Plumbing Pipe Fittings

[Piotr Karczewski]

On 3/19/2022 at 7:55 PM, mjm said:

Isn't this the exact purpose of a PIO?

I don't know if You know what I wanted to say? 
I was writing about unnecessary multiplication of symbols after any modification (like cutting hole into symbol) we have to create a new symbol. After all we will have a multiple line report concerned on one product - base symbol and its modifications. 

[mjm]

9 hours ago, Piotr Karczewski said:

I don't know if You know what I wanted to say? 
I was writing about unnecessary multiplication of symbols after any modification (like cutting hole into symbol) we have to create a new symbol. After all we will have a multiple line report concerned on one product - base symbol and its modifications. 

@Piotr Karczewski It's likely entirely likely I did not understand. My apologies. What I thought I understood is that symbol variants unnecessarily proliferate when needing to be modified. This is a problem indeed, one I have faced a few times. But in my impression a PIO is designed to accommodate any number of variables (see the Spotlight SoftGoods tool or Indoor or interiorcad). Maybe I'm attributing too much to the possibilities of the PIO -  not sure.

And also maybe those PIOs operate in too narrow a definition of variability to be effective for your needs?

I can completely understand the desire for 'editable instances' of symbols - very cool idea.

[Gilbert Osmond]

This seems relevant to this topic --

 

In VW Designer 2023, is there any way to actually wrap editable text labels directly on a 3D surface such as the outside of a pipe?

 

I know this can be simulated using Textures but that's a round-about way which doesn't allow easy, direct editing or arbitrary drag/drop movement of the resulting label. Textures are really optimized for repeating patterns, not single label locations...

 

How do I do a label that looks like this... but is in fact fully wrapped / placed on the 3D outer surface of the pipe, not just "hanging in space" as a planar text label that doesn't show correctly when changing 3D perspective?

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by Gilbert Osmond

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Plumbing is not my area.  But, if it was me doing this I would make each line of text separate and then move them into position manually so they appear wrapped.  If I had a lot of these, I would make the maximum number of lines and then use classes to hide the ones that are not required for certain parts.

[Jeff Prince]

10 hours ago, Gilbert Osmond said:

In VW Designer 2023, is there any way to actually wrap editable text labels directly on a 3D surface such as the outside of a pipe?

 

I know this can be simulated using Textures but that's a round-about way which doesn't allow easy, direct editing or arbitrary drag/drop movement of the resulting label. Textures are really optimized for repeating patterns, not single label locations...

 

How do I do a label that looks like this... but is in fact fully wrapped / placed on the 3D outer surface of the pipe, not just "hanging in space" as a planar text label that doesn't show correctly when changing 3D perspective?

 

Easily editable is where you may run into some difficulty.  Here are a couple of ways to at least accomplish the task:

• Texture Decal.  Create an image file for each label needed.  Keep it editable in your image editing program.  Generate new .png files as required to remake the decal textures.
• Project Text to Surface.  Make a string of text in Vectorworks.  Convert it to polys.  Use Project to send those polys to the face of your surface.

 

[bcd]

Sounds like you're asking for a 3d mappable Data Tag. Very cool idea.

Edited May 28, 2023 by bcd

[digitalcarbon]

I made this a long time ago and it was very very very involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[digitalcarbon]

Oh, did I forget to mention that it was very involved?

[Gilbert Osmond]

5 minutes ago, digitalcarbon said:

I made this a long time ago and it was very very very involved.

 

 

Right... that's why I was hoping there was some way to just do a magic text label that could be applied as a a "wrap" or "send to surface", behaving exactly like a Texture Bed ... but retaining its characteristics as a fully-editable normal text field...

[digitalcarbon]

there were two reasons this mapping was useful.

1. when I made videos of the project and would fly around i did not have to remember what stuff was.  I could just read it as I flew by.

 

2.  If VPs were rendered in OpenGL then the labeling would show and i did not have to annotate as much.

 

I stopped using this approach when i switched over to Onshape as the items are called out in a BOM.

[thinkingpencil]

From these posts I know I am adding to the expertise of piping maestros! In my simple domestic projects I have drawn, for example, sanitary piping layouts in the annotation layer of view ports. Or sometimes on a design layer. In the MEP toolset the piping tool does still seem to be diagrammatic one (vwx 2023 SP5). So in the next project I shall draw sanitary pipework in 3d using the duct tool set to round.