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Teaser Tuesday - Direct Editing of Sections and Elevations - Vectorworks 2018


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1 hour ago, JimW said:

 

Gives a close approximation, however it will not show a limited depth, it focuses on the sectioned plane.


 Unknown.png

 

 

To confirm, this section line starts in front of the building portion on the left hand side of the image and then jogs back and cuts through the right hand side?

 

I'm curious if it uses the clip cube to show this? From an outside perspective it would be weird to customize a whole new module just for this function..... I can imagine a future workflow where all sheet layer viewport views are defined by looking inward or outward to a clip cube "cube", where you could drag a side to update/change a viewport.

 

Kevin

 

 

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Just now, Kevin McAllister said:

I'm curious if it uses the clip cube to show this? From an outside perspective it would be weird to customize a whole new module just for this function..... I can imagine a future workflow where all sheet layer viewport views are defined by looking inward or outward to a clip cube "cube", where you could drag a side to update/change a viewport.

 


The underlying tech is very similar yes, but on the user interaction side it doesn't directly involve clip cubes. This tech, along with some other VGM enhancements are all working towards the speedy and direct control over nearly everything that pretty much everyone wants. 

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34 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

 

Still pretty far away from what your demo is displaying Jim. The line quality is much sharper and blacker than default OpenGL. It's very crisp, so I assume there's no creasing angle set.

 

I really like it too. Apart from the fact that it appears to show lines between floor levels where one wall meets another.

Right, it does show more lines and seams than true hidden-line. It's meant as a very fast, interactive approximation of HL that you can actually work in.  I think the performance is very nice.

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1 minute ago, rDesign said:

So if the SL Section VP is assigned a RW Hidden Line Style, how do we display this 'special' OpenGL Hidden Line mode?

Do we have to switch the VP Style to OpenGL before we start editing the VP?


No, "special" was just in reference to the tech underneath. These viewports in the example were only rendered in Hidden Line, OpenGL is not required for the viewport. You would keep using whatever preferred rendering mode you wanted as normal.

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2 minutes ago, JimW said:


No, "special" was just in reference to the tech underneath. These viewports in the example were only rendered in Hidden Line, OpenGL is not required for the viewport. You would keep using whatever preferred rendering mode you wanted as normal.

 

Ok. So if the preferred rendering mode is HL, after you make all these changes to the model in the VP per your demo GIFs, does the VP still need 'updated' from the OIP button?

 

[ I may have gotten confused / distracted from the announced feature (direct editing of SLVPs) by the OpenGL HL display function].

 

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1 minute ago, rDesign said:

Ok. So if the preferred rendering mode is HL, after you make all these changes to the model in the VP per your demo GIFs, does the VP still need 'updated' from the OIP button?

 

 

No, after making the desired edits and exiting the direct editing mode, the viewport will automatically be updated without further user interaction. 

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7 hours ago, JimW said:

 

I picked random things to edit for the gif, what types of actions would you prefer to see?

If I was to extrapolate and use the new clip- gif methodology further?

I would use it on a  real  projects & show its benefits elsewhere.

 

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9 hours ago, JimW said:


Only Section and Elevation VPs. What part of this would you want for regular Plan viewports that the usual "Edit Design Layer" doesn't supply? Since Top/Plan viewports always appeared on the sheet nearly identically to the plan in terms of what you could see/edit, while Sections had to be recalculated each time you edited anything in older versions before you could see your changes.

 

 

Well yes unless you consider annotation space.... now in my excitement, I realized of missed something vital here*. This isn't in the documentation/paper space that allows us to edit all information that goes into a document in context.  It's somewhere else again as far as the software is concerned, i.e model space?

 

So it really doesn't avoid the contextual shift of "Edit Design Layers" it just gets us to a useful place faster after the shift. A very welcome improvement and hoping the first of many. Especially given other comments in the thread about where this is heading contextually.

 

If my misunderstanding is correct then yes no relevance to flat viewports.

