Camera Controls !!!

[Yinka Gbotosho]

Having used Ar3, Ar4 and NXT consistently for production drawings in the last one year, I have come to the conclusion that NXT lacks precise camera controls especially for exteriors. I particularly like the controls in Ar4. Also, Ar3 does a good work of it. However, NXT has a better rendering engine. I often find myself running to Ar4 to contol and save camera views before coming on to render in NXT. Am I missing something or is it yet to come?

[Yinka Gbotosho]

I will check on that George.

[Ron Eddy]

What I've been doing seems to work fairly well.  First decide what ratio the rendering will be (3:4, 1024:768, etc).  Then draw a rectangle in AutoCAD having the same ratio.  Zoom in till either the height or width of the rectangle barely shows in the AutoCAD window.  Then stretch the window in the other direction till it just encloses the rectangle.  From that point on, unless you dock and undock toolbars frequently, the AutoCAD window will always show VERY close to what you would see in a rendering and the size is retained from session to session.  If you set up an AutoCAD camera and stretch the camera window to the same size as your AutoCAD window, the camera will also always show you what you'll see in the walkabout window when it's set to that camera.  the only irritation here is that the camera window only endures for the current session, but the camera settings themselves are retained

[Eric B]

Ron that technique was the suggested workaround about a year ago when AR5 lacked the ability to adopt or impose the Walkabout view into or out or AutoCAD. It helps to get the window to look about right but lacks consistency. After the ‘set autocad view to current walkabout’ was added the need to eyeball an approximate widow to retain a similar (but not exact) depiction of the current vantage point was no longer needed.

 

Also- the above method is still only an approximation of the two apparent depictions of the space, that of the AutoCAD and that of the rendered AR5 vantage point. Any slight change in the AutoCAD environment will shift the implied AutoCAD camera. Not the best environment to be working in when you have to do things like;

Photograph Matching, Multiple Finish or Phase studies, jumping between two or more vantage points, rendering the same model at different images sizes, revisiting an older model with saved VIEWS that need to be rendered the same.

Because AR5 still understands VIEWS like AR3, AR4 and can talk to AutoCAD using saved view names is why I stick with VIEWs and not CAMERAs. I know that a VIEW in AR5 will always remain and can specifically be set to a known point in space within the model while not being warped by any changes in the window or image ratios or even screen resolution.

The bottom line is that AutoCAD appears to have forever lost the ability to retain a consistent depiction of a vantage point when defined by a camera as it appears to be now tied to the size of the dialog box and the screen resolution to name a few. The older DVIEW command appears to have lost its understanding of the zoom control but retained all the other elements.

So for exactness and consistency I will continue to use VIEWS and render in Walkabout AR5 using AutoCAD or REVIT for the model building and set-up.