Interactive Settings – Background Colour. The standard settings for the background colour are to have a white background colour for Top/Plan view, and a slight minty colour for 3D views. The reasoning for this is that it helps you to see when you change from a Top/Plan view to another…
The third mode of the Project Tool is quite different to the first two. In this mode the Project Tool will project a shape onto another NURBS surface. You could think of this as being like an extrude to the NURBS surface
The Visualization palette shows the lights that are in the current scene, and if a viewport is selected, the Visualization palette shows the lights that are in the viewport. This allows you to edit light, shadows, the intensity of the light, etc. in this viewport, without affecting the lighting in other…
The Tangent Snap is really useful when you need an object that starts or stops at a tangent to circle or arc. This snap is the only way to ensure that your object is tangential. You can find more information about this and other snaps on the Guide to Productivity.
The Interactive Appearance Settings are designed to give you control over the way Vectorworks looks, not the way that it behaves. There are numerous settings here, allowing you to change such things as the screen colour, the background colour for perspective views, and preselection colour, to name just a few….
You can change the sky and ground colours using the Interactive Appearance Settings, found in the Vectorworks Preferences.
The second mode of the Project Tool is similar to the first mode except that it cleans up the area where you have split the original NURBS surface. In other words the NURBS surface is trimmed to the shape of the planar object. This makes a very quick to create…
Animationworks – Create Rotating object. Animationworks has a tool that will create a rotating object, so that as the movie plays, the object rotates.
Snaps – Snap to Distance. Use this snap when you want to snap to a percentage along an object. You can find more information about this and other snaps on the Guide to Productivity.
I’m a big fan of using the Project Tool, because it so powerful for 3D modelling. You can use it to trim a NURBS surface to suit a planar shape, you can also use it to project planar objects onto a 3D object. In my recent 3D Modelling Special Interest…