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3 small wishes... 2D related


ApocHalyptic

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1. When drafting 2D, it would be nice to simply 'fill' a closed area as per any paint/illustration program. Yes I understand the argument about needing a plane to apply a surface feature, but I would like straight forward simple no fuss "Fill". Not asking for PS or Ill here.

2. Transparency level of objects. (or in the very least images) Okay, maybe I am a bit... but here is another feature I have used in other advanced CAD programs as well. Being able to simply select an object and adjust its transparency is a major bonus when tracing over AirPhotos. A transparency slider is the simplist means of acomplishing this. Yes, it is possible to import partially transparent photos from PS, but some features may need to become more 'intense/opaque' to see them in the photo while other parts of the photo will wash out line work. Importing several photos with different transarency levels can become a nightmare to organize in a drawing. I heard word about using props for this... but this sounds a lot more complicated than it really needs to be; select object, adjust trasparency...

3. Linking objects to their position in 2D space. ie. If a polygon is imported in with a top left corner point of x: 603456m y: 5995677m moving the point of origin on the document would not change this (the object would move in relation to the movement of the point of origin). Another thing people will most likely shake their heads at although this has huge benifits for mapping. No, Azimuth is not the answer to mapping on VW. UTM and meter coordinates are not supported by Azimuth and they have no wish to support this tremendously popular grid system in resource industries. Not only that, but VW already imports GPS .dxf files with appropriate coordinates intact. With a few more tweaks here and there, VW could revolutionize the speed and availability of mapping in the resource industries here in Canada. I can see this beeing helpfull in other areas of CAD for quickly repositioning your drawing on your document.

Anyways still looking for the Killer CAD app. VW is as close as it comes when compared to price and ease of use.

Great work, love the interface.

cheers!

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quote:

Originally posted by ApocHalyptic:

[ Being able to simply select an object and adjust its transparency is a major bonus when tracing over AirPhotos. A transparency slider is the simplist means of acomplishing this.

Try layer transfer modes for this. Very simple and works for me for the exact purpose.

quote:

3. Linking objects to their position in 2D space.

Sounds very problematic considering the overall design of the coordinate system - can't really follow your thought (although I do a fair bit of mapping. In essence, a User Coordinate System is what you are after, or?

quote:

No, Azimuth is not the answer to mapping on VW. UTM and meter coordinates are not supported by Azimuth and they have no wish to support this tremendously popular grid system in resource industries.

Are you saying that Azimuth does not work with metric units? (I'm not a geographist, just need to produce "mapping" as a part of my work, so I may not know what you refer to.)

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Salut Petri;

Layer transfer modes, interesting, have not been pointed in that direction yet. Perhaps this is promising, I will certainly look into this... pg.92... aha yes Overlay I did not catch on right away. I have actually used this with my airphotos, essentially reducing my image layers by 1/2. It is certainly the best means of dealing with this problem in VW, but nothing beats a live adjustment from 100% to 0% Transparency for best visualization when overlaying. Airphotos can be tricky, and there have been many errors in the past due to subtle changes in Forest Cover.

Concerning object linking to x.y position. Yes, I had troubles clearly explaining. Well first off, as a Canuck we do not use Longs and Lats in our industry here. The UTM meter grid is just so simple to use. I only use Longs and Lats when travelling at sea. Okay let me see if I can draw a clearer picture with my words this time.

An ecosurvey grid is GPS'd let us say, establishing plot 1 as the Point of Commencement. The area covered is 500m squared and plots are on 100m intervals running North-South/West-East. By coincidence plot 1 is at UTM 600,000mE by 5,900,000mN with plots running South and East. Exporting this GPS data into .dxf produces a 25ha square area with 100m grid lines and plot points. Importing the processed data into VW renders a perfect representation spatially since we are not dealing with Lat/Longs but in the universal meter unit. Moving the arrow over our grid area shows us perfect position in x,y meters. The problem is, that moving the 'class' objects destroys the x,y meter positional information imported into VW. Reposition of imported objects is often necessary since objects are placed center of the document. There is a work around, which is grouping all objects, recording the x,y(top left 600000x, 5900000y) coordinate given in the Object Info pallette, repositioning the origin manually by 'next mouse click is: 600000x, 5900000y', and entering the same x,y coordinate(Top Left) for the object group in the Object Info pallette to return the ojects back to thier 'true' positions in real world space.

I am curious perhaps if there is a way to lock an object to its x,y value so that its spacial information is never accidentally destroyed in VW?

