Kaare Baekgaard

Just installed VW 12 on my new home computer - an Imac with OSX Tiger. I cant get the rotate tool to work on this computer. The problem is, that the tool ignores keyboard input in the toolbar angle field. But on my job computer - a dual 1,8GHz G5 with OSX 10.3.9 the same tool seems to work just fine - but here I do not get the same options in the toolbar as on my home computer. (rotate duplicate/rotate in screen plane/plus a tool, I can't remember) Am I really dealing with two different tools, that look similar? Or does the same tool work different on these two systems? Is there a fix for the dysfunction on my home Mac, which is quite disastrous?

Hi Nicholas Very nice renderings indeed! No 2: I have tried it - and to good effect. But I find that it seriosly slows down rendering times on my machine, don't you? If not, maybe you have found something I haven't. No 5: This just kills my machine (dual 1.8 GHz G5) With the old Studiopro I liked glowing surfaces, because it allowed me to be rather lazy with my lighting. Add a little glow here and there and hokuspokus you've got a nice, flashy rendering.

Just got my copy of VW 12 A lot of good stuff - and overall I like it . But still: '1. Smooth transitions on polygonbased meshes (with option for setting smoothing angle)' This is actually fairly critical... '2. Environmental map' Nope - still just a backdrop '3. soft-edged shadows' Yesss! '4. copy/paste or drag'n'drop from within texture dialogues' Same ol'e same ol'e - sigh. '5. Emission or glow factor as texture parameter instead of just 'constant'.' Havent found that one yet either So one up and four to go (- is that the right expresion?) If it is not too hard, perhaps you can grant at least the first wish in the next update (smooth transistions). The 3ds import function has put me in contact with a lot of free props for my renderings. But they are not fun to use, if they look all jagged. My Strata Studiopro from 1994 had this feature. That was almost 12 years ago!

I've got a well-modeled regular bike - you may be able to use it as template

I use keyboard input. Do you know, that you can use the numeric input field as a calculator? In the angle field (is that the right term?) just write 30+25 for instance. Where 30 would be the angle of your previous segment and 25 the relative angle of the new segment . VW will calculate the result for you and restrain the new segment to the correct angle.

I cant wait to get my hands on this nice piece of ... software. It seems to be loaded with genuine improvements - thank you NNA. As a product designer, I think the 'designer' package is not quite what I could wish for - I still miss an industry series software product, that specifically adresses my profession. As you know, the devil is in the detail so I will probably soon be back with more complaints :-)

Yess

scottwojda, I have done this several times without problems - are you sure, the colour is set to white and no other surface in front of it? If you can't solve it, you may want to use the translucency reflection.

I have used Stratas Studiopro for some years until the export/import functions got too muddled to be practical. Now I am using Animationworks. But I have to say at a loss of animation quality. It's much faster to do all work within Vectorworks, of course, but AW lacks the ability to control 'ease in' and 'ease out' to my satisfaction. As a result, the animations get an abrupt character. I wasn't pleased with the first version of the Cinema 4D export filter, and haven't tried the second, but if you want a highly professional look to your animations, that's the only way to go. AW is cool for everyday jobs, though.

Also Mac-base and never a problem... Sorry Retondo. Travis: You may want to take a look at the application PDFCompress. I print to PDF using system software, and then make a compressed version for review by dropping the output on PDFCompress. It's a lot faster than using destiller, but I get less control, of course.

I second that - filleted corners ought to render with a solid line placed right in the middle of the fillet. For a present version fix, I ungroup the rendered viewports and edit the resulting content by hand.

Either the file is huge or there is some kind of fault. If everything else fails - render and export the images one by one, then import them into a new sheet. 300 dpi is often more than necessary. I use 144 dpi for everyday jobs and 216 for 'extra nice' presentations.

Well - I solved it myself :-) The deal is: Batch convert the CAL files in GraphicConverter into tiff-files. Use Super Get Info or similar to change the surname from .tiff to .CAL (can't do in Finder - you will end up with xxx.cal.tiff, where the .tiff is hidden). Replace the original files - and bingo!

Just recieved a bunch of DWG's - for every DWQ, there is a rather large CAL file. When I open it in Illustrator, it claims, that the files are linked, but it can't read the linked file. Importing into VW, the message I get is: 'unable to create a graphics importer for the file. Quicktime may not have an importer installed etc.' - But I have all of Quicktime installed. I can open the the .CAL file easily in Graphic Converter - and its a bitmap blueprint, but resaving in a different format makes VW loose the link. Any idea as to how to cheat the program into accepting the graphics files?

A survey from NNA regarding wish list items would be nice, and I would definately take the time to answer it in detail. I have wish list entries dating back to 2001, that are still relevant today, and have yet to be fulfilled ? like the simple feature to be able to tab into the object info palette without clicking it first. It does'nt sell many licenses, but it makes life a lot easier.

>and NOT necessarily as a rendering tool later (that will be another day)< A fast way to get both is to import the image as an image prop, disable auto-rotate and rotate the prop to fit the ground plane, then import the image again as a simple 2D image, scale and fit it to the prop, select both and convert them into a symbol. Now you have an image-ground-plane in 2D as well as in 3D.

Sometimes when I do batch renderings, some of the output jpegs are cropped with a white 'frame', which is a real pain... Gov, I think you may want to consider which objects are clearly visible in the renderings, and which are not. I often have two versions of the same symbol objects - one for the foreground and one for the backround. It gives you the option to economize with the memory. By creating a couple of extra classes, you can also hide away a lot of surplus objects, that are not visible in the individual rendering.

'Multible extrude' is a rudiment from pre-nurbs versions of VW. I believe it is worthwhile to update it. The better alternative might be to imrove 'extrude along path' tool to include extruding between two different shapes along a single path. By the way: Has anyone ever had much use of the 'create surface from curves' comand? Unless the curves are completely planar, I never seem to get the required acuracy for intersecting curves. I could use some kind of helper to get the curves touching each other.

You have to make an individual image for greyscale mask - use a copy of the original image to create the mask. Offhand I can't remember wether white or black is the transparent colour, but a grey will give you semitransparent.

'Access the Images directly from Photoshop via filepath browser' Huh?

I have a wish list entry for the ability to rotate textures globally. Hopefully it will be implemented in version 12.

Use convert copy to lines instead. The command will invoke a dialogue, where you can get a hidden line result.

Use the Vectorscript Plug-in Editor.

You should take a look at the refraction value of your glass texture. Given that the 'liquid' is in fact modelled to fit inside a glass with a thickness, I think this could be the cause of your problem. Try setting the refraction value to zero. If this fixes the appearance, you can try increasing the refraction to a point, where it looks right.

Do the objects, that disappear have solid fill ? Sometimes it is not enough to change the class setings globally and you have to select the objects and turn on their fill. Is the classes of those objects set to 'visible'?