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How do I get rid of Viewport crop green rectangles?


kenpayson

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After years of creating viewports with drawn rectangles, all of a sudden on  files I've been using for a long time, a green rectangle comes up in 2D crop viewports both on the sheet layer and the original design layer. Sometimes there are several stacked on the design layer. They show up as simple rectangles in the None class - I can delete them, but they come back. I've never seen these in over 17 years of using MiniCad / VW. There must be some default that got triggered. I'd like to know how to get rid of these for good. thanks, Ken

 

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Thanks for the replies. I saw that Edit box and unchecked it, but it didn't seem to change anything. the next time I opened the file the green box appeared again.

In the design layer, which I used to create several viewports, there are several green boxes now, and on the sheet layer with several viewports, the green

boxes appear only on the 2D viewports, not the 3D views that have been created with crop rectangles. Very annoying.

Not sure if this is a new glitch in the latest version? The worst of it is when I go to print to pdf the green box appears.

At least they ought to give it a class of its own so it can be turned off en masse.

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1 hour ago, kenpayson said:

Thanks for the replies. I saw that Edit box and unchecked it, but it didn't seem to change anything. the next time I opened the file the green box appeared again.

In the design layer, which I used to create several viewports, there are several green boxes now, and on the sheet layer with several viewports, the green

boxes appear only on the 2D viewports, not the 3D views that have been created with crop rectangles. Very annoying.

 

Did you go through and manually delete all the existing green rectangles? Unchecking that box will just prevent future green rectangles from being created, but it won't delete any ones that already exist.

 

Essentially each time you navigate to a Design Layer via a Viewport and that box is check, it adds a green rectangle. There's otherwise nothing special about this rectangle, it's just normal geometry now which you should now delete.

 

If you've already done this, perhaps there is a bug?

 

1 hour ago, kenpayson said:

At least they ought to give it a class of its own so it can be turned off en masse.

 

Not a bad idea, actually!

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I have experienced this green crop Object in the past. My notes would be:

 

1) What is the purpose of this green rectangle 'Add Reference Crop Object'?

2) I find when creating Viewports there should be a check box where one could add a Crop Object or VW could be adding one by default.

3) Also when going back on the sheet layer trying to place a Crop Object into a VP then drawing an object it never snaps all that well to the current size of the VP.

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Grethe Connerth said:

 

1) What is the purpose of this green rectangle 'Add Reference Crop Object'?

 

One use is  use so that when you are adding notes on a design layer you can keep the notes within the extents of the sheet layer vp crop.

 

I do however put them on a "NonPlot" class as soon as I create them so I can turn them off in my viewports. Once I do that I uncheck the check box in the edit vp dialogue so that I don't make any more rectangles unnecessarily.

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Hi @Boh 

 

thank you for the explanation.

I may have to look this one up on 'VW Help' as I am not 100% sure I understand.

 

Oh, BTW - did you see my note to you on the other blog about the now available SP3 update on 3rd of April?

 

OzCad mentioned they would send out an alert so that it shows up in VW program's messages ( Bell on right bottom corner ).

Well up until now nothing has shown up there but their website does, but I didn't receive any alert or email about it which I think should happen automatically.

Anyways, it's out now and I hope you got it also.

 

Cheers,

Grethe 

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Hi Grethe.

 

Not sure VW help will er..help!...

 

Here are a couple of screenshots that might explain better.

Whilst working in a design layer it is sometimes good to know where the edges of the viewport crop are so that you can make sure all your notes can be seen in the VP and not cut off.

 

I'm all good now thanks with the SP3 update. It has finally arrived in New Zealand :-) !!

 

image.thumb.png.d8c6ba1d81c32f9f3d04cf8702516502.png image.thumb.png.090f02b0c7153fbdfe5f268b396b0c8e.png

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Hi @Boh

 

thank you for the visuals, that makes total sense now.

 

I think I will send a post to "Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests" as I'd like to see when creating a new Viewport that a crop would be automatically created in the shape set by the camera settings - for example 'Aspect Ratio 16:9'. 

 

Happy days from Melbourne OZ.

