Hatches

[Peter Eichel]

VW 12-Designer/WinXP Home: Hello, new member. Great forum that has answered a good deal of my questions. Here's one, I want to apply a hatch to an exterior wall in a 2D elevation. I create a polygon over the area and apply my hatch. Can I "punch" a hole in the pattern to view the window in the wall. AutoCAD can place a hatch by merely clicking inside an area which excludes any inside closed areas like a window without the need of creating a polygon. Could this be in the works for VW?

Thanks

[jan15]

Peter,

We do that differently. VectorWorks has always had something Autocad doesn't have -- layers, in the normal sense of the word, in which one layer is above or below another. (Autocad "layers" are not layered and are therefore similar to VW Classes.)

So just give your windows and doors a solid fill and put them on a layer that's above the one with the siding hatches. Then if you move or copy them to other locations they always cover up the siding. You might also want to make the window assembly a group so that it's easier to move around or re-size as a unit. It's much more accomodating than the thing AC calls a group. And if there are several windows all the same, you might want to make a symbol instead of a group, so that you can later edit one instance and all the others will change.

You could also give the siding hatch a solid fill if you want it to cover up other things, or to show the color of the siding. But in that case you might want to put it on a layer that's behind the one that has the heavy outlines of the building, so that the solid fill won't cover up half the line width of the outlines.

There's also layering of objects within a layer. The commands "Send to Front", "Send to Back", "Move Forward", and "Move Back" operate on whatever objects are selected at the time.

In many cases VW does things differently than AC. You've hit on the right way to learn, by telling us what you're trying to accomplish, rather than just saying how you used to do it in AC.

[mikatoa]

Or you can 'clip surface' under Tool and apply your hatch to the 'punched' surface. You have to do the process again if you need to edit.

[Peter Eichel]

Thanks to both of you. I created a poly and applied my hatch. I then sent the poly to the back and my window reappeared with the hatch still showing over it. With the clip tool I snapped to the four window corners and presto!

Quick and painless. I wish I had the time on Vectorworks that I spent on DataCAD & AutoCAD.

[Peter Eichel]

Reading on I have discovered the paint box mode in the polygon tool. Clicking inside an enclosed area made of 2D lines, this tool creates a polygon the exact shape of the enclosure. It also creates cutouts in the polygon if there are any closed areas, like a window, inside the space. It's a great way to add hatching to a 2D elevation. The drawbacks are you cannot set a point of origin for the hatch and it cannot be done in a viewport unless you create lines (enclosed area) over the existing object in the

viewport.

[CipesDesign]

Have you tried it in the "annotaions" of your VP? It should work, I think :-)

[Peter Eichel]

Peter: Sorry, I mean't the annotation mode when I mention "in a viewport". I tried but the lines of any object in a viewport, or should I say any object being viewed in a viewport cannot be picked even though I believe you can snap to them (is this correct?). Therefore you would have to create an enclosed space by snapping around the area you wish to hatch. It's much easier to do in the design layer.

[CipesDesign]

Hi Again Peter. OK I messed around a bit. The new POLY modes work great in a VP annotation, BUT the VP must be in Hidden Line rendering mode. You can however do the following: create a VP in HL mode. make sure it is updated, enter the annotations, create you POLY (hard edge outline), set it to be "fat" and "hollow", then change the render mode of your VP to FQRW (or whatever).