Architect Special Interest Group March 2017 (pm)

In this session we looked at the resource manager. An introduction to movie hemi talk about other topics that we were hoping to cover but we did not have time to cover all these topics. In terms of resource manager we looked at using tools,  object styles, and textures.

Topics Covered:

• 01:01    we started by looking at a specific plug-in object called Detail Cut Wood. This is a Vectorworks plug-in that is designed to show word for framing and detailing. The users wanted to know where they could find this plug-in object if it wasn’t easily available in the detailing toolset. We looked at the settings on this tool, using the Object Info palette and changing the graphics using the Attributes palette. But if you want to reuse an object like this in several locations it would be better to turn this object into a symbol.
• 05:39    after setting attributes for the object we converted this into a symbol so that we could use it in several locations. We also looked at the option of having this object automatically convert to a plug-in object once it’s placed from the Resource Manager. When you create a symbol you have a choice as to whether the object will remain a symbol once it’s placed, or whether it will convert to a group or plug-in object.
• 12:28   there is also a timber object that is available of the archoncad website. This timber object was designed in response to the detail cut wood object and it was designed to be a stretchable piece of wood that had flexible graphics where you could change the line weight of the outside and the inside of the object. But the main feature this object was its ability to be stretched with the selection tool rather than physically typing in the size of the timber as with the detail cut wood. This is a plug-in object available for you to install and you can find it if you search for library objects on my website. We then looked at where this object is stored, adding it to your custom workspace, and how to use it.
• 23:44    now we’re going to look at object styles, focusing on the column tool. The 2017 the column tool now has the ability to use an object style (partly, not fully). This means that you can save a symbol of a commonly used column and reuse this column when ever you need to through the Resource Manager. We looked at setting up our own custom column object and saving this column object so that we could reuse it again from the Resource Manager. We looked at how to edit the object in the resource manager and then how to reuse it again on columns. But a column style is not live to the columns in the design layer, if you update the column settings in the Resource Manager, the columns on the design layer do not update. We also looked at the changes between the resource manager when you are in a tool like the column tool and when you are using the resource manager directly from the Resource Manager palette. When you use the resource manager from a tool (in this example we used the column tool) the resource dialogue box only shows you the resources available that suit that tool. When you use the full Resource Manager, it shows you all the resources that are available for all the tools.
• 51:20     we looked at how we could change the colour of the siding texture. There are ways to tint an existing texture in Vectorworks which we looked at. We did not look at extracting the colour to photoshop and changing the colour that way. But there is a quick way to change the texture by applying a filter colour over the texture.

Architect March 2017 am
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