RubenH Posted October 4, 2003 Share Posted October 4, 2003 Shell tool take to much time on lofts. Does anyone have that problem? RHF IMAC G4 800mhz 768 MB Ram OS X 10.2.6 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Biplab Posted October 5, 2003 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted October 5, 2003 As you might have noticed that the shell tool creates the resultant shapes by offsetting original surfaces and opening up the selected surfaces. For complicated lofted surfaces, creation of the offset surfaces may take a long time. The only way to bring about better performance is to come up with lofted surface shapes that you want with less number of control points. This in turn is related to the curves that you are lofting with. For instance you might want to replace some of the NURBS curves with a large number of vertices with approximating curves that has less number of control points. Quote Link to comment
RonR Posted October 18, 2003 Share Posted October 18, 2003 How are you generating the curves for the lofted surface? I've noticed that the way the original curves (that the the loft is generated from) are created can make quite a difference in the number of vertexes, and thus calculation times. Draw a NURBS curve with 7 or 8 control points that sweeps back and forth. Check the number of vertexes. Then use the Offset by Distance tool to create another curve from the first a short distance away, and check the number of vertexes. It will increase dramatically. I needed to create a shell object by first drawing the inside contours so I could clear components, then offsetting to get the outside contour so I could shell to the inside- shelling to the outside left gaps. On lofting I ended up with over 23,000 vertexes. I went back and redrew the outside contours with the minimum number of vertexes to maintain the shape, using the offset curves as a guide. I lofted a shape with only a few hundred vertexes. RonR Quote Link to comment
Bart Rammeloo Posted October 19, 2003 Share Posted October 19, 2003 Other (higher-end) software solutions have options to automatically reduce the amount of vertices (rebuilding the curve or the surface). Of course, you lose a bit of precision, but you can set that precision yourself. It's a feature I would LOVE to see in VectorWorks. Cheers, BaRa Quote Link to comment
RubenH Posted October 20, 2003 Author Share Posted October 20, 2003 First thanks for your answers. The problem really appears when the loft it's made from three nurbs curves, not two. I do not use offset tool. Another thing it's that in version 10.1.2 the shell tool was faster, with the same numbers of nurbs curves generating the loft. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.