CONVERT TO LINES #9
3/13/05
In this issue:
Reasons to go 3D
Making a 3D rockery
Finding out about the Split tool
The Art of Perspective Drawing
Hello northwest VectorWorks Users! Our next Seattle VectorWorks User Group meeting will be held on April 20th, a Wednesday, skipping March entirely since the Seattle Central Community College will be closed for spring break in the latter half of this month. When we meet again, we’ll be focusing on 3D from an incremental point of view. (If you are way into 3D, skip down to the tips section at the bottom.) Expect another e-mailed meeting reminder much closer to that date.
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3D is a visible proof that your figures add up. Or not. Do the assembled elements of your design fit together? Will the beam poke out through the roof or fit correctly when seen in left-front isometric view? Do you need to prove that your structure meets a complex zoning code which factors in different grades on each side of the building?
Many of you have heard me talk about putting the “pretty picture” at the back of the process for the sake of being able to see how things fit together and I think most of you who are new to 3D may find real value in thinking about creating lines and then, later, adding color and texture. Even interior designers may find value in converting 3D views to lines and adding color from another source than VectorWorks, especially now that the sketch feature has been added to VW 11.5. Later, as time allows, learning to add lights and textures from within VectorWorks will bring another kind of drama to their designs.
But the devil (read “money”) is in the details and this is the main reason to learn to do parts or all of your projects in 3D. Money gets saved when you discover an error that would have slipped by with no 3D model and the visible double check. The builder’s estimator and superintendent come to the party more quickly when they can clearly see your intent and so assign a cost. Your 3D illustration keeps them from cutting corners around the plan or starting assembly from the wrong corner or from just not seeing the detail. At the end of the day, when you’re tired, VectorWorks’ 3D tools will give you a creative energy boost empowering you to take banding details a little farther than your first idea or two and this will hopefully remove the problem of having to run to the project in emergency-mode. It’s all about the money.
OK, you say, but what about all the time it takes to set up and manage 3D? I would reply that for every hour that you spend setting up your work for 3D, you gain the time back when you draw your sections and elevations since we need only measure up and set the element once. Every other view will have those lines in the correct location saving having to place them one by one. Imagine your typical process of creating elevation drawings. What if you spent your time removing lines, having to only rarely add them? That’s a timesaver.
If you do get to the stage of producing “pretty pictures” I certainly won’t respect you any less however I may ask you to share some of your knowledge with the rest of us on how you typically set up your models.
But what did he mean by the “incremental” comment at the top of this piece? That’s the art of knowing just enough to solve a problem or two by using VW’s 3D tools. I expect, in our next meeting, to show you a number of ways to move toward that goal.
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Some tips:
If you are a landscaper and want to draw rocks for a rockery, a simple way to do this is to extrude a squarish rectangle, give it a solid fill color and extrude it approximately the same depth as one of the other dimensions. Then go to an Orthographic view (View/Right Isometric for instance). Use the Split Tool in line mode to cut off random corners. Rotate the block and split off more until you get a rocklike object.
The Split Tool resides on the 2D Object palette and you can read about the several types of objects it can edit by going to page 8-29 in the VectorWorks V11 User’s Guide or by going to the Help file and clicking on What’s This, then clicking on the Split Tool icon. This Find Info tip came from Patrick Higgins and was borrowed from the VectorWorks listserve.
Everyone most likely uses the keyboard to cut, copy or paste and probably also uses keys to activate Duplicate, Rotate, Nudge and Join. But what about getting the 2D Reshape Tool up quickly or the Active Only (Layers) command set to clear away the clutter of other visible Layers through use of the keyboard? There are a LOT of keyboard commands available to you. Adding a handful to your bag of tricks could save you some real time over the course of a year.
To find the shortcuts list, start up VW and go to the VectorWorks Help command and type “Keyboard Shortcuts” (w/o quotes) into the Search box . The Print command will generate a five page list of timesavers.
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The Art of Perspective Drawing was a Grumbacher Library publication from 1968 and was composed entirely of works by the illustrator Simon Greco*. I met and befriended Simon late in his life and he gave me a copy of the Perspective book (which described the principles of perspective drawing) plus a large print of one of his paintings done for Trans World Airlines showing their pride and joy, a propeller powered airliner, skimming the skyline of Manhattan. Greco created a superb painting in 3D and I doubt you’ll see the like of it again. I’ll bring my print of this work to share with you at the next meeting of the Seattle VectorWorks User Group.
Tom Greggs
206-524-2808
*On the flyleaf of the perspective book is this note:
“Mr. Greco, a noted teacher, painter and illustrator, is well known for his work in connection with the Life Magazine series of the Epic of Man. Originals of his commercial commissions are in the collection of the U.S. Naval Academy, The Smithsonian Institution, The American Museum of Natural History, Adirondack Museum and Betsy Ross House. As a fine arts painter, his work has been exhibited at the U. of Pennsylvania, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum and many others.”
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
CONVERT TO LINES #8
CONVERT TO LINES #8
February 3, 2005
In this issue:
VectorWorks manuals
Setting up the model
Greetings VectorWorks Users! Our next Seattle User Group meeting is February 23rd beginning at 6:00 PM and finishing at 8:00 PM.
Let’s get right into the first topic.
Consider the authors of the VectorWorks manuals. How do you go about structuring information when there are so many tools for drawing lines, so many processes for assembling sheets for the printing of finished work, so many ways to put together and highlight a model. In a highly engineered product that is constantly being churned, old ideas and tools roll out while new ideas, techniques, and methods roll in. Listing all of these processes, options and choices is the job of the lexicographer--the dictionary editor.
But would you make a cake while trying to pull a recipe from a dictionary? No. Better to read from something written by one who actually makes a living sifting flour and mixing butter. Those of us who bought VectorWorks may have thought, reasonably, that the manuals which came with the product would be both dictionary and recipe book. We may have expected that at some point in our reading we would encounter a soothing voice that would tell us how best to navigate through the confusion.
Nemetschek, you will be happy to hear, is serious about doing what they can to provide us with the best instruction out there. They have recognized, evidenced by steps they’ve recently taken, that you should have the best manuals available to you, regardless of where they were produced. They have also indicated a sincere interest in improving the web site by providing more how-to tutorials of all kinds.
My point in this is that you will benefit by owning a 3rd party manual which will speed the learning of VectorWorks. You might choose one of the new NNA Training Guides:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.html
or one of several books offered here:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/manuals.html
Buy one of these. Whether you purchase it yourself or NNA provides the book and buries the cost in the next upgrade is (as I’ve suggested to them) beside the point. The newer user proceeding without 3rd party guidance will struggle needlessly.
I have found that manuals I’ve purchased for my own use have provided me with relevant information month after month. An idea closed to me at an earlier stage of growth becomes clearer later and so the manual keeps giving back. If you read the book, learn everything, and want to move on, I will help you sell it. Just approach VectorWorks with the understanding that the factory manuals are, for the most part, very much like dictionaries. The hard-won, practical knowledge that you’ll need to really take off will be found at one of the web sites listed above.
OK, back to our next meeting. We’ll keep on with our approach of having a mix of topics that run from beginner to advanced. Work Group Referencing is something we think of as an advanced topic but a new user, working by themselves, can use WGR to set up a very interesting file structure which is designed to limit the number of alterations rippling through the plan when primary changes are made. Stuart Gerger will start off this part of the demo. Poppi Handy will talk about Fences and why she really likes this tool (Poppi: email me!). Those of you using VW10.5 and down will hear more about how Sheets has had its name changed to Views in VW11. You’ll find the change won’t alter your methods at all but only give you new and improved composition options. I may extrude some knee braces or trellises. This is a fun way to get some simple 3D accessories into your work. I’ll also bring an illustration graphically showing the benefits of exporting VW 3D models into Photoshop for touchup prior to printing.
We’ll meet at the Wood Construction Center located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
The process of setting up a file in VectorWorks depends on who you work for. If you have an employer who has already worked out the job specifics such as height of objects and their stacking order, then you might appreciate a tool such as Model Setup which is found in VW Architect. With Model Setup you just plug in floor to floor heights and a manageable set of Layers are automatically created for you. Model Setup is part of a package of tools including Document Setup, Create Standard Viewports and Standard Naming. These tools, particularly Standard Viewports and Standard Naming are going to be part of a system that will be handed down to you. The logic for naming Layers, Classes, and Sheets will have come from somewhere else.
If you’re self-employed or have a good deal of autonomy at work, then everything is different. In this world, since you are responsible for what sits on a Layer or what object inhabits a class, you’ll want to use your own terminology. The terms MOD and SLAB* preceding every Layer name--as automatically created by Model Setup--may not help readability. We also rarely know for certain the heights of our walls and floors until after we’ve drawn for a while. I don’t like being pinned down ahead of time and so whenever I draw a new set of walls on a Layer, I use the Object Info palette to set the wall’s overall height and the height of its base and skip over entering these numbers in the Layer Setup dialog box leaving those input boxes blank.
If there‘s a bug with this method, it is that (with the exception of things that stick to walls like windows and doors) a bed or a sink-base placed on a Second Story layer will default to 0’ winding up, effectively, on the Main Story when viewed in 3D**. If this were to happen, you could move them all at once with the Move Tool or individually, one by one, with the Object Info palette. I like the flexibility of using the OI palette enough that I am willing to put up with moving object to their correct heights rather than be forced to preset the Layer height in Layer Setup. If you populate your multistory drawings with lots of 3D elements, you may find my system harder than just setting up heights as God and Nemetschek intended in the Layer Setup dialog box. Bottom line, you have three ways to set your object heights: Layer Setup, Model Setup or via the Object Info palette.
*Rather than use Mod or Slab as prefixes to label Layers, why not use something that makes for easier reading while still giving you an identifier that marks the Layer as belonging to the Model or as having a 3D entity within? In that case, if the Main Story contains live 3D walls, the Layer name might be “Main Story (3D)”. Use “3D” as a suffix. The roof framing plan may have no 3D elements within so no special label would be needed. All Layers lacking a 3D suffix would be assumed to be composed of only 2D elements.
**The only reason to preset a height of any given Layer is that whatever you draw there will stick on the base setting of that height. If you decide to set your wall’s total height and base height as you go along (as I do), avoiding the Layer Setup options, note this one proviso: at some point before you start placing doors and windows into those walls, set, at least, their base height. If you are drawing on the Basement Layer and have not set a base height for those walls, when you do begin to place doors and windows, they will naturally default to 0’ and so will show up as though on the Main Story Layer when you look at your assembled model in 3D. If you later come back to set the wall’s height, the doors or windows previously placed will not automatically adjust and you will have to set the window or door base height for each via the Object Info palette. However, they will automatically adjust if they read the wall’s base height first.
See you on the 23rd.
Tom Greggs
206-524-2808
February 3, 2005
In this issue:
VectorWorks manuals
Setting up the model
Greetings VectorWorks Users! Our next Seattle User Group meeting is February 23rd beginning at 6:00 PM and finishing at 8:00 PM.
Let’s get right into the first topic.
Consider the authors of the VectorWorks manuals. How do you go about structuring information when there are so many tools for drawing lines, so many processes for assembling sheets for the printing of finished work, so many ways to put together and highlight a model. In a highly engineered product that is constantly being churned, old ideas and tools roll out while new ideas, techniques, and methods roll in. Listing all of these processes, options and choices is the job of the lexicographer--the dictionary editor.
But would you make a cake while trying to pull a recipe from a dictionary? No. Better to read from something written by one who actually makes a living sifting flour and mixing butter. Those of us who bought VectorWorks may have thought, reasonably, that the manuals which came with the product would be both dictionary and recipe book. We may have expected that at some point in our reading we would encounter a soothing voice that would tell us how best to navigate through the confusion.
