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HOUCAD

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Everything posted by HOUCAD

  1. The way walls work in ADT the width, height and position of each wall component can be controlled independently. components are positioned in plan based on a baseline that is defined when creating a wall style. Plus and minus dimensions are used to determine the position either side of the base line. You have options to either define the exact height and vertical position of a component or define a distance from the wall baseline, bottom or top so you can position any component anywhere. These settings also control which components are used or ignored when fitting walls to roof or other 3D geometry. Wall components also have cleanup priorities so like components will automatically join even between different wall styles.You can also set which component you want your dimensions to default to. Is your slanted wall uniform width and tilted or is it tapered? ADT walls allow you to attach a modifier to any component similar to the extrude in VW only the modifier becomes part of the wall style and is drawn with the wall automatically.
  2. I have had this problem as well. In my case it seemed to be a quartz imaging / antialiasing issue. Hatch would show up on my screen but it was kind of grayed out and it would not print. Another symptom was rotated text showed up gray. In Vectorworks preferences / Display turn on quartz imaging and antialiasing and see if that helps. I have found that sometimes it just needs to be toggled off and on to clear up problems like this. It seems to be different between computers too.
  3. There has to be a way to show feet and inch units properly in a worksheet. Dimensions appear properly as feet'-inches" 12'-4" with the dimension command but in a worksheet it appears as 12'4". They get run close together and it can be confusing. It is a real pet peeve in this office and it doesn't help to sell the automated features of the program to my bosses who do not see any reason to change from typing everything out manually. Sure, its nice to have it read actual dimensions and automatically adjust if a door changes but if it can't print dimensions in the right format its useless. That is what my bosses have to say anyway.
  4. hmm yes you are right. A cropped design layer does not get picked up by the section. Is there a specific reason you need to crop your flat drawings? Usually when I do something like this I keep the flats on separate layers or separate files without anything else so cropping isn't needed. If you have to have them set up where you have to crop them then I am not sure if there is anything you can do. You can have class control of objects through multiple levels of design layer referencing if you have all the classes present in each drawing. I have a similar setup with one project and I have the referenced DLVP classes set to use current document visibilities and I have all the classes in the drawing. The model file where I am cutting sections and printing from has the referenced DLVP set to use current doc class visibilities. The sheet layer viewport is set to retain class overrides. I can control all the classes with the viewport class settings in the sheet layer. With doors though I found I have to use the A-Wall-Jamb or equivalent class to turn them on or off in the top level viewport.
  5. When I I choose a panic bar for any door it gets inserted centered where the door knob would go. Is this something that I can adjust somewhere? Does the definition of all the different panic bars or guards need to be fixed?
  6. I run into the same issues when sending as-built drawings. They insist on DWG format which is pretty typical. What I do is export sheet layers then I open them up in Autocad to check them and bind any x-refs. The border text is always messed up but that usually isn't an issue. Depending on the recipient, sending a sheet layer with referenced files works fine as long as they understand what x-refs are and which file is the main drawing file. It is a catch 22 with some entities I send files to. Some specify one drawing file per sheet with no xrefs but then ask for a separate floor plan without dimensions. If they would accept a set of drawings with referenced files they would have everything they need. When sending a background I only export design layers with only walls, doors, windows, ceiling grid etc. Oh and I think it would be nice if there was a "Bind referenced files" option when exporting to DWG.
  7. Thanks Pat. I will try to give it a test this morning. OK it worked great on my sheet set. Nice and quick. This will save a lot of time deleting the info sheet by sheet or from a worksheet. One thing that happens after purging is the issue field names show up in all my title blocks. It does this when you delete the data manually too so its not the script doing it. I have to go to each title block and edit the issue data from the object info pallet to clear the field names. I am just wondering why it does this. THANKS
  8. HOUCAD

    site model

    I have had a problem with the 3D Loci not translating well from some sources. When I import a survey dwg vectorWorks says that some objects will be deleted so try another option. Each option gives me a different warning that something will be deleted. Sometimes I get the contours but no point data and I have to explode the contours and rejoin them. Sometimes I get the point data but have to fiddle with them to be able to use them. I know it has to do with how the original survey DWG was saved and what program was used. The surveyors I deal with are usually using Civil 3D or LDD. Is there a preferred method of exporting those files for Vectorworks to import them cleanly?
  9. HOUCAD

    site model

    I have run into some issues with DWG contours that were exported from ACAD civil or LDD. I don't think Vectorworks translates the 3D polylines very well. Depending on how they were exported from ACAD the contours are sometimes a proxy object. When it is exploded the contours do some funky stuff. I usually check out the files I get from surveyors in AutoCAD to clean up any issues with contours before importing into VW. As Peter said, tracing the contours is the best way to get a good result but on large areas it can be a pain. If you have Autocad you can try to convert the contours to 2D polylines or have the person who is sending you the files convert them. I found that Arch desktop handles the contours from Civil or LDD fairly well compared to vanilla ACAD or ACAD lite.
  10. HOUCAD

    Snap issues

    Yes they are in top/plan view. While I was writing my last post I was trying a few different things with this drawing and now everything seems to be working fine. I don't know what the hell is going on. The one sheet where this first popped up had some elements that were copied from an older VW12.5 drawing. I am pretty sure I didn't convert the entire file from 12.5 to 2009 but I can't say for sure. Now I am able to select everything normally when 20 minutes ago I couldn't.
  11. HOUCAD

