modelling blocks -WGR?

[mike-h]

I am working on a project for a street of terraced houses, of which I'm going to do detailed work on 3-4. To get the daylighting/ sunpaths/ general effect I want to model the whole st - the easiest way to do this for me (in principle!) would be to make a group of my single house I've modelled in detail (leaving out the complex bits), reflect a second version (so as to have a left and right hand version (our terraces work like this, with front door and back extension mirroring the neighbour's), and then copy/paste along the street.

Unfortunately this doesn't seem possible due to the layers, and combining layers just complicates things - I've read up a bit on the debates about WGR as a tool for this sort of thing, but also that the X-ref'd object cannot be rotated etc. Any ideas if this would be the best route for me, and if so how could I reflect/ rotate the house to suit my needs. It would be good if I could do this anyway, as my st is about 19deg off North even in the case of my 3-4 detailed houses it would be great to work orthogonally on a master, then WGR and rotate it into individual files.

I could always make a stripped down block model on a single layer, but would prefer to do it another way...any ideas gratefully received!

VW 12.5.2

G4 powerbook OS 10.3.9

[Dieter @ DWorks]

You can use a symbol of the house. that way you can place it the way you want and rotate it too.

[mike-h]

I guess to do that I'd have to flatten it down to one layer, then raise or lower the heights of each element individually, in order to select everything at one go?

I'm hoping theres a way to avoid this ...?

[Dieter @ DWorks]

IF you use more than one layer, You'll never get it done 'at one go' even with WGR.

If we do an area with x times the same house, we make a symbol of each floor. After making the symbol, we just need to place it in the appropriate layer at the appropriate place. It's very easy to use.

And if you built your symbols with the same insertion point you can do this:

Place the first floor symbols, then copy them to the second floor layers, replace the symbols by the second floor symbols. They will be on the correct place!

[Jeffrey W Ouellette]

Well Hawkeye, the easiest way to get your desired results would be to use the new design layers viewports in VW2008. They are a new reference object, a composite of WGRs and layer links, with unique instancing capabilities.

But in VW12, you can do what you want by creating the WGRs first in 'scratch' design layers for each level of each building, then creating a layer link in your desired target layer of each building, with the layer links containing all the desired levels of each building. Unlock the layer links then Group them together. Then Copy/Paste and rotate as needed. Heavy work, but possible, in VW12. Not pretty, but servicable.

[mike-h]

Thats heavy work! along the lines of what I was thinking - I'll give it a go when I've got a bit more time! meanwhile, bearing in mind my

a. skill level

b. available ram, and

c. effort/ attainment ratio,

I think I'll be making some stripped-down version of my building and turning it into a symbol, on one layer if possible.

I think I have heard of this new feature in VW2008, it sounds very useful in this case...best start saving my pennies!

thanks for the response