Nemetschek, you will be happy to hear, is serious about doing what they can to provide us with the best instruction out there. They have recognized, evidenced by steps they’ve recently taken, that you should have the best manuals available to you, regardless of where they were produced. They have also indicated a sincere interest in improving the web site by providing more how-to tutorials of all kinds.
My point in this is that you will benefit by owning a 3rd party manual which will speed the learning of VectorWorks. You might choose one of the new NNA Training Guides:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.html
or one of several books offered here:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/manuals.html
Buy one of these. Whether you purchase it yourself or NNA provides the book and buries the cost in the next upgrade is (as I’ve suggested to them) beside the point. The newer user proceeding without 3rd party guidance will struggle needlessly.
I have found that manuals I’ve purchased for my own use have provided me with relevant information month after month. An idea closed to me at an earlier stage of growth becomes clearer later and so the manual keeps giving back. If you read the book, learn everything, and want to move on, I will help you sell it. Just approach VectorWorks with the understanding that the factory manuals are, for the most part, very much like dictionaries. The hard-won, practical knowledge that you’ll need to really take off will be found at one of the web sites listed above.
OK, back to our next meeting. We’ll keep on with our approach of having a mix of topics that run from beginner to advanced. Work Group Referencing is something we think of as an advanced topic but a new user, working by themselves, can use WGR to set up a very interesting file structure which is designed to limit the number of alterations rippling through the plan when primary changes are made. Stuart Gerger will start off this part of the demo. Poppi Handy will talk about Fences and why she really likes this tool (Poppi: email me!). Those of you using VW10.5 and down will hear more about how Sheets has had its name changed to Views in VW11. You’ll find the change won’t alter your methods at all but only give you new and improved composition options. I may extrude some knee braces or trellises. This is a fun way to get some simple 3D accessories into your work. I’ll also bring an illustration graphically showing the benefits of exporting VW 3D models into Photoshop for touchup prior to printing.
We’ll meet at the Wood Construction Center located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
The process of setting up a file in VectorWorks depends on who you work for. If you have an employer who has already worked out the job specifics such as height of objects and their stacking order, then you might appreciate a tool such as Model Setup which is found in VW Architect. With Model Setup you just plug in floor to floor heights and a manageable set of Layers are automatically created for you. Model Setup is part of a package of tools including Document Setup, Create Standard Viewports and Standard Naming. These tools, particularly Standard Viewports and Standard Naming are going to be part of a system that will be handed down to you. The logic for naming Layers, Classes, and Sheets will have come from somewhere else.
If you’re self-employed or have a good deal of autonomy at work, then everything is different. In this world, since you are responsible for what sits on a Layer or what object inhabits a class, you’ll want to use your own terminology. The terms MOD and SLAB* preceding every Layer name--as automatically created by Model Setup--may not help readability. We also rarely know for certain the heights of our walls and floors until after we’ve drawn for a while. I don’t like being pinned down ahead of time and so whenever I draw a new set of walls on a Layer, I use the Object Info palette to set the wall’s overall height and the height of its base and skip over entering these numbers in the Layer Setup dialog box leaving those input boxes blank.
If there‘s a bug with this method, it is that (with the exception of things that stick to walls like windows and doors) a bed or a sink-base placed on a Second Story layer will default to 0’ winding up, effectively, on the Main Story when viewed in 3D**. If this were to happen, you could move them all at once with the Move Tool or individually, one by one, with the Object Info palette. I like the flexibility of using the OI palette enough that I am willing to put up with moving object to their correct heights rather than be forced to preset the Layer height in Layer Setup. If you populate your multistory drawings with lots of 3D elements, you may find my system harder than just setting up heights as God and Nemetschek intended in the Layer Setup dialog box. Bottom line, you have three ways to set your object heights: Layer Setup, Model Setup or via the Object Info palette.
*Rather than use Mod or Slab as prefixes to label Layers, why not use something that makes for easier reading while still giving you an identifier that marks the Layer as belonging to the Model or as having a 3D entity within? In that case, if the Main Story contains live 3D walls, the Layer name might be “Main Story (3D)”. Use “3D” as a suffix. The roof framing plan may have no 3D elements within so no special label would be needed. All Layers lacking a 3D suffix would be assumed to be composed of only 2D elements.
**The only reason to preset a height of any given Layer is that whatever you draw there will stick on the base setting of that height. If you decide to set your wall’s total height and base height as you go along (as I do), avoiding the Layer Setup options, note this one proviso: at some point before you start placing doors and windows into those walls, set, at least, their base height. If you are drawing on the Basement Layer and have not set a base height for those walls, when you do begin to place doors and windows, they will naturally default to 0’ and so will show up as though on the Main Story Layer when you look at your assembled model in 3D. If you later come back to set the wall’s height, the doors or windows previously placed will not automatically adjust and you will have to set the window or door base height for each via the Object Info palette. However, they will automatically adjust if they read the wall’s base height first.
See you on the 23rd.
Tom Greggs
206-524-2808
CONVERT TO LINES #7
Convert to Lines #7
Seattle VectorWorks User Group
1/8/05
In this issue:
3D and the Seattle Library
Contemporary World Architecture
Greetings, Seattle VectorWorks Users plus any and all readers out beyond the city limits. This is a reminder of our upcoming meeting taking place January 19th, a Wednesday, from 6:00 to 8:00. We’ll cover the new Viewports concept in VW 11 plus the Objects from Polyline tool and anything else we can fit within our two hours. If you are a beginner, we’ll find time to help you with a few key concepts. Jack Mckean will bring along several VW 10 Learning Series CD’s which we’ll give away. I’ll bring the new VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which you are welcome to borrow. You’ll remember, the 11’s require a deposit.
One more comment about Viewports: Jack’s been using this tool in the drawing of a large commercial project and he’s found it to be very helpful setting the scale of his Layers at the small setting of 1/16” per foot but using Viewports to create printable pages where the scale has been increased to 1/4” per foot. I’m interested in how to keep my Layers aligned in smaller projects and not swish them around as I do now when I am ready to optimize each page layout prior to printing. Can Viewports accomplish this task while leaving the Layers aligned in case project requirements change?
The meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
This being a reminder, I’m not going to run on and on with this drill or that task or continue to shame you into doing more with 3D (although this is the season for new resolutions!). Instead allow me to go off-topic just a bit to encourage anyone who hasn’t seen the new Seattle Library to make time to see this amazing structure. There is a CAD related art piece there--a continuous film of CAD objects in wireframe mode which I think you would find interesting. These objects are projected on a huge concrete wall in the center of the building. I went up to the eighth floor, took a left upon exiting the elevators and walked east on a short, narrow hallway to look down on this unfolding art. What you see is a huge globe of sorts rotating toward you, bringing CAD objects of all kinds and sizes lazily up and over the horizon where they finally roll off and dissolve into space. This art installation is part of a permanent collection. While you’re enjoying and observing all this wonderful library space, try to imagine designing it without CAD.
The other discovery was a wonderful book of Architecture found at the University Bookstore in the U. District. They have an open display of The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, down from $160 to the rock bottom price of $128. This large-format color atlas shows architecture not just country by country but region by region within each country. There are some fine CAD drawings included as counterpoint to many of the project photos. Our very own Experience Music Project building designed by Frank Gehry Partners is shown in the US/West Coast selection of buildings along with the new Gehry Walt Disney Concert Hall and, in the middle of the country, Gehry’s Weatherhead School of Management building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I have to say we suffer in comparison, what with the “guitar strings” structure cluttering the roof along with a satellite dish. Gehry’s forms prove to be fragile, in my opinion, when overlaid with angular shapes, somewhat like a flowing french phrase with a gesundheit stuck in the middle. But I risk creating a real debate here when I really only wanted to pass on the joy of looking at a beautiful book with no intention of paying for it.
See you Wednesday after next!
PS. Check out the brand new Training Guides on the NNA website.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2004/121604.html
Note the link at the bottom of the release.
Tom Greggs
Seattle VectorWorks User Group
1/8/05
In this issue:
3D and the Seattle Library
Contemporary World Architecture
Greetings, Seattle VectorWorks Users plus any and all readers out beyond the city limits. This is a reminder of our upcoming meeting taking place January 19th, a Wednesday, from 6:00 to 8:00. We’ll cover the new Viewports concept in VW 11 plus the Objects from Polyline tool and anything else we can fit within our two hours. If you are a beginner, we’ll find time to help you with a few key concepts. Jack Mckean will bring along several VW 10 Learning Series CD’s which we’ll give away. I’ll bring the new VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which you are welcome to borrow. You’ll remember, the 11’s require a deposit.
One more comment about Viewports: Jack’s been using this tool in the drawing of a large commercial project and he’s found it to be very helpful setting the scale of his Layers at the small setting of 1/16” per foot but using Viewports to create printable pages where the scale has been increased to 1/4” per foot. I’m interested in how to keep my Layers aligned in smaller projects and not swish them around as I do now when I am ready to optimize each page layout prior to printing. Can Viewports accomplish this task while leaving the Layers aligned in case project requirements change?
The meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
This being a reminder, I’m not going to run on and on with this drill or that task or continue to shame you into doing more with 3D (although this is the season for new resolutions!). Instead allow me to go off-topic just a bit to encourage anyone who hasn’t seen the new Seattle Library to make time to see this amazing structure. There is a CAD related art piece there--a continuous film of CAD objects in wireframe mode which I think you would find interesting. These objects are projected on a huge concrete wall in the center of the building. I went up to the eighth floor, took a left upon exiting the elevators and walked east on a short, narrow hallway to look down on this unfolding art. What you see is a huge globe of sorts rotating toward you, bringing CAD objects of all kinds and sizes lazily up and over the horizon where they finally roll off and dissolve into space. This art installation is part of a permanent collection. While you’re enjoying and observing all this wonderful library space, try to imagine designing it without CAD.
The other discovery was a wonderful book of Architecture found at the University Bookstore in the U. District. They have an open display of The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, down from $160 to the rock bottom price of $128. This large-format color atlas shows architecture not just country by country but region by region within each country. There are some fine CAD drawings included as counterpoint to many of the project photos. Our very own Experience Music Project building designed by Frank Gehry Partners is shown in the US/West Coast selection of buildings along with the new Gehry Walt Disney Concert Hall and, in the middle of the country, Gehry’s Weatherhead School of Management building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I have to say we suffer in comparison, what with the “guitar strings” structure cluttering the roof along with a satellite dish. Gehry’s forms prove to be fragile, in my opinion, when overlaid with angular shapes, somewhat like a flowing french phrase with a gesundheit stuck in the middle. But I risk creating a real debate here when I really only wanted to pass on the joy of looking at a beautiful book with no intention of paying for it.
See you Wednesday after next!
PS. Check out the brand new Training Guides on the NNA website.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2004/121604.html
Note the link at the bottom of the release.
Tom Greggs
CONVERT TO LINES #6
Convert to Lines #6
12/3/04
In this issue:
Roof creation
Extrude along path
Model View tool
Greetings, VectorWorks Users! Here is a follow-up to the December 1st Roofs seminar plus the announcement of the upcoming January meeting for 2005!
Roof creation is mostly about drawing a polygon and then extruding it and tipping it to fit the purpose as intended--shedding rain away thus preventing it from dripping into our cereal bowls. Most roofs are made up of more than one plane so that means, when you make a number of extruded, pitched polygons by hand, they probably won’t fit correctly the first time out.
In Top/Plan View, place a locus point at the area where these planes should knit. Copy the locus point into memory. Change to Side View to measure the horizontal distance from one peak to the other, then go back to Top/Plan View. Double-click on your 3D roof and you are whisked to a new editing screen. Paste-In-Place the locus point onto this new screen and then use the 2D Reshape Tool to stretch your roof poly to the new shape. Exit by hitting the Done button in the upper right hand corner of your screen and you are back to Top/Plan View and ready to reshape the next, adjoining polygon.
