Chris Rogers Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Has VW added a way to flatten 3D geometry to the software tool set? I am still having issues when surveyors send 3D geometry. On some projects, I need to be able to manipulate this geometry in a 2D workflow and asking the surveyor to flatten prior to export is not a valid solution. I've tried converting all to 3D polygons, then converting to lines but I end up with thousands of tiny line segments that can't be manipulated. All I need is the ability to take every vertex of a given object and make the Z value = 0 while retaining X and Y. Seems like this would be easy to do and very useful. Thanks for any insight. Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 How about converting your 3D polygons to Polygons? Menu-> Modify -> Convert to Polygons -> Wireframe mode. If you still want 3D polygons, you can convert it back to 3D again. They will then have the same Z value. Quote Link to comment
Chris Rogers Posted March 20, 2019 Author Share Posted March 20, 2019 I can't find the Wireframe mode command to try this on 3D polygons. Also, I have 3D lines in the model that don't seem to follow the same rules either. I've attached an example file. It looks fine from top/plan view, but if you rotate it around the geometry starts to split into pieces that are properly done in 3D and pieces that have wildly different Z coordinates. 15 years ago I would simply us a flatten command on AutoCAD to turn all the Z coordinates to 0. I try about once a year in VW to discover a solution to this problem, but no one seems to know how to manipulate the geometry this way. 1832 Sullivan VW Geometry test.vwx Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 The Wireframe mode dialogue comes after having selected Convert to Polygons. The method will flatten the selection to zero height. If yo still want the object to be 3D, you can convert it back to 3D polygons, or set the Plane to Layer Plane in Object info. This allows you to rotate the model in 3D, though still having zero height in the Z- direction. Quote Link to comment
Chris Rogers Posted April 29, 2019 Author Share Posted April 29, 2019 Thank you for the help. I've been pulled away to work on other things, but hope to get back to working on this soon. Quote Link to comment
Chris Rogers Posted May 7, 2019 Author Share Posted May 7, 2019 Claes, Thanks again for the help. That appears to have worked. I performed the operation while in an isometric view however, and got a really bizarre result. So, I backed up and did it again while in plan view and got a result that looked as expected. I don't know that I understand the specific reasons why the commands used gave me these results, however. I assume it has to do with the plane of the screen? Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 Chris, of course it doesn't work from any view than the top view. What you effectively do is to extract a new version of the model as seen from the top view, rather than actually flattening the model. It's like using a camera to extract a view from the top view. You can't do that from the side unless you have some special software that manipulates the data. What you where used to from your previous program was to manipulate the model in a similar way that you manipulate a selection box in VW in the Object Info palette. Unfortunately, VW does not support a 3D selection box with the ability to manipulate the model in 3D, so the suggested method was simply a way to bypass this limitation. Admittedly it would be handy to do it directly as you first suggested, I do it all the time in my other CAD program, but you can't in VW. Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 I wish we could simply flatten any viewport, so that what we see in the viewport, whether that be plan, elevation or section, is just turned into editable 2d linework. 1 Quote Link to comment
Chris Rogers Posted May 8, 2019 Author Share Posted May 8, 2019 Thanks for the clarification. It seems like making all Z values = 0 would be much simpler conceptually and practically. Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 35 minutes ago, Chris Rogers said: Thanks for the clarification. It seems like making all Z values = 0 would be much simpler conceptually and practically. That wouldn't allow things hidden by other things, when viewed from above, to be hidden in the 2d output though, Quote Link to comment
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