Sweep command no longer works

[MGuilfoile]

Using VW2023 these days, but in the past, whenever I wanted to sweep a collection of 2D shapes (or a single shape) I would create my profile, place a 2D locus where I wanted the center of rotation to be, and it would work perfectly. Now, I get the strange message that I can't place a locus inside the sweep. Well, why not? I certainly SHOULD be able to place it there. It does nothing for the geometry; it is just a marker telling VW which why to spin. It has been broken for a while, but today I just finally got fed up with it. Does anyone have a way to make a sweep go the way you want? I've tried rotating it every which way, but it keeps getting it wrong. The locus point method needs to be returned. This is exactly what locus points are for, but I'll take any method that works at this point. I must be missing something simple, yes?

 

MH Brown

[Jesse Cogswell]

Can you show what dialog box pops up telling you that you can't use a locus point or what the shape you are trying to sweep looks like?  I'm drafting on VW2023 right now and can use a locus to set the center of the sweep.

 

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

I think you get that message when you have geometry on both sides of the locus.  When you do that you get a condition referred to as "self-intersecting geometry".  The 3D kernel does not handle this condition very well.

 

The locus can be at the edge of what you want to sweep, but not the middle.

 

One work around would be do separate sweeps for the geometry on both sides of the locus and then Add Solids to put them together afterwards.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

I have tried to duplicate your problem, but cannot seem to.  I have placed the locus in every conceivable place, inside outside, added extra locus, etc.....zip.

 

Can you post this file.

[Tom W.]

14 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

I have tried to duplicate your problem, but cannot seem to.  I have placed the locus in every conceivable place, inside outside, added extra locus, etc.....zip.

 

Can you post this file.

Use @Jesse Cogswell’s example above. Place the locus inside the circle. Does it allow you to run the command?

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

@Tom W.

Hi Tom,

I don't seem to recall that this ever would work. (placing a locus inside a circle). That would immediately create intersecting geometry and if it did work, would screw you up working with it further.

 

What will work if you need to do this is two half circles as shown below.  Even if you sweep the full 360 it will work, but again two spheres in the same space.  Two half circles swept at 180 degrees seem to create some type of solid, no bounding box, but in edit they are separate.

 

But, until we see the file, we don't know.

 

 

[Elite Exhibits]

FYI

 

We have seen existing, fully functional Sweeps, from past versions / past designs that give a warning dialog when one attempts to edit them in a newer version of VW - Force Quit is the only way out of this situation

 

Peter

[MGuilfoile]

Thank you for everyone's interest in this problem, so I took the opportunity to bring up another problem that I've been asking about for a while: the Single Face Texture map apply tool rarely works for me.

 

I've included a single VW2023 file that has a collection of 2D objects that don't want to sweep around the locus and a screenshot of the message I get. To the left of that collection of 2D objects is a simple 3D object that does not allow me to place a red texture on the three inside faces of this "U" shaped table. I have included three screenshots for reference: What I want, Before I try the Single Face tool, and then the incorrect result after using the Single Face tool. It is clearly not working for me. The faces I want to color red are all simple rectangles abutting other simple rectangles, the simplest condition possible.

 

Both of these situations occur more often than not. Neither are rare or uncommon results. I suppose these two problems could be specific to my installation of VW, but that is very unlikely. If you just want to answer the sweep question, that's fine. I can post the Texture Apply tool problem elsewhere.

 

Thanks for any help!

MHBrown

Question, broken Sweep and Single Face Texture Tools.vwx

[Tom W.]

Re the Sweep, you don't need a locus because the centre of rotation is the edge of the object. Plus the Sweep command works on the X axis so you need to rotate right then run the command. That's why you're you're getting the warning message:

 

 

 

Unless I've misunderstood the shape you're trying to create.

 

 

[Jesse Cogswell]

The sweep issue happens because you are setting your axis in the wrong direction.  All sweeps must be set up with shapes to the right of the sweep axis.  If I understand your shape correctly, you don't even need a locus point.

 

 

As for the texturing issue, there's something weird with your extrudes.  As I think @Bart Hays mentioned to you in your other post, your extrudes are behaving in the pre-VW2021 way of having the extrude sides acting as a single face.  When I recreated your extrude shape by copying and pasting the profile and re-extruding it, the per face texture tool works as planned.

 

 

EDIT: Shoot, @Tom W. beat me to it!

 

 

 

Question, broken Sweep and Single Face Texture Tools JNC.vwx

Edited April 12 by Jesse Cogswell

[Jesse Cogswell]

Oh, and as a general note for sweeps, in an ideal world, you want to sweep a single object, not a collection of objects.  In your case, you could grab all of your shapes and run a Modify-Add Surface command before doing the sweep.  You'll get the same end shape, but it uses far less computational power to make it.  I once received a drawing that would crash when trying to update a Section Viewport.  The drawing contained 150 track head lighting fixtures whose 3D components contained a sweep that was made up with a dozen or so rectangles and arcs rather than a single polyline.  If there were only a couple in the drawing, the section was fine, but with 150 of them, the drawing would crash.  I grabbed all of the shapes in the sweep profile and added them, the section (and the drawing performance in general) was much happier.

 

[MGuilfoile]

Thanks for the help. I have been using the sweep tool since Minicad 5, so I think I understand that the way it works has definitely changed. Perhaps it has something to do with VW being more of an app where you work in 3D rather than2D. That's a good thing and I'll have to adjust to how that has probably affected how the sweep tool works. I believe that in previous versions of VW a locus would locate the center of rotation, sweeping left or up depending on orientation (re the screen plane). I flipped the profile in 90-degree increments, and it never worked in any. It always made a Frisbee looking object rather than the dumbbell shape I was looking for. I'll have to pay closer attention and see what I'm doing wrong. Regarding sweeping multiple objects, I have a reason for doing that when I need different parts to have different textures. In other words, I need the separate geometry. Once I decide what texture goes on which part, I will fuse the ones which abut and have the same texture.

 

Regarding, the "something weird about my extrusions" I must beg to differ. The only thing odd about this extrusion is that it started life as square corner "U" shaped polygon and I filleted the top two corners. That should not matter. If it does, there are many other operations that cause this tool to fail. I don't think it is possible that there is something unique about my installation of VW. This has continued to happen through several service packs. This tool is not usable for me. It is totally useless for most of my work. Having to refer to a list of operations to avoid to make it work is not a solution. If I convert the object to 3D polys it does it correctly, showing that the software knows what to do. I wish someone from VW would examine it. They have the file they are always asking for, so I'm hoping they will find the problem.

 

thanks,

MHBrown

[MGuilfoile]

To update this problem with the Single Face texture tool, I just tried it on my 2019 MacBook Pro running VW2024, fully updated to the latest version. It exhibits the same behavior that I see in VW2023 running on my Windows10 machine. I tried the "trick" of retrieving the original 2D shape I extruded, copying it, and pasting it into the modeling layer. As you found out, when this exact copy of the original 2D shape is extruded the texture tool works as it is supposed to. Thank you to those who figured that out!!

I want, however, to point out that:

 

This. Is. Not. A. Solution.

 

This is a workaround. I hope that the actual problem will be fixed because these little problems will eventually build into very large problems with zero work arounds. It's like taking care of a car. Fix the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. There is a problem with this and other tools that all of the fantastic folk on this forum help each other to work around, but they really need some attention (rather than new icons, for example).

 

Thanks,

MHBrown

[MGuilfoile]

Never mind. It worked once and when I tried it again, it went back to the original wrong behavior.