I like to view the roof in relation to the walls below so when I go to a side view of the roof, assuming it is on a different layer than my walls, I use the Align Layer Views command to swing the walls into alignment. I like limiting my visible layers to just walls and roofs since other pieces of the drawing clutter up the view making it harder to see and make choices. Regardless of what you are building, be it cabinets or gears, use Align Layer Views to gain understanding of the Layer to Layer relationships.
I used VectorWorks 11 + Architect for the evening’s discussion and so I made use of all the automated tools. But when the going gets complicated and automatic doesn’t get it done, Ungroup the roof planes and edit each one just like it was any other extruded polygon.
The 2D Reshape tool and the 3D reshape tool are a bit confusing since the 2D reshape tool IS used to change 3D shapes. But remember that when you edit a simple 3D shape, you are taken to an editing pane where the 3D info has been stripped away and stored. You are now editing a 2D entity. Exiting restores the 3D elements. The 3D Reshape tool edits more complex 3D entities including Nurbs surfaces such at Extrude Along Path objects, and also walls.
I’m hoping for one little old improvement in the roof tools in the next VW upgrade and that would be automatic creation of fascia and barge rafters. VW does this now but only when the barge or fascia is in relation to a cut rafter tail. If you had a 2x4 top cord truss and wanted a 2x8 fascia, you’d have to create this deeper board yourself. You can use a simple extrude, one by one, to create these however that process can be laborious. Just prior to the 1st, I tried a couple of new ways to create fascia and barges with mixed results. In one case, I used the automatic roof framing tool in VW 11 which made individual 3D rafters for the entire roof including barge rafters. Then I threw away every other stick of framing while keeping the barges. Don’t check the Create Ridge Board box or this will leave a gap between the barges at their tops. If you want to stretch the barge to enclose a gutter end, simply lengthen the span in the Object Info palette.
But David Rosenfeld suggested using the Wall tool to make a fascia or any kind of repeating band. This is a good idea since you can type in the wall width and height, 1-1/2” by 7-1/2” in this case, in the Object Info palette. But what happens when you have a gable roof mixed in with hips? Continue to run the “wall” across the front of the gable then go to a straight on view of the gable and use the 3D Reshape tool to add a reshape node to this “wall” at both top and bottom allowing you to drag it upwards to fit the gable.
When the shape is more complex than a simple rectangle, use the Extrude Along Path tool. I use it for gutters and belly bands with drip caps. Note that the Extrude Along Path tool will place your shape’s centroid or middle average onto the center of your pathway (called the Path Object). So you have to either outsmart this tendency or use Edit Group to shift the shape one way or the other to get it to align correctly. I’ve resigned myself to using the Edit function since I rarely get it right the first time. It is worth the effort however. In two projects that had complicated drip bands, the final 2D elevation drawings had them showing perfectly so I didn’t have to add lines by hand. This is a time saver. You will also see in 3D any error if your band is terminating or transitioning in an incorrect manner. I expect Nemetschelk to improve the Extrude Along Path tool with an alignment option in a future upgrade.
As noted above, the Extrude Along Path tool creates a more complex 3D entity. The Path that you create is converted to a Nurbs curve. This means that when you need to lengthen or shorten the Path, click on Edit Group and then use the 3D Reshape tool and not the 2D reshape tool to make the change. Paste in your locus points for reference since estimating distance in the editing pane without using a reference is especially difficult. Lastly, whenever pasting in references into the editing window or pane, be sure to remove them before clicking on Done so they won’t mar the finished 3D views.
How many of you have used the Model View tool to assemble your layers into models? I have been using the original, much less intuitive method called Create Layer Link. Model View has been under my nose since at least Version 10.5 and I’ve finally discovered it! Model View may only be available in Architect but I sincerely hope that it has made it to all versions of VW. I’d be interested in knowing if the bare VectorWorks package has Model View installed. Try this tool with its improved interface now.
Here is a question concerning the coming year: should we break up the meeting structure to allow us to focus on the newer user one month and then cover topics more interesting to advanced users the following month? Or should we continue on, mixing and matching both during our evenings as time and inclination allow? Jonathan Pickup, author of many manuals on using VW, strongly suggests the two party system. But he also meets many more months of the year than we do and he charges $ for these meetings, understandable in part because he has to fly to the various cities served. Here is the list of offerings they attempt to provide the newer user during the course of a year:
•New Drawing Methods
•Preferences and Constraints
•Setting Up a Domestic Project
•How to Use Layers and Classes
•Building a Simple House
•Creating and Using Symbols
•Walls, Floors, Columns
•Simple Roofs
•Intro to 3D Modeling
•Intro to Worksheets
•Setting Up Large Projects
•PowerPac
•Intro to Rendering
•Intro to Site Modeling
•Intro to Customizing
If you are a newer user who would benefit from a structured intro similar to that offered by the New Zealand VectorWorks User Group, then let me know. Our reality is that we would structure the evenings to suite our own biases but use Jonathan’s well developed pdf files, based on his books, to guide us. He has very generously offered to give us these files for SVUG use.
The URL for the NZ User Group: http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/home.htm
Jonathan’s book sales site:
https://vesta.safe-order.net/archoncad/manuals/manuals.php
Jack’s back! Jack McKean will host the January meeting and cover the Viewports concept in VW 11. He is finding it a terrific improvement for organizing drawings. I’ll take a look at Objects from Polyline in VW Architect which allows you to create thirteen different items from any polyline shape such as creation of massing models (quick housing shapes), piping runs, seating layouts, space planning and more.
I’ll bring the Learning Series CD’s so if you wish to borrow one, be prepared to write me a check for $75 which I’ll hold until the safe return of the CD which should be mailed back to me after approximately 2-1/2 weeks. If you are out of meeting range, mail me the check plus a nonrefundable check for $5 to cover to-and-fro mailing. If you get and return one, I can keep the same check and mail a fresh one out. When your last CD is back safe in my hands, I’ll return your uncashed check by mail.
For further info on the Learning Series CD contents:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/trainingcd.html
Plan to meet on January 19, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. The event is free.
Write down the date on your calendar and expect a reminder e-mail sometime closer to the 19th.
12/3/04
In this issue:
Roof creation
Extrude along path
Model View tool
Greetings, VectorWorks Users! Here is a follow-up to the December 1st Roofs seminar plus the announcement of the upcoming January meeting for 2005!
Roof creation is mostly about drawing a polygon and then extruding it and tipping it to fit the purpose as intended--shedding rain away thus preventing it from dripping into our cereal bowls. Most roofs are made up of more than one plane so that means, when you make a number of extruded, pitched polygons by hand, they probably won’t fit correctly the first time out.
In Top/Plan View, place a locus point at the area where these planes should knit. Copy the locus point into memory. Change to Side View to measure the horizontal distance from one peak to the other, then go back to Top/Plan View. Double-click on your 3D roof and you are whisked to a new editing screen. Paste-In-Place the locus point onto this new screen and then use the 2D Reshape Tool to stretch your roof poly to the new shape. Exit by hitting the Done button in the upper right hand corner of your screen and you are back to Top/Plan View and ready to reshape the next, adjoining polygon.
I like to view the roof in relation to the walls below so when I go to a side view of the roof, assuming it is on a different layer than my walls, I use the Align Layer Views command to swing the walls into alignment. I like limiting my visible layers to just walls and roofs since other pieces of the drawing clutter up the view making it harder to see and make choices. Regardless of what you are building, be it cabinets or gears, use Align Layer Views to gain understanding of the Layer to Layer relationships.
I used VectorWorks 11 + Architect for the evening’s discussion and so I made use of all the automated tools. But when the going gets complicated and automatic doesn’t get it done, Ungroup the roof planes and edit each one just like it was any other extruded polygon.
The 2D Reshape tool and the 3D reshape tool are a bit confusing since the 2D reshape tool IS used to change 3D shapes. But remember that when you edit a simple 3D shape, you are taken to an editing pane where the 3D info has been stripped away and stored. You are now editing a 2D entity. Exiting restores the 3D elements. The 3D Reshape tool edits more complex 3D entities including Nurbs surfaces such at Extrude Along Path objects, and also walls.
I’m hoping for one little old improvement in the roof tools in the next VW upgrade and that would be automatic creation of fascia and barge rafters. VW does this now but only when the barge or fascia is in relation to a cut rafter tail. If you had a 2x4 top cord truss and wanted a 2x8 fascia, you’d have to create this deeper board yourself. You can use a simple extrude, one by one, to create these however that process can be laborious. Just prior to the 1st, I tried a couple of new ways to create fascia and barges with mixed results. In one case, I used the automatic roof framing tool in VW 11 which made individual 3D rafters for the entire roof including barge rafters. Then I threw away every other stick of framing while keeping the barges. Don’t check the Create Ridge Board box or this will leave a gap between the barges at their tops. If you want to stretch the barge to enclose a gutter end, simply lengthen the span in the Object Info palette.
But David Rosenfeld suggested using the Wall tool to make a fascia or any kind of repeating band. This is a good idea since you can type in the wall width and height, 1-1/2” by 7-1/2” in this case, in the Object Info palette. But what happens when you have a gable roof mixed in with hips? Continue to run the “wall” across the front of the gable then go to a straight on view of the gable and use the 3D Reshape tool to add a reshape node to this “wall” at both top and bottom allowing you to drag it upwards to fit the gable.
When the shape is more complex than a simple rectangle, use the Extrude Along Path tool. I use it for gutters and belly bands with drip caps. Note that the Extrude Along Path tool will place your shape’s centroid or middle average onto the center of your pathway (called the Path Object). So you have to either outsmart this tendency or use Edit Group to shift the shape one way or the other to get it to align correctly. I’ve resigned myself to using the Edit function since I rarely get it right the first time. It is worth the effort however. In two projects that had complicated drip bands, the final 2D elevation drawings had them showing perfectly so I didn’t have to add lines by hand. This is a time saver. You will also see in 3D any error if your band is terminating or transitioning in an incorrect manner. I expect Nemetschelk to improve the Extrude Along Path tool with an alignment option in a future upgrade.
As noted above, the Extrude Along Path tool creates a more complex 3D entity. The Path that you create is converted to a Nurbs curve. This means that when you need to lengthen or shorten the Path, click on Edit Group and then use the 3D Reshape tool and not the 2D reshape tool to make the change. Paste in your locus points for reference since estimating distance in the editing pane without using a reference is especially difficult. Lastly, whenever pasting in references into the editing window or pane, be sure to remove them before clicking on Done so they won’t mar the finished 3D views.
How many of you have used the Model View tool to assemble your layers into models? I have been using the original, much less intuitive method called Create Layer Link. Model View has been under my nose since at least Version 10.5 and I’ve finally discovered it! Model View may only be available in Architect but I sincerely hope that it has made it to all versions of VW. I’d be interested in knowing if the bare VectorWorks package has Model View installed. Try this tool with its improved interface now.
Here is a question concerning the coming year: should we break up the meeting structure to allow us to focus on the newer user one month and then cover topics more interesting to advanced users the following month? Or should we continue on, mixing and matching both during our evenings as time and inclination allow? Jonathan Pickup, author of many manuals on using VW, strongly suggests the two party system. But he also meets many more months of the year than we do and he charges $ for these meetings, understandable in part because he has to fly to the various cities served. Here is the list of offerings they attempt to provide the newer user during the course of a year:
•New Drawing Methods
•Preferences and Constraints
•Setting Up a Domestic Project
•How to Use Layers and Classes
•Building a Simple House
•Creating and Using Symbols
•Walls, Floors, Columns
•Simple Roofs
•Intro to 3D Modeling
•Intro to Worksheets
•Setting Up Large Projects
•PowerPac
•Intro to Rendering
•Intro to Site Modeling
•Intro to Customizing
If you are a newer user who would benefit from a structured intro similar to that offered by the New Zealand VectorWorks User Group, then let me know. Our reality is that we would structure the evenings to suite our own biases but use Jonathan’s well developed pdf files, based on his books, to guide us. He has very generously offered to give us these files for SVUG use.
