Disappearing residence

[pkeyes]

I've got a 3D model of a small house on a site, built up with layer links. It renders just fine with Open GL. However, when I try to use Renderworks, the house only appears when looking at it roughly from north to east. When viewed from any other direction, the house disappears, although the site features are still there. When I swtich to wireframe or Open GL from the same direction, the house reappears. The direction I am facing also affects whether I can see a rendered interior space; looking towards the southwest I can, towards other directions I can't. When I rotate around from the directions where it is flipping from visible to invisible, I get an apparent section plane cutting through the house, with those elements beyond the plane visible, and those in fron unvisible. Any thoughts? Thanks.

[propstuff]

That's creepy,

Have you checked that you havn't inadvertantly linked in something strange? Like a 3D section? or double linked something?

Updating to VW 10.5. fixed a few bugs (better print options for a start), but I don't know if that might help in this situation.

[ 07-19-2005, 04:38 PM: Message edited by: propstuff ]

[pkeyes]

Nicholas-

Thanks for the suggestion. I checked but couldn't find anything. I started another layer with new links, and the same thing happened. Luckily I had another layer with just the building modelled; I linked the site model to this and it all works fine. I'm assigning this bug to the category of things-I-will-never-figure-out-and-don't-have-the-time-to-pursue-amymore. Thanks for the attempt though.

[CipesDesign]

Hi Peter,

Is it possible that you have too much (or too many) light(s)???

[pkeyes]

Hi Peter-

Nope, that's not it - just an 11 am sun position at 97%, and one opposing point light at 75% to fill in the shadows. I just tried deleting both of them, and the same problem still occurs. As I said, this may just be a bug I never figure out, and I can just abandon this layer, as I have another layer with a model built with (the same) links on it that does work.

But thanks to a fellow Oregonian - I teach architecture up in Eugene. A few pics and a walk-through model of this house are up at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~pkeyes/Whidbeyhouse/house1.html.

Peter

[islandmon]

pkeyes, looking at your config. OSX3.9 and VW10.1 are a huge mismatch ! You'd be better off running Classic OS9 with VW10.1 than OSX.

Upgrade to VW11.5.1 asap.

[CipesDesign]

Cute house. I especially like the boat storage, as I am a fellow saiolor (O'day 222) as well as a fellow Oregonian.

[ 08-08-2005, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: CipesDesign ]

[islandmon]

pkeyes, I got a bad link on that URL. Please check and re-post it when you get a chance.thx

[islandmon]

pkeyes, I got a bad link on that URL . It works fine if you eliminate the 'period' at the end of the underscored line.

Very Kool design and tight programming. My only comment is that the exterior decks and stair do not appear to be seismic rated. Thanks for sharing your fine work.

[ErichR]

pkeyes,

I'm wondering by what means you are choosing your viewpoint, or what method you are using to view the model. Try this:

In Top/Plan view, go to View/Set 3D view.

Click and drag to the angle you want to view.

Set the viewing height equal to the other height (otherwise you will have parallax issues).

Use the Normal setting for the perspective. I've never been able to figure out, since MiniCad V4, or whenever, why the other options are there.

Adjust the viewing port to see more than is necessary.

Then use the Renderworks bitmap tool so that you can save the rendering. Click and drag to include what you want to be there.

By using the above method, you are almost guaranteed predictabled results.

[pkeyes]

Thanks to all for your comments. Glad you like the house - it's weird talking about content rather than process on this site! And thanks for the comment on the non-seismic decks. You are certainly right; they'rer still schematic at this point - I'm meeting with my engineer Friday to firm everything up.

As for the anomaly issues, we're still batting zero. As regards the mismatch between VW and OS 10.3.9, (I've now also gone to 10.4.2), I tried opening it with Classic, and Classic just doesn't see it. I've been using VW 10.1 for a couple of years, and have never seen anything like this.

I tried Erich's suggested procedure, and got the same anomaly. Usually, I just use the walk-through and flyover tools, but even with set 3D view, the house still goes missing from certain directions. I've looked through what I think are all the linked layers for some weird item that could be causing this glitch, but I can't find it. But as I said, I've got another linked model that is working just fine, and hopefully I'll never see this problem show up again.

Thanks again.

[michaelcobb]

I have the same issue with VW 11.5. Everything was going fine with my house. I had all the layers linked with exception of the site info. When I brought in the site model layer things started to act funny. OpenGL perspectives work okay but when I try any variety of renderworks (no textures, low resolution etc...) it still gives me a big blank. I vaguely remember this happening due to memory issues in previous versions. Interestingly when I look at it orthogonally in at least one side view it seems to work. Any new information on this problem.

[ 09-22-2005, 08:38 PM: Message edited by: michaelcobb ]

[islandmon]

Just one legacy PIO object is nuf to scrabble the memory address arrays of the underlying C++ code.

In otherwords a C++ Method fails to dealloc a piece of the code and subsequent procedures then cannot access that block for processing of the information. Or the information in the array is not passed as argument to the Method for rendering. I had this happen with the Table&Chair Tool. Everything worked just fine until my upgrade to v11 then the problems started to appear first with the rendering then as I added more objects to the file the kernel panics started.

One of the problems with the VW set-up is that for version compatibility the vss functions within Tools require that the name string of the Tools be the same ... making User identification of the versions more difficult.

I discovered the source of the problem by a one2one comparison of the Plug-ins between various versions from v10 > 11.5. I recommend this process to all Users.

[michaelcobb]

Wow. That is some heavy knowledge you have their my friend. Much resp? to that (as we say in California). Unfortunately I only have vectorworks 11 so I can't do the one2one that you speak of. This file isn't something that I created in another version. Its new with this one. But interestingly I did use an imported autocadd topo to establish the site model. In the process of putting together this file I did wind up deleting the DTM data a couple times. Could that be the culprit. Thinking about reconstructing this project in a new file. Worth it? Got elevations sections and plans so far. For some reason my email is still coming up as mike@ studioecesis.com. It should read mcobb@studioecesis.com. Gonna go change that now.

[islandmon]

Yes, start fresh and reconstruct the file via copy&paste testing each Layer's objects looking for artifacts & dups,etc. before adding the next Layer. Pay special attention to your Fonts and to any Acad symbols ( you may be surprised at what you find buried in the symbol ) & Hatches imported. As the Layers are successfully compiled add coordinate Loci to check the registrations. Save with each iteration.

[michaelcobb]

Well that worked like a charm. Good to hear I have your endorsement on the methodology. Always unsure if there's a better way. I've noticed you can't do too much tweaking of the DTM data without some problems. Its all about backing up I guess when you start doing that sort of thing.

Thanks for the help.