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Teaser Tuesday - Multiple Drawing Views - Vectorworks 2018


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1 hour ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Great tease!

 

I'm curious if its possible to link the render mode of all the open panes..... so if I shift from OpenGL to wireframe all the open panes shift at the same time.... I can see myself wanting this. I often switch render modes while working and I wouldn't want to have to switch each individually.

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Render mode linking to all the panes is not implemented in this version. However, I can see the usefulness of this feature.

 

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And what does it do if you double click to edit a symbol in one view? Do all the views switch into the symbol? What happens to the render mode(s)? Do you get an Exit symbol button in every pane?

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Object editing (e.g. symbol editing) mode can be entered/exited per pane.

 

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Does the top row of the mode bar show the settings for the currently active pane then? (e.g.. the dropdown for views)

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Yes, the view bar, navigation palette, and related UI components will show the currently selected pane settings.

 

Edited by Chih-Pin
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16 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

Yay!

 

Q1) How does this integrate with Saved Views? Can a Saved View save combinations of multi-view set-ups? Or, does a Saved View load into the Active Pane?

 

Yes, the saved view will be applied to the currently selected pane. I can see there will be a lot of requests of saving the configurations of the multiview setups though. 

 

16 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

Q2) Is there a way to quickly jump "into" and back "out of" one of the panes? For example, in Cinema4D you can click the middle mouse button to expand one of the 4 views to fill the screen, then click again to return to the multi-pane display. This isn't a critical function; just curious.

If this^ doesn't exist, when you turn off then turn back on "Enable Multiple View Panes" does it recall your previous arrangement?

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You will be able to enlarge the currently selected pane by "turning off" multi-view. Next time you "turn on" multiview, it will recall the previous arrangement. There is a hot key for quickly toggling this feature.

 

 

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18 hours ago, RGyori said:

And on the day that I received my Service Select renewal reminder... hmmm.  ;)

 

Just to be clear, am i correct on presuming that Multiple Drawing Views is GPU dependent and that VW 2018 will not yet take advantage of multiple cores?

 

 

 

Hi RGyori:

Top/plan view already takes advantage of multiple CPU cores.  The final frame drawing (after zooming or panning etc.) is divided up among however many cores you have, to speed up the drawing operation.  The multi-threading also allows Vectorworks to more quickly respond to any user actions before the drawing operation is finished.

 

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13 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

Does the App need to be full screen to handle two monitor support or can view on the second screen be a separate window with say resource browser docked into it?

 

I just happened to make it fullscreen for the video example, they can be resized freely. Currently the view panes don't dock with other palettes though, but that was one of my first wishlist items for the next revision of the tool.
 

 

13 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

And Is it possible to set say viewports to create a picture in picture instead of the Return to Viewport button?

At the moment it is not specially hooked into editing modes no, but good idea.

 

13 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

I'm curious if its possible to link the render mode of all the open panes

To simplify the first implementation, render modes are always separate and class/layer visibilities are either ALL the same or ALL separate. 

 

 

13 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

and what does it do if you double click to edit a symbol in one view? Do all the views switch into the symbol?

Each view pane, if you enter an editing mode or container object within that pane, will show a separate editing border and exit button. Slapped this very quick example together, i'm editing two different symbols on the design layer in the left two panes, editing a group in the upper right pane, and looking at the design layer top/plan in the lower right pane:

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 9.39.10 AM.png

 

 

13 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Does the top row of the mode bar show the settings for the currently active pane then? (e.g.. the dropdown for views)

Yes.

 

 

12 hours ago, Andy Broomell said:

How does this integrate with Saved Views? Can a Saved View save combinations of multi-view set-ups? Or, does a Saved View load into the Active Pane?

Combos are what I'm thinking will be the next big feature to come to multiple views. Currently you can load in separate saved views to separate view panes and it stores this configuration per-file, but they cant be saved as a Set of panes, which seems like it would make the most sense to me. Either by expanding what Saved Views can do, or introducing Saved View Sets as a resource type. 

 

 

12 hours ago, Andy Broomell said:

Is there a way to quickly jump "into" and back "out of" one of the panes? For example, in Cinema4D you can click the middle mouse button to expand one of the 4 views to fill the screen, then click again to return to the multi-pane display. This isn't a critical function; just curious.

