Matthew Giampapa

It sounds like you have the Logitech mouse ware software installed, or something that works like it. We generally see this behavior when the mouse driver has a feature to snap the cursor to the ok button of any dialog boxes that pop up. VectorWorks updates the object info pallet and other pallets in a very similar way which confuses this software. The fix would be to disable this feature of the mouse driver, or add VectorWorks to an exclusion list for this feature. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

Hmmm, I haven't played with this myself too much, try placing a 3D locus point in your file. Select just this point with the selection tool before you run the animation command and use the option screen to orbit around the selected object. Normally this option would try to calculate the center point of the sleeted object, but if a locus is selected it should just use that. Everything else really depends on the size of the window you have open. I admit the manual is spotty at best here. I will put a note our wish list about this. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

There are 3 choices for your orbit point, the center of the selected object, the center of the ground plane, and the center of the working plane. You can change the one you are using in the orbit point options dialog. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

This type of a change requires a bit of technical work on our part. It is my understanding that we are currently investigating this kind of approach, but it will require functionality somewhat similar to an AutoCAD viewport. This is certainly on the drawing board for a future release of VectorWorks. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

As long as it conforms to Apple's font guidelines and does not require the use of 3rd party software such as ATM it should work well. The general rule is that if it is a straight true type font it will work in VectorWorks. This goes for both OS X and classic MacOS. Furthermore, the only problems we have on record dealing with this font have to do with it being rotated and not looking great, (this is a general side effect of rotated text and VW has a preference to turn the quality up at the expense of speed) and one user reported that the font does not display when used in a vertical dimension. (This was found to be related to that particular version of the Graphite font, and was resolved by using a different version) Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

To place a 3D staircase in VectorWorks Architect 9.0.1, first find the stair tool in the objects pallet. Select this tool, then click on the stair preference button in the mode bar. This will open a dialog asking what parameters you wish to set the stair. Click ok and then click twice on the drawing. The first click will set the position and the second click will set the orientation. If you would like to adjust the parameters later, you may select the object, and use the shape tab of the object info pallet. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Suukmel: First off, i'm new to vectorworks (1 week ) As i'm plodding through this new tool (longtime acad veteran) i have run into a roadblock with respect to using the stair tool. No matter what I do with the settings, it absolutely refuses to place a stair. Since the manuals and online help have been of no use, I'm hoping somebody can explain the process of placing a 3d stair in a floorplan. Thanks in advance...

This certainly could be a bug, we have a similar bug on record which is tied to the presence of a stair object in the file, but that will only affect the none class. If this is not happening in your other files, I would suggest emailing it to us at tech@nemetschek.net so we can take a look and see if it reproduces here. There may be an invalid entry in the class table which is preventing it from saving your changes. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Neil Ironside: VWA on a Mac....I can not switch off the "use class attributes at creation" in the class setings for the "none" class....I close the dialogue box, the chart shows "N" beside the class, I return to the drawing window, VWA spends about 15 seconds doing a massive recalculation, but the none class still takes the class attributes, and when I return to the class chart, there is a Y instead of the N. Solutions? A bug? i think I started this drawing in VW8

We currently know about a problem with MacPlot 5.1.2 and all Carbon applications. There is an additional resource which the printer driver must supply in order to work correctly. A large number of print drivers were broken by this, but it is a relatively minor change for the people who write the driver. We have already been in contact with MicroSpot about this, and they are now aware of the problem. They are currently working with Apple to update their software to work applications using the Carbon printing API. Unfortunately, I do not know how MicroSpot will be handling distribution of this update. Believe it or not, we do not try to break the MacPlot driver with each release of VectorWorks. However, we only aim for compatibility with printers supported by the OS. The 750c and other HPGL based plotters are not MacOS compatible. In general you will have far fewer headaches on the Mac with equivalent 755cm. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Alistair Kirkwood: Matthew i have jsut installed the 9.5 beta and have found that i can not print using the latest Macplot 5.1.2 to my hp750c plotter. once i have selected the plotter in the chooser and go to page set up the top line states that it is an unsupported plotter. is this a problem with trying to use hp-2gl instead of selecting the raster version. if so can we expect a fix from vw or will this again have to come from macplot. to be honest i'm getting tired of upgrading vw and then waiting for macplot to upgrade before i can print. any suggestions or clarification would be welcomed. alistair

Tim, You need to email the file to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net with a small description like you put in your previous posts. They will try to reproduce the problem and set thing in motion to get it fixed. Please include the version of the beta, and the version of Mac OS X you are using. We will only be supporting X.1 or later in VectorWorks 9.5. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by timpower: by the way, the OS does not freeze, this is one of the great things about OSX. I just restart the program and it opens pretty quick. TP [ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: Matthew Giampapa ]

