RickR

I'm trying to work in 3D, but not quite succeeding. Along the way I sometimes have to do renderings or at least sightline checks. So I'm doing as much 3D as possible. Too often I have requirements for 2D details that would be ludicrous to model in 3D. IE rigging hardware for installation of curtain tracks and electrics. So a hybrid method is necessary. I've been doing what you describe for in various programs for decades. But with smarter 3D it's beginning to be more workable. Can save a lot of time with Spotlight elements.

Which also means a Material must have several ways of display: 2D plan fill/hatch, 3D Hidden line hatch/pattern, Rendering texture, section cut...

You might try an object. I've done a couple of things with the old text in symbol approach. From the records I can generate tables and counts.

Aha! Unified view was not tripping me up, but your comment triggered further thought. The DLSVP presented the ground plan as across the screen. Since you can not rotate a hybrid object I got stuck.(DLVP not aligned) I've now come up with 2 ways. At first I rotated the floor plan But I don't like having to shift the section from 0,0 nor working "sideways" on most stages. A 3rd Design layer seems to do the trick. I've created a DLVP of the floor plan to move and turn as I want. I'm still curious what others are doing... But I'm glad to have the help.

I found a "legacy" label tool. It auto increments a number surrounded with a polygon. I'm not using it anymore, but it should still be hiding in the workspace editor.

I can use some help duplicating a traditional plan and section workflow using as much 3D as possible. I thought Design Layer View Ports would do this, but they don't. Because they rotate and change view with the rest of the file, I can't get what I want. The issue is seeing both plan and section at once, and aligned. This video describes the goal in detail and why I want to do it - My old technique had me drawing the section manually. Or using a DLSVP and converting it into lines so I can rotate it separately from the plan. It's very time consuming and prone to error. The only other option seems to be using Sheet Layer Veiwports and annotation. The problem there is that annotations can be very awkward. What are others doing?

7-ML-29870-ML- This isn't necessarily installation specific and will get more traffic in the General Discussion area.

NVIDA has a new driver for my Quadro card. It's specifically for ACAD; http://www.nvidia.com/object/AutoCAD_PD_workstation.html Will it do me any good? Do you have any recommended settings for various video? From way back, I always figured nonAD software had to be more compliant, so general settings worked beter. Is there any truth in that?

I have found 2 issues. * Moving the origin can cause problems. I have taken to always moving the objects to the orgin. * Location functions in worksheets are for the object center, rather than the insertion point. Note that the "Round" function can come in very handy here. It does seem odd to me that the OIP data is not available. Location is the single most important data for a CAD object.

Nice try. I am the administrator. Tech support had the answer - as ususal. Dell "Control Point Manager" software! I've had issues with it on other machines, with other software. Remove it and all is fine.

I fiddled with this until tech support went home. :mad: Brand new machine - Windows 7 32bit pro, Intel i7 quad core, 4GB, NVIDA Quadro 1800 workstation class - yeah! Install from disk - seems fine run program - NOTHING! after a bit of fiddling in find the minidump files for the times I tried to run VW.Re-install/ remove / reinstall/ remove/ reinstall/ remove Quicktime etc. Any suggestions to let me get some work done?

I don't know if it was the 2010 upgrade or my brain got upgraded... but it took me way too long to come up with these very simple worksheets. So I offer them to VW newbies in hopes of saving them the time. The worksheets are a load calculation by circuit and a fixture count by symbol name. They should be easy to change to meet personal preferances and/or many other needs. The attached file is the simplest light plot in history.

Like drawing coordination and part of it. All viewports should create a saved view with their current properties. If I change the crop then the zoom/pan factors in the saved view will be changed. Drawing lables, Elevation and section markers should be objects connected to their viewports. BTW: This might require allowing the same name for parts. A floorplan design layer, has a viewport/saved view that becomes a drawing on a sheet. Why can't they all have the same name? I keep having to name my views with the word "view" etc.!

