Symbols regressing to childhood

[UserName]

After quite a few "valuable"-learning-experiences, I succeeded in making my first 2/3D (door) symbols. All was well untill I went back to the "Wall" layer after working in another layer and found that the 3D part of ALL the set of door symbols had degraded back to an intermediate stage in their construction.

The same thing has also happened to the set that I had stored in the Resource pallette!

Ejecting the VW preferences didn't work, nor restarts etc.

Someone please tell me I don't have to make them all again!

[Ken]

If I understand your situation, there's a very minor quirk regarding this. SOMETIMES hybrid wall symbols may *appear* degraded because of how you exited the 2D and 3D edit window. Just go back to the symbol in 3D and 2D edit and reset for top/plan view. Now back in your floor plan, toggle from iso to top/plan and voila. It's a quirk.

If you're not referring to this quirk, then you've either forgotten the 2D part of the symbol, forgot to create a 3D object in the 3D edit window, or you're viewing your plan in top view instead of top/plan view.

------------------

Kenneth

[UserName]

Thanks for the response, but that doesn't seem to be the answer. Specificaly what I did was; made the 2D symbol in top/plan, duplicated it to start the 3D version, extruded the door jamb and architrave portions up to the required height, cut the mitres at the top using an angled solid subtraction, duplicated one side and rotated it to make the top part of the jamb, re-mitred the duplicate to the right size, subtracted the excess, and finally placed the top portion in place before going through the "create symbol" process and editing it for 2/3D insertion, loci etc.

Then I duplicated, and re-edited them for different sized doors, and all was working well in 2&3D. It was some days later they went bungo.

Now the 2D parts are o.k., but the 3D parts are all at the stage where the top part of the Jamb has been cropped, but the excess is still there, and they're not in position!

P.S. it seems that the ones in the resource pallette are ok afterall: have I just got a corrupted file???

[Ken]

Well, it's not easy trouble-shooting by written words alone, but here are some ideas you may want to try:

Are your walls at adequate heights? Are your layer links refreshed to avoid overlaps? Do the same symbols work okay in simple walls (on a blank document)? Do the symbols look okay in iso view inside the 3D edit window? Are you using VW8.5.2? An earlier version had wall symbols stuck at absolute Z.

Your manipulations for each door seems like a lot of work. Julian Carr (see VW discussion page or NNA third party resources) provides a nifty add-on called WinDoor Manager. It does exactly what you've described. There are some upper limits, but if you're brave enough to go inside each for editing, you'll have no problem for rare super custom door types.

In my experience, anything less than color rendering or animation is best using simple 3D polygons for door cutouts in the model -- then fill in the converted model with detailed elevation paste-ups (or symbols) of fancy doors. Better control of lineweight, too.

------------------

Kenneth

[UserName]

Thanks again Kenneth,

I suppose doing things the hard way is the eternal burden of the young and the ignorant. I did learn a fair bit in the process of making them 'though. Yes, everything WAS fine; the symbols behaved properly, rendered well, looked "real" in the model. I checked out your suggestions and they are comprehensively "broken" now.

Interestingly, the smaller door sizes, which I made directly from the finished original sized one, are also displaying the same artefacts, even though they never went through that stage of development themselves!

I've just resigned myself to the fact that I've got corrupted symbols.

Thanks for your help, I've got to go and say my mantras now;

Save often, work on a copy; Save often, work on a copy; Save often work on a copy,..........

Nicholas

[UserName]

Thanks again Kenneth,

I suppose doing things the hard way is the eternal burden of the young and the ignorant. I did learn a fair bit in the process of making them 'though. Yes, everything WAS fine; the symbols behaved properly, rendered well, looked "real" in the model. I checked out your suggestions and they are comprehensively "broken" now.

Interestingly, the smaller door sizes, which I made directly from the finished original sized one, are also displaying the same artefacts, even though they never went through that stage of development themselves!

I've just resigned myself to the fact that I've got corrupted symbols.

Thanks for your help, I've got to go and say my mantras now;

Save often, work on a copy; Save often, work on a copy; Save often work on a copy,..........

Nicholas

[MikeB]

I dont know if this is related but I had a problem with objects rendering transparent even though the material was opaque. it started with a few objects and slowly over time infected the entire file. The solution that worked was to throw away my preferenced file, reinstall VW, RW, and Quicktime ( I'm accually running the Quicktime 5 beta, works great)

To my suprise this solved all of my problems.

It might be worth a try.

Good luck