Floor vs Extrude commands

[ThinAirDesigns]

What is the practical difference between using these two commands for a building floor?

The one downside I have noticed to the Floor command is in rounded corners -- even with the finest rendering they appear as visible segments. This maked them unusable for say a rounded cantilevered deck where you don't have an exterior wall to hide it behind.

Another downside occurred on an exterior wall with a concave curve -- the segments took their shortcuts between the points of the curve and these showed through the curved wall that was intended to hide them. I had to use a larger radius on the slab to move it back far enough into the wall to hide these.

Can someone toss me a reason to use "Floor" over "Extrude"?

Perhaps there is a setting which controls the granularity of the radius on the floor command?

Thanks.

JB

[mike m oz]

TAD

I tried modelling the same 'floor' using both methods and came up with absolutely no difference in the curves on the two 3D objects.

The number of segments on a curve is controlled by the 2D and 3D Conversion Res(olutions) set in VectorWorks Preferences. The higher these are set the more segments to each curve - I usually have these both set to High.

If you use the VectorWorks rendering modes make sure that you also have the Smoothing Angle for Line Render on Document Preferences set to at least 30?.

For output make sure the Rasrer Render options under Document Preferences are also set appropriately.

The 'Floor' option has the advantage of having a visible fill in the 2D Plan View, wheras an extrudes fill will only be visible in a 3D rendered view.

[ 01-12-2005, 08:19 PM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

[ThinAirDesigns]

Thanks Mike, I'll play with those settings.

Perhaps they don't effect all objects the same as I can curently model a small slab and an extrude with a round corner side by side and they are dramatically different.

I'll play and report.

Thanks again.

JB

[ThinAirDesigns]

Mike, I fiddled with the settings:

With a extrude and floor created side by side and with the 3D Conversion Res. set to "High" or "Very High" I can see no difference between the two.

If the setting is "Low" (which apparently is the default as I never changed mine after install) then the floor definitely has a lower res on the radius.

If anyone plays with this, remember that the setting is applied when the object is created...meaning that if you change the setting to "High" and view objects that were created while the setting was on "Low", they will still appear consistent with the "Low" setting.

Thanks Mike.

JB