post from 2d to 3d

[Anthony Reilly]

Hi All & a pleasant Holliday Season to you,

Am struggling with turning existing 2D elements on a sight plan that a couple of us theatre technicians measured & drew into 3D steel post. I've had much help from the forum all along the way. Man, you really have directed me well.

Bottom line; I drew the steel tubing, copied them and then tried to extrude them to the proper height. No worky. You told me to choose building shell and the column feature. Everything solved with the 6" pipes except that they were floating above floor and when I try to use a black gradient, it doesn't go all the way up the pipe. (This i'll investigate later) The post are on the deck now.

So i try again with custom shaped posts (what looks like a "T" combined with an "I-beam". Not able to extrude. So I go back to the columns and choose the i-beam and t in the configuration together, select both items, extrude to 17'10" and make them into a symbol. One problem is that I can't figure out how to modify the "I-beams" and the "T"'s to match the footprint of the existing posts on our plans. The other problem is that even though the "Z" height is "0" the symbol is still floating above the deck. And it doesn't seam as easy to get them to the floor and in the right place. (the steel post had crosshairs marking the center of the steel pipe).

I have four of the most recent tutorials. I completed the first "Vectorworks Essential Tutorial Manual" by Jonathan Pickup. I Love the exercises! and the movies! My main interest before this project was to learn lighting. Lightplot Deconstructed by Gregg Hillmar (who must be a great lighting designer to have written this book) was very disappointing: no disc, no focussed project, and way too much "In Ye Olde Days... I'm struggling to keep up for my students. I appreciate the comfy style, but what I really need is hands on exercises that I can check as I go.

My next choice is to continue with Vectorworks Architect Tutorial by Jonathan Pickup.

If you have an other suggestions, please throw a piece of lead at me. Maybe that will make and impression on this old ignorant beginner.

Thanks Much!

And if you read this Mr. Hillmar, please write another book with exercises in PDF format that contains movies:) I will gladly purchase another copy.

Sincerely

[klinzey]

In order to extrude an object it bust contain primitive geometry. (Line, Polygon, Polyline, Circle etc) you can not extrude a Plug-in object, such as a column, or things like groups or symbols.

There are a few ways to draw the beam in 3D.

The mast basic way is to use the 2D Polygon tool to draw the cross section of the beam. (It should be one continious closed polygon.)If the shape is complex you can use operations like add surface and combine to get the 2D shape but to start just use the polygon tool.

Once you have it drawn then just select it and extrude it.

Onece you extrude it you will have a 3D only object that you can move in rotate.

The other method is to start with a structuarl shape object and configure the Plug-in object to match your shape. Once you have configured it, ungroup the object (remember you can't extrude a plug-inn object) and then extrude the geometry.