As for Azimuth, I am sure it would be fine for anyone not needing true UTM meter co-ordinates. Azimuth deals strickly with Lats and Longs. Richard from Azimuth Mapping told me in an email that Azimuth does not support UTM and they have no interest in supporting it. Which I find kind of silly since UTM needs no conversion since it is ... universal! Not sure how many Geo Projections it has. Essentially for my work I only need a few adjustments to VW and it would be a perfect Mapping tool. I should look into building a simple plugin perhaps... [smile]

Anyways, I think I made my post long and confusing enough.

cheers!

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quote:

Originally posted by ApocHalyptic:

It is certainly the best means of dealing with this problem in VW, but nothing beats a live adjustment from 100% to 0% Transparency for best visualization when overlaying. Airphotos can be tricky, and there have been many errors in the past due to subtle changes in Forest Cover.


Tricky indeed - I have on occastion found 'invert' to be useful for (again) the exact purpose. Also sometimes it helps to preprocess the aerial in PhotoShop.

Addition: also the colour of the poly you draw has to be carefully selected. Tasteful colours often don't work...

quote:

The problem is, that moving the 'class' objects destroys the x,y meter positional information imported into VW. Reposition of imported objects is often necessary since objects are placed center of the document.

Still not sure what happens there. In our maps, everything is geo-referenced in the Australian Mapping Grid (flat earth x/y projection). The largest area we've dealt with was over 6700 square kilometres, centroid (pseudo-centroid!) at x=1094469.298, y=5954623.723 (metres).

We've moved this and that, including the print page, changed scale, imported new data sets, copied and pasted this boundary poly to yet other data sets - you name it, we've done it - and the polygon stays put in the coordinates, so the spatial information is not destroyed. In VW 8 and earlier it was a different situation (I think), not to mention the good old MiniCAD (I know). But in VW 9, everything is hunky dory. We even copy and paste aerial photos.

Not sure what your 'class objects' are.

You aren't importing DXF into a file that already has data, are you? That can stuff up things seriously.

[ 02-08-2004, 08:12 AM: Message edited by: Petri ]

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Salut;

Alexandre B A Villares:

quote:

Try Tool > Combine into Surface ...

Works in most cases, however in VW10 does not work in some situations where areas are bordered by a polyline, or a break line. I end up retracing these lines with a single unconstrained line, then using this tool. A small bit inconvenient. Perhaps this is fixed in 10.5?

Petri:

quote:

We've moved this and that, ... you name it, we've done it - and the polygon stays put in the coordinates, so the spatial information is not destroyed.

Wow, I have not had this luck with VW10. Perhaps I should down grade! We use use .dxf output from Leica systems GIS DataPRO unfortunately available only for PC and incredibly buggy (or perhaps it is the legendary stability of the platform it is running on:) ). Our class objects are very simple, line, point, areas, and the information imported into VW remains intact very nicely, until we try to start repositioning the objects on the page for presentation. Moving the objects records them at a different x,y position, thus my reason for all the extra steps insuring I do not lose the x,y information. I only import into a blank doc. I hate a mess [smile]

Sounds like the Australian Grid System is the same likeness which we use here. From the way AzimuthMapping communicated to me, these systems are not supported. Their plugin apparently will take the extra step to convert positional information to Lats/Longs, and they do not sound familiar with our type of Grid Systems. With out a demo there is no way I will test this out!

It is great to hear from someone else mapping in our style with VW. I am just nit picky is all, Anal Forestry Services is our motto [smile]

cheers!

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quote:

Originally posted by ApocHalyptic:

Moving the objects records them at a different x,y position, thus my reason for all the extra steps insuring I do not lose the x,y information.


Well, if you move the objects, of course their coordinates are changed! Don't lower the river, raise the bridge: move the print page instead.

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Move Page. Yes, I just discovered this! I have been searching for a means to do this for several weeks now, taking a while to get to know all the tricks and tools VW has.

I wonder, how do you deal with import another .dxf file into an existing map file? Do you simply import the NEW .dxf file into a blank document and paste the objects "in Place" in the existing map file?

Do you use any layer linking?

Curious.

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quote:

Originally posted by ApocHalyptic:

I wonder, how do you deal with import another .dxf file into an existing map file? Do you simply import the NEW .dxf file into a blank document and paste the objects "in Place" in the existing map file?

Do you use any layer linking?


Copy & paste is the correct method. Importing DXF/DWG into a non-blank file can cause all sorts of problems.

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