Grethe

 

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18 hours ago, Grethe Connerth said:

I think I will send a post to "Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests" as I'd like to see when creating a new Viewport that a crop would be automatically created in the shape set by the camera settings - for example 'Aspect Ratio 16:9'. 

@Grethe Connerth There is a very similar feature already built in:

A cropped VP can be created by setting the view, then drawing a rectangle (or other 2d shape) surrounding the design layer area of the desired VP. If the desired view is 3d, use a screen plane rectangle.  With the rectangle selected, proceed with Create VP in your usual manner.  A dialog appears asking whether to use the rectangle as the VP crop. The dialog will not appear if the Always Do option was checked in the past.  The dialog can be reset to appear via Vectorworks Prefs>Session>Reset Saved Settings.

 

-B

VP crop.png

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36 minutes ago, Benson Shaw said:

@Grethe Connerth There is a very similar feature already built in:

A cropped VP can be created by setting the view, then drawing a rectangle (or other 2d shape) surrounding the design layer area of the desired VP. If the desired view is 3d, use a screen plane rectangle.  With the rectangle selected, proceed with Create VP in your usual manner.  A dialog appears asking whether to use the rectangle as the VP crop. The dialog will not appear if the Always Do option was checked in the past.  The dialog can be reset to appear via Vectorworks Prefs>Session>Reset Saved Settings.

 

I had the same first initial reaction to her post, but then I realized she was specifically referring to a crop being created that matches the selected RW Camera used to create the viewport (and there are numerous reasons to want a viewport created from a camera). You can't simultaneously create a VP with a camera and with a rectangle defining the crop.

 

I used to use the screen plane rectangle method to create rendering viewports, but I found it's a bit sloppy and inaccurate compared to the built-in aspect ratio of the camera tool. (Plus it's the only way to force Cropped Perspective to be a particular aspect ratio). So now even if I don't intend to use camera effects, I still use a camera to set up my view.

 

But then the viewport is technically uncropped, and with uncropped perspective viewports, sometimes VW lets you grab it by a "corner" and sometimes it doesn't. I've never quite figured out the reasoning behind when it does and doesn't. Having an actual viewport crop that matches the camera crop would be super useful since it'd make snapping to the four corners of the viewport more consistent.

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2 hours ago, Andy Broomell said:

Having an actual viewport crop that matches the camera crop would be super useful since it'd make snapping to the four corners of the viewport more consistent.

 

^exactly! I've often wondered why it wasn't easier to snap to (eg. why can't you snap to the corners of a bitmap rendered viewport in general? after all you can snap to an image).

 

Kevin

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Hi guys,

 

thank you all for your input, ideas and feedback. I'm glad to see there is a general need in place.

 

I tried the way you suggested @Benson Shaw, it seems a bit of a work around with having to adjust the screen plane rectangle, maybe also because I haven't used this before and try it out more, but it's a supportive step. 

 

Correct @Andy Broomell, mainly the camera related Viewport crop would be great for the Aspect Ratios, and the lack of snapping to the corners of VPs is nutty. 

 

If anyone is interested my post on the VW Forum's 'Wishlist Feature Content Request' from a few days ago is called 'Viewport Crop Options'.

Let's see how we go.

 

Cheers,

Grethe

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Grethe Connerth said:

 

I tried the way you suggested @Benson Shaw, it seems a bit of a work around with having to adjust the screen plane rectangle, maybe also because I haven't used this before and try it out more, but it's a supportive step. 

 

Correct @Andy Broomell, mainly the camera related Viewport crop would be great for the Aspect Ratios, and the lack of snapping to the corners of VPs is nutty. 

 

 

In the mean time you can work around the issue if you have objects that cross out of the camera's crop area. If you temporarily set the render setting of your viewport to Hidden Line, anywhere an objects outline crosses out of frame you will have a snap point. I usually use the rectangle tool and those snap points to draw the camera crop. The points I could use in the example below are circled in blue.

 

Kevin

 

5ace23b5d4bc7_ScreenShot2018-04-11at8_02_18AM.thumb.png.36845338907d92da3347000328741045.png

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