Saturday, November 29, 2008

Convert to Lines #32

11/29/08
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• NNA (still) coming to demo Version ‘09
• New movie for User Group members
• Getting to converted line drawings while using Stack Layers
• Making promotional materials
• Misc. cautions, etc.

No meeting for December as usual but I had more than a few things to talk about so I’m getting this letter out hoping to have a running start when we return in late January. By then I hope to have a few hours under my belt using Version ‘09 which is due to arrive any day now.

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Still time to register for the free demo of Vectorworks 2009, to be held December 11th, on Thursday evening, downtown Seattle. Please pass this on to anyone you know who uses Vectorworks. Thanks!
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/209798513

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We have a new movie provided by NNA for user group members.
Francois Levy, leader of the Austin Texas Vw User Group, has created a movie that shows how he uses the power of Vectorworks to design in 3d, then display model information throughout his plans. Levy has evolved a sophisticated approach to plan development. I think you’ll enjoy seeing him employ those processes.
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/Levy_Bim_small_project.mov

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The following describes how to use Stack Layers to rapidly get four exterior hidden line views of your model, placed on new layers, rendered and converted to lines for ease of editing.

Reconciling old and new technologies within your Vectorworks workflow is a normal part of learning and advancing but can sometimes be a challenge when a technique you’ve used in creating drawings disappears. The direction we’ve gotten from NNA is that we should be using Stack Layers, along with Viewport Sections, to display our models. This is a natural evolution as new ways are developed to show information but as a result of this transition, we find tools such as Create Layer Link and Model View tool left off the main menus and sent into the Legacy folder. And yet there isn’t an official method—no developed alternative—for getting to the benefits of a traditional model-on-design layer using Stack Layers. For me, a big benefit of the past has been ease of converting a model into editable lines.

Stack Layers has become a key part of my drawing process and there is real advantage to seeing your model all at once while being able to isolate layers to correct various issues, usually related to textures or fills; errors that typically show up during rendering. Many of you have embraced Stack Layers and not looked back. When you’ve needed to edit-over unfinished or unwanted lines, you do it in Annotations mode after making a viewport of a model view. I find in my own drawings I do quite a bit of reworking of viewports, both adding lines, revising weights, or adding details, frequently because pushing the 3d model toward total completion didn’t seem practical at the time. These days I use Stack Layers to make viewport-based elevations of my drawing, typically in Hidden Line style, and I stay with these as long as possible, taking advantage of automatic updating of layers since projects change over time. But ultimately I want to convert my model to lines so editing is easier, really, much easier than staying solely with Stack Layers based viewports.

To start, assemble your Stack Layers model in the regular way by turning to visible any design layers holding 3d info. (Tip: indent the name of each 3d-holding layer by three spaces to ease finding them on your Layers list, then bunch them together). Make a viewport and send it not to a Sheet, but to a Design Layer. This is called a DLVP. Note that from this single DLVP you can rotate the model contained within to any view. Set your model to a side view, render in Hidden Line, then Convert Copy to Lines. Send the converted lines, using the OIP (or Object Info palette) to a new design layer we’ll name “Elevations”. From there it can be ungrouped and edited.

BONUS TECHNIQUE: before you render a second view, but after having sent your lines to the Elevations layer, select the Render Bitmap tool from the floating palettes (look at the Visualization palette sporting the light bulb and select the teapot icon) and drag it over the elevation such that it creates a full color image, perhaps using Custom Renderworks, which can be chosen from the Render Bitmap Options palette. Send this image to your Elevations layer and it will fall exactly atop the rendered lines. Obviously, we’ll want to send the full color rendering to the back so that the lines sit up front, accenting and highlighting the colored image. Repeat this process for the other three elevations but do the bitmap render first and the hidden lines second which places them in the correct order.

Make a viewport of each elevation, either of the line work alone from Hidden Lines rendering, or a composite including the Bitmap renderings.

From here you can annotate each elevation viewport, organize them on sheets and eventually print. If your model changes later, you can redo the bitmap render and replace the old with the new rendering. Same with the Hidden Line rendering. Having made a viewport of the line work from each face of the model, if the model changes you can turn the DLVP to visible, set it to match the original orientation, and rework your lines, assuming that the changes are small. If the changes are big, re-render as Hidden Line and Convert Copy to Lines again.