Page 15-22 is incorrect. VectorWorks should only accept "True", "Yes" and "T" for true. AFAIK know it is not case sensitive. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by JRoth: I'm attaching data records to objects in a drawing, and have a number of boolean elements, but the ony way I can get them to be ture is by typing "true" Anything else (including "1") turns the statement false.I haven't used the boolean option for this before, but it's my understanding from the manual that 0=false and 1=true. It would be a lot easier to type "1" than to type "True"! Am I screwed up, or is VW?PS I need to work on this today, so a quick replay is greatly appreciated

Maxon and Nemetschek North America are both owned by the same parent company Nemetschek AG. At the moment that is really the extent of the relationship. Right now the best way to get your model into another 3D program, including Cinema 4D, is to export as a DXF and then import it into the other program. I am not aware of any incompatibilities between the two products, but we also do most of our compatibility testing with AutoCAD as it is the benchmark for dxf/dwg compatibility. When you get models which are dislocated, is this when translating from VectorWorks to C4D or from C4D to VectorWorks? If can send in an example to tech@nemetschek.net which does this every time it would be very helpful. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by 7parella: Is there a trusted way to translate models made with VectorWorks 9.x to CInema 4Dxl 7? Ive been trying with .dxf and vrml formats with uneven results, sometimes it works, but many times I get parts of the geometry dislocated. Ive also been told tha VW and Cinema 4dxf (Maxon) are somehow related, is this true?...If truth, this could mean that a plugin to export c4d files is not an extravagant request... (maybe?... or am I dreaming?...) Thanks

In your case RAM is probably the most important factor. 64 megabytes and Windows 98 is really the bare minimum to have the program run. Personally, I am using the program quite well with a PII 450 and 256 megabytes of ram. VectorWorks 9 does a lot more work behind the scenes than VectorWorks 8 did. While I would really consider adding additional memory before anything else, you should also consider either downloading the demo version of VectorWorks 9 from out web site or calling our sales department to have a demo disk sent out to you. This way you can see exactly how well it runs on your system before you make the decision to buy. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Artifex: I am thinking of upgrading to VW9.5 from VW8.5.2 but am concerned about hardware. Would I be looking for trouble using a somewhat dated pIII computer with 64 megs of ram and win98. One of the things I quite like about 8.5.2 is that it makes little demand on my system. The likelyhood of adding more memory is not problematic, but if more exhaustive measures are required I may happily work away as I am and wait to upgrade VW after replacing my system. Any suggestions?

The summary in the database header row is simply the sum of the subsequent rows that are part of the query. This should not be changing if you are moving objects or even creating and deleting objects. In VectorWorks 8 and 9, a worksheet will not automatically recalculate itself. To see the correct, updated totals you would have to open the worksheet and use the recalculate command in the pulldown menu. I think it would be helpful here to have someone look at the actual file that is giving you this problem. Can you please email it to tech@nemetschek.net with a description of the problem or link back to here on the message board? Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by ccroft: g4 533, OS 9.1, vworks 8.5.2 I'm trying to build a worksheet that will list 3d extrudes and report the height width and depth. Height and width is obvious and I am able to get depth with =volume/width/height, but the list won't summarize correctly. So if I have 5 objects with the same dims I might get a list like: 3 - 3/4x24x361 - 3/4x24x361 - 3/4x24x36 Furthermore, the summary changes if the objects are moved! Is this a limitation of 8.5.2 that is working in 9? Might this be part of the upcoming Mechanical add-on? Or am I missing something? FYI: This is a parts list for a cabinet-shop. I'm currently using records for the 3rd dim and that works. What I have in mind would be simpler and less prone to error from filling in and attaching records. Thanks for any input.

Thank you for the feedback, this will be looked into. In the future if you encounter any bugs with the 9.5 beta series, please email the report to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net and it will be processed much faster. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by timpower: While using the 9.5b07 i have had some bombs on big documents (20mb).........;documents with lots of jpg imports don't seem to be stable. The program crashes, but the system doesn't....this at least is an improvement thanks to APPLE. TP

