Displaying label legends in views other than top/plan

[pippawilde]

Hi All,

I need to show label legend info for fixtures in viewports displaying in other than top/plan view.

For example, I have a vertical circle truss. To show the label legends on my plan view sheet would be confusing, as there are lights all around the circle and they overlap in plan view.

My entire model/plot are drawn in 3d, so to show the vertical trusses more clearly, I do detail sheets showing the vertical trusses and lights in front or side views. I would like to display the label legends in these views but haven't had any luck.

In the past I've drawn the position and lights a second time, drawn in plan rather than vertically and have applied legends to that re-drawn element but this seems like a lot of additional memory in an already large file.

Suggestions, please? Thank you!!

[James Russell]

Hi Elisha,

This is also something I've wondered for a while and never really delved into... until now.

I've been playing with the Vectorworks Lighting Device and it's associated parts for a while now and I'm commonly breaking it in the process. Within that I found that when a 3D component is added to one of the container components of the lighting device it is displayed on the 3D plane with the 3D object.

I'm not using 2011 yet but I'm led to believe that there are 3D text functions within that enhanced from 2010 which believe we're both still using.

When I inserted an Image Prop, with it's function set to rotate to viewer, into a container it did an okay job of representing the circular component I had selected for my Channel Label (noted that it was just a screen shot as the base image, ).

The flaws that I have in my plan thus far are that you can't access the Lighting Device record from within the symbol container for a device and that I don't have 3D text that auto rotates to viewer to associate to the record.

If you did have these two things through a plugin perhaps you could just allocated a container symbol to each of the text attributes, (channel, unit number, colour)... possible perhaps, but not within my current abilities.

Maybe it'll spark someone else here.

James

[pippawilde]

Yikes! That sounds fairly convoluted, but it seems to me that being able to do this would be a common desire. I have to believe that there's a simpler way to do it!

I'm going to run this past a friend of mine that's a beta tester and maybe he'll have some ideas...will keep you posted!

In the meantime, any one else out there...thoughts?

[pippawilde]

Nope...no good answers. I think that this just may be beyond the standard functionality of the program for right now. Hope that the next version addresses this!