Trim

[Carl Burns]

I think there are some improvements (the trim tool is quick and easy to use now) and some losses in the trim methods in 9.0.1, for my work. I have seen a lot of wishes for the return of the old control-T (win). I hope NNA can spare some concerted thought on this...there seem to be many sorts of trimming situations and now a number of trimming tools here and there around the program. Not pretending to take the time to do it here, I think it would be great to see the trimming better organized / centralized and extended to handle the requirements people propose.

[P Retondo]

Carl,

Check out the General Discussion forum, item titled "trimming with arcs/circles," for a thorough discussion of working around the loss of <Ctrl+T>.

[stella]

I don't know if 9 has it, but I would love to see a 'fence' option in trimming, like in AutoCad, where you can select a cutting edge, then draw a line through a number of objects, all of which will trim back to that edge. It can be a bit of a pain having to pick each object to trim if there are a lot of them!

[P Retondo]

quote:

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Originally posted by stella:

I don't know if 9 has it, but I would love to see a 'fence' option in trimming, like in AutoCad, where you can select a cutting edge, then draw a line through a number of objects, all of which will trim back to that edge. It can be a bit of a pain having to pick each object to trim if there are a lot of them!

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Stella,

I'm a bit confused by your mention of both "fence" and "line / edge", but the following would apply to either kind of trimming object:

In VW 8.5 you can select a trimming object (line or polygon)and use <Ctrl + T> to trim all lines or arcs that intersect it. Use a group to exclude objects from being trimmed. A circle or an arc will only trim lines.

In VW 9 there is no <Ctrl + T>. However, as with VW 8, the "Intersect Surface" and "Clip Surface" tools will do substantially what you are looking for. You control the objects to be modified by selecting only those objects to be trimmed, plus a polygon or circle that serves as the "fence." The fence must be the "top" object (<ctrl + F> to bring it to the top).

The "Intersect Surface" cuts the selected objects at the polygon or circle that is on top - with lines, only the interior portion remains, but for other types you have to delete the original. Arcs are converted to closed polylines. Clearly this could work better, but the tool was not really intended to do a trim.

The "Clip Surface" tool deletes the portions of all object inside the "fence."

VW 8.5.2 and 9.0.1

Win 2000

[This message has been edited by P Retondo (edited 10-07-2001).]