Improvement to Grid Bubble Tool

[Jim Smith 337]

The Grid Bubble Tool is somewhat clunky. Amending a Grid is difficult as is adding secondary Grids. We are regretting having used the PIO for a project. Using the Grid Tool was a help & a time saver at the start, but now costs time to make alterations. In other projects we have made our Grid as a 2D / 3D hybrid Symbol that allowed us to reference the Grid in section.

I'd love to see the following improvements:

- Allow for better ability to alter the Grid PIO's individual elements

- Ability to change the dimension call-out to agree with the drawing's custom dimensions & positioning

- Add a function to add secondary Grids (a, b, c or i, ii, iii etc)

- Ability to align Gird Lines independently of one another (as buildings are often eccentrically shaped & Empty spaces on a drawing don't always need to have grid lines extend)

- Ability to remove Grid Bubbles independently (see above)

- 3D Grid references

- Allow Grids & Bubbles to be illustrated independently; i.e. Grid Bubbles should be set by the real world output size - regardless of my drawing's scale the Grid Bubble should always be 12 point and 10mm ø for example (Similar to a Drawing Label - having said that, my Labels live in Annotation Layer)

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6 hours ago, anton5 said:

Is there a way to create only one grid line and bubble (for example in zoomed in detail drawings) using the grid bubble tool?

 

kind regards anton

Not easily.

 

If I remember rightly, my usual workaround is to create a two-line grid in the annotations space, and stretch it so that only one line is visible and the other is somewhere off the side of the page print area.

 

A messy solution to a problem that's caused by the makers of the tool not fully understanding or anticipating the way gridlines need to show up in real world drawings.

[anton5 4]

I figured it would be some sort of annoying work around (and than having to cover up with white box so that it doesn't show outside of the viewport etc...)

 

[Asemblance 34]

On 10/21/2017 at 12:21 AM, Jim Smith said:

- On larger projects our Grid is a Hybrid symbol so the the Gird is is visible in both 2D & 3D 

 

@Jim Smith - How do you create this Hybrid 2D & 3D Grid exactly? Is it a case of effectively drawing a 'cage'? So.. you draw lines up vertically from the end of each of the 2D plan gridlines, on each side? Not sure best way to create this really.

[Jim Smith 337]

4 hours ago, Asemblance said:

Is it a case of effectively drawing a 'cage'? 

 

That's essentially it, & we only really do this for Larger projects. There are 2 Classes for Grid Lines (Grid/Line/Plan & Grid/Line/Elev).

 For a garden centre project we did last year I also had Sets of Grid Bubbles that were in classes called: GRID/ID/PLAN/1:500 (& /1:100, 1:50, 1:20, 1:10 as well as sets of classed for Elevations). The reason was each of these grid bubbles are scaled so they look correct at the relevant scale. This didn't work too badly but we still needed to add additional viewports for details as the Grid Bubbles were often too far from the detail.

[Asemblance 34]

Thanks Jim - I think I'll give it a go, although I'm sure we'll run into some headaches first time around!

[Jim Smith 337]

You're welcome, hope it works for you, we found it was a time saver all round.

 

[Patrick Fritsch 62]

Yo! VW developers...Either fix the tool or take it out as it's a useless piece of junk...NO results since this was submitted in 2016 and probably before...sad! Oh but don't tell me we have point clouds instead, more junk bling bling!

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8 hours ago, Patrick Fritsch said:

Yo! VW developers...Either fix the tool or take it out as it's a useless piece of junk...NO results since this was submitted in 2016 and probably before...sad! Oh but don't tell me we have point clouds instead, more junk bling bling!

In the meantime... you might find this discussion useful:

 

 

[Amorphous - Julian 262]

What a great solution @Jim Smith and @Kevin McAllister. 
 

But then again, I agree with @Patrick Fritsch - tools released in a program needs to be considered, tested and works. Some VW tools do not reflect how users would use them in real life.

 

We waste a lot of time as VW users finding 'workarounds' to the lack of consideration/limitations of VW tools. 

 

Enclosed is a screen shot of how we end up doing our 3D grids, by rotating them in 3D. But as with all the 'workaround' solutions presented, the limitation of this solution is that the 'section depth' of a viewport limits the display of this grid. 

 

If anyone in Vectorworks is listening, this 3D grid issue cannot linger for another few years to eventually get a solution. 

[mike m oz 376]

I'd like to see a plane solution where we can define them as grids and have a toggle so they can be made to show up in any view as required.  The grid label location would need to be flexible and have a user definable distance from the building part in a view.

 

The difficulty would be ensuring that only grids applicable to that building part are in a view.

[Jim Smith 337]

On 2/11/2019 at 10:34 PM, mike m oz said:

I'd like to see a plane solution where we can define them as grids and have a toggle so they can be made to show up in any view as required.  The grid label location would need to be flexible and have a user definable distance from the building part in a view.

 

The difficulty would be ensuring that only grids applicable to that building part are in a view.

 I should think you've hit the nail on the head. Perhaps a Tool similar to the way the Section Tool is visible in 2D, but with a 3D widget that allows one to view the Grid & Label in 3D.

[Patrick Fritsch 62]

Again, it's a basic tool that ALL designers need to use and it's been neglected by VW so they choose to put resources into currently useless point clouds, virtual reality and mobile Nomad junk that does not event work....All the Bling Bling will end into  a Bang Crash for VW