Advice

[AFDesign]

Hi,

i need an advice.

Imagine you have a single wall with more than 1 window one over the other, like in the attachment. How do you draw them? My "problem" is the resulting plan, where you see one window over the other. I found very uncomfortable to split the wall in more layers, because i don't need them. Is there another way to obtain a clean plan with the desidered window without splitting the wall in more layers?

Thanks

Andrea

[VincentCuclair]

I think you hit a sore spot there........I haven't found one but I have been in need of one. A tip when selecting one of them to get the right one go to a 3D view and select it. Another tip you can use the send to back/move to front function to show the one you want in planview.

[islandmon]

Create a symbol of the window(s) and then edit the 2d part with lines & text

to provide the necessary plan descriptors.

Ah, the power of the Hybrid...

[Kool Aid]

Imagine you have a single wall with more than 1 window one over the other, like in the attachment. How do you draw them? My "problem" is the resulting plan, where you see one window over the other. I found very uncomfortable to split the wall in more layers, because i don't need them. Is there another way to obtain a clean plan with the desidered window without splitting the wall in more layers?

Andrea

This could well be the Question of the Year! It goes very deeply to a conceptual level as comes to the dicotomy of Modeling and Drawings.

By a fairly common architectural draughting convention, the floor plan is a horizontal section at the level of 1200mm. The VW Top/Plan is anything but!

But it could be. We could have the sectioning level as one of the layer attributes and parametric objects could easily assume the relevant graphic attributes.

As comes to windows:

- When the sill is above the sectioning level, the 2D representation shoud use the (user defined) line style for ?above?

- When the head (top) is below the sectioning level, the 2D representation shoud use the (user defined) line style for ?below? (beneath, ghost: whatever.)

In addition and with only a few lines of additional code (and the relevant parameter available for wall instances), this could be adjusted by wall, to make the Plan Drawing as legible as they used to be when we were young and prepared drawings on the drawing board. Arbitrarily, so we were able to communicate our design intention.

Alternatively/additionally, windows could have an option to be ?Clerestory? or ?(whaeveryoucallit_below)?.

Thanks! I can't introdude behaviours to layers (actually I can? after a fashion, but not in a useful way) or walls (definitely not in any way), but at least I can make my Window object to be closer to what you want and to what I needed, altough I did not know.

You've made my day, andreavw!

[Stan Rostas]

By a fairly common architectural draughting convention, the floor plan is a horizontal section at the level of 1200mm. The VW Top/Plan is anything but!

But it could be. We could have the sectioning level as one of the layer attributes and parametric objects could easily assume the relevant graphic attributes.

You can define Plan views today at the height you define by using a Section Viewports of a Sheet Layer Viewport set to Front, Side, or Back View and have the resultant Viewport use the Class or Wall Style Definitions. This has been possible since 2008 and most of the bugs have been fixed in 2010 for proper representation. So, for buildings with complex spatial and sectional qualities, if modeled, one can have as many plan representations as horizontal sections desired without having to go through 2d drafting gyrations.

[Kool Aid]

Can I? Does the Section Viewport look and behave like a Top/Plan view? Can it be used interactively to Design things?

If not, your preaching does not matter.

[Stan Rostas]

Can I? Does the Section Viewport look and behave like a Top/Plan view? Can it be used interactively to Design things?

If not, your preaching does not matter.

Then if that is the requirement then there are many methods and tools not available.

I agree with you 100% on the need for what you describe, but from what I can tell you are an economic pragmatist when it comes to what NNA can provide,yes? Do you think it is worth their resources to provide this at this moment in the overall developement of Vectorworks, or could it be added later, a few versions down the road?

Presently with the navigation capabilities between Veiwports and Design Layers as well as to other files the present setup is workable but not ideal.

If one is working entirely in 3d anyway to design, seeing the plan graphic representation might actually get in the way of visualizing your ideas? Attempting to be as agnostic as possible here and working with what is provided presently.

[mike m oz]

Imagine you have a single wall with more than 1 window one over the other, like in the attachment. How do you draw them?

Yes you can - what you need to do is create a Hybrid Symbol which has a 2D/3D Door object with two 3D only Window objects above it. You then need to edit the Wall Hole forming part of the Symbol so it consists of three separate extruded rectangles. This fills in the pieces of wall between the three parts.

In the attached example I used the Window PIO to create the 3D window parts and then converted them to Group in a 3D view so I lost the 2D part and retained the 3D part.

[Kool Aid]

Another ignorant High Priest.

[AFDesign]

I didn't expected so many answers thanks you all!

I already tried to create a section viewport from a parallel view, and it works, but the result is not as good as the planview we can draw. And it's impossible to project 2D data (is it so?).

