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Standard View and Working Plane ? not always automatic ?


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Traditionally, one would switch to the Front or Standard View to move / draw in the "Z" plane. Top Plan View for X and Y - Front for Z and X ? etc Setting the Working Plane to match was not needed. Now there appears to be the possibility that drawing in the Top Plan view, and switching to the Front View, will allow the object to be moved in a direction that is not visible in 2D. This, more than often, results in the object not being where it is expected, when you switch back to the Top Plan view.

Is there a Preference to have the working Plane follow the Standard Views ?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would love to understand how others deal with this inconsistency when editing an Extrude (? for example). Traditionally, an extrude was created from a "Screen Layer" 2D object. When you edited the extrude, you returned to the "Screen Layer" 2D world. Now, with the Auto "Layer Plane" mode - you edit an Extrude and the Working plane may be 90 to the Screen / Viewing plane.

Example: Extrude a 2D Polygon in the Front View, or draw and Extrude in the Top Plan and rotate the Extrude 90 degrees (? in a side view)

In the Top Plan View, Double Click the Extrude to edit it.

One is still able to easily go into the Edit Mode, but the view remains Top Plan VIew, even though there is no way to correctly edit the geometry. As the 2D polygon is viewed as a "Line". The Viewing Plane does NOT automatically change to the correct 2D orientation.

One then needs to change the view to correctly Edit the Polygon, logically, as 2D Geometry. It makes little sense to edit a polygon viewed from the end.

How can the View Automatically change, Logically, to one that equates to the geometry at hand? (It one did this prior to the Layer / Screen Plane Shift)

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I have always drawn the initial shapes in top plan, performed the extrude, rotated it into the orientation I wanted then made any needed alignment/modification changes from there.

I am almost always in either isometric or top/plan, so I don't notice what you are seeing there. I never really did this intentionally, but I have just noticed how doing so completely avoids screen plane of any kind. I'll do some tests here and see what comes up when bouncing between the two planar modes.

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I automatically choose top/plan from the mode bar drop down whenever I'm editing an extrude. I've trained myself to do this because of the screen plane / layer plane mess. Even editing the shape in top can sometimes cause unexpected results.

Its pretty dumb since the source of an extrude will always be a 2d shape.

Jim, if you always extrude in top/plan don't you have problems with texture orientation on some objects? Especially if you're trying to place an image on a surface.

My workflow involved extruding in the logical view - usually top/plan, front or side - for the object I'm trying to create.

Kevin

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Jim, if you always extrude in top/plan don't you have problems with texture orientation on some objects? Especially if you're trying to place an image on a surface.

Absolutely. It's one of Renderworks' biggest problems at the moment, not being able to map objects faces/sides individually. I get around it by extracting the various faces and texturing them separately. (One of the messiest workarounds I use.)

As for planar objects in general, we have recent found some REALLY strange behavior similar to this when you draw 2 planar objects in two different 3D planes, then try to use both of them in one operation, such as an extrude along path. Often they will both try to pick one of the 3D planes which results in visually fantastic but useless geometry. All of which is getting documented and looked into now.

With the work I've been doing recently I have been coming across a lot of these and filing far more issues than feature requests, where in previous months it was the other way around.

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I think I've seen this type of geometry before. That's partly why the source of an extrude should always be edited in top/plan....

I also have trouble with extrudes all the time. Mostly if I extrude a line or open polyline into a surface (creating curved backdrops etc.). If you subtract other geometry from it VW can get very confused. Often it creates empty shapes.

Kevin

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

To be honest I feel that extrudes shouldn't allow unclosed polylines, unclosed polygons or lines if it is going to result in impossible/hollow geometry. At the very least I have recommended an alert that pops up if that has happened upon exiting the extrude. (or during creation if it was wrong from the start)

This was very common in support calls when I first started. Users would draw 4 lines to create a rectangle, then select them all and attempt to extrude it to create a box. It would then fail because Vectorworks can't properly extrude anything that does not have a surface. This is fixed with proper training of course, but I think its an easy enough mistake for a novice or even an expert to make that an automated alert be added at a minimum.

Going further, options to prompt the user to convert the source geometry into a "proper" polygon before the extrusion occurs would be even better.

Edited by JimW
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That's a hard one. I find I often need to make them and wish that VW understood the geometry it was creating better. Other programs (ie. Rhino) differentiate better.

For example - for visualization purposes I may want to create a realistic looking venetian blind. The most efficient way would be a series of angled lines extruded to create it. These are perfectly valid surfaces. Now imagine there was some obstruction that required cutting away part of one side of the blind near the bottom. The logical approach would be to use another extrude from the front and do a solid subtraction..... but VW gets confused when you do this.

Kevin

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Effectively what Vectorworks does is create a surface that has a same thickness as a line does, which unfortunately is 0. Most likely a "fudging" approach that gives a line a thickness before extruding it would be better, which is what most raw modeling applications like rhino and 3DS do to account for a surface made from one dimensional geometry.

The change will be a matter of us needing to output useful geometry in that particular case than being mathematically "correct" as we are now.

(By the way if it wasnt clear, I agree completely with the original posts and those following, just that the solution has to be carefully considered to avoid shifting the problem elsewhere rather than fixing it.)

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