I'm not really allowed to comment on anything that has not been officially announced. Certainly full and seamless interoperability with other products like Cinema 4D would be "good" thing, and it is being looked into.In the mean time I will forward your enthusiasm and comments about how useful this would be to you to the appropriate people here at NNA. For right now, I am told by our resident "expert"on Cinema 4D that dxf is the best way to import a straight model, then relight and texture. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by ajs: hm, this again.y'know, I was talking to the VW rep at MacWorld NY this past summer, and he alluded to a project called, I think, Turntable, that would allow improved (read:seamless) translation between these 2 programs.Which seems like a good idea, considering that yes, they are owned by the same company...It was allegedly targeted for this fall.Was he just funning with me? 7parella, if you search this forum for Cinema 4D, you'll find that this is a commoner issue than you might think. My experience has been spotty at best, and I think that you might have the best luck with dxf. Don't waste your time texturing your VW model, either-do all texturing and lighting in C4D.FWIW, I have had much more success moving formZ models to C4D via .obj., but even that is a bit wonky. My experiences are with VW9/C4DXL 6.3-YMMV. Yo, Nemetschek-more than a couple VW users seem to be wanting to do this, and the demand doesn't seem to be diminishing-how's about getting this to happen before I finish my transition to formZ? Especially in light of all these fine localized EuroVersions of VW. C4D is a bit bigger in Europe than in the States, I believe-wouldn't it be a Good Thing to be able to export directly to it?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, it would help if it could be reproduced consistently. Anyway, here is a trick, use the set origin command to set the origin to the center of the drawing. This will put the origin at the original 0,0. Now to move the page outline back to center is hard to do, but if you select the move page tool and then double click it (the tool in the pallet), it will center the page at the drawing center as well. This should put you back to the same place as a new blank file and persevere any work you did. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Giovanni: VW 9.0.1 Architect Windows 2000 It happened a couple times on 2 different files. I already have objects on my layers.I set the origin to be on the center of the drawing (gray box, drawing area) with the menu command. It won’t do it; the origin 0,0 will be somewhere close to it but off, so that my references are not aligned. I’ve tried re-setting the origin switching every layer (different scales), but same result. I had to manually (bull-eying) reset it so to have the referenced title block to appear where I wanted. Usually this doesn’t happen with new/empty files. Is it a bug or there is something I don’t know…. just when I thought I knew everything? Thanks.

Get the RenderWorks 9.0.1a update from our website. There is a Macintosh only bug in RenderWorks 9.0.0 and 9.0.1 which will cause the program to think it has run out of memory even thou it hasn't. The update can be found on this page http://www.nemetschek.net/downloads/renderworks/index.html Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by TiTaNiuM sAMuRai: Import/ and Export Image File... were doing nothing. The problem turned out to be the recent Quicktime upgrade. I installed only what I thought were crucial components. After installing several other components, RenderWorks appears to work fine. However, I was still getting the 'One or more operations was aborted due to lack of memory. Increase partition size.' Mem (on the mac) was set to 60M min. 128M pref, the model isn't complex, and even with all RW extras turned off, I had the same message. I purged the other two layers since they contained items I wasn't rendering, and all seems to work okay now. [ 11-20-2001: Message edited by: Matthew Giampapa ]

I think the most likely reason for this is the way the pdf was created. While print2pdf is a good program, it does not create a well optimized pdf file. A pdf is really a superset, or relative of postscript. AFAIK, print2pdf simply creates a high resolution bitmap graphic and embeds that in the pdf file just like printing a bitmap to a postscript printer. Had the pdf been created with Acrobat Distiller using a postscript printer driver, the vector based information that describes the image would have been saved in the pdf instead of a bitmap. When you then print this pdf on the windows machine, it has to send each dot to the printer as an image, rather than in the printer's native language. So there will be a slowdown here. It could also simply be a limitation of the 430's driver. I suspect that printing any large hi resolution bitmap to 430 under windows will be slow. (BTW, large format printing in Win 95/98/ME is also much slower than in Win NT/2K/XP. This may also be a contributing factor) Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Skia_D: The big problem that I still haven't figured out is this - and I hope someone can help. A friend that I send files to uses a 430 with a windows platform. I am on Mac. The .pdf runs well as I said, but runs r-e-a-l s-l-o-w. The 430 only has windows drivers so I can't use the desktop printer utility. So is there any other way that I can create a .plt or .prn in Mac that will run quickly (or quicker) on the 430? BTW: Mac OS 8.6 on a PowerPC 8100 w/ a G3 card, VW 8.5.2

There are technical limitations which influenced the decision to limit parametric constraints (which are used by the associative dimensioning) to a single layer. If the two layers were at different scales, or in different 3D views it would become very complicated to deal with or have consistent behavior. Since this was already on the wish list for a later version, it will be considered for the next major release of VectorWorks. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by TiTaNiuM sAMuRai: Why a single object across two layers? The object resides in ONE layer only, but carries REFERENCE information to two other layers.

Worksheets can not be rotated at this time. They are treated as a special case by the program. If you do not want to rotate the title block for this layer, you can also export the Worksheet as an image, and then reimport it as an image. This will lost a small about of quality in the text and the ability to edit, but you will then be able to rotate and resize the resulting object. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Cbeckwith: I have developed a worksheet on an ASME "D" size paper. I have put a worksheet on a separate layer in order to rotate the worksheet object to put it in landscape mode on the drawing, but unable to rotate the worksheet to avoid my titleblock. How do I rotate a worksheet. Rotate command will not do? Need help.