If this^ doesn't exist, when you turn off then turn back on "Enable Multiple View Panes" does it recall your previous arrangement?

Yes, you can set a hotkey for multiple views (I believe the default is going to be "M" ) and when pressed, that will toggle multiview on or off, leaving whatever the current active pane is as the single pane when the mode is off.

 

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Thanks Jim and Chih-Pin.

 

Those were not the best examples I have chosen.

A better example would be an activation of a camera from camera lister.

I assume it will activate the camera for the active view.

In such cases you have to always care which view is active.

 

Similar to C4D that needed 18 releases until activating a camera will

always adress the perspective viewport only but not the orthogonal views.

And is still that the Render View button may accidentally preview render

your wireframe orthogonal views instead of your shaded camera view if

you don' care enogh about your active view.

 

I only use single or 4 pane view (top, front, left or right + perspective),

orthogonals wireframe and perspective/camera view shaded.

And I also think it is quite important to be able to easy switch between

4 view mode and one single view of them in full screen.

(C4D = MMB, Modo = "0")

 

Plus, in Modo, a view also gets active if only the cursor hovers over that view,

like when you do any things related to view by a short cut.

 

It would be a bit tedious if I had to arrange such a typical 4 view mode manually

for each file or include in template files.

But I also like the flexible split view option.

 

 

I'm sure the other majority of users is more interested in double views for

DL+SL comparisons.

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3 hours ago, Dave Donley said:

 

Hi RGyori:

Top/plan view already takes advantage of multiple CPU cores.  The final frame drawing (after zooming or panning etc.) is divided up among however many cores you have, to speed up the drawing operation.  The multi-threading also allows Vectorworks to more quickly respond to any user actions before the drawing operation is finished.

 

 

Thanks Dave, just when I thought i knew it all! 9_9  A part of my question came from considering the $ vs performance value of the upcoming iMac Pro . 

 

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1 hour ago, JimW said:

Each view pane, if you enter an editing mode or container object within that pane, will show a separate editing border and exit button. Slapped this very quick example together, i'm editing two different symbols on the design layer in the left two panes, editing a group in the upper right pane, and looking at the design layer top/plan in the lower right pane:

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 9.39.10 AM.png

Interesting..... I'm not really sure what I think about this. What I'm currently understanding is that multi view provides separate distinct panes which individually are their own document windows independent of the other panes that are open.....

 

When I use multi view in another piece of software, I'm usually using it to access a snap point or see a piece of geometry that's obscured in the view I started working in. So I would start a drawing operation in one view, move over to a second pane to acquire a snap/place a point and then move back to my original pane to finish the operation. I would have assumed that if I went in to edit a group or symbol and it was visible in 3 different panes, I would be editing it in those 3 different panes. I would have also assumed that only panes that showed something outside of a design layer (eg. a sheet layer) wouldn't drop into container edit mode. So can a single drawing operation span multiple panes - eg. can I draw a complex 3d NURBS curve by selecting points in multiple panes? Does the clip cube span panes or is it distinct for each pane?

 

One thing I am excited about is the ability to see the design layer in one pane and the sheet layer in another. But I think many people would then wish for the ability to right click on a sheet layer viewport and choose an option to "edit design layer for viewport in adjacent pane" so you could directly edit and see a sheet layer viewport at the same time.

 

Given that these panes are completely independent can you open a worksheet or the script editor in their own panes. I can see this being valuable for Marionette for example, where you could have a 3d view of your Marionette object, a top plan view of the Marionette network and the script editor as your three panes....

 

Kevin

Edited by Kevin McAllister
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6 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

I would have assumed that if I went in to edit a group or symbol and it was visible in 3 different panes, I would be editing it in those 3 different panes. I would have also assumed that only panes that showed something outside of a design layer (eg. a sheet layer) wouldn't drop into container edit mode. So can a single drawing operation span multiple panes - eg. can I draw a complex 3d NURBS curve by selecting points in multiple panes?

