CS1

Great thanks for that Mike, didn't know there was a option for that, I shall try it.

Right under my nose. Theres an option below called "background render settings".

Right under my nose. Theres an option below called "background render settings".

Haha, I mean the sections of existing walls that are to remain and which locations are to be removed, and also new wall locations.

If you have SLVPs and they are set to "custom rendeworks", you would expect you could go up to View > Render > Custom Renderworks Options. But because your on a Sheet Layer all the render options are greyed out. You need to return to a DL, adjust the "custom renderworks" settings, then return to the SLVP and update. Am I missing something?

If you have SLVPs and they are set to "custom rendeworks", you would expect you could go up to View > Render > Custom Renderworks Options. But because your on a Sheet Layer all the render options are greyed out. You need to return to a DL, adjust the "custom renderworks" settings, then return to the SLVP and update. Am I missing something?

Thanks for that Chad, the only problem with locking is the plans are not final at the moment, im still going round and moving walls then undoing and trying other directions.

What about where you have a wall with two different claddings (textures)?

Sorry I don't mean "join" as in the tool "join", I have been stetching one wall into another or using the slit tool to cut one wall in to three and changing the class of the middle wall to say "removed" and then dashing. The walls seem to appear fine for a short time then all of a sudden all the walls that are joined like this shoot off the page. How are people doing plans for renovations with this problem? I start off with all my existing walls in a a class "existing remaining", then I go round the plan and trim section of these walls and change there class to "removed" so on my existing floor plan VP I can do a class override and show them as dashed and on my proposed floor plan VP I can hide them.

I have attached a file showing the problem. It happens whenever I join to walls in the same directions. The walls basically shoot off the screen an infinite amount.

Don't know the solution for your problem but I find VW often has random problems which require closing down and sometimes loose a fair amount of work so I have my backup set to save every 5mins and keep the last 12 backups, this way I have a backup every 5mins for the last hour. This isnt so great for large files but better then nothing.

In hindsight I regret my choice of titles

Thanks for that Mike, the slab tools is useful but you cant "clip surface" for stairs and lifts. Imagine with walls if we had to select all walls, convert copy to polygons, and then group with all the walls (hybrid) just so we could show them as a solid fill in plan view and brick in 3D. It feels like this is what is expected with floors. Having the same texture for all sides may not work for all buildings but I think it would be a hell of a lot better than the way it is now.

When I have a SLVP with an isometric view for example I adjust the scale to suite the size of the page. To do this I click on the scale drop-down box and scroll to "custom", I enter a figure (not one that is preset eg 1:50) lets say I enter 1:40. I can then click on the custom scale box and adjust the figure till I get the correct size, eg 40, 41, 42 etc as soon as I type in 50 (a preset scale) I loose the ability to then try 1:51. the custom panel is locked, I then have to click on the scale drop-down box and scroll to "custom" all over again, I have to do this every time I type in a preset scale. I would find it handy if this custom box wasnt locked, dont know if im alone on this. What is the advabtage of having it locked?

I can appreciate what your saying, but at the moment we can create walls, roofs, windows, doors, etc without using hybrid symbols. These all work in model and plan, at the moment there is not one tool that can create a floor that can do the same without using "hybrid symbols". I understand that the direction of this program is to ideally "draw it once", "hybrid" sounds great but all it is, is copy, "paste in place", extrude, select both and group, any change to the object requires doing the same process over again. We can set textures for walls to left right side, if the floor could just have top bottom and sides wouldnt this resolve 99% of the problem with the floor tool, couldnt the floor tool then be used with out hybrid. There maybe 1/100 jobs where the floor tool would need even more textures but then you could use hybrid symbols for that.

I see hybrid symbols as "work arounds" for tasks that the tools aerent able to complete fully. I have seen a fair amount of plans and details for buildings, machinery etc, and I think its safe to say people that draw plans (us) dont just use solid lines, the drawings would be a mess, why then are the basic tools not set up to cater for this? We dont we do this for walls or roofs or joinery. I would have thought floors would be the next tool to fix for software that is used to draw plans for buildings.