    Snap issues

    I have set layer and class options and I checked that they are all in top plan. I realize that different layer scales effected snaps but the layers I have been working with are both 1:1. Sometimes the snaps work and sometimes they don't. It seems to be something wrong with this set of files or the server. I still can not select some things without using force select. If I try to force select a detail it will only select things on the class I selected. Everything else remains non selectable. After a few tries selecting items they will all become selectable. I don't know what the heck is going on. I keep running into these strange issues with files and I end up having to start from scratch to fix them. This makes using a master plan set useless. I might as well set up every set of drawings from scratch.
  12. HOUCAD

    Snap issues

    WTH!?!? Now I have to force select to select anything and snaps work on some layers but not others!? This is nuts. Could all this be a side effect of setting my VA project prefs to a project folder on the server? Everything seemed to go strange after I did that. There is nothing in this drawing that uses any of the project pref txt files though.
  13. HOUCAD

    Snap issues

    Another problem that may be related is now I am unable to select viewports or objects. I had just selected a viewport on a sheet layer without any trouble. I changed its layer. I went to select another viewport and was unable to select anything on the sheet. After doing a force select everything returned to normal. What is going on? I shut down my computer and took a break before restarting it. Maybe the server needs to be rebooted too?
  14. I am having an issue with snaps not working between design layers. I have my layer options set to show/snap others but I can only snap to an actual object or a viewport representation. I have a border layer referenced into a design layer named border. I have another layer set to see and snap to the border. All the classes from the border file are present in this drawing. I am still unable to snap. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't depending on the drawing. All my snap settings are turned on. I can snap to other objects that are on other layers in this drawing just not the border. Some files it works and some files it doesn't. I have compared settings between files and everything is the same as far as I can tell. These little annoyances are driving me crazy! Things work one minute then they stop working out of blue.
  15. THANK YOU! I finally got back around to testing that out and it works perfectly. One minor thing I noticed though when I add a new finish to the list, the date modified time of the room finish library file is 3 hours behind the current time. I checked the time on the server and other computers, and they are all set to the same time and time zone. I don't think it effects anything it's just odd.
  16. Pat, have you ever made a script that purges issue Data? When ever I use a border set from a previous set, all the issue data remains even if I delete the issue data from every border. When I open the issue manager all the data comes back. Once I make a report of the issue data and clean it out manually it does not return and when I am able to keep a template for a clean start it works fine but I always end up tweaking things while working on a project so my templates are always revised from a working set of drawings. Just wondering if there is a quicker way to purge the data.
  17. Thanks Pat, OK if I can have multiple database sections in a worksheet can I just have a blank section after the database to enter info in manually? Usually the MEP sheets are created by someone else so I don't need the borders I only use the MEP borders to organize the whole drawing set.If I could just enter the info in manually after the database info that would do the trick.
  18. I have a worksheet I use for a drawing index that lists the sheet number and titles from my borders. I want to add a space between disciplines like between arch and Structural sheets but when I try to add a blank row it will only put it at the top of the list. Is there a way to add a blank row between data lines in a database worksheet? What I ended up doing is making a space holder border and put the MEP heading as the sheet number and left everything else in the border blank.It would still be nice to be able to add spaces.
  19. Ahh I thought I had that set already. It seemed to just start happening out of the blue. Maybe someone changed that setting. Thanks
  20. We have a custom dimension style and the arrows keep flipping to the outside of the witness lines. Any dimensions less than 6'-2" kicks the arrows to the outside. There is plenty of room for the text and arrows with 11 point text. I tried messing around with some of the dimension settings for extensions and nothing seems to effect it. Is there some buffer dimension somewhere for dimension text?
  21. Something is really screwy with this. Now I can't use the wide flange tool at all. It goes through the motions but nothing appears. Custom selection says they are there but they can not be selected. It is not just this one drawing now. It happens in all drawings, new blank drawings etc. It worked fine yesterday morning.
  22. I have tried everything with the classes. turning all off then on again and they just will not appear. when I do a custom select it counts them but when I run the script nothing is selected. I checked to see if the class was set to none or 0 line weight and that is all fine. This is weird. ok, I just tried to change the class of one of my wide flanges in the source file and it disappeared!? Something is definitely quirky here.
  23. When I try to copy and paste a wide flange from one file to another they do not show up in the drawing. All my classes are on, after pasting the resource browser shows that I have a wide flange selected. I tried doing a custom select and it shows the number of wide flanges I have in the drawing but nothing is selected. This is strange and a real pain in the butt. Anyone else have this happen before?
  24. Any help on this?? Do those who have more than one person working on a set of plans just not use the room finish library? I assume the door hardware and any other txt list has the same issue? This seems like it should be a pretty standard project specific function. It works fine for a single user or if you never change the library entries but is it not set up for a multiuser environment?
  25. When I create a room finish library for a project it saves the Room Finish Library.txt file to my computer so if someone else tries to work with the plan the room finish information defaults to the default file on their computer. Is there a way to set up a project specific finish library in a project drawing folder on a server?
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