The URL for the NZ User Group: http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/home.htm
Jonathan’s book sales site:
https://vesta.safe-order.net/archoncad/manuals/manuals.php
Jack’s back! Jack McKean will host the January meeting and cover the Viewports concept in VW 11. He is finding it a terrific improvement for organizing drawings. I’ll take a look at Objects from Polyline in VW Architect which allows you to create thirteen different items from any polyline shape such as creation of massing models (quick housing shapes), piping runs, seating layouts, space planning and more.
I’ll bring the Learning Series CD’s so if you wish to borrow one, be prepared to write me a check for $75 which I’ll hold until the safe return of the CD which should be mailed back to me after approximately 2-1/2 weeks. If you are out of meeting range, mail me the check plus a nonrefundable check for $5 to cover to-and-fro mailing. If you get and return one, I can keep the same check and mail a fresh one out. When your last CD is back safe in my hands, I’ll return your uncashed check by mail.
For further info on the Learning Series CD contents:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/trainingcd.html
Plan to meet on January 19, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. The event is free.
Write down the date on your calendar and expect a reminder e-mail sometime closer to the 19th.
CONVERT TO LINES #5
CONVERT TO LINES #5
November 18, 2004
In this issue
Extruding objects
Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group. In my last post, I had suggested that those interested solely in roofs meet December 1st, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. A number of folks responded and so we will go forward with that meeting but I’m sending this post out to one and all in case your schedule or your interest changes. There is plenty of room so just show up. The more, the merrier.
I have a Vectorworks 10 Learning Series CD, Foundation ll that I’ll give away at the meeting. Those that wish can draw for it--as in pick-a-number. Disk topics include Walls, Advanced 3D, Creating Scripts, Worksheets and Databases, Setting Up a Drawing System and Workgroup Referencing. If you have VW 10 Learning Series CD’s at home that you’ve finished viewing, bring them to the SVUG meetings and share them or swap them!
I also have the full set of VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which I plan to lend out. These include the Vectorworks Foundations l & ll, Architect, Landmark, Spotlight and Renderworks. I’m still working out a plan for this to work but at this point I am considering accepting and holding a check for the retail amount of the CD plus a few dollars to cover mailing the CD out and back. There would be a two week period before the disk would be overdue. Upon receipt of the CD, I would tear up the check and mail you back the pieces. Only one CD at a time would be issued to any one person. Let me know if this interests you.
The Dec. 1 Roofs meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
...................................................................................................................
Let’s get right into some tips. When you want to make a plane such as a ground plane, do you choose Extrude or Floor? The Floor tool gives you a dialog box that allows you to set the floor height in space. The Extrude Tool does not have this same advantage. You will have to drag it to its proper location or use the Move command. You can angle an extruded object by going to a side view and using the 3D Rotate Tool. If the yard slopes or you are making a sloping driveway or other tipped surface, this is the tool to use. A Floor cannot be tilted. If you wish to apply a texture to an extruded object, doing so will cover all surfaces. Pasting a texture onto a floor will only texture the top plane and not the other sides. There is also another option and that is using the Roof Face command which will give you a combination of advantages from both Extrude and Floor. There is--and I believe this is in Architect and perhaps Landmark--a road tool that makes sizing from the Object Info Palette and easy chore. It also has a curb option. Import from Object Libraries the Sitework-Parking & Roads library. Once imported into your Resource Browser, choose Road Straight Drive and use it as a road or any other flat or sloped surface.
Here is a link to a trove of QT movies of VW
http://www.nemetschek.net/movies/index.html
If you have ever wondered about cabinet hinges, check out this site.
http://www.allwoodwork.com/article/woodwork/glossary_of_cabinet_hinge_terms.htm
See you on the 1st of December!
Tom Greggs
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
(206)-524-2808
November 18, 2004
In this issue
Extruding objects
Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group. In my last post, I had suggested that those interested solely in roofs meet December 1st, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. A number of folks responded and so we will go forward with that meeting but I’m sending this post out to one and all in case your schedule or your interest changes. There is plenty of room so just show up. The more, the merrier.
I have a Vectorworks 10 Learning Series CD, Foundation ll that I’ll give away at the meeting. Those that wish can draw for it--as in pick-a-number. Disk topics include Walls, Advanced 3D, Creating Scripts, Worksheets and Databases, Setting Up a Drawing System and Workgroup Referencing. If you have VW 10 Learning Series CD’s at home that you’ve finished viewing, bring them to the SVUG meetings and share them or swap them!
I also have the full set of VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which I plan to lend out. These include the Vectorworks Foundations l & ll, Architect, Landmark, Spotlight and Renderworks. I’m still working out a plan for this to work but at this point I am considering accepting and holding a check for the retail amount of the CD plus a few dollars to cover mailing the CD out and back. There would be a two week period before the disk would be overdue. Upon receipt of the CD, I would tear up the check and mail you back the pieces. Only one CD at a time would be issued to any one person. Let me know if this interests you.
The Dec. 1 Roofs meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
...................................................................................................................
Let’s get right into some tips. When you want to make a plane such as a ground plane, do you choose Extrude or Floor? The Floor tool gives you a dialog box that allows you to set the floor height in space. The Extrude Tool does not have this same advantage. You will have to drag it to its proper location or use the Move command. You can angle an extruded object by going to a side view and using the 3D Rotate Tool. If the yard slopes or you are making a sloping driveway or other tipped surface, this is the tool to use. A Floor cannot be tilted. If you wish to apply a texture to an extruded object, doing so will cover all surfaces. Pasting a texture onto a floor will only texture the top plane and not the other sides. There is also another option and that is using the Roof Face command which will give you a combination of advantages from both Extrude and Floor. There is--and I believe this is in Architect and perhaps Landmark--a road tool that makes sizing from the Object Info Palette and easy chore. It also has a curb option. Import from Object Libraries the Sitework-Parking & Roads library. Once imported into your Resource Browser, choose Road Straight Drive and use it as a road or any other flat or sloped surface.
Here is a link to a trove of QT movies of VW
http://www.nemetschek.net/movies/index.html
If you have ever wondered about cabinet hinges, check out this site.
http://www.allwoodwork.com/article/woodwork/glossary_of_cabinet_hinge_terms.htm
See you on the 1st of December!
Tom Greggs
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
(206)-524-2808
CONVERT TO LINES #4
CONVERT TO LINES #4
10/29/04
In this issue:
Speeding up rendering
Class options vs. Layer options
Setting the height of objects
Question:
Would any of you turn out in early December for an evening of roof editing only? The Seattle Vectorworks User Group usually skips December and November due to the busy holiday time opting instead to meet sometime during the third week of January. There are, however, enough people interested in learning more about the roof tools--how to set up, then edit, roofs--that I would come out in December if you are interested.
.....................................................................................................................
If you would like to attend a roof-only SVUG meeting on December 1st,Wednesday night, 6:00-8:00 PM, e-mail me at tomgreggs@mindspring.com. I will only be confirming the date (for this meeting only) to those that e-mail me in reply to this post.
.....................................................................................................................
Our last get-together in October was a good one considering we met during the seventh game of the Red Sox, Yankees duel. Ivan Hass, who teaches VW at the Wood Construction Center, took a turn at the podium and talked about the power of using Classes in organizing drawings. I tried his ideas out this week when I put a spiral stair into a drawing. I've never used the Circular Stair tool before (VW Architect) but it works well. I also placed a light above the stair hoping to better show it through a side window as I developed the 3D views. But I found that every time I rendered the model, the time to render was considerably longer than before. So I made a new class and named it Spiral Stair and turned it invisible. I moved the stair into this class using the Object Info Palette. Now I can render those scenes where stair visibility is less important at much faster speeds.
Classes are also a boon when you place objects on top of one another and find that they create a conflict. An example would be two wall types, say a concrete foundation wall and a short stud wall. They tend to grab at one another and form unintended joints. If I create a class for each one, then move those walls to their separate class, I can edit them independently and keep them behaving properly.
Consider this exercise of creating a partial daylight basement story set 3'-6" into the ground. The The basement walls will be made up of 8" thick concrete for the lower, in-ground half and 4" wide studs for the upper. On the mode bar under Class make custom classes for each kind of wall and call one Wall-Conc. and the other Wall-Stud. Go to the menu bar to Organize/Layer Option and select Active Only or Gray Others. Select your new Wall-Conc. class and draw the concrete portion of wall there and the stud wall, aligned above, on the Wall-Stud class. Let them both be 8' tall (∆ Z) and have 0" for the base level (Bot.Z). Insert a 3' wide door into the stud wall. Cut the stud wall 3" off the sides of the door such that the total door and wall combo is 3'-6" wide (drawn a line across the wall and use the Trim tool). Keep all the wall segments intact. Transfer the cut markers to the foundation wall via the Object Info palette and cut that wall. Delete the cut foundation segment.
Shorten all stud walls by 4' (∆Z or Delta Z), except the door wall which we'll leave at 8', and raise the bottom height of the shortened walls (Bot. Z) by 4'. Go to the foundation wall class that you have created and select those walls and shorten by 4'. You should be able to return to the Class default of Show/Snap/Modify Others and see your new basement wall composite of foundation and cripple wall showing a door that extends to the basement level free of conflict with the adjoining foundation walls.
Some points to make:
•Layer Options is not the same as Layer Visibility (Visible, Invisible, Gray) but are often used in tandem.
•Return your Class Options setting to Show/Snap/ Modify Others. Too often, after changing these options I find that parts of my drawing have disappeared or what is there cannot be snapped to or changed. There is no virus, you simply have to review Class Options and you will find, in setting it back to Show/Snap/Modify Others, that the missing items return. If you have ghosts in your machine, this is were they will likely surface. If the above fix doesn't work, check Class visibility to see if one of them has been made invisible.
•Note that the default setting in Layers Options should be anything but Show/Snap/Modify Others. Imagine that you were working away with several layers visible but you didn’t know that Show/Snap/Modify Others was turned on. You might accidentally reach down to another layer and move or even delete important information. Instead, set the Layer Option on the menu bar at Show/Snap Others thus turning off the Modify option.
•When drawing one object atop another, where each is on a different layer or class, Show/Snap Others is better than Gray Others since you can reach down to the other class object and snap your new line or wall to that object's exact corner. Loci are also great markers to place on corners and then move up or down using the Object Info palette.
•If you are just dipping your toe into 3D, try this exercise at the end of a day when you need a change of pace from production drawing. Try out the Artistic rendering options if you have the new VW 11 or experiment with lighting and take your model just a little further on.
•Lastly, when creating these new 3D elements, you may feel they are in the way of your 2D drawing, showing solid when you wish to show a dotted line instead. In this case I move these objects to a layer that can contain all 3D items that don't show well on the 2D page. I often have a layer called Floor Planes where I will place the 3D floors, any extrusions or object made with Extrude Along Path. Belly bands, drip caps or outriggers can be moved there as well as foundation walls though I almost always leave live stud walls on my 2D working drawing layers. To convert the foundation walls to lines, select them and use Tool/Convert Copy To Lines. Send the new lines to your 2D working drawing layer.
At our October meeting we also talked about setting the height of objects. Do you make use of the Bot. Z and Delta Z input boxes found on the Layers Setup dialog box when you set your floors or layer levels? This is probably the conventional method but I confess that I like using the Object Info palette to set my objects. This is in part because I work from one story, usually the Main Story and then go up or down with many stops in between for odd Layers that aren’t so easily set up in advance. I develop my layer height typically well after I create the layer. The Object Info palette thus seems more fluid to me as the place to set heights.
