Materials not merging in elevations

[Will]

This is what the elevation is supposed to look like. Screenshotted form the PDF last time I issued the drawing.

 

I opening this drawing again today made some minor changes to road in an unrelated part of the project and this is what it looks like now with thick black seam line incorrectly shown between the ground and first floor. I've spent all morning trying things like moving walls around and various other tricks to try and get it to recognise that it's the same material in the same plane and it hasn't worked. I would have been quicker redrawing these in 2D now. Stuff like this happens on every other project. I've seen this elevation merge materials fail bug so many times now and it always shows up half way through a project when everything has been working perfectly previously. So frustrating.

 

 

[rDesign]

If you are using Vw2023 SP2, there is a bug regarding this issue. I have filed a big report, I hope it will be fixed soon.

I have rolled back to SP1 because of this bug — as this behavior does not happen in Vw2023 SP1, where the coplanar materials correctly do not show a line between them in Hidden Line.

 

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by rDesign

[line-weight]

On 12/20/2022 at 4:27 PM, Will said:

This is always the huge risk with BIM is that it works until suddenly it doesn't. It's one of the main reasons I've always had trouble selling the idea to older more experienced colleagues throughout my career.

Especially these kinds of issues that break completely essential and fundamental things such as elevations or sections.

 

In the 2D CAD paradigm the equivalent would be drawing a line and seeing it disappear or commanding to erase a line and nothing happening. Repeatedly and with no workaround.

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

Check and make sure that the walls on both floors are exactly aligned in Top/Plan view.  If they are then the dividing line should not show.  Even a small offset will cause it to show.

[Will]

48 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

Check and make sure that the walls on both floors are exactly aligned in Top/Plan view.  If they are then the dividing line should not show.  Even a small offset will cause it to show.

Hi Pat, I did already try moving the walls out of alignment and moving them back again, but in any case the walls shouldn't have been out of alignment because I haven't edited the walls in any way since the last time this worked properly. I'm pretty certain it's a bug in vectorworks; I'm 99.9% sure I haven't worked on this file since I updated from 2023 sp1 to sp2 so that would explain it. I will downgrade to sp1 and see if this works. This is always the huge risk with BIM is that it works until suddenly it doesn't. It's one of the main reasons I've always had trouble selling the idea to older more experienced colleagues throughout my career.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Will

[Pat Stanford]

I had forgotten about the SP2 bug with coplanar materials.  @rDesign gave you the correct information.

 

 

[Will]

This bug is back. Using 2025 update 2.1. First image with line circled below is another merge fail. I've tried all the troubleshooting steps above again. Nothing works.

This is a screenshot from the 3D model showing the ground and first floor walls which are perfectly coplanar as far as I can tell: