panta rhei

Seconded. Consistencywise, this could/should/might be a property of the class. At least I don't wish to have another palette or mechanism in the user interface.

Je accuse! But really, obviously I misunderstood: apologies.

Really, GWS? Is wishing Happy Hanukkah criticism? Dear me. I'm glad I did not wish Happy Queen's Birthday...

Were you? Well, the previous post by David L made a point about Mac OS.

Indeed! But not only Batch Printing. Two thirds of VW users are required to subsidise U.S. designers of McMansions and McGardens just to get two-way worksheets. There's hardly anything else useful in Architect or Landmark.

So, OpenGL is not yet prevalent enough for MS to claim to be its invention? Some years ago I read an article, quite obviously based on a press release, quite obviously from Redmond, referring to TrueType technology developed by Microsoft. But of course Bill III also supplied Ark technology to Noah. According to Bill Jr, Noah didn't have a clue.

You're missing the point, Bruce. I'm not a Trimble Professor of Silly Sales, but I'd guess that in an average tract of McMansions, the good old Cartesian coordinates & theodolites produce quite acceptable results.

Right. Well, here in the EU, such laws are not possible. Your employers, Trimble and ESRI, cannot be mandated. I'm glad to live in a market economy.

And the day I'll see any valid 3D by a civil engineer, I'll buy a Chevy.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think that these "residential designers" who seem to constitute the majority of the minority of VW users can be diverted to become road construction contractors...

I think so. But because I do not use any of the pathetically useless McMansion built-in objects shipping with VW, I can't be sure.

Did it really?

Well, 'fess, It seems that you're totally out of your depth here, so it is pointless to continue. You may well be the finest sales rep for Trimble (whatever that is) and may even remotely know what a coordinate or grid is, but obviously you haven't got the faintest idea of the professional fields related to your sales pitch.

Really, Ray?

At least I don't deny the benefits of geospatial data or the fact that one day large scale planning & infrastructure projects will be required to be delivered using such mechanisms. However, very few VW users are involved in such projects. Assuming that the proportion of these users to whom U.S. Government's policies are relevant is the same as with VW in general (approx. one third), I can't see a huge drop in user numbers any time soon. Not even if VW would never have this capability whilst all Goverments would require it. (Last night I had the strangest dream or whatever.) Nevertheless, as an urban designer, town planner, landscape architect and ecologist (among other things, still excluding show business), I find VW a very good tool for what I call "creation of new data". This includes both intelligent analyses and decision-making, in which GIS-programs do not actually excel. (I've been told that they are getting better, though.) I am in no way associated with NNA, but as a user since 1987, I've gleaned, gathered, pieced together and deducted that the quite successful business strategy of NNA and its predecessor is based, often to my frustration (utter dismay & despair at times), on a rather clever (be it by accident or not) market situation analysis: ((functionality/price = success) + (right price point = success)). Look: I don't disagree. But the next tract of McMansions, the next "musical" by Sir Andrew or the next dekathousands of dwelling units built in Japan every year simply do not need to be geospatially google-earthed* by a button. *) There is not a single noun in the English language that could not be verbed. - Sir Winston Churchill

Well, Ray, I don't think you are qualified to compare the two platforms since you do not know how well VW works on the Mac. Neither am I: who knows, on XP, even those things that seem to take ages on the Mac, may happen instantaneously. The look & feel and the overall workflow are parts of "working", don't you think? At least the workflow? Maybe also system maintenance? In one former client firm they had a half-time support person (MCNE, no less) for a staff of about 15 - and we are talking about word-processing & spreadsheets! (They had one person who used MapInfo and started to use VW.) Of course the functionality is identical and that is what I tell prospective users when doing a demo, but refrain from further comparison because of my lack of experience. However, I recently got a somewhat angry phone call from one firm: VW on XP did not look nearly as good as it did in my demo. They decided not to buy VW after trying the demo version. (Incidentally, VW 2008, until SP3, worked at least in one aspect significantly better on XP than on MacOS, so the platforms are not necessarily even functionally identical.)