Ivan and Jack McKean use the Layers Setup screen to set the major levels of their drawings and that gives them one advantage: if you are placing lots of furnishings, they will snap to the Bot. Z height of that layer. In my case, If I insert a commode into a basement, I have to set the Bot. Z of the toilet in the Object Info Palette if I want to see that toilet in a 3D view. But since I tend to show more exterior and less interior in my drawings, I haven’t felt the pinch of having to set the Bot. Z for every little stick of furniture. Set up your layer heights whichever works best for you.
Some thoughts:
•When you go below your 0" level, you have to note the height with a negative sign.
•You can do addition, subtraction and multiplication right in the Object Info palette data input boxes.
If we make a floor or a surface of some kind with a 10" thickness and we set the top of the floor to 0", the bottom of the floor will be -10". If we place a wall beneath that floor, the wall’s Bot. Z will be -8'-0" plus the floor thickness. Instead of adding in your head the total height of the wall and the total height of the floor, you can type in the math and hit return and VW will properly set the wall elevation. But don’t use the 'plus' key if you are going below your 0" level. Type into the Object Info palette for the floor+wall combo: -8' - 10". That is an equation that sends you downward just as 8' + 10" sends you upward.
Hang in there with Classes. You will benefit once you get familiar through regular use.
Final thoughts:
•For those that do interior design, check out this great plugin for Vectorworks called InteriorCAD (interiorcad.com). This program allows you to do cabinets, shelving, closets and so much more. They have a fine pdf file that takes you through the various options. But you simply draw a polygon to define the outside perimeter of your object and then set about inputting the various elements. Download the demo, load it into your plugins folder and then use the Workspace Editor to move it to one of your palettes. Works with VW 10.5 as of this writing.
•Apologies to those of you who use VW for purposes other than architectural. Some day I will know this program well enough to write or teach more evenly.
Expect an e-mail in early January announcing our next general SVUG meeting.
Sincerely,
Tom Greggs
10/29/04
In this issue:
Speeding up rendering
Class options vs. Layer options
Setting the height of objects
Question:
Would any of you turn out in early December for an evening of roof editing only? The Seattle Vectorworks User Group usually skips December and November due to the busy holiday time opting instead to meet sometime during the third week of January. There are, however, enough people interested in learning more about the roof tools--how to set up, then edit, roofs--that I would come out in December if you are interested.
.....................................................................................................................
If you would like to attend a roof-only SVUG meeting on December 1st,Wednesday night, 6:00-8:00 PM, e-mail me at tomgreggs@mindspring.com. I will only be confirming the date (for this meeting only) to those that e-mail me in reply to this post.
.....................................................................................................................
Our last get-together in October was a good one considering we met during the seventh game of the Red Sox, Yankees duel. Ivan Hass, who teaches VW at the Wood Construction Center, took a turn at the podium and talked about the power of using Classes in organizing drawings. I tried his ideas out this week when I put a spiral stair into a drawing. I've never used the Circular Stair tool before (VW Architect) but it works well. I also placed a light above the stair hoping to better show it through a side window as I developed the 3D views. But I found that every time I rendered the model, the time to render was considerably longer than before. So I made a new class and named it Spiral Stair and turned it invisible. I moved the stair into this class using the Object Info Palette. Now I can render those scenes where stair visibility is less important at much faster speeds.
Classes are also a boon when you place objects on top of one another and find that they create a conflict. An example would be two wall types, say a concrete foundation wall and a short stud wall. They tend to grab at one another and form unintended joints. If I create a class for each one, then move those walls to their separate class, I can edit them independently and keep them behaving properly.
Consider this exercise of creating a partial daylight basement story set 3'-6" into the ground. The The basement walls will be made up of 8" thick concrete for the lower, in-ground half and 4" wide studs for the upper. On the mode bar under Class make custom classes for each kind of wall and call one Wall-Conc. and the other Wall-Stud. Go to the menu bar to Organize/Layer Option and select Active Only or Gray Others. Select your new Wall-Conc. class and draw the concrete portion of wall there and the stud wall, aligned above, on the Wall-Stud class. Let them both be 8' tall (∆ Z) and have 0" for the base level (Bot.Z). Insert a 3' wide door into the stud wall. Cut the stud wall 3" off the sides of the door such that the total door and wall combo is 3'-6" wide (drawn a line across the wall and use the Trim tool). Keep all the wall segments intact. Transfer the cut markers to the foundation wall via the Object Info palette and cut that wall. Delete the cut foundation segment.
Shorten all stud walls by 4' (∆Z or Delta Z), except the door wall which we'll leave at 8', and raise the bottom height of the shortened walls (Bot. Z) by 4'. Go to the foundation wall class that you have created and select those walls and shorten by 4'. You should be able to return to the Class default of Show/Snap/Modify Others and see your new basement wall composite of foundation and cripple wall showing a door that extends to the basement level free of conflict with the adjoining foundation walls.
Some points to make:
•Layer Options is not the same as Layer Visibility (Visible, Invisible, Gray) but are often used in tandem.
•Return your Class Options setting to Show/Snap/ Modify Others. Too often, after changing these options I find that parts of my drawing have disappeared or what is there cannot be snapped to or changed. There is no virus, you simply have to review Class Options and you will find, in setting it back to Show/Snap/Modify Others, that the missing items return. If you have ghosts in your machine, this is were they will likely surface. If the above fix doesn't work, check Class visibility to see if one of them has been made invisible.
•Note that the default setting in Layers Options should be anything but Show/Snap/Modify Others. Imagine that you were working away with several layers visible but you didn’t know that Show/Snap/Modify Others was turned on. You might accidentally reach down to another layer and move or even delete important information. Instead, set the Layer Option on the menu bar at Show/Snap Others thus turning off the Modify option.
•When drawing one object atop another, where each is on a different layer or class, Show/Snap Others is better than Gray Others since you can reach down to the other class object and snap your new line or wall to that object's exact corner. Loci are also great markers to place on corners and then move up or down using the Object Info palette.
•If you are just dipping your toe into 3D, try this exercise at the end of a day when you need a change of pace from production drawing. Try out the Artistic rendering options if you have the new VW 11 or experiment with lighting and take your model just a little further on.
•Lastly, when creating these new 3D elements, you may feel they are in the way of your 2D drawing, showing solid when you wish to show a dotted line instead. In this case I move these objects to a layer that can contain all 3D items that don't show well on the 2D page. I often have a layer called Floor Planes where I will place the 3D floors, any extrusions or object made with Extrude Along Path. Belly bands, drip caps or outriggers can be moved there as well as foundation walls though I almost always leave live stud walls on my 2D working drawing layers. To convert the foundation walls to lines, select them and use Tool/Convert Copy To Lines. Send the new lines to your 2D working drawing layer.
At our October meeting we also talked about setting the height of objects. Do you make use of the Bot. Z and Delta Z input boxes found on the Layers Setup dialog box when you set your floors or layer levels? This is probably the conventional method but I confess that I like using the Object Info palette to set my objects. This is in part because I work from one story, usually the Main Story and then go up or down with many stops in between for odd Layers that aren’t so easily set up in advance. I develop my layer height typically well after I create the layer. The Object Info palette thus seems more fluid to me as the place to set heights.
Ivan and Jack McKean use the Layers Setup screen to set the major levels of their drawings and that gives them one advantage: if you are placing lots of furnishings, they will snap to the Bot. Z height of that layer. In my case, If I insert a commode into a basement, I have to set the Bot. Z of the toilet in the Object Info Palette if I want to see that toilet in a 3D view. But since I tend to show more exterior and less interior in my drawings, I haven’t felt the pinch of having to set the Bot. Z for every little stick of furniture. Set up your layer heights whichever works best for you.
Some thoughts:
•When you go below your 0" level, you have to note the height with a negative sign.
•You can do addition, subtraction and multiplication right in the Object Info palette data input boxes.
If we make a floor or a surface of some kind with a 10" thickness and we set the top of the floor to 0", the bottom of the floor will be -10". If we place a wall beneath that floor, the wall’s Bot. Z will be -8'-0" plus the floor thickness. Instead of adding in your head the total height of the wall and the total height of the floor, you can type in the math and hit return and VW will properly set the wall elevation. But don’t use the 'plus' key if you are going below your 0" level. Type into the Object Info palette for the floor+wall combo: -8' - 10". That is an equation that sends you downward just as 8' + 10" sends you upward.
Hang in there with Classes. You will benefit once you get familiar through regular use.
Final thoughts:
•For those that do interior design, check out this great plugin for Vectorworks called InteriorCAD (interiorcad.com). This program allows you to do cabinets, shelving, closets and so much more. They have a fine pdf file that takes you through the various options. But you simply draw a polygon to define the outside perimeter of your object and then set about inputting the various elements. Download the demo, load it into your plugins folder and then use the Workspace Editor to move it to one of your palettes. Works with VW 10.5 as of this writing.
•Apologies to those of you who use VW for purposes other than architectural. Some day I will know this program well enough to write or teach more evenly.
Expect an e-mail in early January announcing our next general SVUG meeting.
Sincerely,
Tom Greggs
CONVERT TO LINES #3
Convert To Lines #3
10/6/04
In this issue:
Editing polygons/roofs
Editing wall heights
Observations of a New VectorWorks User
Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group! Our next meeting will be on October 20th, a Wednesday, and we’ll go from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
Topics? We have a goodly number but what we really want to do is to key on whatever topics you would like to cover. E-mail myself or Jack McKean with suggestions. Title your message “Vectorworks Suggestions” and send to:
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
jacmac@accessiblemagic.com
We had a good turnout for our September meeting where we talked about editing polygons, 3D polygons and roofs. Jack showed a terrific medical sling designed for transporting injured people which he designed using the 3D Powerpack tools within Vectorworks and Poser.
Here follows a recap of the polygon editing process plus I’ve included a letter taken from the Vectorworks Listserve which you might find interesting.
Having editing knowledge is important because anytime you have something with volume--a bracket, a floor or a roof for example--you will want to change its shape at some point. (If you haven't tried creating objects in 3D, read up on the Extrude tool, the Create Floor and Create Roof tools.)The following describes the editing of a roof but contains the information needed to edit most 3D shapes.
Once you have created a roof with the automatic Create Roof tool you may find that you wish to edit it beyond the capability of the choices available on the Edit Roof dialog box. Ungroup the roof using the Ungroup command. What remains are Roof Faces. Mark out the outline of the needed change over the roof face you wish to modify using 2D lines, loci or whatever. Copy (not duplicate) these markers. Now select the roof face and click on Edit Group. You will be taken to a NEW editing pane although it will look much like the window you’ve just left. The roof info (rafter depth, birdsmouth, location in space) will have been logged, then removed. The result is a bare 2D polygon ready to edit using the 2D Reshape editing tool. This process works the same for other 3D polygons except for walls.
Before you begin to edit within this new pane, use the Paste In Place command to get your markers to show up atop your polygon--they will land just as you had placed them back in your main drawing window. Edit the polygon to fit these marker guides. Delete the markers. Hit the Exit Group button on the upper right hand corner of the editing pane and your are back in roof land.
I try to stay with the automatic roof tool as long as possible since it gives me so many options to adjust. But at a certain point, I bust up the roof to do the more unique editing plane by plane.
Some key points:
•Walls cannot be edited in the manner described above. Change the vertical shape of walls using the 3D Reshape Tool.
•If you are attempting to edit a rectangle or square and you can’t seem to change its shape, you may have created that shape using the Rectangle tool. Convert this shape to a polygon using Convert to Polygon command then use the 2D Reshape tool from there.
