drawing with viewports.

[tallboy]

I'm working on vectorworks 2009, drawing in 3d and generating views. I have an issue with creating views that don't have texture added. For instance, I've drawn an interior with brick walls, that I would like to generate a 2 d brick elevation in white using the brick hatch, rather than a rendered drawing with the brick texture, as the people building it don't like the rendered drawings. Can you do both these things in vectorworks, or do you have to trace over the section drawings, and draw old school to get a hatch on a wall. Can the wall be both rendered in 3d for some views, and produce an old school 2d line drawing for the builders on the same sheet?

[islandmon]

3D is 3D not matter how you texture & slice it up. Hatches on the other hand are 2d ...

Application of Hatches to a 3D elevation requires Annotating the vertical surfaces via Hatch-filled polygons or Image Fills. Or you can create a special Hatch Texture and apply it to the 3D wall ... bingo .. instant 2D Hatch on 3D Walls.

[MKingsley]

You can create your own brick texture in the resource browser very easily that has a white brick color and any line color and size you want.

[grant_PD]

Brings up an interesting wish tho...if you could assign a 2d fill to an object as well as a texture. It would be constructed like a hatch, with line weight and vector information. Then the renderer applies it after the hidden line drawing.

[WillR]

To speed up converting 3D to 2D, try using the "Convert to Polygon" tool.

Go to the view you want and select the 3D object. Go to Modify/Convert/Convert to Polygons (or "Convert Copy to Polygons" if you want to save the original).

Then select the rectangle and add the hatch. This will work in any view, including iso and perspective. For those views, make sure you select "Hidden Line Rendering" in the dialogue box. The model will be converted into a bunch of parallelograms.

I use this tool often as well as the "Convert to Lines" tool since I design in 3D a lot, and want to simplify for the construction drafting.

Edited September 2, 2009 by WillR