 

At the moment it is not possible to DRAW between two separate panes with a single tool that uses multiple clicks like Line or NURBS curves, only to drag objects from pane to pane. You can keep the same tool active and plunk down objects in any of your open panes, but we weren't able to get cross-pane drawing working well enough to suit us before feature freeze. You can edit a symbol or group or any container in ANY of the views, even editing the same symbol once in each of as many views as you have open, but currently it behaves as it has in previous versions where the drawing view where you make the edit is what gets the edit border, it doesnt perform a bulk action and enter the editing mode in all relevant panes, good wishlist item though.

 

10 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

I think many people would then wish for the ability to right click on a sheet layer viewport and choose an option to "edit design layer for viewport in adjacent pane" so you could directly edit and see a sheet layer viewport at the same time.

Agreed, I think this is the direction the feature should evolve in. the first implementation will get users working with it and seeing what they like and don't like, from that we will be able to guide our 2.0 feature design. (We are now more often focusing on improving existing tools and not letting them fall to the wayside after their initial fanfare, giving items 2.0 and 3.0 feature sets in subsequent releases.)

 

8 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Given that these panes are completely independent can you open a worksheet or the script editor in their own panes.

Edits that spawn their own special dialog (Like worksheets and Scripts) do not interact with Panes in any way, only editing actions where you'd be taken into the orange border UI. However, since when youre editing a marionette node or object uses the container edit UI, marionette objects can indeed be edited across multiple panes.

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1 minute ago, rDesign said:

Would Multi View allow editing a worksheet in one window while viewing a DL in another (e.g. changing the Door or Window schedule while viewing the floor plan)? Thanks.

Edit Worksheet still pops up it's own quasi-dialog box edit interface, it does not interact with Panes directly at this time. 

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3 minutes ago, michael john williams said:

Everything so simple and quick! No downtime waiting for rendering etc. It would be useful to know the spec of the pc that was in the video?


Nvidia GTX 980Ti was the GPU, which is effectively all that would be use on a machine for Multiple Views. The CPU, hard drive etc wouldn't factor into it's performance very much.

However, the only real reason you'd NEED something as powerful as a 980Ti is if you were using it on dual 4K displays like I was in the demo. If your GPU already handles a single view with no stuttering or slowness, it would likely handle multiple views without issue on the same screen.

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2 hours ago, JimW said:

At the moment it is not possible to DRAW between two separate panes with a single tool that uses multiple clicks like Line or NURBS curves,

 

Ouch.

 

That is at least 80% of why I use Multi View Window in CAD when available.

Part of the rest 20% may be to visually control Geometry while modeling

 

 

2 hours ago, JimW said:

(We are now more often focusing on improving existing tools and not letting them fall to the wayside after their initial fanfare

 

That is great !

 

2 hours ago, JimW said:

giving items 2.0 and 3.0 feature sets in subsequent releases.

 

That is something strange for me.

There are examples in the past and current releases where I could have lived

very well without knowing of the V1.0 and V2.0 releases in between.

 

 

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1 hour ago, zoomer said:

That is at least 80% of why I use Multi View Window in CAD when available.

Part of the rest 20% may be to visually control Geometry while modeling

 

^ I agree with this. I suspect many people heavily into 3d would come with the same expectation. I can definitely see the usefulness of what's being teased, but being able to snap/draw across panes is fundamentally what made me wish for true multi view as a must have feature. Otherwise there are other things I would consider bigger priorities.

 

1 hour ago, zoomer said:

That is something strange for me.

There are examples in the past and current releases where I could have lived

very well without knowing of the V1.0 and V2.0 releases in between.

 

This made me laugh out loud, I guess because its so true :D

 

Kevin

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Just now, line-weight said:

@JimWhave you tested whether this multi views plays nicely with 3dconnexion devices?

 

I have tested it extensively and submitted bugs specifically related to it.

 

Since it works very differently from the rest of the view changing in Vectorworks (which are almost all tied to menu, tool or cursor input) it often has issues triggering an active pane properly, but I expect these issues to be resolved by the time we release. 

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15 minutes ago, JimW said:

 

I have tested it extensively and submitted bugs specifically related to it.

 

Since it works very differently from the rest of the view changing in Vectorworks (which are almost all tied to menu, tool or cursor input) it often has issues triggering an active pane properly, but I expect these issues to be resolved by the time we release. 