•Rather than using the Edit Group command or the keyboard shortcut, just double-click on the edge of the volume needing editing and you will be taken to the editing pane.
•If you overlay another polygon onto your primary polygon (or Roof Face) for editing, rather than moving the primary poly's vertices one by one to fit your pattern, try selecting the primary polygon and the editing shape and subtract one from the other via using Clip Surface thus cutting away the unwanted roof shape in one action.
•There was one additional command I didn’t demo at our September meeting and that was the Align Layer Views command. Let’s say our roof (or any other object) needs to be edited in relation to a wall or other 3D element but said element resides on another layer. Once you change the roof to a Front View to better mark the area needing editing, you lose view of your other objects which are still in Plan View and not Front View. Click on Align Layer View in the Menu Bar and the wall will swing into alignment with the roof letting you see both together. I find the Align Layer View tool indispensable .
Back to the topic of getting your input. Please write us back a short note on what you think might help you.
I’m very curious if any of you struggle setting up your projects, wanting more information on how to use Layers, Classes and Layer Linking. Which tool do you use to set up the height of your model elements? Do you use Model Setup and if so, is it the greatest thing since the squeezable ketchup bottle or does it seem to impede your progress?
And now that letter.
From: John Martens
Reply-To: VectorWorks User Discussion List
To:
Date: Saturday, October 2, 2004 10:54 AM
Subject: OT: Observations of a New Vectorworks User
I am a one-man operation and have been working in Vectorworks Architect (PC)
for approximately a year and a half. I had no familiarity with the program
when I started and have had to learn it on my own through various books,
tutorials, and mostly struggling by doing. I have been on this listserve
for about six months, and I would like to share some of my observations.
Learning Vectorworks: I started out with the Vectorworks tutorial CDs and
found them rather helpful but problematic in that many of the operations
performed on the screen were done so quickly that I missed critical steps.
If one would be able to slow down important phases and speed up the obvious
ones, I would have had a much easier time with those CDs, but I found that
playing those parts over and over became tedious at best.
Reading the manuals, of course, was very helpful, but studying 700 or 800
pages simply is not practical when you're also trying to keep your work flow
moving. I found the Tom Bear book a worthwhile $25 investment, if nothing
else to give a different perspective in a reasonably concise manner.
This listserve has become an extremely valuable part of learning this
program. Since I am a one-man operation and frankly have no one else to
talk to about this program, the everyday human commentary from this
listserve has given me the real world perspective which was almost
impossible to get out of the books and tutorials. It is also very
gratifying to see a community of users who are willing to take their own
valuable time to help one another!
The biggest breakthrough, however, for me has been finally loosening up my
wallet to shell out for Jonathan Pickup's two indispensable tutorial
volumes, Essential VW and VW Architect Tutorial. Jonathan's approach is
limited to an architect's perspective on producing production drawings, and
unfortunately that may render it inappropriate for other users, but that is
the huge advantage that it gives to those of us doing architectural
drawings.
As we all know, there are many different ways of doing each of many
different things that VW is capable of, but when you are doing one
particular type of drawing such as architectural, there tends to be a best
way for each of those processes and that is the one that Jonathan recommends
and presents. Rather than getting lost in the minutiae, he focuses on the
big picture and takes the user carefully and concisely, step by step to the
end result. Given the extent that I value my own time and the amount of
time these two volumes have saved me so far, the cost of them is minuscule
and I only regret that I did not start out from day one with those volumes.
Working in 3-D: I know that a lot has been mentioned on this listserve about
the pros and cons of working in three dimensions, but I would like to add
one major point. As architects or designers we are trained to think in
three dimensions while we typically work in two. Sitting over the drawing
board, we work in two dimensions but are constantly thinking about the
three-dimensional implications of what we are drawing, and we usually
anticipate these relationships correctly. On the other hand, for all the
efforts we put into that, I do not believe we are capable of anticipating
every relationship, every proportion, every intersection. How many times
have we gone to a job site and wished we had proportioned that soffit a
little differently or lowered that ceiling plane in that one area, or
realized that the back of that half-wall could've been detailed a little
better? For me it has been a startling improvement to be working in three
dimensions and being able to step back, walk around, or look up or down at
some complex intersection in order to resolve it more appropriately. The
bottom line is that working in three dimensions makes us all better
designers, and isn't that what we are supposed to be anyway?
Plug-Ins, extra tools, etc.: I have also been amazed at how useful the tools
and commands found on sites like VectorBits, Vector Depot and the many other
great web sites have been. Again, I am amazed at the spirit of sharing from
the creators of those many tools who offer them for free. Among the tools
for purchase, I have found Matt Panzer's recent viewport tool to be
outstanding, a great timesaver and real bargain. It works like a charm and
has saved me hours and hours of time, particularly in being able to take
files started in Vectorworks 10 and work on them in the much improved
Vectorworks 11. With it you really can transition a file from one program
version to another.
Vectorworks 11: Hallelujah! I have been working on a large project that has
a very irregular roof, and every time a wall is added or changed I had to go
through the laborious process editing it point by point to the roof. What
was a less than perfect process that could take as much as a half an hour
can now be accomplished precisely in one click with the "fit walls to roof"
command. And then there are viewports, which granted can be a painful
paradigm shift and not always the easiest to grasp at first, but for me once
I was able to make the mental shift has become another invaluable
improvement. And the many other touted improvements I find to be real
improvements, not just the typical marketing hype..
Anyway, I hope this is not too long-winded for you all, but hey, as I said,
I have no one else to banter with and I hope these thoughts might be of
interest to some of you. Keep up the good Vectorworking!
John Martens
One can enroll onto the Nemetschek Listserve by going to
http://www.nemetschek.net/support/mailinglists.html
Hope to see you again in October
Tom Greggs
10/6/04
In this issue:
Editing polygons/roofs
Editing wall heights
Observations of a New VectorWorks User
Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group! Our next meeting will be on October 20th, a Wednesday, and we’ll go from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
Topics? We have a goodly number but what we really want to do is to key on whatever topics you would like to cover. E-mail myself or Jack McKean with suggestions. Title your message “Vectorworks Suggestions” and send to:
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
jacmac@accessiblemagic.com
We had a good turnout for our September meeting where we talked about editing polygons, 3D polygons and roofs. Jack showed a terrific medical sling designed for transporting injured people which he designed using the 3D Powerpack tools within Vectorworks and Poser.
Here follows a recap of the polygon editing process plus I’ve included a letter taken from the Vectorworks Listserve which you might find interesting.
Having editing knowledge is important because anytime you have something with volume--a bracket, a floor or a roof for example--you will want to change its shape at some point. (If you haven't tried creating objects in 3D, read up on the Extrude tool, the Create Floor and Create Roof tools.)The following describes the editing of a roof but contains the information needed to edit most 3D shapes.
Once you have created a roof with the automatic Create Roof tool you may find that you wish to edit it beyond the capability of the choices available on the Edit Roof dialog box. Ungroup the roof using the Ungroup command. What remains are Roof Faces. Mark out the outline of the needed change over the roof face you wish to modify using 2D lines, loci or whatever. Copy (not duplicate) these markers. Now select the roof face and click on Edit Group. You will be taken to a NEW editing pane although it will look much like the window you’ve just left. The roof info (rafter depth, birdsmouth, location in space) will have been logged, then removed. The result is a bare 2D polygon ready to edit using the 2D Reshape editing tool. This process works the same for other 3D polygons except for walls.
Before you begin to edit within this new pane, use the Paste In Place command to get your markers to show up atop your polygon--they will land just as you had placed them back in your main drawing window. Edit the polygon to fit these marker guides. Delete the markers. Hit the Exit Group button on the upper right hand corner of the editing pane and your are back in roof land.
I try to stay with the automatic roof tool as long as possible since it gives me so many options to adjust. But at a certain point, I bust up the roof to do the more unique editing plane by plane.
Some key points:
•Walls cannot be edited in the manner described above. Change the vertical shape of walls using the 3D Reshape Tool.
•If you are attempting to edit a rectangle or square and you can’t seem to change its shape, you may have created that shape using the Rectangle tool. Convert this shape to a polygon using Convert to Polygon command then use the 2D Reshape tool from there.
•Rather than using the Edit Group command or the keyboard shortcut, just double-click on the edge of the volume needing editing and you will be taken to the editing pane.
•If you overlay another polygon onto your primary polygon (or Roof Face) for editing, rather than moving the primary poly's vertices one by one to fit your pattern, try selecting the primary polygon and the editing shape and subtract one from the other via using Clip Surface thus cutting away the unwanted roof shape in one action.
•There was one additional command I didn’t demo at our September meeting and that was the Align Layer Views command. Let’s say our roof (or any other object) needs to be edited in relation to a wall or other 3D element but said element resides on another layer. Once you change the roof to a Front View to better mark the area needing editing, you lose view of your other objects which are still in Plan View and not Front View. Click on Align Layer View in the Menu Bar and the wall will swing into alignment with the roof letting you see both together. I find the Align Layer View tool indispensable .
Back to the topic of getting your input. Please write us back a short note on what you think might help you.
I’m very curious if any of you struggle setting up your projects, wanting more information on how to use Layers, Classes and Layer Linking. Which tool do you use to set up the height of your model elements? Do you use Model Setup and if so, is it the greatest thing since the squeezable ketchup bottle or does it seem to impede your progress?
And now that letter.
From: John Martens
Reply-To: VectorWorks User Discussion List
To:
Date: Saturday, October 2, 2004 10:54 AM
Subject: OT: Observations of a New Vectorworks User
I am a one-man operation and have been working in Vectorworks Architect (PC)
for approximately a year and a half. I had no familiarity with the program
when I started and have had to learn it on my own through various books,
tutorials, and mostly struggling by doing. I have been on this listserve
for about six months, and I would like to share some of my observations.
Learning Vectorworks: I started out with the Vectorworks tutorial CDs and
found them rather helpful but problematic in that many of the operations
performed on the screen were done so quickly that I missed critical steps.
If one would be able to slow down important phases and speed up the obvious
ones, I would have had a much easier time with those CDs, but I found that
playing those parts over and over became tedious at best.
Reading the manuals, of course, was very helpful, but studying 700 or 800
pages simply is not practical when you're also trying to keep your work flow
moving. I found the Tom Bear book a worthwhile $25 investment, if nothing
else to give a different perspective in a reasonably concise manner.
This listserve has become an extremely valuable part of learning this
program. Since I am a one-man operation and frankly have no one else to
talk to about this program, the everyday human commentary from this
listserve has given me the real world perspective which was almost
impossible to get out of the books and tutorials. It is also very
gratifying to see a community of users who are willing to take their own
valuable time to help one another!
The biggest breakthrough, however, for me has been finally loosening up my
wallet to shell out for Jonathan Pickup's two indispensable tutorial
volumes, Essential VW and VW Architect Tutorial. Jonathan's approach is
limited to an architect's perspective on producing production drawings, and
unfortunately that may render it inappropriate for other users, but that is
the huge advantage that it gives to those of us doing architectural
drawings.
As we all know, there are many different ways of doing each of many
different things that VW is capable of, but when you are doing one
particular type of drawing such as architectural, there tends to be a best
way for each of those processes and that is the one that Jonathan recommends
and presents. Rather than getting lost in the minutiae, he focuses on the
big picture and takes the user carefully and concisely, step by step to the
end result. Given the extent that I value my own time and the amount of
time these two volumes have saved me so far, the cost of them is minuscule
and I only regret that I did not start out from day one with those volumes.