I found, in editing lines placed over a fully rendered model, that the result looked really good but there were many lines I didn’t want, lines that cluttered, rather than aided clarity. Among these:
•Muntin bar lines
•cable railing lines
•lines from objects with a heavy polygon count (people)

These can all be hand-edited out. With a little advance planning, you could class your cables and turn that class off prior to beginning Hidden Line rendering. I removed the image of the person from my line drawing by doing just that, since, with its high poly count, it rendered out as nearly all black. I turned that class back ON when rendering with Custom Renderworks, going into the dead lines VP and removing background lines that now overlaid and obscured my figure. The muntin bars can’t be controlled by class so manual removal is the only option.

If you use the Render Bitmap tool, be sure to set your dpi high, perhaps to 300, via the Render Bitmap Options palette found in the upper left hand corner of the Mode bar once the tool has been activated. Also, make sure you Edit the final Sheet layers to also show a 300 dpi setting.

More tips:
•DLVP’s can be duplicated.
•In assembling my 3d-containing design layers, using Stack Layers, into something usable, I will often employ the Camera tool to place a 3d loci into one of my 3d layers which can then be activated via the OIP or by clicking on the camera angle icon to generate a perspective view. If you find that your DLVP of a perspective view has lost its position and is now in Top View, go to the layer holding the camera loci (don’t forget which one) and dbl. click it. Now click on your DLVP. The correct setting should return. If you forget which layer you’ve placed the camera loci on, you can easily find it by using the Visualization palette and clicking on the camera reference which will restore the orientation.
•When you do a Convert Copy to Lines and send those lines to a new layer, an odd condition can occur when the receiving layer inherits the same 3d orientation of the original layer but the converted lines no longer contain 3d information. Hit Command 5 or Control 5 (or Top/Plan View) and your converted lines will appear.
•You have quite a bit of control of lighting using Custom Renderworks. In Custom Renderworks Options, look under the Adjust Lighting tab as well as under the Rendering tab.
•When using the Render Bitmap tool on a Stack Layers model, the bitmap will be created BEHIND the model and you won’t be able to see it. Turn off Stack Layers after the rendering is finished. You’ll see it then and be able to route it to the appropriate layer. This behavior doesn’t happen on a DLVP. If you render a few times in this fashion and know that the image is still selected, then just send it on to the appropriate layer.
•Add “DLVP” as a prefix to the front of any design layer containing a DLVP to help you recognize its unique status.
•There are two palettes within Vw named Visualization. OOPS, in my opinion. There is the tear-off palette containing a host of tools. There is also the palette available via the main menu under Window > Palettes that holds instances of light objects and camera views.

In the future, I’d love to be able to edit my viewports by reaching into the model, shift-selecting to hide lines or otherwise modify, ideally by using a keyboard command. Workarounds, such as I’ve described above, are no fun. And feature-envey is no fun either when you find a competing CAD app has just added the very tool you want. From the Sketchup 7 web site: “Right-click on any placed SketchUp model and choose Explode. Depending on how it was rendered, you'll get vector lines, raster images, or a combination of both. It's the easiest way to get vector geometry to edit directly, hands-down.”

Ok, NNA, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Everything old is new again!


I’d like to thank Kevin Keys for input on this topic and for Matt Panzer for starting the thread on the NNA Listserv. Any mistakes or misrepresentations in the above discussion are entirely mine.

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Use Vectorworks to make your promotional materials. I created a job sampler recently which consisted of six projects. Four featured fully rendered perspective drawings including photographs of the existing residence prior to construction. One included PDF’s of parts of the working drawings showing isometric views of a detail from a ellipse-shaped eyebrow dormer. Two were rendered in hidden line set to Sketch mode. All had some amount of text defining the project. The lead sheet included a viewport of a title block. The final output was in PDF format.

To make something like this, you could start with the method outlined in the Convert Copy to Lines description above. In my case, I wished to finesse the 3d output in Photoshop, where I could stamp out aberrations and drop a sky color into the background and onto corner windows. To do this I made sure my Sheet layer dpi was set high and then I exported the images to the desktop as JPEG’s. To export line detail such as details from your working drawings, don’t use a raster process like a JPEG, instead create a viewport of the detail, place it on a sheet, and then export as a PDF. This keeps the vector-based lines sharp and avoids the jaggies. Once all these elements are on the desktop, start a new file, letter sized, and import each set of images to a single layer in the new file. The layer scale should be set at 1:1. Once you have all the images assigned to unique sheet layers and arranged to your liking, export all as a PDF (Batch) file.

