Kaare Baekgaard

Hi Jim The chair is beginning to look good, but I have had to restart the same subdivision 15-20 times from scratch to get it right. One reason for this is, that there is no tool that does the opposite of the 'edge split tool'. I sure wish, there were, because it would allow for a lot more trial and error. This great new tool would remove a ring of cage edges, where the edge split tool adds one. Does that make sense to you?

I am getting some experience with subdivisions and it has already found its way into a couple of product designs. At this moment am using subdivision to model a regular chair. I have the end result in sight, but I have had to redo the crucial part a few time to establish the right order of events. I have a wish, that I hope can be granted: It is my understanding that the cage of the subdivision is the 'actual' geometry – and that the geometry, that I see is really the product of some sort of calculation. I wish, I could tick some box in the OIP to see only the cage – with rendered surfaces if I am in a rendering mode. The reason for this wish is, that it is very hard on a computer monitor to judge whether a twisted and bent subdivision surface is fair and harmonic to look at in real life. The cage actually gives a better clue than the surface itself. So I wish I could see an isolated rendition of the cage – also when the subdivision object is deselected – and that I could snap to the points and lines of cage.

I just tried to find a suitable texture in the Arroway libraries only to find, that none of the Arroway wood textures appear to be seamless. That is kinda the only imperative criterium for a wood texture: Seamlessness. These libraries reflect poorly on NNA and Arroway, which I guess are two guys in a shed. I dont need 250 wood textures, that are useless. I need 25 good ones – so that is my wish. Please dump the rest, so I don't have to look at them ever again.

OK, thanks for the response.

After a complete reinstall of VectorWorks, the application feels compelled to give me tips all the time: "Did you know.... " The only tip I really, really need is on how to disable this annoyance once and for all, but I cannot seem to find this option. Can anyone help me here?

I make the comment about the Section Solid alternative, because I tend forget how versatile it is myself. If I start out with a solid primitive of some sort, it will never become a faux solid – even if I use a faux solid as a cutting tool. So if you take your failed faux solid and place it inside a real solid cube, you can sometimes section-solid yourself to a real solid just like that. You may still have problems with fillets, but it is no longer hollow. The Section Solid tool can cut with open and closed solid objects – as well as with basic surfaces. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxL3Oyph55RRaHJKRWNVTFlaYTA/view?usp=sharing

I would hate to loose the ability to add-solid collections of nurbs surfaces, because I make my living from doing that. But I see your point about faux solids. The OIP gives no indication as to whether a solid is open or closed – and it should – so that would be my wish. The stitch and trim command produces poor solids, because it trims the nurbs surfaces involved – and adjoining trimmed nurbs surfaces inside solids will often (always) cause problems, if you use the resulting objects in further operations. So I recommend using the section solid command instead whenever you can – and you usually can. Perhaps you have overlooked, that you can use the (2D) connect/combine tool to join 3D untrimmed nurbs surfaces?

To be fair, it is quite easy, if you just want to use a photometric file provided by a manufacturer – or one of these free samples: http://www.mrcad.com/download-free-ies-lights/ But there is no preview inside VW, because it is not a proper ressource.

I wish custom lightsources based on photometric datafiles would be ressources just like textures and HDRI's I wish that custom lightsources would have a separate dialogue window (in addition the OIP) with all controlable options like 'lightsource opening dimensions' etc. – I wish that there would be a suitable preview of the lightsource in this dialogue window - and maybe even the ability to edit the raw data of a custom light ressource in a VW spreadsheet The custom lightsource is a truly great VW feature that I do not use often enough. So I tend to forget that they are so fantastic. If they were ressources, they would be easier to handle and I am sure that I would use them a lot more.

+1 as in this thread https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=42641&Number=212478#Post212478

+1

Hi Jim This was not fixed in SP1 – and I just realized that I cannot batch render projects with individual layer lighting settings. This is a rather serious setback in my workflow, so I ask, that fixing it gets higher priority.

Sometimes it's the geometry, sometimes it's the textures and sometimes it's the lighting that adds rendering time. I can see how this wish could be very difficult to implement. How about a separate palette called 'Analysis' which displays a smiley. When nothing is selected, the happiness of smiley reflects the overall complexity of the current document with indicators for geometry, textures & lighting. If I select a single object, I will get a complexity indication for that object alone. If I select a viewport, I will a complexity indication for the scene.

Sorry for the rant, Jim There is a work-around that fellow sufferers should know about: Draw a little square in front or top view. Extrude the square to zero height and place it, where you want the origin of the texture to be. Use the 'send to back' command on the square and add-solid it to the object, that you want to use the atribute mapping tool on. Now the origin of the texture will orient itself to the square. After using the tool, enter the solid and delete the square.

I hate that every attempt to use the Atribute Mapping Tool on anything other than square objects becomes a battle, that I loose: Click-drag click click click-drag click click #∞'*&dam itclick drag click click *§hit click drag click click click click-drag click click #∞'*&hell click drag click click *§uck click drag click click click –– ...and the texture is still nowhere near the place, I need it to be. The cylinder and sphere mapping types are singularly appalling beyond all comprehension. I wish this tool would work.

Could you show us a rendering created with the method that you describe?

OK... It is on a Mac with OS 10.9.5. I can import the image, but all I get in the image field of the Edit Image Bump dialogue is a black square.

There is a minor bug in image bump maps in VW2016: It should work with many different formats, but it only accepts jpeg.

For Mac users there are two inexpensive apps, which are quite good: Super Vectorizer will probably always be better than any buit-in tracing function and it exports to DXF. PdfGrabber translates pdf drawings into DXF's without making a mess of it.

Right now point clouds are sort of stand-alone objects, that do not interact with any tools. But seeing that the Clip Cube works on a point cloud, it is reasonable to assume, that the Create Contours tool could also be tweaked to work on point clouds. I wish it would, because I could then make elements of a design fit onto or into geometry defined by a point cloud.

You are onto something, Benson Shaw. But there is a flaw in how VW handles 2D polylines, that would have to be fixed first. If I fillet a corner where a curved segment meets another segment at an angle, the curved segment will change its geometry dramatically. It has been true for so long, that I suppose we all just sort of forgot about it. I wish, that the programmers would fix that, so that I could +1 your wish.

Thank you, Jim I use separate scaling of separate layers in almost every document. I am horified by the notion, that I would have to do without.

I could only partially do so, Jim. I had loaded the history tree of two of the objects with so much stuff, that I got lost and had to do some changes in the regeneration. The lampshade, however, is a clean regeneration back to its original structure: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxL3Oyph55RRR1h5Tm9DUWFlNmM/view?usp=sharing

I stripped this backup down to a single layer with an example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxL3Oyph55RRbWpqRXRJbkowbkE/view?usp=sharing

Reset all Plugins did not do the trick. The problem is almost always the fillets - but sometimes I have to go deep into an object to find the culprit, which means unddoing a number of fillets.