Planes

In 2010 I wrote the following article on the Vectorworks forum:

”
What it looks like from my position is that the whole “2D objects on 3D planes” idea was only introduced to assist the Push & Pull tool. If that is so, I would have preferred a new set of tools that draws the 2D objects on those planes. (Directly on the object clicked on, rather than on separate planes that have to be established first. More on that later).

Now it looks like we want to have 2D objects on several planes, which in fact we don’t want at all (well, I don’t want that). We want 3D objects on planes through our model, not 2D objects. The advantage of 2D objects is that they can have several kinds of graphics attached to them, but instead of spreading 2D objects through space, it would have been nicer if we got more flexibility in texture handling on 3D objects, and more control over 3D objects. Like 3D rotation of textures (rather than rotating the texture in it self) and assigning different textures to different sides of objects, like we can with walls.

The downside of 2D objects floating on other planes in space is that it is very unclear how these are going to be treated by the render engines and how they will export to DWG on one side, C4D in the middle and IFC on the other side of the spectrum.

BTW I like the idea of the Push and Pull tool very much, it looks a bit inspired from Sketch Up though. All other things that were inspired by other programs are far better implemented than in the original programs, like References and ViewPorts. In the case of the Push and Pull tool, that is not very clear yet.

One point of improvement might be the control over the objects that are drawn on the surface of a 3D object. For instance: a separate tool that draws the rectangle directly on an objects face. It would have an optional first click on a corner of the 3D object, then a 2nd click along a side, VW would still not know which surface it would be, the 3rd click would reveal to VW the surface and finish the rectangle or oval. When you’d look in the OIP you’d see the X and Y values as distance to that first click. This would give control over the object drawn. This is already possible in VW 2011 but it requires the set up of a separate working plane. While the tool could do that immediately the moment it recognizes the 3D objects side clicked on.

One last thing: I noticed the default setting of the plane is Layer plane in case of a new file. I would suggest to default to screen plane as it used to be. VWs object handling in screen plane is still much better than its “plane object” handling. Also, when I set the plane to default to Screen Plane, it sometimes, by itself switches back to Layer plane or 3D plane. Very annoying.

Editing an extrude, shows me the object in “Extrude Plane”. Especially for extrusions, it might be far better to look at it face on. The same goes for Editing symbols. Symbols are created in their easiest orientation and then placed in drawing under strange angles. When I edit the symbol I would like to be in straight orthogonal mode.

I do see it might come in handy some times and I do admire the fact that you are able to rotate it in this way. I noticed I can do a few things with the “Plane Mode” buttons next to the views, but once hitting the “Active Layer/Symbol Plane Mode” button should return me to old fashioned Front and Rights (etc) views inside the symbol.

Thanks,
Gerard   ”

It looks like nothing, I mean really nothing, has ever been done with these comments.