Snap to 3D mesh

[Biscontin]

I cannot snap to a 3D mesh... is it a typ behavior or it is an issue of my file?

See video.

 

Thanks. 

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Did you make this object in Vectorworks or import it?  Can you post the file, easier to figure out.

[Biscontin]

Yes it was imported from a Revit file...

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

 

Check to see if it is truly a mesh.

 

Select the mesh and do an "edit group".  You may be able to go in a few layers deep.  See if it is truly a mesh and a not collection of unconnected 3D polygons.

 

[Biscontin]

Ok I'll try, thanks.

[rDesign]

It also might be that in the process of demonstrating in the video that you have snaps turned ON, you ended with them being turned OFF.

 

Single click the 'Snap to Object' Icon:

 

In Vw2025, I imported a simple Revit test file (imported as Vectorworks Mesh Objects) and the snaps work correctly:

 

 

Edited March 15 by rDesign

[Andy Broomell]

There's definitely a bug where some mesh objects lose their snap points. I've found that Cutting the object then Pasting in Place will restore their snaps.

[zoomer]

2 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

See if it is truly a mesh and a not collection of unconnected 3D polygons.

 

Aren't Meshes in VW always loose 3D Faces in a Group ?

 

The other problem with Revit or other imports (IFC), when you choose the option to create VW Solids, VW will just put loose 3D Faces inside a Solid Adition Container - to make you believe owning a true Solid - which you realize you have not, when you tried to use PushPull on it.

 

I think VW should snap to things like loose 3D Faces anyway 🙂

 

Edited March 15 by zoomer

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

41 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Aren't Meshes in VW always loose 3D Faces in a Group ?

 I didn't think so...maybe.  Sometimes what appear to be meshes are NURBS surface which are preferable as you can use the OIP to select points.

 

Mesh is a rather ambiguous term.

[Peter Neufeld.]

9 hours ago, zoomer said:

Aren't Meshes in VW always loose 3D Faces in a Group ?

 

Hello,

Not really. Meshes mean that each 3D poly shares its vertex with the adjacent 3D poly which is why meshes are more efficient than just a bunch of 3D polys.

 

This movie shows how if you draw a selection marquee over a point you can move it with the Selection tool and all the other faces move accordingly.

 

 

 

 

Interestingly the Help notes this limit :"A mesh object can contain up to 30,000 vertices". 

 

When you Convert to Group then each poly get's its vertices back. 

 

Cheers,

Peter

[zoomer]

6 hours ago, Peter Neufeld. said:

Meshes mean that each 3D poly shares its vertex with the adjacent 3D poly which is why meshes are more efficient than just a bunch of 3D polys.

You can move it with the Selection tool and all the other faces move accordingly.

 

Ah, I remember.

But, as there is no direct way to grab a Mesh's Vertex .... isn't the needed "Marquee Selection" a hint that there might be mot a single welded and shared Vertex but multiple separate Vertices for each Poly ?

 

When I go into a Mesh's Edit Mode,

(like to close a hole by adding a missing Poly or aligning some Polys Vertices ....)

VW says I am in a "Group" not Mesh.

I can select multiple Polys, but I can only edit one Poly at a time.

(So in Edit Mode, for e.g. bringing n Poly's Vertices together this means at least n-1 times Select Poly, Enter Edit Mode, Move Vertex)

A Solid converted to a Mesh contains non-closed (!?) Polys, which are not connected and can be moved independently.

 

So it could be a higher level Mesh object for VW, but for the user it behaves like a Group with loose 3D Polys.

It is good that a Mesh in VW, once exported, behaves like a standard Mesh outside of VW again.

 

I did avoid editing Meshes years ago.

If you bring in Meshes into VW that is usually for a reason. Like it comes from a 3D App and may have assigned a Material and Mapping - which you would lose immediately if you would try to edit it.

 

What I still notice since VW 2014 is Selection inconsistency.

VW's Marquee selects only objects when these are fully overlapped. If you want to also objects only being touched by Marquee, you need to hold ALT key. Not so for Meshes, they will select in both cases.

So when you select something and only also slightly touch a Mesh with your Marquee - it will highlight and be unwontedly added to your selection.

If you have would have a large terrain mesh under your building, you could not use Marquee Selection at all without always selecting also the Mesh. You would need to always hold SHIFT key when selecting to force inside-Marquee-only.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Although I can usually find a technical answer for the mysteries of Vectorworks that sometimes appear, this is one eludes me.