Good to hear. Thanks.

Can different views have different sets of classes/layers visible in them? And I assume we can apply a "saved view" to any of them? This would be a nice point in time to make the "saved views" list more manageable (as discussed in other threads). Mine are becoming quite unwieldy.

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20 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Can different views have different sets of classes/layers visible in them?

Yes, they cal all be locked to the same layer/class visibilities, or all use separate visibilities.

 

20 minutes ago, line-weight said:

And I assume we can apply a "saved view" to any of them?

Yep!

 

20 minutes ago, line-weight said:

This would be a nice point in time to make the "saved views" list more manageable (as discussed in other threads).

Agreed, I'm thinking a system of Saved View Sets is needed, something that can be organized/foldered/collapsed in a hierarchical list, something to make it less of a monolith list.

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3 hours ago, zoomer said:
5 hours ago, JimW said:

At the moment it is not possible to DRAW between two separate panes with a single tool that uses multiple clicks like Line or NURBS curves,

 

Ouch.

Technically this is possible; Jim was probably just trying to simplify the answer.  All of the panes being used must all have the same active layer and all be either 3D views or all be Top Plan views.  At this time users will not be able to start a tool in a Top Plan view and then finish that tool in a 3D view.  The interactive feedback will also not show in 3D views while the tool is being used in Top Plan or vice versa, however the object created by the tool will show in both if it’s visibilities permit.  I hope this helps clarify the multiple pane interaction, please let me know if you have any additional questions.

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That was a task I thought of.

 

No problem with layer restriction.

I prefer global settings for layer/class settings and visibilities.

 

But working in a 2D top plan view, starting to draw a rectangle,

length, width and when it gets red to push/pull,

define its height by snaping to an object in a side view.

(which is defined as 3D view in VW)

 

 

Thinking of multiple active Layers is totally new and unexpected for me.

Maybe technically needed for availability of DL and SL at the same time.

Need to get used to those novelties to see what I could do and how others

will use them.

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I sometimes use different layers for different versions of a design. Or for "existing" and "proposed" elements. Something to play around with but I can imagine that maybe being able to draw something in one viewport with certain layers switched off for clarity, whilst seeing it appear superimposed on a different option/version in a subsidiary viewport could be pretty handy in some cases.

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I use Layers for different versions all the time, if possible.

But in some cases, like where changes exceed Stories, you have to use Classes,

which is far less comfortable and more complicated than Layers.

 

That is why I lately had the idea of adding an additional "Version Layer" dimension

to visibility. Similar like Render Takes in C4D.

So you can switch between Versions and make changes in Geometry.

Maybe internally that works just by Duplicates of related Layers or Classes but

hidden from the user.

 

 

I personally (3D only) prefer global settings for layer/class settings and visibilities

because it is less complicated, faster and easier to handle.

But I often heard that being able to have the ability to have separate visibilities is

mandatory for many many people.

So I think it is a must have feature to control Classes and Layers separately per Pane,

as well as, an option control these globally in a simple way.

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Truly amazing new features for Vectorworks, and one that will make working in 3d and using BIM workflows much easier and more compelling. Its Nicely implemented, and runs well even on my Macbook Pro!

Heres a creative images created for a training course I delivered to the Irish Film Industry, created by my assistant Kenneth Smith with a little post production in Photoshop.

 

Jonathan Reeves / director
BA(Hons) M.Arch Dip.Arch RIBA
Jonathan Reeves Architecture

 

Author of "Innovative Vectorworks BIM"
www.jra-vectorworks-cad.co.uk

Set Design Small.jpg

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On 7/26/2017 at 5:04 PM, JLoy said:

Technically this is possible; Jim was probably just trying to simplify the answer.  All of the panes being used must all have the same active layer and all be either 3D views or all be Top Plan views.  At this time users will not be able to start a tool in a Top Plan view and then finish that tool in a 3D view.  The interactive feedback will also not show in 3D views while the tool is being used in Top Plan or vice versa, however the object created by the tool will show in both if it’s visibilities permit.  I hope this helps clarify the multiple pane interaction, please let me know if you have any additional questions.

 

Another strike against "Top-Plan"  - When are we going to sunset this thing?

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