Working in 3-D: I know that a lot has been mentioned on this listserve about
the pros and cons of working in three dimensions, but I would like to add
one major point. As architects or designers we are trained to think in
three dimensions while we typically work in two. Sitting over the drawing
board, we work in two dimensions but are constantly thinking about the
three-dimensional implications of what we are drawing, and we usually
anticipate these relationships correctly. On the other hand, for all the
efforts we put into that, I do not believe we are capable of anticipating
every relationship, every proportion, every intersection. How many times
have we gone to a job site and wished we had proportioned that soffit a
little differently or lowered that ceiling plane in that one area, or
realized that the back of that half-wall could've been detailed a little
better? For me it has been a startling improvement to be working in three
dimensions and being able to step back, walk around, or look up or down at
some complex intersection in order to resolve it more appropriately. The
bottom line is that working in three dimensions makes us all better
designers, and isn't that what we are supposed to be anyway?
Plug-Ins, extra tools, etc.: I have also been amazed at how useful the tools
and commands found on sites like VectorBits, Vector Depot and the many other
great web sites have been. Again, I am amazed at the spirit of sharing from
the creators of those many tools who offer them for free. Among the tools
for purchase, I have found Matt Panzer's recent viewport tool to be
outstanding, a great timesaver and real bargain. It works like a charm and
has saved me hours and hours of time, particularly in being able to take
files started in Vectorworks 10 and work on them in the much improved
Vectorworks 11. With it you really can transition a file from one program
version to another.
Vectorworks 11: Hallelujah! I have been working on a large project that has
a very irregular roof, and every time a wall is added or changed I had to go
through the laborious process editing it point by point to the roof. What
was a less than perfect process that could take as much as a half an hour
can now be accomplished precisely in one click with the "fit walls to roof"
command. And then there are viewports, which granted can be a painful
paradigm shift and not always the easiest to grasp at first, but for me once
I was able to make the mental shift has become another invaluable
improvement. And the many other touted improvements I find to be real
improvements, not just the typical marketing hype..
Anyway, I hope this is not too long-winded for you all, but hey, as I said,
I have no one else to banter with and I hope these thoughts might be of
interest to some of you. Keep up the good Vectorworking!
John Martens
One can enroll onto the Nemetschek Listserve by going to
http://www.nemetschek.net/support/mailinglists.html
Hope to see you again in October
Tom Greggs
CONVERT TO LINES #2
CONVERT TO LINES #2
9/10/04
In this issue:
Talking 'bout walls: Inserting wall elements (cavities) and
dimensioning to face-of-stud
The Seattle Vectorworks Users Group invites you to attend the next meeting planned for Wednesday evening, September 29th, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
This event is free. We are an independent group not affiliated with the school.
Our goal is to help you get the most out of using Vectorworks.
We have gotten your e-mail address with the help of Nemetschek or you were already on our list. I’m interested in not sending out unwanted e-mails about this group. If you have received the mailing in error, let me know and I’ll be glad to remove your address. And of course, if you know of someone who might be interested in our user group, by all means, pass on this info.
We meet intermittently during the year taking the summers off. We are developing ideas for upcoming meetings and would appreciate hearing from you on what topics you’d like to participate in if you were able to attend. Would it be something like how to apply textures, how Work Group Referencing works, how to set up a simple file? Would it be how to better understand layer linking, what’s scripting all about, how do cabinetmakers structure their drawings? What about VW 11 and Viewports? Don’t forget the topog tools and plugin programs like WinDoor or simply how to edit a polygon.
We can mostly set up the evening to provide some very useful information wherever you are in your learning curve. We treat beginners with care. And those of you with lots of experience can help me learn something new.
You can reach me, Tom Greggs, at tomgreggs@mindspring.com and you can also find information on our meeting schedule and planned topic by surfing to www.accessiblemagic.com.
Let me know what you’d like to learn.
.................................................................................................................
In my first letter sent out this summer I listed some tips for users who haven’t yet tried using the numerical keys 1 through 9 to easily rotate through all faces and angles of your object . Below are two techniques that tie together. The first is for those new to cavity lines and the second is for more advanced users.
First tip! When you draw a wall, the Object Info Palette gives you the opportunity to insert cavities into that wall. Let’s say your finished wall is 4” wide and you want 1/2” wallboard showing on each side. The imagined midpoint of the 4” wall is 2”. Subtract 1/2” from 2” and you get 1-1/2”. This is the dimension you type into the Cavity dialogue box. Click for another cavity line and use the same number--assuming the wall has the same wallboard on each side--but this time type a negative number or -1 1/2 (You may type a dash between the whole number and the fraction. Doesn’t matter.). Done! While still in the dialogue box, I like to give the cavity lines a lighter weight so they don’t compete for attention with the primary wall lines.
Second tip! How do you plan for wall widths on your drawings? If you are using Vectorworks in the world of architecture, it seems there are quite a number of those that size their wall width to match that of studs and they tend to dimension to face-of-stud. And there are others that build up and show the wall cavities and dimension to the finished-face of their walls. Yes, I know that many dimension to the wall’s centerline. In residential construction, the framer is most efficient when he lays out to the wall’s edge position and so you might consider dimensioning your drawings to suite that convention which is face-of-stud.
In any case, both of the styles above rely on someone else eventually doing the math, adding or subtracting the various finishes. This can actually be a good thing since client wishes change and site conditions are fully revealed only upon demolition. But mostly, you can be out front with your drawings and give the installer the best of both worlds using Vectorworks. When drawing at 1/4” per foot or less we will make the cavity lines disappear so our walls are clean. This helps with readability when dimensioning to key structural elements. When drawing on other pages at 1/2” per foot or more, we will show the SAME walls but use other dimensions set to the finished-face. If we wish we can then bring the cavity lines back to a visible state with a click.
There are two key tools that help in placing and adjusting wall locations: Connected Walls and Hide Wall Cavities. Putting the two tools together, I can build up a composite wall of stud plus wall coverings and now zoom in on the line within the wall defining face-of-stud, grab that line and drag the wall to the correct location. The wall connection will not break. Once done you can run the dimension chain from cavity line to cavity line or face-of-stud to face-of-stud. When these inner lines have been dimensioned, you can turn off cavity lines for those pages that don’t need the detail when it’s time to print (File/Document Preferences). Just check the box “Hide Wall Cavities” in the Document Pref’s. On other pages showing areas requiring careful fitting such as baths or kitchens or at larger scales, dimension to the outer edge of the wall or finished-face and uncheck the “Hide Wall Cavities” box to to show cavity lines prior to printing.
Here are some points to understand;
•The idea is that you take the time to construct your walls to reflect their true thickness and insert cavity lines showing at least the face-of-stud line. Draw your walls once at their correct width then duplicate and send the walls to other layers using the Object Info Palette or use Work Group Referencing to develop other views or use the new Viewports in VW 11 which allows you to block out and highlight portions of your plan at larger scale. On the topic of Viewports, they do not become a collection of static lines. When you change the referenced drawing, the Viewport can be refreshed with a single command.
• Associative dimensioning--that is, sticky dimensions that stay stuck to a wall edge--do not stay sticky when you place them on an inner cavity line. The dimension tool will recognize the inner line so you can snap to it but you must manually grab the dimension end and stretch it to the new location if you decide to move the wall after you’ve dimensioned it. I’d love for associative dimensions to recognize the inner lines but I do not find the lack of sticky within the wall to be a big impediment.
•Get comfortable setting up walls to their true thickness and learn to place cavities. This is not hard once you go through it a few times as you will likely have the same few walls to draw again and again so typing in the correct dimension becomes routine. Plus you can save that wall into the library.
•You must remember the turn-cavities-on/turn-cavities-off drill as you print plan pages. I’ll lobby Nemetschek for a sheet-level toggle that allows us to show cavities, or not, page by page rather than going to a single global checkbox as is now the case.
•And lastly, what about the dimension line that looks a little off in the framing drawing because it was set in 1/2” or the thickness of the wallboard? Will that confuse anyone? Not likely at 1/4” per foot, especially if you state clearly that the dimension lines on the floor plan or framing plan pages are set to face-of-stud.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
9/10/04
In this issue:
Talking 'bout walls: Inserting wall elements (cavities) and
dimensioning to face-of-stud
The Seattle Vectorworks Users Group invites you to attend the next meeting planned for Wednesday evening, September 29th, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
This event is free. We are an independent group not affiliated with the school.
Our goal is to help you get the most out of using Vectorworks.
We have gotten your e-mail address with the help of Nemetschek or you were already on our list. I’m interested in not sending out unwanted e-mails about this group. If you have received the mailing in error, let me know and I’ll be glad to remove your address. And of course, if you know of someone who might be interested in our user group, by all means, pass on this info.
We meet intermittently during the year taking the summers off. We are developing ideas for upcoming meetings and would appreciate hearing from you on what topics you’d like to participate in if you were able to attend. Would it be something like how to apply textures, how Work Group Referencing works, how to set up a simple file? Would it be how to better understand layer linking, what’s scripting all about, how do cabinetmakers structure their drawings? What about VW 11 and Viewports? Don’t forget the topog tools and plugin programs like WinDoor or simply how to edit a polygon.
We can mostly set up the evening to provide some very useful information wherever you are in your learning curve. We treat beginners with care. And those of you with lots of experience can help me learn something new.
You can reach me, Tom Greggs, at tomgreggs@mindspring.com and you can also find information on our meeting schedule and planned topic by surfing to www.accessiblemagic.com.
Let me know what you’d like to learn.
.................................................................................................................
In my first letter sent out this summer I listed some tips for users who haven’t yet tried using the numerical keys 1 through 9 to easily rotate through all faces and angles of your object . Below are two techniques that tie together. The first is for those new to cavity lines and the second is for more advanced users.
First tip! When you draw a wall, the Object Info Palette gives you the opportunity to insert cavities into that wall. Let’s say your finished wall is 4” wide and you want 1/2” wallboard showing on each side. The imagined midpoint of the 4” wall is 2”. Subtract 1/2” from 2” and you get 1-1/2”. This is the dimension you type into the Cavity dialogue box. Click for another cavity line and use the same number--assuming the wall has the same wallboard on each side--but this time type a negative number or -1 1/2 (You may type a dash between the whole number and the fraction. Doesn’t matter.). Done! While still in the dialogue box, I like to give the cavity lines a lighter weight so they don’t compete for attention with the primary wall lines.
Second tip! How do you plan for wall widths on your drawings? If you are using Vectorworks in the world of architecture, it seems there are quite a number of those that size their wall width to match that of studs and they tend to dimension to face-of-stud. And there are others that build up and show the wall cavities and dimension to the finished-face of their walls. Yes, I know that many dimension to the wall’s centerline. In residential construction, the framer is most efficient when he lays out to the wall’s edge position and so you might consider dimensioning your drawings to suite that convention which is face-of-stud.
In any case, both of the styles above rely on someone else eventually doing the math, adding or subtracting the various finishes. This can actually be a good thing since client wishes change and site conditions are fully revealed only upon demolition. But mostly, you can be out front with your drawings and give the installer the best of both worlds using Vectorworks. When drawing at 1/4” per foot or less we will make the cavity lines disappear so our walls are clean. This helps with readability when dimensioning to key structural elements. When drawing on other pages at 1/2” per foot or more, we will show the SAME walls but use other dimensions set to the finished-face. If we wish we can then bring the cavity lines back to a visible state with a click.
There are two key tools that help in placing and adjusting wall locations: Connected Walls and Hide Wall Cavities. Putting the two tools together, I can build up a composite wall of stud plus wall coverings and now zoom in on the line within the wall defining face-of-stud, grab that line and drag the wall to the correct location. The wall connection will not break. Once done you can run the dimension chain from cavity line to cavity line or face-of-stud to face-of-stud. When these inner lines have been dimensioned, you can turn off cavity lines for those pages that don’t need the detail when it’s time to print (File/Document Preferences). Just check the box “Hide Wall Cavities” in the Document Pref’s. On other pages showing areas requiring careful fitting such as baths or kitchens or at larger scales, dimension to the outer edge of the wall or finished-face and uncheck the “Hide Wall Cavities” box to to show cavity lines prior to printing.
