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I would like to make a thread to help all of us Mac users get something out of Maxwell. Our previous version didn't work as well as the PC version so I think a lot of us are a bit behind.

How do you get good results? What do you export from? What lighting settings do you use?

There's a lot of what I would call show-off posts and I would to do something different. I would like to make a thread where we can all get up to speed, a thread where the only question that is stupid is the one you're afraid to ask.

So let's start with someone's model and see if we can realize the full potential of Maxwell and SHARE IT WITH ALL OF OUR FELLOW MAC USERS!

Please join in!

Sincerely,

William

DXF import works smooth. Now i can import an object directly from VW12. GOOD

That's good news.

CAn you post some images?

What options does VW 12 give you in dxf export?

Wm

These are the options:

What are your classes/ layers?

And what materials will you apply?

As an architect and Artlantis person, I am especially interested in metals and glass.

What are the settings?

Wm

Layers are Spatial components: They can contain a whole model inside or parts of it.

Classes controls atributtes of objects inside layers : color, lines, textures...are more like acad layers, but inside a VW layer.

A document can contain a lot of layers and classes.

Hope you understand!!!
Sorry for my English!!!

I enjoy using Vectorworks a great deal.

How did you attach materials to objects?

I have a lot of trouble with this.

Wm

It's easy: create or browse your materials trought Resource Browser palette, and just drag and drop. On the Object info palette (with the object selected), there it's a tab that's say render, there you can control the mapping, scale, rotation of the texture for the specified object.

I cannot save any images even when the rendering is successfully completed.

Do you have this trouble?

Wm

This is the error message I get:

>> Checking Data...
>> Loading Bitmaps & Preprocessing Data...
>> Error: UVW channels ( 1 ) on object "ADDITION-SIDING.1" not enough for material "Board-NewBright_4x4"

What am I doing wrong?

Here is the file. It's a house addition.

http://www.makearchitecture.com/images/ ... /test1.zip

I am ready to give up on this and sue these guys! This really ridiculous. Maxwell has crashed about a 7 times today. I have never used a program, including beta software, that has crashed this much.

If the software's manual is so incomplete (it's not an issue of complexity, I use BOA which few people can figure out) , I'll go back to Artlantis. I have gotten ZERO for the $500 and dozens of hours I have played around with this poorly written program!

For saving the image only type the file extension: .tga/.tif./.jpg
I hope to help.

Thanks, no, that didn't work. I saved it and nothing was there. Is it a folder preferences issue?

Don't know...here maxwell it's working fine.

Like you, as a mac user, I'm feeling a bit behind getting to know Maxwell. I'm not sure what problem you're having that's making you crash so much, but I thought I read a post from Juan the other day about something similar... You might search for his posts to try to find out whats going on.

As an aside, I keep telling myself that the best way to learn this program is to start with the simplest of all scenes (perhaps a studio scene with a still life setting of one or two objects) and just play with materials, lighting, camera settings etc, until I feel comfortable enough to do "architecture."

Then I forget all that, and open previously modeling architectural projects from my past and hit "render" only to be frustrated by how long it takes to get results. When will I ever listen to that voice in my head

Keep this thread going! eventually it will help.