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Clip Surface command limited to 1,000 Objects ??


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Hi there,

I tired to create a perforated plate and wanted to clip circles out of a rectangle and then extrude it afterwards. It seems that the number of circles is limited: 999 pieces works fine, with 1,000 the command clips only one circle.

Is there a limitation ? If yes, any ideas for a workaround, exept joining smaller plates with less than 1,000 objects  ?

 

VW 2017 / SP3

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

How many holes will you be cutting?  Do you need this modeled with the actual holes in the geometry, or can you get by with a texture with a transparency map?

 

If you really need to model it, you can try the following steps:

1. Select the rectangle and one circle

2. Clip Surface

3. Delete the circle used to clip the hole

    You should now have a polyline with one hole

4. Select all remaining circles and "Cut"

5. Select the polyline and use the Edit Polyline command (it's the same command as Edit Group)

6. Paste in Place

7. Exit the polyline group

WARNING: If you have many more than 1,000 circles, you might want to go make some coffee (and possibly a four course meal).

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You might be better of subtracting solids rather than clipping a polygon and then extruding.

 

1.  Solid subtraction has a useable history.  Clipped surfaces don't.

2.  Extruded polys with holes tend to have annoying interior lines.

 

If you don't need a hidden line drawing of the object, a texture with a mask rendered in renderworks or open gl will process MUCH faster than and extrude with 1000 circular holes.

 

hth

 

mk

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Have you thought about using the Surface Array command to create your object? Its found under the Model menu. Here's the help info about it -

 

http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2017/eng/index.htm#t=VW2017_Guide%2FShapes3%2FCreating_a_Surface_Array.htm&rhsearch=surface array&rhhlterm=surface array&rhsyns=

 

Its pretty much designed for what you're trying to do. As everyone says, you are creating a lot of geometry so it will slow your file down significantly... :)

 

Kevin

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks @ all for the help,

 

you are all right, it is a lot of geometry and it slows down the file very much. Surface Array command seems to be a solution, but in the end it is only a quick way to create that much geometry.

What I really want to do is a perforated plate as in the attached picture with convexe an concave pits. I did this as solid addition and converted it to a generic solid. The geometry is perfect, but it terribly slows down he file,- so it is unseless, especially when I want to insert this mutiple times as a symbol.

Maybe a rendering solution is better, but I'm not very familiar with renderworks, so how can I do this ?

perforated_plate.jpg

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Matt's solution is a good one. If you really need the geometry (eg. you render in hidden line for example) I would suggest making a symbol containing your geometry (eg. the perforated sheet) and a low res version of your geometry (eg. a simple extrude). Class the perforated sheet and simple extrude separately and then you can turn off the perforated sheet while you're modelling and turn it on only when you render for output.

 

Kevin

 

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