Rossford

Working on a drawing today and I noticed I had lots of duplicate objects right underneath each other. Sometimes two, but also 3x and 4x in a few cases. Any idea why this happens? In one case, I know I copied an entire class of items to move to another layer for a display. (Yes, probably could have used viewport vis) The other commanality is that I am sharing files via FTP sites. On one big project, I am importing and exporting ACAD drawings, but on the one today, only the import base and none of the design layers were ACAD. So, two questions 1 - Is there some common task that makes me duplicate items in place that I am not aware of? 2 - Who sells the plug in for "remove duplicate objects" that I have heard referred to. Thanks in advance.

Outlander, You might consider many separate fences/boundaries around each grading areas, which will keep the "existing" contours in ungraded areas. Not sure if that is what you mean. BTW, in the prelim phase, I sometimes get just 2D contours, and there is not time to do the whole site model. In such cases, I just trace the 2D contours (splitting lines if necessary when they are part fill and part cut), then select all the cut or fill lines and get a total area of the polygons or polylines (they must be closed to get a readout in the OIP) Basically, this replicates the old planimeter method digitally. I would love to use the 3D more but sometimes, we just don't get the fee/time to build the site model and this workaround comes in handy.

Talk about asking a client about import classes, I am sitting here working on a China project, and all the ACAD chinese characters came in as ?????, not that I would have understood the chinese symbols any better. After a while of clicking one by one to figure out what layers were what, I finally had to call them for a few of them. Technology can't solve everything. You can give the ACAD import a prefix in the import box, which I find helpful. I usually have a prefix of X or Z for my base layers which sit near the bottom of my layer structure. I haven't tried it, but I guess you could select all and re-assing the class and/or layer name in the shuttle file. Using the intermediate shuttle file is imperative, as I understand it, to good ACAD import. I am working on another project in California right now, sharing drawings back and forth with an ACAD firm, and after a rough start, we figured out how to co-design in VW and ACAD, so it can be done.

Sometimes I have to click off and then hit the edit tool again, because the tool sticks in the previous mode. I don't know why, but it sure sounds like you are in the "-" mode rather than the move mode.

LOL. You guys are always so helpful, I thought I would throw out at least one softball......thanks!

Have a couple of questions for building site models in Landmark.... Should I put the site modifiers on the DTM, or use a different layer? Seems as if when I click on any portion of the DTM, it selects the entire DTM when site modifiers are there, so I can't edit them. Also, from time to time, I move the entire DTM and not just what I am trying to! Do plants, hardscapes and landscaper areas require being sent to the DTM surface, or do they "know" to get there? It seems to me I get different results with single plants and the poly draw/insert planting tool. Lastly, should site modifiers be poly lines or polygons? I have heard it both ways from experts. And, when I use poly beziers, even if my line shows only 5-6 vertices, I see many more connection points on the underlying TIN network when the model is built. Sometimes, my bezier lines get far too many points, so I have been converting to polygons and simplifying, but its an extra step. Thanks to anyone who knows these answers. Lastly, what is the meaning of life? :grin:

I actually have the problem in reverse. A recent VW file grew from 40 to 66MB when exporting to dwg. Anyone know how to reduce the export size to dwg?

Textures are for 3D objects only. You need a solid, pattern or hatch fill for 2D objects. However, in any class, you can assign both a 2D pattern and 3D texture, in the class organization box. Another thing that might work is to make your area or object a floor object with zero depth, and assign the texture, and use top view instead of top plan.

Not sure, but in the knowledge base there is an article on graphics card recommendations on the VW site.

That feature is a legacy to work with autocad, since many drafters did it that way "back in the day." It could be dropped, IMHO if the code for new features is limited. For the full ACAD like experience, you can also turn your screen background to black and party like its 1999, or maybe even 1989!

I get that a lot. When you modify a 3D poly, by adding or moving points, you would think the Z elevation would stay the same, but it often comes in at 0 or the bottom allowed elevation. Try looking in iso or from the side to determine if all the points are at the elevations you think they are.

