The Question:

Hi All,

I was just wondering if anybody knows of any ‘advanced’ Stacking Order tools?

We have a complex 2D elevation of a multi-tiered auditorium I’m currently working on. Sometimes new geometry needs to be in a specific place in stacking order to display correctly, but there can be a huge number of them (lets say 5-50 ‘stacking’ layers?). If I need something to stack at say, 25 out of 50, this is quite time consuming!

This may end up being one for the wishlist, but I’m imagining a tool which allows you to move the stacking order of an object to match another object (i.e. just in front or just behind)

Does anything like this currently exist?

Thanks,
A

The Answer:

In the very old days the Send to Back function would also revert the drawing order of the objects selected. That bug/feature was killed by the powers that be. That feature-bug however was ideal for solving situations as mentioned. So I wrote a little thingy called Reverse drawing order. That would be enough to solve your problem, although it needs to be called twice. Just a little tweaking was enough to rebuild it into Send behind.

Select the objects you want to send behind another object and select that object, too. Then call the function and voilá:

Download:

SendBehind.vsm

However:

Unless you are tweaking a “Convert to 3D polygons” model (Who uses that function still, nowadays??? it is far nicer to render a hidden line in foreground of a Final Quality Renderworks in a viewport) you wouldn’t need these function if you, like Boh suggests, used groups and symbols to draw a more object oriented “model” (a 2D drawing can be a model, too). By making sure you minimize the stacking amount to 3-5 objects it is easy to make corrections later. As soon as you go over your personal limit (for me that is 3 objects) include a group some of these objects belong more together than others so you can group them The parts of a window and the curtains are more likely together than the balcony in front of them. This way it is very easy to send, inside the group, the curtains behind the window and outside the group the balcony in front of them.

Just my 2cts (or 4,  who is counting).

The whole thread:

The whole thread can be found here:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/54780-geometry-stacking-order/