jet Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 Trying to join together tons of line and poly segments, the ends are not always touching, but always very close. I have to keep zooming and move one end to touch the other, then compose them together... very time consuming. Is there a better way, for example can i set a distance that it would automatically snap the 2 lines together if they are within that distance... otherwise this will take for ever! Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 For lines-to-lines try Command+J (Join). For polys-to-lines or polys-to-polys try the Combine/Connect tool in the Basic tools palette. I think these will save you lots of time. Quote Link to comment
jet Posted March 21, 2011 Author Share Posted March 21, 2011 Thanks, but i have been using those tools. I still have the problem of lines not quite touching.. In autocad i could say Join ends if they are within 'X'. Do you know of anything like that... I do lots of mapping, so this often happens importing DXF or SHP files. Lots of lines and polylines that need to be closed? cheers, jim Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 That's interesting. I have just tried these with a variety of odd shapes and in every case the objects touch and will "compose" as desired. I'm curious what your objects look like, as these commands should work. If you can post a screenshot or file it might be helpful. Additionally it would be good to know what OS and VW's versions you are using... Quote Link to comment
jet Posted March 21, 2011 Author Share Posted March 21, 2011 in most cases its just because they do not quite touch or they overlap... the overlap or undershot is very tiny, and i have a file with thousands of these that i have to close. I have had this happen may times, with imported line work.... could be a lot of factors, bad cad or otherwise. at the end of the day i have to clean files like these on a regular basis. in autocad i could join based on a tolerance setting ie join all lines and plines that have ends within .001m. I am a huge vw fan and would like to move all of my projects over to vw... but i often hit these problems. any advice would be helpful. i am using vw 2011 sp2 on a system identical to yours (27" iMac, 2.66 quad core / 4 gb ram 512 vid card Mac os 10.6.6 Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 jet, thanks for the info. So are you saying that the the Join and Combine/Connect tools don't work and still leave gaps? Or are you saying that you are having a hard time determining which objects need to be connected (thereby needing to zoom in really close to see)? Quote Link to comment
MullinRJ Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 Jet, Are you trying to use the JOIN command on all the lines at once? I believe it only works on 2 selected lines at a time. You are in need of a script that would sort through all the endpoints and join the ones that are close. I think what you want can be bought at VectorBits. See ChainMaker. http://www.vectorbits.com/VectorBits_2011/vectorbits/vectorbits.html HTH, Raymond Quote Link to comment
jet Posted March 21, 2011 Author Share Posted March 21, 2011 Yes the join and compose commands do work... if the endpoints are perfectly touching end to end... The trouble is the ends of many of them are not quite touching, so you have to zoom and zoom and zoom in to see that the ends are off by some riduculus amount like .0001m. So i need a tool or something that will FORCE combine or FORCE join the ends. Otherwise i will be here for ever fixing each line and poly... thanks for your time. MullinRJ - thanks, i will look at that site. jim Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 But jet, and I don't mean to be contrary, the Join and Connect/Combine are intended to connect, *exactly* connect, objects to each other. For example if you have two lines that are not connected you can connect them using join, similarly, a polyline can be joined to a line or to another polyline using Connect/Combine. See attached for graphic example. Very interested in hearing your comments on these. Quote Link to comment
MullinRJ Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Jet, How many objects do you have selected when you run the JOIN command? Raymond Quote Link to comment
Benson Shaw Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Throwing in another tool 2d Polygon Tool>Paint Bucket mode:creates a closed poly from linear objects enclosing an area. Original objects are not changed or deleted. Does not create anything when an area is not enclosed by the orig objects. It also gets dicey if enclosing curves have fill which intersect the intended new poly. Play around with it to see. -B Quote Link to comment
jet Posted March 22, 2011 Author Share Posted March 22, 2011 just the two objects Quote Link to comment
MullinRJ Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 That's odd, because when I use JOIN on two lines, they join perfectly. Is your problem with the JOIN command or the COMPOSE command? Are the objects you are having trouble joining Line-Line, Poly-Poly or Line-Poly? Raymond Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Further, you cannot Compose until after you have Joined/Connected. So yes, there is a lot of work involved in cleaning up other people's sloppy files (I know because I do it all the time too). If they only had to clean up their own files once they would probably attempt to draw with more accuracy. But in reality most people don't... Quote Link to comment
jet Posted March 22, 2011 Author Share Posted March 22, 2011 Thanks for everyones comments, the problem still exists... Yes lines and polys do combine and join if they perfectly meet at the ends.... But i am looking for a solution for cleaning a file with 1000's of lines with many that do not quite touch. So a command that would automatically 'force' them to meet within a set tolerance. Both Autocad and Illustrator have these clean / edit tools built in... I have been a big VW fan for years, but come from an autocad background. So i am trying to make an effort to really solve some of these issues that keep me coming back to autocad... I love VW and hate AutoCAD, even tho i still am forced to use Autocad on a regular basis because of these and other issues, would like to just forget about autocad, but as with this case, i will have to bring the file into Autocad, clean the linework, then bring in back into VW. It looks like Mullenrj link above may work "see chainmaker" cheers, jim Quote Link to comment
billtheia Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 I'm a little bit confused. Can't you simply use the Connect/Combine tool? You can use it in combine mode and, with two clicks, join two objects into a single polyline. See attachments. Quote Link to comment
bc Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 Just an update: I can not join two polylines with the connect/combine tool or by selecting both and composing. I recently submitted this to VSS tech support and it was acknowledged as an issue they COULD recreate and were going to look into it. Stay tuned... Quote Link to comment
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