I hope vw2010 will add a "smart" behaviour: when an object's "Z" > layer's "Z" vectorworks hide the object... dreaming?

thanks again,

Andrea

ps. sorry for my english... hope you will understand what i mean

[Kool Aid]

I hope vw2010 will add a "smart" behaviour: when an object's "Z" > layer's "Z" vectorworks hide the object... dreaming?

I think I'll implement this into my Window object on Wednesday.

[Robert Anderson]

I hope vw2010 will add a "smart" behaviour: when an object's "Z" > layer's "Z" vectorworks hide the object... dreaming?

This is to an extent already implemented in the standard Vectorworks window in the "Clerestory" property. But it would be simple to do what you are asking for. I'll put it into our internal wish list.

[Kool Aid]

Will it be available on Thursday? In my system I believe it will.

[VincentCuclair]

Don't know if it has been added in 2010 yet but simply being able to 'tab' through several objects one on top of the other to select one in the middle would be very useful in Plan view (at the moment it is only possible to select the one on top)....

[Stan Rostas]

Don't know if it has been added in 2010 yet but simply being able to 'tab' through several objects one on top of the other to select one in the middle would be very useful in Plan view (at the moment it is only possible to select the one on top)....

Not available yet.

[propstuff]

Will it be available on Thursday? In my system I believe it will.

Don't be silly Petri,

You're going to have to upgrade to an llc to run 2010 on snow leopard.

[Kool Aid]

Hi,

i need an advice.

Imagine you have a single wall with more than 1 window one over the other, like in the attachment. How do you draw them?

This has been fun! Not sure of any valid results yet as there are Interestig Issues, but I'm optimistic. I somewhat underestimated the effort and overestimated my spare time for today. It may well be that my Window tool does what I believe is the issue at hand only on Saturday, not Thursday as my previous Vapourware-announcement stated.

Nevertheless, here we have three instances of my Window object. From left to right:

1. The sill i(bottom) s above the designated sectioning level

1. The designated sectioning level is between sill height & window head

3. The window head (top) is below the designated sectioning level

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/1311/almostthere.png

There are Reasons for graphic oddities. I know how to solve this, but the Current Solution I know is inelegant and therefore not satisfactory. It has merit, though.

Andrea, I have no idea why I had not thought of this before! Thanks again!

[AFDesign]

Dear Kool Aid,

did you learn by yourself programming vectorscript? I'd like to know if exists a guide, a book explaining vectorscript language whith "explained examples"? Anybody knows?

Good work with your window object!

thanks,

Andrea

[Kool Aid]

No guides, no books, I'm afraid. Ms. Janis Kent used to publish Manuals and I seem to recall that her latest one about VW 8.5 had a section about VS.

VectorScript is based on Pascal, which is out of fashion.

(My guess is that the reason is that William Gates III never progressed beyond Basic, so there's no Visual Pascal for Appications, only the spaghetti of Basic.)

The information sources are

- VectorScript Language Guide in the Help System; it assumes knowledge of programming

- Vectorlab (http://www.vectorlab.info/index.php?title=Main_Page)

- VW Developer Network (http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=Main_Page) ? the VS Function Reference that ships with the progam is pretty much useless

- the VS Mailing List by NNA, from which I have been banned for too many times to be bothered any more

Us Old Hands ? well, we have the advantage of having had access to MiniPascal and VectorScript programs before the time of Vice-President Robert Anderson, the Sheriff of Texas, Maryland and Nottingham, who locked all plug-ins.

Only a couple of months ago I made changes to a plug-in originally written by Richard Diehl himself! (Rich is the Founder & current President of NNA and the former owner of a Toyota Celica from the 1980s?)

For you, it'll be hard work. Even harder than to someone like myself.

[brudgers]

Dear Kool Aid,

did you learn by yourself programming vectorscript? I'd like to know if exists a guide, a book explaining vectorscript language whith "explained examples"? Anybody knows?

Good work with your window object!

thanks,

Andrea

In the US version there is a PDF with the language guide.

Under windows and vw2008 it is located in c:\program files\Vectorworks 2008\VWhelp\Additional Documentation\VectorScript_LangGuide_2008.pdf

[Miguel Barrera]

(My guess is that the reason is that William Gates III never progressed beyond Basic, so there's no Visual Pascal for Appications, only the spaghetti of Basic.)

Actually, Pascal was the language of choice in the early and mid 80's when the mac came out. The OS and most mac programs including MiniCad were developed in Pascal so the obvious choice for scripting was to use the same language that everybody was familiar with. Before being renamed, Vectorscript was called, appropriately, MiniPascal.