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Basic 3d viewing


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I am using 9.5.2 on MAc OS 9.2.2. I have been using VW for years and do mostly 2D. I recently drew a theatre w/ drapes and a lighting grid using hybrid symbols, walls, and some 3D objects. The walls are one layer, the drape another and the grid another. When I look at the drawing in side view it looks great. When I switch to a front elevation I can see thru the wall to the drape behind. I tried layer linking to a separate layer, different renderings, and putting the wall and drape on same layer. There is nothing the manual that I can find. Any suggestions?

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That wasn's a silly question. It was the right question. I had a hatch in the 2D part of the sybol but no cavity fill. That helped. I still can't get it to render properly in front view without putting things on the same layer. Or in one instance changing the layer order. I put a video screen in 3D on a stage. When I look at in section everything looks great. When I look at it in front elevation by itself it's a solid color. When I looked at in front w/ everything it was behnind the back wall. So I went to layers and moved the screen on top of the walls and it worked. Do you know why that is and how to get around it? It's not very useful if you are trying to use the same drawing for ground plans and elevations. Thanks for your input.

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I am trying to look at different layers at the same time. I have toi investigate the set up of z and ?z to see what I need to change. Any input would be appreciated. I just want to reitterate that no matter how many layers I'm using everything looks correct in side view. It's the front elevation that gets screwy.

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I think this is your problem. Vectorworks isn't really made to view different Layers in 3-D at the same time.

What you need to do is create a layer just for viewing the complete 3-D model, and then Layer Link all your layers inton this layer. The Layer Link command is under the View menu. What this does is reference all of your 3-D information into a single layer for viewing.

I find it very useful for seperating the 3-D information into simpler sets of compnents in different layers for editing, and then have the Complete Model layer (with all the other layers linked to it) just for viewing.

Keep in mind that you cannot edit Layer Linked information in the Layer it is linked to, you have to edit the objects in their origional layer, then VW will automatically update the Layer Links. In addition you can select a Layer Link, unlock it (under the edit menu) and move it or duplicate it, and it will still update when you edit the origional geometry.

Good Luck

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I think Mike has the answer. If you are viewing multiple layers in 3D, when you change the view in one layer, you have to use the command "Align Layer Views" to get the other layers to adopt that view. I've never tried rendering in that situation, so I don't know if all layers will render once they are aligned. Mike has given you the correct procedure: create a new Model layer, and insert links to all the layers you want included. If you still have a problem with an object appearing in the foreground when it should be in the background, the most likely explanation is that the object actually is in the foreground and has been placed incorrectly (an easy mistake to make in 3D!).

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Ahh yes! Now I remember. I had already tried to layer link but ran out of memory to render it as unshaded poygon. (the only way to make the wall solid.) So I was working around it by leaving the other layers in wireframe, aligning all layers, and only rendering the walls. Is there any way to make the rendering less memory intensive? The drawing is about 13 MB and I have 120 MB allotted to VW. Anything I can do?

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The polygonal renderings convert your drawings into polygonal faces for rendering. Depending on how much and how complex the drawing is, this can be very memory intensive and time consuming.

Are you traditionally getting out of memory errors when rendering with unshaded polygon when rendering a layer link?

You might want to try Open GL rendering. Sometimes that is less memory intensive than the polygonal rendering modes.

I wouldn't bump up your memory too much more as you are about at the limit. If you had more memory in the machine, that would help with allowing more memory to be available to VW.

[ 01-20-2003, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Katie ]

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