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Top/Plan view problem when slab is added


LouK

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I was an intermediate user of VW2002 years go, now trying to get back into the program. I don't understand what's happening in my Top/Plan view:

 

I drew a slabless floor plan.  Everything was fine in 2D and 3D. Then I added a slab bounded to the outside wall edges. Everything including the slab, is correct in 3D, but doors & windows, shapes etc., disappear in the Top/Plan view. Remove the slab and they reappear. It's as if the slab is sitting on top, but it's not.

 

I'm sure it's something simple that I'm being thick about or have forgotten, but so far I have not found the resolution. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Edited by LouK
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To expand on what Jim said, Objects in Vectorworks are "Stacked" in the order they are drawn. If the objects are unfilled, that is usually not a problem. When you start adding objects with fills, it can be an issue.

 

You said that you drew the slab after the walls doors and windows. And that is is bounded to the outside of the walls, so it extends over the walls.

 

Over simplification ahead ;-)  So Vectorworks draws the walls (that you drew first) then adds the doors and windows and then finally comes to the slab and says OK, I need to draw that and it extends over the walls.  If you select the slab and Send to Back then VW will draw the slab first, then the walls and then the windows and doors.

 

All of the above applies if everything is on the same Layer.  If they are on different Layers, then the stacking order of the Layers comes into play also.  You can change the Layer Stacking order from either the Organization or Navigation Palettes by dragging in the # column to get the layers where you want them.

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Top/plan view is confusing when you are starting out trying to work out how things work in 3D.

 

When you're in top/plan view It's not a top view of the 3d objects, rather each 3D object is made into a flat symbol, like paper cutouts and these are simply placed onto the screen. VW - believe it or not - is not clever enough to know that a floor slab, set at a height lower than a wall, should be drawn under rather than on top of a wall. So you have to tell it, as described above, by sending it to the "back" of the stack of paper cutouts.

 

An annoying feature of floor slabs is that because they have a fill, it's easy to keep unintentionally selecting them when you are editing other objects in the floorplan (try drawing a selection marquee around something, for example, when that thing is sitting on a floor slab with a fill). My solution to this is to turn off floor slabs in my "floorplan-editing" view.

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On 1/31/2017 at 11:07 AM, line-weight said:

(try drawing a selection marquee around something, for example, when that thing is sitting on a floor slab with a fill)

Good thoughts from line-weight.

 

Elaborating even more:

Note that press/hold the shift key prior to start of a selection allows dragging a marquee without selecting the slab or other object at point the marquee starts.  This is a way to start a new selection without selecting or moving that start point object, or to add items to an existing selection, or remove items from an existing selection.

 

Top/Plan view is always WireFrame. Rendering a Top/Plan view (eg OpenGL) automatically switches the view from Top/Plan view to Top view. In Top view, the object stacking is ordered by the relative 3d position of the objects rather than the creation order. Similar results obtain if switching the drawing view from Top/Plan to Top view.  Top view can be viewed in Wire Frame or in any of the available render modes.

 

-B

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On 04/02/2017 at 0:45 AM, Benson Shaw said:

Note that press/hold the shift key prior to start of a selection allows dragging a marquee without selecting the slab or other object at point the marquee starts.  This is a way to start a new selection without selecting or moving that start point object, or to add items to an existing selection, or remove items from an existing selection.

 

Ah, I knew you could use shift to add/remove from an existing selection but not that it can be used to solve the marquee dragging problem - so thanks for the tip.

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