Vectorworks, Inc Employee Popular Post PVA - Admin Posted August 28, 2018 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Popular Post Share Posted August 28, 2018 This... this is a big one. The hybrid nature of many Vectorworks objects and symbols has been incredibly useful for a very long time. Times change however, and even more is needed from this system. In answer to this, we are introducing 2D Components for Hybrid Objects, which has a relatively mundane name, but significant implications in Vectorworks. This feature expands the capability of Hybrid objects. They no longer only display a 2D graphic in Top/Plan view, but front, back, left right, top, and bottom as well. We also introduced two hybrid components, one that determines the section appearance for the object from the top and one from the bottom. This feature does not affect any older workflows directly; the hybrid nature of existing objects can be maintained and simply used as it has been for years. However, if you want even more direct control over elevations and section views, this feature is where you’re going to want to look: We anticipate a significant number of questions related to this feature, so feel free to let loose here on the forum or over on the Facebook post! We will be hosting a live Facebook Q&A session to discuss each of the items we share in Teaser Tuesday posts. Here’s how it will work: the teaser will come out on Tuesday (ET) and then you can post questions about it on Wednesday in the forum, through direct messages, or on our Facebook post. On Thursday at 2:00 p.m. ET, we will answer your questions live on the official Vectorworks Facebook page. If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll also be transcribing the answers and posting to the forum too. Feel free to ask any questions you like related to the feature that was just teased. This format is an experiment for us, so we also welcome any feedback or suggestions for the format, as well. We plan to share Teaser Tuesday posts and host live Q&A sessions each week leading up to our launch of Vectorworks 2019! 6 Quote Link to comment
jbtroost Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Nice one! Will save a lot of rendering time. When I would make a 2d copy to polygon, can I use the same texture – converted to an image I reckon – as I use in the 3d part? And will this 2d version follow the same geometry? Quote Link to comment
Andrew Davies Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 This looks interesting - may take quite a bit of getting used to though. Does it replace Auto Hybrids? Need to digest it a little more - but my initial reaction is that it's quite complicated. Symbols in VWX are already convoluted (2D/3D/Auto Hybrid etc) - am worried this adds a layer of complexity? I can imagine a few instances of looking at a viewport and wondering why something isn't showing - to later realise it is due to the level of detail. Another thing to worry about? I can certainly see how it can help rendering. I currently spend a lot of time flicking between different render modes to get the look I want - but often find I need to compromise. This may solve that. But it does look like it's going to take some getting used to. Andrew 3 Quote Link to comment
Markvl Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 So lets say I generate a section thru my model (a house) and I've populated it with furniture...is the 2D part of the symbols only going to show up in certain render formats? or is there some kind of check box that would allow me to use 2D aspects in something like open GL? Or am I intuitively thinking 2D symbols will only show up in say Hidden Line? 1 Quote Link to comment
elepp Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Hi, looks promising. My question is how it exports to IFC. Can we export different LODs? That would be really helpful to reduce complexity in IFC Models. And would it be possible to have attached records react to the LOD? 2 Quote Link to comment
rDesign Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 (edited) In 2019 when I create a Section VP, will the new 2D symbol cut-plane mean that we can control which objects will show as a “cut section”? Meaning that furniture, Plumbing fixtures, etc can be made to no longer show as being cut in section? If so, this is a great addition. Thank you! I realize that the teaser video is just using the chairs as an example, but I’m not sure I understand the workflow application for the front and side elevation of the chairs, when the “3D only” chairs placed on an angle look no different graphically from the 2D front & side ones in a rendered Hidden Line VP. I’m sure I’m missing something that makes this very useful for other users’ workflows. The Level of Detail is also a very welcome addition. Edited August 28, 2018 by rDesign Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 The ability to access the 3d geometry whilst in a 2d portion of a hybrid symbol is welcome. i am interested to understand how we control the hybrid visibility of symbols when not using viewports. Will there be an option to toggle this new hybrid geometry when looking at orthogonal views from a design layer? What will happen to all this new geometry when you run the convert to group command on a symbol? I think this is going to be a very welcome function and I’m looking forward to dreaming up interesting ways to use it. 1 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 (edited) First I thought meh .... I never used Auto Hybrids ... But the Scale/LOD option (in 3D) makes it very interesting. So a couple of Questions : 1. Do we get an easy way to switch all Design Layers Scale to see/check LOD ? 