informing design, 1st floor building layer, second floor building layer. When working on the 2nd Floor and it is the active layer, the cursor will not snap to anything outside of that layer. My wall attributes and classes are not acting appropriately (my wall class that I have set up is poched and none of the walls that are selected to that class are poched, even though they are using "class attributes." I have "show snap others" on in layer prefs, and "show snap modify others" for my class prefs. If I toggle my layer prefs, there is no change snapping. Now, if I select my 1st Floor as the active layer, it snaps to everything as it should, EXCEPT for my 2nd Floor. So it seems that the second floor is problematic. Thoughts?

I have an issue with curved walls and keeping them connected. I have a VW 2009 file that has been updated to 2010. A] My walls aren't connecting in this document and B] If I create a new document with a curved wall, then move another wall in that curved wall it becomes disconnected. Thoughts?

Hi Peter, Thanks for the response, but unfortunately that isn't cutting it for me. This is frustrating because I have a curve, start height and end height. I simply want to sweep a rectangle down to a zero height...something very simple to do in other modeling programs, but I can't figure out how to do this here...

Hi, I'm trying to model a ramp, but maybe my mindset is wrong. How does one create a ramp that sweeps along a profile curve (starting at 0 and going to a height of 1000mm). Or how do you sweep a rectangle (1200mm wide x 1000mm high) along a curve with an end height of 0. Attached is the image of the drawing. Thanks!

Yes, I have Cinema4D. I bought the student edition and am working hard at understanding the program. It's a bit of a doozy (very in depth and a different way of looking at modeling). Blender is open source (free) and apparently just as good, from all the work I've seen come from it. The advantage to using Blender is that it costs nothing, versus Cinema 4D is about $1500 plus $500 per module you get (MoGraph, Hair, Sketch and Toon, Advanced Render, Thinking Particles etc). For a basic package to build/render you'll spend easily over $2000. On the flip side, it's an OUTSTANDING program...though they need to really improve some snapping, distribution/moving and measurement functions in the program for the architecture and industrial design world to really enjoy it! Feel free to email me if you have any other questions about it.

Cinema4D has a "hypernurbs" function, where you can push and pull poly-surfaces. Blender should be able to do the same. C4D works well with VW. Blender should be able to do a 3DS export for VW to handle.

I would consider modeling something like this in a program such as Cinema 4D, 3DS Max, or Maya. In these programs it's very easy to "box model" or push and pull polygons. VW handles 3D geometry very differently, comparatively speaking. Sketchup, unless they have improved their curvilinear geometry, isn't a wise choice either (in my opinion). The 3 programs I mentioned first all have ways to "dress" models as well -- learning curves in these programs are pretty intense, as I have found. It's a total change of your "modeling mindset." What is the end result you want? High quality renders of a sculpture, or are you adding these to an architectural model as details?

Awesome! Thanks!! Now is the default of VW to always center on the "world" center? Even if I change the 0,0 of the rulers, it seems to default on the original working plane.

I'm curious if there is a way, after creating a 3D object to have VW automatically center on the built object? Basically, the scenario is this: If I am modeling an object from the front view, and I move to the left view or an alternate angle, the object is frequently off the screen and I waste time trying to find the object in space. I'd like to eliminate this step. When I model in Cinema 4D, I can hit "O" or "H" and have the screen essentially snap to my object, but I haven't figured out how to speed this process up in VW. Thanks in advance!

Hello, Has anyone had any issues with this trackpad fix for Mac OSX 10.5.6? I'm still regularly having issues where the entire drawing DISAPPEARS from the screen. It's not as frequent as before the fix, but it's a demonstration that the fix hasn't completely resolved the issue. Any thoughts/feedback would be great! Thanks!

gmm18: You're right that the Workspace is Designer. I actually started out learning in the wrong workspace a few years back and just became used to it. I found that when i changed to the Architect workspace, things got shuffled around in the menus and became very frustrating to relearn, as i typically didn't have the time/patience to at the time. I should probably take the time now while i can. When you say "replaced my user preferences folder" did you just delete the old one? michaelk: That may be a "quick fix." I just get frustrated with the fact that i would even have to do that. That sort of stuff drives me up the walls... I would very rarely get the problem in VW 2008, particularly when using a file for 10 hours straight. More commonly i would get snapping errors where VW seemed to get sloppy/fussy with its snaps. I computer restart would resolve this.