If it was a full contextual active view then being able to move model annotations and paper annotations without having to think which is which would be very helpful in late stage documentation and when we have multiple people working.

 

So what does this do with annotation space?

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My question: what does this give us that the clip cube doesn't?

 

Currently if I am editing my model in 3D and want to do something that chopping a section through it would make easier - I use the clip cube. To do that I click on one button at the top of the screen, adjust my clip cube as I want it, and carry on.

 

If I understand correctly, to use this, I'd have to go to a sheet layer, find an already existing section viewport that happens to cut the model in the place which is useful for the operation I want to carry out, double click on that viewport, enter into this new editing mode, and then do my stuff. That seems a lot more laborious, and what if I don't already have a section set up in the place I want?

 

I guess I am missing something here?

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21 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

So what does this do with annotation space?


I do not believe it affects it at all, it's left as its own edit mode, but I will check.

 

 

20 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Currently if I am editing my model in 3D and want to do something that chopping a section through it would make easier - I use the clip cube. To do that I click on one button at the top of the screen, adjust my clip cube as I want it, and carry on.


The feature is geared toward when you have a large number of section or elevation views already established and you want to fine tune them in-place, as opposed to bouncing back to the design layer, enabling clip cube, lining it up the way you want and then making the edit, then going back to the sheet and updating the viewport.

If you're mostly used to editing in the design layer and utilizing clip cube already, this feature won't affect your workflow much at all from what I understand.

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35 minutes ago, JimW said:

The feature is geared toward when you have a large number of section or elevation views already established and you want to fine tune them in-place, as opposed to bouncing back to the design layer, enabling clip cube, lining it up the way you want and then making the edit, then going back to the sheet and updating the viewport.

Hm, OK but in that case why not just have the double-click through from the SLVP bounce you into a clip cube view, set up with the clip cube arranged to cut the model as per the relevant section?

 

Then you can achieve the same things but using an already-familiar editing mode.

 

This seems to provide yet another editing/viewing mode that is similar-but-not-quite-the-same as another one. This is something that VW is accursed with generally and is what can make it monumentally confusing to use sometimes, especially I imagine for new users.

 

It also, I assume, means lots of work is put into creating this new thing instead of making the already-existing clip cube better. The clip cube is very useful but I find it remains slightly buggy (bits of stuff outside the cube sometimes popping into view during rotations, things like that).

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On 04/08/2017 at 5:01 PM, Rick Berge said:

Clipcube only works with wireframe or opengl, and it only works with a simple section - nothing with staggered section line.

The new Edit doesn't use the CC and you can have more complex sections than just the cube.  And it will automatically show the model in a fast/good approximation of your viewport's render mode, so you can work effectively in HL or other.  It also allows you to navigate to annotations and back without things shifting around underneath you.

Other little things: it works with DL sections as well as SL.  It's simpler without all the various options you see on the dialog for Edit Design Layer. 

 

Seems like this can do stuff that clipcube can't, while clipcube does stuff that this can't.

 

Is there an intention to converge into one mode that can do all the good stuff rather than these parallel ones?

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18 hours ago, line-weight said:

 

Seems like this can do stuff that clipcube can't, while clipcube does stuff that this can't.

 

Is there an intention to converge into one mode that can do all the good stuff rather than these parallel ones?

Yes there is overlap in capabilities, but they're also built around different workflows. I can't really answer about future plans...I'm still focused on this years release!

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31 minutes ago, Rick Berge said:

I can't really answer about future plans...

 

Can anyone?

It would be reassuring to know there is someone somewhere with long-term oversight. Developing two very similar - but not the same - modes makes me wonder whether there is. As I said above, I feel this is typical of the way VW often seems to be developed with no high-level design strategy, and in a way that just multiplies confusion for users.

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With this feature + the multiple-views-simultaneously feature I feel reassured that my yearly Service Select subscription funds are being put to good use.

 

It's neat to see advanced BIM, Energos, 3d point cloud & so forth, but these more basic every-day workflow features are just as important. Glad to see they're getting implemented.

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