Didn't you just say that you don't have recent experience on Macs...

Daresay, that is one of the project types where VW's capabilites can really shine and where your firm can even extend the scope of services provided, eg. from facilites planning to facilities management. This could relate to a less than ideal implementation of reference files and various other aspects, but not only. With even some 200,000 objects, things can get sluggish. However, with a properly implemented VW system, what in AutoCAD requires 200,000 entities, can be done with just a few thousand VW objects. Surely you are aware that new Macs can run Windows, even concurrently? In your situation, you will want quite a few people with AutoCAD in their machines during the transition and some with the latest version even after that. In any case, should you migrate, access to AutoCAD really must be limited on a need-to-use basis, otherwise the recalcitrants will just keep on drafting instead of modeling, BIMming and databasing.

I just imported simultaneously one DWG-file (13 MB) to VW 2008 (SP3) and another one (6 MB) to VW 2009 (SP2). Worked fine. MacBook, 2.5 GB RAM, OS X 10.5.6.

This should be considered in relation to the type & size of your projects. I am not entirely convinced that VW can efficiently used in very large projects. You might want to check the Ellicott Heights BIM-example by NNA. Then there is also the question about your architectural style. Any budding Gehrys, Hadids or Rashids as Associates? Budding Libeskinds could be happy with VW. I know nothing about the Windows-platform, except that it obviously has great potential to become unstable. Maybe you have already done this: start from scratch with new machine (or at least rebuild), clean Windows-installation, latest drivers, absolute minimum of drivers and software. The good news is that VW gives you the opportunity to switch to Macs... Depending on various factors, a mix of iMacs, MacBooks and Mac Pros. May I ask why ArchiCAD & Bentley Architecture are not on your list?

Depends on the cabinet. Are you referring to "parametric cabinets"? If the components are, as they should be, in different classes, then you need to apply the texture to the class. I think that at least in InteriorCAD's this is the case. http://www.extragroup.biz/index.php?id=48&L=1 On the other hand, if you have made the cabinet yourself, from normal modeling objects, then you can apply, scale, rotate etc. the texture for each component just as you wish. This is what I do, because the parametric ones that ship with VW are pathetically useless and I can't justity the cost of InteriorCAD for the odd kitchen or wardrobe.

Happy Yule, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, New Year etc. too, to those who do not happen to be Christians. Funny how so many traditional festivities, since time immemorial, are now rolled into one by the last entrant, representing a minority of the humankind.

Worked fine here. MacBook, 10.5.6

Well, a script is definitely a workaround.... The only good thing is that one can copy & paste the value. I wrote the original one to measure 3D-polys that were on the surface of DTMs and represented eg. walking paths. Added handling of closed 3D-polys just now. PROCEDURE LengthOf3DPoly; { ? Petri Sakkinen 1995-2008 } VAR x, y, z, x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, d, h, l, total : REAL; n, i : INTEGER; obHd : HANDLE; BEGIN obHd := FSACTLAYER; IF GETTYPE(obHd) = 25 THEN BEGIN n := GETVERTNUM(obHd)-2; FOR i := 0 TO n DO BEGIN GETPOLYPT3D(obHd, i, x1, y1, z1); z := z+z1; GETPOLYPT3D(obHd, i+1, x2, y2, z2); d := DISTANCE(x1, y1, x2, y2); h := z2-z; l := SQRT(d^2+h^2); total := total+l; END; IF ISPOLYCLOSED(obHd) THEN BEGIN GETPOLYPT3D(obHd, i, x1, y1, z1); z := z+z1; GETPOLYPT3D(obHd, 0, x2, y2, z2); d := DISTANCE(x1, y1, x2, y2); h := z2-z; l := SQRT(d^2+h^2); total := total+l; END; END; total := REALDIALOG('Length', NUM2STRF(total)); END; RUN(LengthOf3DPoly);