You are probably seeing the difference between the "Export PICT" command and Exporting a "Image File" as a PICT. The reason for both options is that deep down inside PICT really is a primitive based graphics format. It was originally designed to draw by saying draw a circle at x,y with radius r in color c. Opposed to having a bitmap of the image. It started its life as a subset of the Macintosh graphics system QuickDraw. In the course of the format's evolution over the past 17 years or so, it has gained the ability to have a bitmapped version (in fact this is much more common today). This is typically done internally by embedding jpeg data inside the PICT. You can use the workspace editor to make sure that you have both available to you. The "Export Image File" should give bitmapped results, while the "Export PICT" should give vector based elements where possible. If this isn't the case let me know and I will double check the behavior in 9.0.1. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by TiTaNiuM sAMuRai: I'm having some troubles with RW and am wondering if anyone else has come across them... Running VW 9.0.1 imports a VW8 pict either raw or as a picture, just fine.Running VW 9.5.0b7 imports a VW8 pict just fine, also.However, VW 9.0.1 exports a pict that imports into 9 as vectors only, despite the fact that the model was rendered completely. [ 11-20-2001: Message edited by: Matthew Giampapa ]

I have tried to be as polite and constructive as possible here. I did not close your thread, in fact I have been much of an advocate for you when others would prefer more drastic action. My saying that it is no longer technical question means that since it is not problem with the software, just a problem with what you would like it to do, I would not be addressing you other comments about the viewer. It is not my job, nor am I able to make policy changes in how we develop products. All I can do in this regard is alert others who can. Since I have done this a number of times, and we are quite clear on what you want out of the viewer, the problem is no longer in my hands. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by Archken: Yes, that certainly explains it better -- and more palatable -- than silencing those deemed inappropriate (by some superior marketing authority) or turning face on exploring the real problems (out of ignorance it seems... or arrogance). PDF is probably the future for me, too. Not Viewer. I think "flicking of pages" in Acrobat might be the trick, short of saving as a Quicktime movie, which takes a few more steps. I hope Adobe and Apple develop theirs with more interactive vector 3D capabilities. Their future looks brighter. Meanwhile I will certainly NOT go away or get clamped down because of the censorship here -- now that I know who is doing it. Instead, I will just be the watchdog for NNA arrogance. It also seems the title of this section is a misnomer. "General Discussion" should be changed to "Technical Questions", huh Matthew?

A quick spike in cpu usage is to be exspected. Whenever you move or other wise cause a plug-in to refresh it has to recalculate itself. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by jnr: Matt: Thanks again for your help. I will set the min/max page sizes equal. I will let you know about re-creating the crashes after I have had time to redraw the file (it's a house). I need re-draw it because it has been copied a gazillion times and has walls and parts flying all over the place. I know this is sloppy computer work, but when you're designing a building you're testing many options and configurations. So far I cannot find a pattern in the crashes. Earlier they seem to be associated with stetching or moving walls, but now I can't tell. I tried working with the task manager open as you suggested, to watch resource allocation. The only thing I saw was a spiking of cpu usage (60-85%)whenever I moved a parametric object(dinner table for example) or panned or zoomed. I don't know if this is normal or not. I'll get back to you soon. -J

Your virtual memory settings look fine, I would leave them as they are for now. It would take a lot of effort to use what you have set as the minimum. The only suggestion I have on this would be to set the max and minimum size to the same number. This shouldn?t affect anything stability wise, but it will prevent Windows from resizing your page file without asking. This is desirable because if windows resizes the file as you work it is prone to becoming fragmented. (FYI, since you asked before, the page file is a file created on your disk into which Virtual memory is mapped. The OS acts as if it has a much larger memory space than it does physical ram. Since most of the time it does not need to access everything in memory at the same time, infrequently used things are written to the disk in this file. When something tries to read that portion of memory, the OS automatically moved it back into ram and puts something else in the file) As for your video driver, I would stay with the one located on this page, http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/files/w2k_572.cfm Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support quote: Originally posted by jnr: oops. Do you have any comments about the reply above regarding paging size/ virtual memory? [ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: Matthew Giampapa ]

Jnr, Chris, I just had a long talk with our head of engennering about the problem. Matrox was able to confirm that when using the Dual Head mode of the G450, that OpenGL does not function on the secondary dsiplay. We have one of these cards here somewhere and are going to look into what exactly is happening with this type of setup. What I need know from both of you is more or less a list of when you have seen these crashes. Working with a specific tool, going into a rendering mode, changing sheets, etc... I would also be exremely helpful to know if you are seeing this in all your files, or just 1 or 2. If you create a blank file and put a few 3D objects in it can you reproduce the crash? Any steps you take which cause the crash to happen every time will also be a tremndious help. Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support