Okay..."track pad" fix script worked. I'll pass this on to the other students at UNM. Perhaps maybe a moderator can stick that to the top of the page until a service pack remedies the problem?

A quick note, this was happening using a BlueTooth mouse and the trackpad. I'm looking into this trackpad fix now to see if that is the culprit.

I am curious if anyone has this issue that i am having. I have just upgraded to VW 2009. It looks nice and for the most part i appreciate some of the new changes. But basically, i haven't been able to really USE Vectorworks because i can't really draw in it. ...At all. I am up to date with the latest version VW 2009 SP2. My MacBook Pro is running 10.5.6. The problem i am having is, if i draw a line, zoom in or out, the line disappears. Then i pan (spacebar) and the line shows up again. I start drawing another line, maybe zoom in, or out while doing this, or after the line was drawing and everything gets glitchy/gone missing again. I pan and it shows up again. I have tried this on a separate MacBookPro running the same version, and the same thing is happening. In my preferences i have Quartz Imaging selected, and Anti-Aliasing unchecked. I have toyed around with changing the settings, checking and unchecking zoom line thickness, etc. Nothing seems to help. ....so, in short...i can't use Vectorworks to draw. Pretty disappointing....

PDF is locked for editing because i am using a student, using a student version. (For the record Nemetschek, i'd be down for paying up to $500 for a "Student Edition" that was unlocked and fully functional that was a 3 year license or something that i could then put towards a pro-rated full license). Anyway, after contacting support and not getting any help i have figured this out. So, this is for the record, if anyone else is having this issue. It SEEMS that the answer is to create a viewport and export to EPS from the viewport. When this happens, the line weights are accurate to within .01 of Illustrator's stroke weights. Before i would snap an EPS from a model layer and then have to rework all my weights in Illustrator. So, viewports are the way to go!!

Hi guys. Thanks for the replies. It looks like it was a class issue. ...silly mistake on my behalf!!

I don't know. I have officially stopped using VW for rendering. Cinema 4D simply destroys it. ...but as i might have mentioned earlier, scale is weird in C4D.

Hi, I have two VW files. One has a layer of drawings on it. The other has a layer that i want said drawings on. How do i get one set of drawings into the new document. Copy/Paste doesn't work. Thanks!!

I recently started using C4D. It DESTROYS the rendering VW can do. The modeling is much nicer too. The problem is, it's not as accurate in terms of creating geometries and it doesn't handle feet/inches well. In my perfect world, i would have a merge of C4D and VW. I was using Artlantis for a while for rendering, but it loses to C4D too.

I started using VW religiously at my school. Another one or two classmates used it and the next thing we knew everyone in the school was getting it. I think a lot of people are pretty happy with it...at least the Mac people. I think you should go for it. AC is good to know, on a Mac VW is the way to go!! That rhymed.

Hi there, I contacted VW support a while ago about this issue and haven't had much luck, so i turn my direction here. I am exporting vector drawings to EPS so i can put my graduate tech studio boards together. The line weights that i have been caressing in VW are exporting at ridiculously thin values into Illustrator. Has anyone had this issue/resolved it? My 0.25 and 0.18 lines are thinner than human hairs when printing out of Illustrator. I can BARELY even see them in the Illustrator files. Thoughts?

No. I used the stair tool, in this instance. Depending on the design, i'll typically use it. I guess what happens when you use the stair tool, is that when you drop in the stairs, the tool automatically creates two classes for your stair - a 2D class and a 3D class. *shrugs* That's the only way i can explain it, because when i had my "Stairs" class that made as an active class, i only would see the 2D stair, no matter my point of view in 3D. So, after i activated all 50 classes in my document or so, i would see the stairs in 3D again. ...just have to isolate that class now.

VW is relatively bug free for me. Typically i have weird instances occur IN the program rather than catastrophic failure. I'm a little annoyed with a current glitch where sometimes i am in group view and i zoom in to fix something a little and EVERYTHING outside of the group that i SHOULD be able to see disappears, then i zoom out two "clicks" of my mousewheel and it all appears again. So, it's just minor stuff. Also, i find that if i am working in VW for a long time in one session, the snapping gets a little weird and inaccurate.