I believe it can be done... The floor tool does 1/3 of the requirements the extrusion tool does 1/3 of the requirements and it looks like the slab tool does the other 1/3. Why would anyone want to create 2 instances of the same object (hybrid, Extrusion for the 3D , 2D polygon for the 2D . Just to do soemthing that a dashed extrusion could do or a floor object that could have different on all sides. Im not doubting that there are numerous ways to create an object with 6 different textured sides (or more). But its like drawing 4 lines, joining them, grouping them to create a 2D square, why not use the rectangle tool.

Yeah thats a great point. It seems that with all the complex things that are possible with VW it cant complete the simple task of creating a single object (not hybrid object) that can look as desired in 2D and 3D, the user needs to either sacrifice one for the other or double up on objects. For what I use VW for I could almost imagine not using beam tools roof tools floor tools etc if the extrude tool could just do the above.

Ah the slab object cant recognize "clip surface" So stair wells and lift shafts cut be shown properly.

Haha thanks Pat(s) The slab tool is just what I need. So after looking at this it is possible to give 3D objects like this editable 2D attributes. Have you got any insight as to why extrusions dont have this ability?

I have had this problem occur randomly: I have a SLVP, I have changed the scale of the VP several times, when I now try to change the scale from say 1:100 to 1:50, the program has a bit of a think the scale changes for a bout a second then the scale just reverts to 1:1. PS. Im not talking about the scale of the page as I know that cant be changed for sheet layers. It seems if I close and restart the problem is fixed temporarly

Yeah I know there are numerous ways to create what Im after ( I wasnt asing for a dedicated deck tool). The problem is you either have to have hybrid objects or create using the joist tools etc. Why do we need to do this when there is a floor tool? Or why cant we just use extrusions? Extrusions are great you can create whatever shape you want and edit it but you only have full control over how it looks in 3D not 2D. A large number of users use VW for building plans, with floor plans we try to illustrate in 2D whats happening in 3D. I think it makes sense that if we are creating objects whose final presentation is going to be 2D on a printed plan we should have better control over there 2D attributes.

I want to create a free draining timber deck. I need it for the presentation and working drawing stages of my drawing. My first method was to create the decks using the floor tool. On the ground floor plans I can show the first floor deck outline above as dashed and also give the decking a hatch. However in the model only the topside has the decking texture the underside and edges do not. Ok the next method I tried is to use extrusions. In the model the texture is applied to the top, bottom and edges. Great. Now when I go the plan views I cant give th decking a hatch and I cant show the outline as dashed for my ground floor plans. What can I do????????? I know I can create to objects one 3D one 2D and class them seperately and give each different attributes and for each view do different class overrides or turn each class on/off for how I want it to appear, and every time I want to make a change to the shape I have to edit both the 2D and 3D components. But this is just a simple deck!!! Surely in 2008 there has got to be a better way??? I mean In VW we can create a 3D spiraled object which starts at 1mm diameter and scales out to 100mm diameter and then work out the volume etc. We can create models and show the suns progression through the year with moving shadows etc. Are you telling me this program can do all this and far far more but it cant give a dashed line to an extrusion or put a texture on the bottom of a floor object??? Surely not!

When you have a SLVP with openGL background render and say an isometric view, if you want to edit the view you enter the "crop" mode and rotate around the building or object to where you want, but as soon as you rotate the render changes to wireframe, so you have to exit, hit update, wait for it to render then re enter the crop mode and try again. Why is this? It is painfull!!!

Sorry I was thinking about VPs I have attached 3 rough PDFs showing 2D objects rotated with 3D objects, I generated the VPs wuickly without checking the height of the 3D objects so will look a bit funny, if the 3D objects were at "0" in the Z axis I think would look OK. Not sure if this method can be used to achieve your requirements with a bit of tinkering.