Here are some points to understand;
•The idea is that you take the time to construct your walls to reflect their true thickness and insert cavity lines showing at least the face-of-stud line. Draw your walls once at their correct width then duplicate and send the walls to other layers using the Object Info Palette or use Work Group Referencing to develop other views or use the new Viewports in VW 11 which allows you to block out and highlight portions of your plan at larger scale. On the topic of Viewports, they do not become a collection of static lines. When you change the referenced drawing, the Viewport can be refreshed with a single command.
• Associative dimensioning--that is, sticky dimensions that stay stuck to a wall edge--do not stay sticky when you place them on an inner cavity line. The dimension tool will recognize the inner line so you can snap to it but you must manually grab the dimension end and stretch it to the new location if you decide to move the wall after you’ve dimensioned it. I’d love for associative dimensions to recognize the inner lines but I do not find the lack of sticky within the wall to be a big impediment.
•Get comfortable setting up walls to their true thickness and learn to place cavities. This is not hard once you go through it a few times as you will likely have the same few walls to draw again and again so typing in the correct dimension becomes routine. Plus you can save that wall into the library.
•You must remember the turn-cavities-on/turn-cavities-off drill as you print plan pages. I’ll lobby Nemetschek for a sheet-level toggle that allows us to show cavities, or not, page by page rather than going to a single global checkbox as is now the case.
•And lastly, what about the dimension line that looks a little off in the framing drawing because it was set in 1/2” or the thickness of the wallboard? Will that confuse anyone? Not likely at 1/4” per foot, especially if you state clearly that the dimension lines on the floor plan or framing plan pages are set to face-of-stud.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
CONVERT TO LINES #1
Seattle VW Users Group Update
8/04/04
Greetings! This letter has been sent to you and other Seattle based individuals interested in VectorWorks. Perhaps you attended the Nemetschek VectorWorks 11 road show that came through Seattle in July or you have dropped in a time or two to the SVUG meetings at the Wood Construction Center. My name is Tom Greggs and I hope to lead the Seattle VectorWorks User Group this fall. I reside in Seattle and make my living using VectorWorks for a goodly part of each weekday. I’m writing hoping to encourage you to join us as we meet periodically throughout the year for the goal of learning how to better utilize this remarkable tool. We don’t have dues. We don’t have a dress code. We are only interest is in getting better at what we do, whether it be stage design, product design, landscaping, cabinet construction, architecture or whatever.
The following is a letter I wrote shortly after our last meeting. If you read it you may get a sense of what the evening was like. If it sounds interesting, stick through to the end and we may talk later in the summer in order to set up our first fall meeting.
CONVERT TO LINES
In this issue:
Align Layers and Past in Place
3D views and the numerical keyboard
The Seattle VectorWorks Users Group met last month at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall and I took a turn hosting this time and gave Jack McKean—who typically stands at the head of the class—a well earned rest.
My interest is in architecture but the basis of my discussion that night serves anyone who builds up unique elements to form a whole (this assumes that you are using VW Layers for your various parts and are not assembling all onto just one layer). Let me recap what we covered.
What I wanted to show that evening was the importance of the Align Layers command and the Paste in Place command when used in tandem. In my case, the focus was roof editing. If I have a roof on its own layer and I want to modify it somehow in its relation to the wall that supports it, how do I change it without having to make a Layer Link model to see parts in relation and how do I do this quickly?
But before I go on, I'd like to ask if you use your number keys to get Front, Back, Side and angled 3-D views? If you have an extended keyboard, take a look at the grid of keys 1 through 9 on the right side of the board. The cross that forms the middle of the grid all generate straight-on 3-D views. The middle key 5 is Top View. The back key 8 is the back view. The front key 2 is the Front View and so on. The outer corner keys 1, 7, 9 and 3 are all 3-D isometric (angled) views. Wonderfully logical. You do not need a modifier key combination to change 3D views.
Are you still with me? Do you care? If not, skip to the last paragraph. For the rest of you, let's go back to our roof. Why don’t I just make a Layer Link of all the layers and show the whole model? This is because the more I draw, the more lines I have to look through. It’s confusing. If I can limit my layers to just two, I can pick out my wall or window edges more easily. So, If I’m looking at my work in Left Side view (push the #4 key)--and I want to see my wall in relation, first make sure you have the wall layer showing as visible or as gray. Then click Align Layer Views and the wall will spin out of Plan View and align with the roof in the same left view manner. Click on the roof layer then change the pitch or overhang. Then click on the wall layer and change its height as needed to grow it to the roof.
In my demo from that evening, I modified a roof plane that needed a shorter overhang than its adjoining roof planes in order that it not extend into a building setback. I broke that face free and tilted it back and lowered it, swinging the hip rafters off and away from the outer corners in the process. Being able to quickly change views from Top view to Side view gave me a means to readjust hip locations and lower or raise the walls as needed.
In a very real way, being able to accurately adjust one 3D part to fit another meant you could prove to yourself that the roof would work even though you may never have swung a 28-once framing hammer in your life. Once your model is built-out in the third dimension, solving construction problems in VectorWorks means that when you go out onto the job site to confer with the framer, you’ll be imbued with confidence. The first words out of your mouth will more likely be “I think this is how the roof will work” than the more usual phrase of “Don’t hit me!”
We talked about why the Paste in Place tool was an aid in modifying roof faces or other polygons. I won’t go into detail on that one now (this letter is getting a little windy as it is). We also talked about why the nudge tool presents a special challenge for cabinet makers and how buying an extra pair of glasses with a focal range set just for CAD work reduces eye strain. Plenty more tips were donated by those attending.
And this is partly why I love going to the SVUG meetings. I get info’ that helps me over certain hurdles that have hung me up for a while. It is so nice to be given a free tip or two that removes an impediment to smoothly using VectorWorks. Thanks to everyone that attended and shared.
Oh, and the other important reason I look forward to attending the SVUG meetings is that it gives me a chance to stop for dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant just down Jackson.
So here’s the real reason for this letter. Would you consider attending a future meeting? What would you like to cover: simple stuff or complex? Do you have a particular interest or perhaps a bit of knowledge you might like to share? Let me know your thoughts as an aid for planning another meeting after summer break. I hope to cover each meeting with a follow-up e-mail in similar fashion to the above.
Also, of course, let me know if you want off my list or if there are others you may know who use VW and may want to be included.
Jack McKean, as most of you know, has been putting in lots of time in the past few years making sure that the hall was booked, that Nemetschek was notified and indeed had sent out announcements to registered users about our upcoming meetings. He then has put aside time to organize himself and host those SVUG evenings pulling most of the lecture duty. Jack: a hearty thank you from all of us.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
Seattle VW Users Group Update
8/04/04
Greetings! This letter has been sent to you and other Seattle based individuals interested in VectorWorks. Perhaps you attended the Nemetschek VectorWorks 11 road show that came through Seattle in July or you have dropped in a time or two to the SVUG meetings at the Wood Construction Center. My name is Tom Greggs and I hope to lead the Seattle VectorWorks User Group this fall. I reside in Seattle and make my living using VectorWorks for a goodly part of each weekday. I’m writing hoping to encourage you to join us as we meet periodically throughout the year for the goal of learning how to better utilize this remarkable tool. We don’t have dues. We don’t have a dress code. We are only interest is in getting better at what we do, whether it be stage design, product design, landscaping, cabinet construction, architecture or whatever.
The following is a letter I wrote shortly after our last meeting. If you read it you may get a sense of what the evening was like. If it sounds interesting, stick through to the end and we may talk later in the summer in order to set up our first fall meeting.
CONVERT TO LINES
In this issue:
Align Layers and Past in Place
3D views and the numerical keyboard
The Seattle VectorWorks Users Group met last month at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall and I took a turn hosting this time and gave Jack McKean—who typically stands at the head of the class—a well earned rest.
My interest is in architecture but the basis of my discussion that night serves anyone who builds up unique elements to form a whole (this assumes that you are using VW Layers for your various parts and are not assembling all onto just one layer). Let me recap what we covered.
What I wanted to show that evening was the importance of the Align Layers command and the Paste in Place command when used in tandem. In my case, the focus was roof editing. If I have a roof on its own layer and I want to modify it somehow in its relation to the wall that supports it, how do I change it without having to make a Layer Link model to see parts in relation and how do I do this quickly?
But before I go on, I'd like to ask if you use your number keys to get Front, Back, Side and angled 3-D views? If you have an extended keyboard, take a look at the grid of keys 1 through 9 on the right side of the board. The cross that forms the middle of the grid all generate straight-on 3-D views. The middle key 5 is Top View. The back key 8 is the back view. The front key 2 is the Front View and so on. The outer corner keys 1, 7, 9 and 3 are all 3-D isometric (angled) views. Wonderfully logical. You do not need a modifier key combination to change 3D views.
Are you still with me? Do you care? If not, skip to the last paragraph. For the rest of you, let's go back to our roof. Why don’t I just make a Layer Link of all the layers and show the whole model? This is because the more I draw, the more lines I have to look through. It’s confusing. If I can limit my layers to just two, I can pick out my wall or window edges more easily. So, If I’m looking at my work in Left Side view (push the #4 key)--and I want to see my wall in relation, first make sure you have the wall layer showing as visible or as gray. Then click Align Layer Views and the wall will spin out of Plan View and align with the roof in the same left view manner. Click on the roof layer then change the pitch or overhang. Then click on the wall layer and change its height as needed to grow it to the roof.
In my demo from that evening, I modified a roof plane that needed a shorter overhang than its adjoining roof planes in order that it not extend into a building setback. I broke that face free and tilted it back and lowered it, swinging the hip rafters off and away from the outer corners in the process. Being able to quickly change views from Top view to Side view gave me a means to readjust hip locations and lower or raise the walls as needed.
In a very real way, being able to accurately adjust one 3D part to fit another meant you could prove to yourself that the roof would work even though you may never have swung a 28-once framing hammer in your life. Once your model is built-out in the third dimension, solving construction problems in VectorWorks means that when you go out onto the job site to confer with the framer, you’ll be imbued with confidence. The first words out of your mouth will more likely be “I think this is how the roof will work” than the more usual phrase of “Don’t hit me!”
We talked about why the Paste in Place tool was an aid in modifying roof faces or other polygons. I won’t go into detail on that one now (this letter is getting a little windy as it is). We also talked about why the nudge tool presents a special challenge for cabinet makers and how buying an extra pair of glasses with a focal range set just for CAD work reduces eye strain. Plenty more tips were donated by those attending.
And this is partly why I love going to the SVUG meetings. I get info’ that helps me over certain hurdles that have hung me up for a while. It is so nice to be given a free tip or two that removes an impediment to smoothly using VectorWorks. Thanks to everyone that attended and shared.
Oh, and the other important reason I look forward to attending the SVUG meetings is that it gives me a chance to stop for dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant just down Jackson.
So here’s the real reason for this letter. Would you consider attending a future meeting? What would you like to cover: simple stuff or complex? Do you have a particular interest or perhaps a bit of knowledge you might like to share? Let me know your thoughts as an aid for planning another meeting after summer break. I hope to cover each meeting with a follow-up e-mail in similar fashion to the above.
Also, of course, let me know if you want off my list or if there are others you may know who use VW and may want to be included.
Jack McKean, as most of you know, has been putting in lots of time in the past few years making sure that the hall was booked, that Nemetschek was notified and indeed had sent out announcements to registered users about our upcoming meetings. He then has put aside time to organize himself and host those SVUG evenings pulling most of the lecture duty. Jack: a hearty thank you from all of us.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
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