Drop to Working Plane feature

[tomhaupt]

I would like to see a command added that would drop 3d objects to any specified working plane (or the layer plane as well). For instance, after drawing a staircase in 3d, it would be so useful to be able to drop various components of the stairs onto a designated plane in order to prepare cut sheets and layout onto 4x8 ply sheets.

[Pat Stanford]

So for clarity, what you would actually like is to create a 2D (or I guess it could be 3D) "duplicate" of the selected parts on a selected Layer/Working Plane. You don't want to go to the effort of making the start and then have a command that will blow it up by moving those parts to a different plane. Correct?

[tomhaupt]

I attach an example file. In the file you will see I have drawn a simple cabinet. In order to determine the best layout of the parts on standard 4x8 sheets of ply material, I wanted to ungroup my cabinet, flip the parts around so they all would lay flat to the layer plane, and drop them to the rectangles representing my ply sheets. Breaking the parts out and flipping them around is easily accomplished. What I would like is to have a command to simply drop my parts on to the designated surface (in this case the ply rectangles). Since I draw primarily in 3d now, all the parts are at different Z heights. A command to drop all parts to the layer plane or chosen plane would be a real time saver. In the past, I have had other projects where that would also be a useful feature. As you will note, many of my parts are 'solid subtractions' or some 'solids' option. Such objects do not allow for setting the Z height in the OIP. And yes, they could be either 2d or 3d but since I would do a printout in TOP view, in this case, it would not matter. My aim is simply to be able to create optimized ply cut sheets more simply. VW has a similar tool in the Terrain modeling environment for dropping symbols to the terrain. That would be a lovely feature to add for many other uses other than terrain modeling. Hope this helps explain what I'm asking for.

 

I don't quite understand your meaning in the "You don't want to go the effort of making the start . . ." phrase.

1590966172_WalkInClosettoVWForum.vwx

[Pat Stanford]

"Making the STAIR". Not start. 🤦‍♂️  (I hate autocorrect). Making the Stair, to whatever other object you are making. You don't want to build the model and then have to blow it apart to make the cut sheet. You want duplicates.

 

And yes, this is a much better description of what you are asking for.  

 

Goes back to the old "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it."

[Matt Panzer]

20 hours ago, tomhaupt said:

I would like to see a command added that would drop 3d objects to any specified working plane (or the layer plane as well). For instance, after drawing a staircase in 3d, it would be so useful to be able to drop various components of the stairs onto a designated plane in order to prepare cut sheets and layout onto 4x8 ply sheets.

 

Is there a real need to do do this with the 3D objects or would the extrude source 2D polys work for you?  As long as you model the extrudes from the shape of the panel and extrude them by the plywood thickness, a script could very easily extract them and place them on the ground plane.

[tomhaupt]

Let me preface this with the fact that I am not a super user of VW; much to learn yet. I had not thought of trying the extract surfaces tool (if that's the one your meant), but I did try that. It does work well if the parts are a single extrusion of a rectangle. It does open the option to set the Z height,  but for my parts that are produced with solid subtractions consisting of dados subtracted from the extrusion or solid, the extract tool requires me to select a lot more surfaces to achieve my desired part TOP view with the dados shown. It certainly does work but seems like leaving them as 3d parts and dropping them to the plane accomplishes my desired TOP view without having to do so much selection of surfaces. My little cabinet is a copy from another layer. I placed the copy on a different layer so I could ungroup it for the parts.  If you have looked as my drawing, take a look at one of the inside faces of the cabinet sides that has several dados. It seems, using the 'extract' tool  and having to select all the multiple surfaces becomes a chore in itself. But I realize I may be missing something or misunderstood your suggestion.

 

I have yet to delve into writing many of my own scripts much but look forward to using those tools more.

[Matt Panzer]

6 hours ago, tomhaupt said:

Let me preface this with the fact that I am not a super user of VW; much to learn yet. I had not thought of trying the extract surfaces tool (if that's the one your meant), but I did try that. It does work well if the parts are a single extrusion of a rectangle. It does open the option to set the Z height,  but for my parts that are produced with solid subtractions consisting of dados subtracted from the extrusion or solid, the extract tool requires me to select a lot more surfaces to achieve my desired part TOP view with the dados shown. It certainly does work but seems like leaving them as 3d parts and dropping them to the plane accomplishes my desired TOP view without having to do so much selection of surfaces. My little cabinet is a copy from another layer. I placed the copy on a different layer so I could ungroup it for the parts.  If you have looked as my drawing, take a look at one of the inside faces of the cabinet sides that has several dados. It seems, using the 'extract' tool  and having to select all the multiple surfaces becomes a chore in itself. But I realize I may be missing something or misunderstood your suggestion.

 

I have yet to delve into writing many of my own scripts much but look forward to using those tools more.

 

OK.  Thanks for the clarification!  The approach I was thinking about would require the use of extrudes without solid subtractions or additions.  The idea was to extract a copy of the 2D object (that you used to create the extrude) with a scrip and lay it on the ground plane.  Since you're using solid operations, this will not work.  The Extract Surface tool was going to be my next suggestion.  There's no other built-in function I can think of for this.  A script could be written to simply drop a copy of the part to the ground plane but I don't know if it could be smart enough to know how to unrotate the 3D parts that are rotated off the ground place (eg: the vertical side of a cabinet) so it lays flat.