2. Does this work for all PIOs too ? a) Side Views in Sections b) LOD in 3D (Like the Window in the Video) 3. Do we get true 2D orthogonal Design Level Views (Left, Right, ...) to model and work with the new 2D representations in Wireframe or HL Mode ? 4. a) Will VW batch update all Symbols from the Library to have 6 2D Views ? b) Will these updated Symbol Components Data, when exported to a previous VW Version, just be ignored or destroyed after again migrated to VW 2019 ? 5. Do we get the LOD setting generally for all kind of objects in OIP ? (Like use Hatch in detailed and just color in simple Scale or show that Extrude in simple and middle Scale LOD only, ....) Edited August 28, 2018 by zoomer 2 Quote Link to comment
jmanganelli Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 (edited) This is very useful. Thank you. Please do implement the symbol section cuts feature. When modeling a commercial/industrial/laboratory space, it is important to show cuts through the equipment that is intersected when a building section or floor plan is generated. Having 2D views loaded up with 3D geometry can become heavy and slow to process. Having sections loaded up with wireframe views of equipment can make a visual mess. Often, if looking at a section or plan of a room with specific equipment in it, the value in showing the equipment is to understand clearance around it. So having a cut through the equipment affords visual analysis and keeps the drawings readable. Edited August 28, 2018 by jmanganelli Quote Link to comment
jmanganelli Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Another example is, if designing a warehouse with high rack storage and an automatic sprinkler system and internal roof drainage system installed under the roof, then it is necessary to visually analyze and communicate how high the racks can be while allowing adequate clearance under the automatic sprinkler system piping and roof drainage system piping. If the warehouse roof has a long run in both directions, then the sprinkler piping and roof drain lines can drop quite a bit over the total run of the roof. It is useful to be able to look at a section cut to understand these spatial relationships without having all of the other piping in the foreground and background overlaid on top of it. Quote Link to comment
elepp Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Is there a way to access information about these objects via a worksheet? I like to create worksheets about objects to check for missed information and inconsistencies in my data. Quote Link to comment
Kevin McAllister Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 This feature looks super interesting at first glance! 2 hours ago, zoomer said: 3. Do we get true 2D orthogonal Design Level Views (Left, Right, ...) to model and work with the new 2D representations in Wireframe or HL Mode ? The first question that came to mind is this ^. VW has never really recognized true views as 2d orthogonal views and its been an issue when features have been implemented in the past. The default preferences for working in 3d would be my main example, where VW considers Front/Back/Right/Left etc. as 3d views and displays them in perspective if you set your preferred projection to perspective. Not intuitive or very useful. How is this feature integrated to overcome this? Or will I continue to work in Orthogonal in all my 3d views? How does VW autogenerate the "section" views for a symbol? Can the user choose the cut plane? Has any of this been tied into Auto Hybrids? What happens when a symbol also contains an Auto Hybrid? Or is this mostly for use with single object symbols? Kevin Quote Link to comment
Matt Overton Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 (edited) This is very much going in the right direction and will be most useful. Certainly gets us closer to DA level elevations from the pure model. Look forward to seeing how flows to related systems (I'm guessing over a couple of versions) ie:- Wall, Roof, Slab Components with Level of Detail control so one viewport control takes care of most situations. Also hoping there is a stretch goal that reduces LOD of detail as you get further from the camera in Perspective viewports Oh... forgot to ask does VGM use this to prioritize low-level detail for redraw when moving views? Edited August 28, 2018 by Matt Overton 1 Quote Link to comment
rDesign Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 I really like the new 2019 workflow shown on creating the 2D Hidden Line portion of a 3D symbol. That function alone will be a valuable time saver. Keep up the good work! 2 Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 Can we add 2D-objects into the autohybrid-object to make annotations and similar? Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 1. The level of detail stuff seems genuinely useful. If it all works in practice, and is something that is applied across the board (and not just a subset of symbols/plugins etc). 