rotating drawing (not content)

[gvelthuis]

Using the arrowkeys (MAC) moves you through the drawing (without effecting its content).

Is there a way to rotate a whole drawing without effecting the content (90 degrees left and right and 180 degrees) ?

At the moment, when drawing elevations and sections from a plan, I have to:

- make all layers visible/active

- select all

- rotate 90 degrees.

It would make sense to have the whole drawing rotate left or right with a single command.

Does anyone know of something like that ?

[Carl Burns]

Try layer links:

If you want to rotate an architectural plan, make a new layer and in it create a layer link to the plan layer. "Unlock" and move / rotate the layer link freely.."content" of the plan is only affected by working in the original layer. To make working easier use Layer Colors under Document Preferences and make the layer link gray.

[Guest]

There is a view option for Right, Left, Right Iso, Back, Left Iso, etc.

Is that now what you are referring to ?

[gvelthuis]

Carl,

Thanks for the tip; I received the same one on another area of these techboards, but . . . . . I studied Layer Linking some time ago but I didn't get the clue; guess I have to dive in again.

Katie,

No, you are referring to the view options for a 3D model; I'm working in 2D.Think of making a drawing the traditional way; You draw a floorplan and after that pick up the lines to make the elevations. The easiest way to do that is turn the paper 90 degrees for each one of the elevations.To do the same in VW, I would have to turn my monitor upside down.The only trick I can think of is rotating the content of the drawing (f.i. 90 degrees) but then I have to be sure that all of the layers are visible (I tend to make them invisible, when they contain information I only use once in a while) and make them invisible again afterwards.I don'y want to alter the drawing, just have a look at it from an angle.

[TiTaNiuM sAMuRai]

Layer linking. You'll need to start doing your document based on link, but the only way to change the content -- if, for example, you have a building with a 45 degree kink -- is to go into the layer referenced by the link. The LL will allow you flexibility in display, but will not give you a UCS-type rotation of the base plan.

Essentially, the answer to your question, assuming you're talking about what I think you're talking about, is no.

[P Retondo]

It is possible to do what you want only in the world of 3D objects, by setting a working plane at any rotated angle you desire. VW then applies a system similar to ACAD's UCS (user coordinate system). Unfortunately, this capability does not carry across to the VW 2D world. A few months ago I suggested applying all the code related to 3D working planes to 2D objects to allow this capability - how about it, NNA? Multiple inheritance?

[Haich]

VW not having this functionality in 2D space is my biggest problem with the program. PLEASE implement this in future releases.

[gvelthuis]

Well, apparently, I touched a sensitive chord; the feature looked so obvious to me that I couldn't think of any other reason than being stupid myself (yes . . . not reading manuals).

I really think that the feature is very helpfull in the earlier stages of the deign process.

Most of the time, I duplicate the floorplan a few times and rotate them but this time I had to work with a huge file (imported complex dxf) and then VW gets pretty slow( even on a fast G4)

Anyway, I join the last writers in making a plea to NNA to include the feature.Even in the earliest versions of Photoshop (I know, I know....that's about pixels, not about vectors) one could rotate either the image or the canvas.

[ionw]

I and my office would find the ability to reorient the drawing space to an arbitrary angle very helpful. we often have projects that are more than rectangles! the nice thing about rotating the drawing area is that we could use all our familiar constraints (Shift etc) to make lines parallel to a wall that is not parallel to the bottom of the printed page. Not to mention if we need to adjust a dimension it might not be as hard as playing with the unconstrained dim tool!

thanks for your time

Ion Webster