xref lighting

[Martin Klain]

can you xref lights into the model and have them work   just trying to keep down the size

 

Thanks

[Wayne Williamson]

I have been able to get luminaires and lights to work in the first level of x-refs. X-refs inside an x-ref is a different story though.

 

I find that making you lights a block & inserting them reduces the render time much better than an x-ref. Both AutoCAD & NXT treat repeated blocks as an instance of the same thing. In an X-ref NXT still looks at each new thing as a new thing regardless of whether it occurs in an X-ref. (At least this is the way I understand it).

 

Rendering times will be more a function of complexity of materials, especially displacement & lighting rather than directly related to file size.

 

Hope this helps.

[Ros. Riha]

Interesting - Roy, please, could you confirm whether the statement "Both AutoCAD & NXT treat repeated blocks as an instance of the same thing. In an X-ref NXT still looks at each new thing as a new thing regardless of whether it occurs in an X-ref" is correct? If I understand well, it means the use of X-refs actually slows things down, which would be bad for all AutoCAD Architecture users - in ACA you cannot do without three levels of X-refs (Element-Construct-View)...

 

Also, once I put multiple light sources into an X-ref, they show as one single luminaire in nXt... thus it is not possible to use channels on them - could this behavior be changed?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

All blocks (including xrefs are instanced by AutoCAD.)  Only repeated blocks are instanced by nXt-- I think the threshold is 5 instances.

[Ros. Riha]

Roy, please, does nXt use instancing on blocks withoin blocks or xrefs?

And could you please let us know if it would be possible in the future to usechannels on light within xrefs?

Thanks

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Yes to nested blocks and xrefs.  I don't normally comment on feature requests.