Some like to export using TIFF or PNG since they lose less data, gain fewer compression artifacts and therefor look better when printed. File sizes may be larger to much larger versus JPEG. In testing one rendering, size grew from 692 KB for the JPEG, to 3.5 MB for the PNG, and to 6.7 MB for the TIFF. Test print to see what looks best for your particular output.

See Convert to Lines #31 for info on setting printing resolution.

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If you are using Vectorworks 2009, the advice I’ve read on the NNA Tech Board is to NOT convert an existing drawing into V. 2009 but rather finish in V. 2008 (or earlier) and start any new project in ‘09.

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That’s it for now. See you in the new year!

Tom Greggs

Friday, November 07, 2008

Convert to Lines #31

11/2/08
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
Please contact me at tomgreggs@comcast.net

In this issue:
•NNA coming to demo Version ‘09
• Early word on 2009
• Animation continued
•Misc. cautions, misc. resources
•Adjusting preferences for printing
•More free advice

Greetings VectorWorks users! Join us Thursday, November 13th, 6:30 to 8:30 PM for the first User Group meeting of the season. We’re going look at using Stack Layers in Vw 2008 to view and edit, light and set perspective views. We’ll also want to share your ideas with the group and help with any questions you might have. I’ll have several 3D renderings to share of the planned remodel of the Wood Construction Center facility. 

Our meeting will take place at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.

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Finally back! Sorry for the long delay in writing but I’ve been waiting for a couple of things to happen. One was that the Vw’s update was about to arrive (Vw is the new shorthand) and I was expecting to bring it loaded on the laptop to our next meeting. That hasn’t happened--something about NNA not being able to ship my particular grade until quite late in the product cycle. I’m still waiting. The other reason, apart from outright entropy, was that NNA has been planning a Seattle tour to show off version 2009 and I was hoping to relay that date. I can say that Thursday, December 11th is currently being contemplated--tentatively contemplated--with the event site located in downtown Seattle. I WILL send out notice as soon as they determine their schedule. 

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Meanwhile, Tech Board and List Serv comments have been very positive about the new version. The change to a better modeling kernel--Parasolid by Siemens PLM--may be the biggest advance. We should have far better ability to create objects in Vw ‘09, that in ‘08 and below. For instance, creating a handrail which follows an offset stairwell downward was not possible prior to this upgrade. 

Siemens is a huge company with 5.5 million seats and 51,000 customers using various brands of their software. 
Here is a URL to Parasolid if you’d like more info:
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/parasolid/index.shtml

For Version ‘09, 60% of their kernel has been imported into Vw with the following 40% planned for inclusion in 2010. Walls will benefit as we’ll be able to create shapes that can then be subtracted giving us unique sills, for instance. Improved snapping has gotten raves. Another advancement that caught my eye was that we can now snap to points within imported PDF’s. Thus you can bring in a survey, place it on a reference layer and trust that the corner you’re snapping down to will provide an accurate reading. Having this option, versus problematic DXF files, could make using imported files much simpler.

 Take a look at the NNA website tutorials for ‘09 if you haven’t already.  There’s a lot to explore and ponder. 

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In the last Convert to Lines #30, I talked about making flyaround animations. One of the important parts of the discussion left out was how to create a more circular orbit around your model. You may have found that your flyaround took a boomerang route instead of a round one. To fix this, follow my guide in #30 up to the beginning of the last paragraph. After creating a perspective view of your model as described (enclosed in picture frame), click-select the whole frame and ungroup. Then drag-select just the model and not the frame or any ground volume if you can avoid it. With this central mass selected, go to Model>Create Animation. Orbit Point should be on by default. Select Animation Options and click on Selection. (If Selection is grayed out, you have nothing selected within the picture frame.)  The rotate amount should be 360 degrees.  To test, run for 5 seconds and see if your flyaround is behaving. If so, render your model for the final orbit. Once rendered, set a fly time of 45 seconds which seems a reasonable viewing period. Note that your model will render based on its relative screen zoom. Zoomed out, you’ll get a small model and zoomed in, a bigger one. Larger images will cause rendering times to increase.