That is so obvious I'm surprised it didn't happen when the sheet coordination was created. And of course double/right clicking on an elevation marker sends you to the elevation view.

Not more than necessary, exactly what we want! What is necessary is to do whatever is necessary when we decide it is needed.

Yes! Just the pure simplicity would be wonderfull. Not having to sort out how the other folks created their files would be nice too.

Check for spaces or other hidden charaters in front of the unit numbers. Almost all records are text formated so will sort by ABC rules.

My request is a fixture lable that can show up in a section/elevation view. There seem to many near solutions to the problem of working with lights vertically arranged, but shown in a plan view. Light booms, double hung fixtures, ladders and the like. To my view the "correct" solution is to use an elevation/section/vertical viewport placed beside the plan view of the lights. Of course this is traditional hand technique. If everything is truely tied together and there is only one PIO for every light, then editing is dramaically simplified. The drawback is that the fixture lable needs to show up in the elevation- not in plan view. I can't be the only one that's thought of this.

FWIW: I found out how to change the symbol for a legend. It's really easy when you think about it... Go into "Lable Legend Manager" and go to edit the layout. While there, select the symbol and click on "Replace" in the object info pallet. Just basic VW methods.

Everything you say Sam make complete sense to me. If I was doing full time production LD work then I wouldn't have even bothered with this issue. Your point on the liability of weights is just a sign of our societal standards. I did have a thought on what might be a simple way to handle basic sums. Since I've yet to learn vectorscript I would appreciate your view, before I tackle anything. 1. The basic "limitation" is the field formating. So we create a record format that has numeric feilds where we want them. Even I can do that! 2. A script copies the data from the PIO and standard records to the new record. I would even avoid trying to parse it out to keep it simple. Maybe I would generating a warning to help avoid unintentinal values. If text is in the data then sums won't work - Fine! 3. Create a worksheet based on the new record. It's no longer 2way or auto updating, but at least it's all in one place. Of maybe I just buy into LW... Do you know if VW Architect has anything on this issue? I know it has some electrical functions, but I never did get a detailed description of what they are. Anyway, thanks for the efforts.

>>sum weights by positions. Yet another basic usage one would think should be built in. Yes Excel & LW do this stuff in a heartbeat, but what's the point of integrated data if you always have to import/export?

See thread http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=106449#Post106449 and many others trying get sums of data, not summations. Anyway, I want to total up lighting wattage. Blown dimmers are not fun. It might be as simple as changing the lighting device PIO to use a numeric format for wattage! Many other electrical calcs would be appreciated as well. I.e Voltage drop, Watts per area, Zonal cavity lighting, even pricing calcs can be handy while drawing.

I appreciate the offer, but you nailed the issue. I'm using the "Lighting Device" and the feild is text and therefore un-addable. Perhaps I should abandon Spotlight features and just make a simple record and a simple worksheet. I'm still defining my workflow, and do a lot of different types of drawings so flexablilty is an issue. Can the PIO be tweaked? WHY make it text field? Dimmer and circuit, color and many other commonly numeric fields I can see being text. But wattage is a measurement as much as length or area. Overloading is something everyone in lighting has to worry about. How can this basic element be missing? What do you use to keep track of loads? I didn't see anything like this in AutoPlot. I see a lot of references to 'LightWright', but I'm doing more architectural work than theatrical, so that would be overkill. BTW: I just pointed a collegue to your chain hoist tools. He was asking me about making something, and I knew I couldn't do it right. He loves it all, but is a little overwhelmed, as he is a CAD novice... He tried to use it without reading the instructions! Hmm, a note on the wish list?

Added details: If setup the worksheet in the image. Then what happens when the fixtures on a dimmer aren't all the same? I need to keep this in VW so it all updates as I go. I could do this in 10 minutes in Excel. I would think totaling up materials would be built in, and simple.

How about combining the issues? Make a PDF of the DWG/DWF/DXF/whatever using ACAD tools for authenticity. Then reference the snapable PDF. As a consultant I would much prefer to supply PDFs in the first place.