2. But doesn't your video show up a fundamental weakness of this, in that a 2d component can't be generated for the two chairs set at 45 degrees? Or am I missing something? Certainly with something like chairs, it's common to have lots of instances of a symbol set at different angles. Automatically generating views (ie. as at present) of the geometry for these kinds of things in section/elevation views saves loads of drawing time compared to what we used to have to do when drawing manually. Ok, so this feature lets me tweak exactly what those generated views look like ... but only when the symbols happen to be set orthogonally to the cut/elevation plane? That makes it useless when that's not the case, because I don't want to tweak the views of only some symbols, resulting in an inconsistent appearance. But maybe I have misunderstood. 3. We seem to have yet another type of anomalous user interface thing, with the floating pallette used to control the editing. Does that exist for other tools? It doesn't give me faith that the inconsistency of the user interface in general is being considered seriously. 4. Ignoring the above, the ability to tweak 2d geometry using linework auto-generated from the 3d model is in principle useful. Where it would be most useful though, is in (eg. hidden line rendering) sheet layer viewports themselves, which at the moment we can't convert to tweakable 2d geometry without causing a big mess. If it can be done with these symbol components, any reason it can't be done with viewports? 5. If I auto-generate (for subsequent editing) 2d views of a symbol which contains complicated mesh elements, is it going to give me a horrible mess with every triangle drawn? 6. As questions above, is this intended to replace auto-hybrids? If not, it's another instance of the VW disease of things-that-are sort-of-the-same-but-not. If it is, then does it fix the problems with the current auto-hybrid, such as (a) inability to paste-in-place into the auto-hybrid with reference to model rather than symbol origin and (b) inability to attach or insert into wall objects without section cut lines appearing at the intersection? 2 Quote Link to comment
Andrew Davies Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 (edited) Well put line-weight. I am particularly interested in questions 2 and 6. Edited August 29, 2018 by Andrew Davies 1 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 (edited) 14 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said: How does VW autogenerate the "section" views for a symbol? Can the user choose the cut plane? I thought it is about to avoiding secondary objects like furniture being cut and therefore distracting in Sections ? So just HL Elevations ? Or is this also meant as generating a Section View like Autohybrid does for Top Plan View ? 2 hours ago, line-weight said: 2. But doesn't your video show up a fundamental weakness of this, in that a 2d component can't be generated for the two chairs set at 45 degrees? I think that would require to rotate the geometry inside of the Symbol (?) If the LOD thing works for all Objects, (like just another extra dimension beside Classes and Layers) this could be the end of all "2D_1:20_Details" helper Classes need that some use so far to control a LOD for different Scales. Edited August 29, 2018 by zoomer Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 1 minute ago, zoomer said: I think that would require to rotate the geometry inside of the Symbol (?) Well it would mean generating an infinite number of views from all angles! And we'd have to edit each one of those infinite views individually if we wanted to change what was auto-generated. And then multiply infinity by 3 to get the different LODs (!) I'm not sure I quite understand the concept behind this tool, or what it's for. Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 So far the most complex Teaser ever :) Will take some time to fully understand. But I think I will like it. 1 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted August 29, 2018 Author Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted August 29, 2018 16 hours ago, elepp said: Is there a way to access information about these objects via a worksheet? I like to create worksheets about objects to check for missed information and inconsistencies in my data. I'll answer this one off the stream: Yes. This has not changed at all, anything you could attach records to and pull information from before will work just fine. These aren't actually NEW object types, we just added more 2D components. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted August 29, 2018 Author Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted August 29, 2018 Just now, zoomer said: So far the most complex Teaser ever 🙂 I can't express how weirdly happy I at at how many well thought out questions and clarifications being asked. Love working with folk like these. Keep em coming, im getting them all listed up for the stream. Looking like we will have @Matt Panzer, formerly of PanzerCAD on tomorrow! 2 Quote Link to comment
Andrew Davies Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 @Matt Panzer of Camera Match fame? That's great - Matt helped me a lot when I first started using Camera Match a few years ago. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted August 29, 2018 Author Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted August 29, 2018 Just now, Andrew Davies said: @Matt Panzer of Camera Match fame? That's great - Matt helped me a lot when I first started using Camera Match a few years ago. Yessir! We snapped him up and I pester him regularly on development related topics 😉 Quote Link to comment
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