Window PIO: Parts: sill

[Christiaan]

So has anyone had much like with this aspect of the Window PIO (i.e. Settings > Parts > Sill)? I'm having quit a bit of trouble coming to grips with it. Has anyone got any general tips from experience?

Here's a few problems I'm having:

-They're very difficult to configure, especially with regard to figuring out how different parts of the sills relate to each other in terms of sizing (this seems to be the biggest problem) ... in fact it seems to be buggy, I'm getting an enormous sill lip that projects into the room using the Brick sill but can't work out why

-Sills appear to be upside down.

-I can't figure out how to show the interior and exterior sills in plan view using the Masonry sill (haven't tried others)

-And the sill Extension doesn't appear to show on plan view either.

[ 04-11-2006, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Christiaan ]

[russellhall]

I'm having very similar problems. I've got the masonry cill just about under control, but the brick cill has a mind of it's own. Does this look familiar?

[Christiaan]

Yup, that's the one. I had to turn the Rise down to 4mm but I'm still unable to control the position of the sill. The sill aspect of the WIndow PIO doesn't appeart to be ready for a production environment.

[ErichR]

Christiaan,

I totally agree with you on this one. The window and door tools border on the counterproductive. Not waht we bought VW for.

[Christiaan]

I want to get together a comprehensive bug submit on this so please post your experiences.

(For us this is at the top of the list of issues to be fixed. I'm in the uneasy position of having recommended that we go for it with this tool, only to find that we can't use it to present a simple window in plan view properly.)

[Christiaan]

Another issue: as a work around to present the windows in 2D semi-correctly I started using the "Draw Wall Lines" option (although this is unsatisfactory as it doesn't show the sills as they truly are). However if you then make it into symbol and then edit it the wall lines dissapear.

[islandmon]

Fundamentally speaking, a PIO should not require the learning of a 'special' sequence of bizarre tips&tricks in order to produce a 'typical & common' object. Originally the PIO was conceived as an aid to drafting & presentation involving simple scripts & dialogs to produce basic objects which were then passed to Vectorworks for manipulation.The hybrid symbol technology fit perfectly with this 'idiot-proof' approach.

Now, it appears that the PIO's are evolving into complex & arcane C++ procedures requiring higher level calls to the Vectorworks & System libraries. Hence the bugginess ... a single parameter out of scope or scale will rock the boat.

[msclark]

I have also had some of the problems that you are talking about, as well as a general feeling that the Vectorworks window tool could only produce about 1/3 of the window configurations I typically use. I started using the Windoor plugin from OzCad about a month ago and have had much better success. I would reccomend it, and you can download a demo version and see if it will do what you need it to. The only issue with Windoor is that you have to jump through some hoops to get the window schedule working the way you want it to, however they have a good tutorial and once it's done, you won't have to do it again. This is one of those basic areas that seems like it should be foolproof but Vectorworks dropped the ball.