 

The video below is short. Notice at first I cannot select a vertex point with my arrow cursor, but if I marquee one, then I can select all the points I want with the Arrow cursor.

 

 

[Andy Broomell]

7 hours ago, zoomer said:

What I still notice since VW 2014 is Selection inconsistency.

VW's Marquee selects only objects when these are fully overlapped. If you want to also objects only being touched by Marquee, you need to hold ALT key. Not so for Meshes, they will select in both cases.

So when you select something and only also slightly touch a Mesh with your Marquee - it will highlight and be unwontedly added to your selection.

If you have would have a large terrain mesh under your building, you could not use Marquee Selection at all without always selecting also the Mesh. You would need to always hold SHIFT key when selecting to force inside-Marquee-only.

 

This is truly and utterly annoying.

[Andy Broomell]

Frankly the best solution here would be to remove mesh vertex editing from the Selection Tool and add it to the Reshape Tool. Currently the Reshape Tool doesn't do anything for Meshes, so it's a great opportunity to move these functions there. Future advanced Mesh editing capabilities could be added to the Reshape Tool in a way that might be limited by trying to keep it as part of the Selection Tool. Plus the Reshape Tool is where a user would likely expect to be able to reshape a Mesh since that's the tool you'd use for most other object types. It'd also remove the current inconsistencies and frustrations with Mesh selection that Zoomer describes.

 

Making the improvement above, plus retaining textures when editing the contents of a Mesh [VE-102526], would go a huge way towards Mesh usability in Vectorworks.

[Claes Lundstrom]

The limitation of meshes means that a typical 3D scan is out of reach for editing, as they have way too many elements. Other limitations include the fact that you can't edit more than one mesh at the time, which would make it way more usable. On the other hand, it allows you to nudge control points with the arrow keys, which you can't do with NURBS objects, making editing far less usable, and feels like an inconsistency VS meshes. More than one NURBS object at the time can't be edited at the time, a surprising limitation, as you can do it with most other programs dealing with NURBS. 

[Benson Shaw]

16 hours ago, Peter Neufeld. said:

Interestingly the Help notes this limit :"A mesh object can contain up to 30,000 vertices". 

I saw that, too.  But vwx can handle meshes with MUCH larger vertex count.  So, dunno.

 

Another interesting thing, to me anyway: If mesh polys are accessed via Reshape tool, the polys are not all closed according to the OIP Closed check box.

 

To demonstrate, Dbl Click (Reshape tool) the mesh, Select all the polys, Check mark the OIP Closed box to close them all, exit the edit window. OIP shows that it remains a Mesh.  Now dbl click/Reshape again. The OIP shows that once again, Polys are not all closed.  A reason may be something to do with coincident edges.  Not sure that would have any bearing on snap problems, but ???

 

-B

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

1 hour ago, Benson Shaw said:

o demonstrate, Dbl Click (Reshape tool) the mesh, Select all the polys, Check mark the OIP Closed box to close them all, exit the edit window. OIP shows that it remains a Mesh.  Now dbl click/Reshape again. The OIP shows that once again, Polys are not all closed.

I noticed this also a while back with imported meshes.  You may have also noticed that while the polygons are in unclosed mode you can't "add Solids".  While they are closed and in edit mode, you can do an "add solids" and they remain closed.

 

What I do with large meshes is send them to C4D and "combine by colour" and then Polygon Reduction.  Export back out as STL.  Turns a very heavy mesh into something that turns quite freely.

 

[Benson Shaw]

3 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

send them to C4D and "combine by colour" and then Polygon Reduction.

Would be interesting to compare resulting C4d meshes to same source mesh reduced in vwx via Modify>Simplify Mesh. That vwx command is rather limited (probably really old, unimproved in version updates) and needs run several times to achieve much reduction of a large mesh. I overlay a copy on the source mesh and watch for unacceptable distortion at each reduction - eg a terrain mesh will ultimately loose the highest and lowest vertices, but at what level of simplification???

 

-B

[Peter Neufeld.]

I think the only way to realistically edit a mesh in Vectorworks is to convert it to a SubDivision object. You can then convert it back to a Mesh afterwards should you choose.

 

Cheers,

Peter

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

13 hours ago, Benson Shaw said:

Would be interesting to compare resulting C4d meshes to same source mesh reduced in vwx via Modify>Simplify Mesh

Did a quick test, seems to work the same as this was not a topographical site model, but architectural.  In the case of the project I last worked on, it was better to go the C4D route.  Many millions of unconnected polygons.