How to use Cameras to Create Viewports in Vectorworks

I saw somebody struggling with creating viewports using cameras in Vectorworks. I thought this movie would be really useful to show how quickly you can create your viewports from a camera and how you can then duplicate the viewports to make more views. This is the sort of topic I often cover in my community: https://www.skool.com/vectorworks-training/about

Heliodon Tool For Accurate Solar Studies

 Join Jonathan Pickup as he navigates the features of the Heliodon tool in Vectorworks, showcasing its capabilities in effective sun positioning based on geographic location. Discover how to leverage this tool for optimal site analysis, influencing building placement and landscape design by understanding sun paths during solstices and equinoxes. Learn to customize city settings and explore solar animations. Jonathan also previews extended content available for his members, offering deeper insights into harnessing the full potential of the Heliodon tool for architectural and landscape projects.

Vectorworks Tip #174 - Saved Views

Saved views are very useful for restoring a view of your project. They control the view, layers, classes, zoom, rendering, etc. It is a really quck way to jump from anywhere in the project to a specific view.

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Interactive Workshops September 2014 (1409) - Introduction to Textures

If you are going to present your work in a rendered way, textures are fundamental. Putting textures on your models helps your clients to understand what materials you are planning. Textures have a lot of power, but if you haven't created textures before you might find this power confusing. These sessions focus on understanding the basics of textures rather than focusing on some really cool or powerful tricks. There are four basic parts to textures (color, reflectivity, transparency, and bump), so in the sessions we try to look at these parts individually, and at the end of the session bringing all of them together to create a texture.

There were four sessions, which you can find here...

podcast 195 3D Viewing Changes in Vectorworks 2015

Vectorworks 2015 has combined some of the 3-D viewing settings to make them easier to locate, it is also introduced an ability to choose your default 3D rendering and projection. When I'm using Vectorworks 2015 I like to set my 3-D rendering to OpenGL and my projection to perspective. I find this makes it really easy to see your model. In this movie show you how to change your settings as well as showing you where to locate the new location for the Cropped Perspective preference.

Vectorworks Tip #148 - Visualisation - Create Animation (Vectorworks 2015)

Create Animation - Move Along a Path in Vectorworks 2015. Vectorworks have substanitally re-written the Move Along Path dialog so that it is much easier to use.

The leader in Vectorworks training and manuals: http://learn.archoncad.com

podcast 194 - Surface Hatches in Textures Vectorworks 2015

Vectorworks 2015 has made huge improvement to textures. Textures can now have a surface hatch. The surface hatch will only appear when you view your model in hidden line rendering. If you set up your surface hatches correctly on your textures, you will see the normal part of the texture when you view your model in the rendered view, and you'll see the surface hatch (the lines) when you view your model and hidden line rendering. The feedback from my clients so far is that this is a huge improvement. If you watch this movie you will see one scene where you can see some viewports and hidden line rendering and one viewport in OpenGL rendering, all using the same textures from the same model, but giving completely different views of the model.

Vectorworks Tip #146 - Document Preferences - Mesh Smoothing

Some of you 3D models will look like a series of triangles making a mesh. This occurs with imported objects like cars and it will also occur on site models. the answer is to use Mesh Smoothing, one of the Document Preferences. It will dramatically smooth out the 3D model.
The leader in Vectorworks training and manuals: http://learn.archoncad.com

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Vectorworks Tip #144 - Visualisation - Lit Fog

Vectorworks Has the ability to show the strings of light coming into the building. This ability is a preference called Lit Fog You'll find Lit Fog in the preferences for the environmental lighting and it adds a beautiful quality of light. Use this to improve the quality of your renderings.

The leader in Vectorworks training and manuals: http://learn.archoncad.com

 

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Vectorworks Tip #140 - Visualisation - Visualization palette

The Visualization palette show 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 viewports.

The leader in Vectorworks training and manuals: http://learn.archoncad.com

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Vectorworks Tip #132- Visualisation- Animationworks - Create Moving Object

Unlike the standard Vectorworks animation, Animationworks allows you to create moving objects inside your Vectorworks files. This means that you can create a walk-through movie where objects move as you walk through. There are several options for this, the first option is when you get an object to move along a path. For example in this scene there is a truck that moves across the front of the building just before the walk-through starts.
Check out this web site..

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podcast 191 Working in OpenGL with Perspective Projection

The normal way of looking at 3-D views and Vectorworks has been to use wireframe with orthogonal projection. Lately I have been trying Vectorworks with OpenGL rendering and perspective projection, and it works very well. when you use it in this method you can see a false ground and false sky which gives the impression of your height above the object. The color of the ground in the sky is adjustable through the interactive appearance settings.

Vectorworks Tip #098 - Visualization - Spot Lights

Use spotlights to draw the eye of the viewer to the part of the scene you want them to focus on. Unlike the Directional light, the spot light has to be placed carefully so that it lights the area you want. Use the Object Info palette to control the intensity, pan, tilt and spread of the light.

For Vectorworks manuals, visit:
http://store.archoncad.com

podcast 180 - Using Cameras with Viewports

You can use a Renderworks Camera to create a viewport. This makes it fast and accurate to edit the view, and it makes it easy to duplicate viewports and edit the view.

http://youtu.be/XNIlW8XaSqo

Vectorworks Tip #090 - Visualization - Edit Camera in Viewport

Edit Camera in Viewport. This is a reason that using a camera to make a viewport is so useful, you can edit the camera (which takes you back to the design layer) which updates the view in the viewport.

For Vectorworks manuals, visit:
http://store.archoncad.com

044-2012 Conceptual Modeling in Vectorworks

New Kindle manual for Vectorworks available

Vectorworks is extremely good at creating conceptual models, especially for urban designs. Vectorworks allows you to import a plan of a city (using Shapefiles) then quickly build the 3D parts of the city for you to check your urban design against. You can then add a sun to create solar animations, fly around your design, and so on.

3D Modeling in Vectorworks is a lot of fun, and it is extremely productive if you apply the basic tools and techniques we covered in 027-2012 Introduction to 3D Modeling (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007JCUTTY). Some people use other software to create conceptual models, but I believe that Vectorworks has powerful techniques for this as well.