It’s a little more work to generate a perspective view versus the ease of creating a simple isometric style, but once you’ve gotten used to seeing your model in this more realistic state, you aren’t likely to settle for less.

If you’d prefer a more professional, foolproof approach, check out OzCad’s AnimationWorks. Look at all of the sample QT movies as each one is a unique example of what’s possible.
http://www.ozcad.com.au/otherproducts/vwaddonsAW.html
Jonathan Pickup, in his cadsupportonline.com issue 0809 covers walkthrough and flyaround animation. His description, while quite good, covers isometric model viewing, not perspective. 

It should be said that having a module one step up from Fundamentals--Architect for instance, plus Renderworks--is the base setup for these modeling discussions.

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Some misc. gotcha’s: 
•If you set your model to Oblique view, OpenGL will not render with this particular representation selected.
•If you intend to import plants into your model, don’t name a Layer or Class “Plant” as this will cause any import of plant libraries to be blocked.
•When exporting an image of your model to a jpg format (File>Export>Export Image File), I find that I am prevented from increasing my dots per inch in the Resolution box which, on my Mac, typically reads as 72 px/in. If you look in the lower right corner of this dialog box, you’ll notice, at least in Vw 2008, that the default setting is for JPEG 2000. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
Note that if you change this setting to JPEG Image or PNG or another, you ARE able to increase the dpi in the Resolution box. Set dpi somewhere between 150  and 300, depending on your printer’s abilities, you ability to wait for rendering to finish, and the expected quality of the final printout. 

Some misc. FREE models:
•Duravit does not have an online download option but you can order their free CD which has DXF models of their products. Scroll down the page to the Spec Manual to order:
http://www.duravit.com/service/catalogs/overview-useo6mangt.html
•Mr-Cad is worth checking out. Mostly a pay-per-model site, they have some free models plus textures. 3ds Format.
http://www.mr-cad.com/
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Adjusting printing resolution in Vw is confusing since settings seem to be all over the place. For instance, dpi settings can be set, under File>Document Settings, Document Preferences. But after creating a sheet layer, you’ll find dpi can be set there as well. Click on a sheet, then hit the Edit button found on either the Navigation palette or the Organization palette. 

Which is more important? Do we need both? To find out, I took one of my fully textured models, rendered in Custom Renderworks, and tried setting dpi’s in both locations. I found that the best place to set dpi was on sheet layers, not in the Documents Pref’s. Printing on a Brother 5280DW laser printer, (capable of 1200 x 1200 dpi), I saw much crisper output when sheets were set to 300 dpi, with the Prefs panel set to 72, than I did when the Prefs panel was at 300 dpi and sheet layers were back at 72 dpi. 

My advice, if you are using sheet layers, is to set your dpi there and ignore the Document Preference panel unless someone out there can give me a reasoned argument against this. One last observation: when the sheet dpi was set high, there was a marked improvement in the image on my Mac notebook screen (OS 10.5.4) 

Play around with dpi to see what setting between 150 dpi and 300 works for you--assuming your printer can handle more that 150 dpi. 

Note all of this assumes you are printing FROM within VectorWorks and not creating a JPEG or some other image file which would then be printed through another application. If you are more interested in exporting and manipulating rendered files in an image processor like Photoshop, then read my suggestion above under Gotcha’s.

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Some free advice. Well, everything here is free so what’s the deal? Only that you may be slowing down in your business, what with the economy and all, and that brings, along with less money, lots of stress. One of the ways to take control of a less than ideal environment is to train up to gain new skills. We always want to do this when we’re busy, so why not now when we’re slow? If I’ve described you, and you are working in 2D, I suggest blocking out some time to design something in 3D, something really, really simple, such that your investment is manageable and the reward-to-labor ratio high. 

You have options for designing in 3D, outside of VectorWorks, as you no doubt know. I’d just like to say that the pay-back, in designing from the beginning in VectorWorks, in 3D, is that you’ll have all your work in one file. Thus small changes, such as property line setback adjustments or stud wall thickness changes, can be managed in a more holistic approach. It was Aristotle who said “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Yes, you can get good-looking 3D at the beginning of your modeling process using other software. But starting and ending the file in Vw means that you have a much shorter distance to travel to make adjustments, to check relationships within the model, and to provide accurate, finished drawings, than with a “sum of parts” approach. 
 
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That’s a wrap. Hope to see you this coming Thursday.