As noted, make sure you are in top view, not top plan view, and make sure you know what layer your site model is on. Also, if you did a snapshot, it is put right over your model on the same layer, and can be moved/dragged out of the way. Lastly, if you aren't getting any textures, click the teapot in the upper right corner (rendering modes) and make sure you are in something like open GL rather than sketch or wireframe to get the 3D textures you applied in the site model settings. Hope this helps.

I recently had the same problem, and figured that VW was just looking closer at the two download limit than in the past. I had actually downloaded VW 2011 three times, because when I downloaded to my laptop, it said the processor was below recommendations, so I bought a new laptop for a bigger processor. That is when I got the message and I bought another seat licence for a few hundred $$. I think they used to give you a few more than two downloads for cases just like these, though. I don't think I removed older versions from the older machine and I wonder if that caused the problem, because I had the same license number all the way back to VW 12.

We had that problem years ago when we had a network and it was just too small and slow a server for multiple machines. I think we started drawings on the desktop, and then transferred them to the main server for storage each night.

Not sure what you mean about not having "true" Bezier curves in 2D? Please explain.

Most of the time, those crashes are a result of the wrong video drivers for Quick Time, at least in my experience on PC's. Make sure you have the right driver loaded for that version. It may be that it doesn't recognize the older version if a newer version is installed.

We discussed this recently. As I recall the same polyline will be closed if a solid but not closed if there is no background. I don't know if you can close it by making it solid, and change it back to none and if it will stay closed. Either way, a time consuming work around.

This may not be the exact right thread title but you probably know what I mean. Why are some similar type settings in "File-Document Set Up" and others in "Tools- Vectorworks Preferences?" Just a little pet peeve of mine. I know that to have lots of features and flexibility, there has to be lots of setting boxes and sometimes we users misplace those. I spent today, my first with lots of annotation in VW 2011, and when I rotated text, it showed up as a blank box. After lunch, I started going through all the settings, knowing something was wrong, since it never did that in 2010 and sure enough, under document set up, there was a box set to "rotated text - show bounding box only". In 2010 either I set it, or it was factory set to show rotated text in medium or high quality. Have any of you spent an hour or so trying to figure out some little used setting in VW?

No trouble here with W7 64 bits after I made sure my drivers were in place. VW recommends certain lines of video cars, and NVIDEA seems to be favored, but I have a newer ATI on my laptop and that seems to work fine on my machine. If I recall right, only open GL uses the video card. And yes, the more memory the better for all kinds of calculations. Someone on these boards reported that the new C4D render engine uses quad core, and that we have to wait until VW 2013 for true quad core VW. By then, 8 core will probably be standard!

Mine was crashing. I tried the usual VW fix - updating drivers and it is all fine now.

When it opens you will see under file-open an option for new or recent drawings. Pick recent and you get a drop down menu. You can also open from your (I am in Windows) files on computer (or server). If you want a specific set up, you can make it and then click File-Save as Template to create a blank drawing with all the settings you want. That can be saved in a VW templates file on your C drive, or can be saved actually anywhere you want on your computer. I hope that is what you are asking.

Bryan, Are we talking 2D and plants placed by Landmark from the libraries? I have used the vegetation line, copied it, shifted it slightly and made it all grey or black to do plant line shadows, and yes, I put those in a separate class.

Some of the Landmark features introduced in the last two versions hopefully convey VW committment to the Landscape side of things. The Red/Blue cut and fill in 2011 is a great example. I agree with Bryan that it would be great to keep those tools coming, including push pull for contours, simplify poly 2D, drainage package, and many of the land planning tools now only available for plug in packages.

Bryan, I agree a full hydro unit may not be necessary. I generally try to simplify my "C" anyway in the rational formula and wonder if worksheets could use class or record formats to do the same thing? For instance, just have a separate column in a workesheet, and give an area tagged as lawn a C of .35, and set up the Q in some other column. There must be an if-then function to use somehow, right? Just noodling, pre coffee. Also, there is a land planning add on module that may cover this. I am not sure about that yet, but it seems as if it had a sewer design module along with roads and the like.

Bryan, I second that motion! I have been trying to figure out some way to combine a simple C value and acreage of drain basins into the worksheets, but haven't really put in much time yet.