panta rhei

Ummmm? What? You're quoting my comment to Ozzie as it would have been directed to you. If you had anything even remotely resembling literacy...

Your wish shall be granted. But I'd have ignored you anyway, so why worry? I expect my correspondents to have an IQ larger than their shoe size so you don't qualify.

The only thing that's obvious is that you haven't got a clue of what you're talking about.

What's Acad? Nevaheard. Nevaseen. Nevawillsee. Nevamind. This could be a new feature. In fact, I've seen this recently in files imported in (Autodesk Incorporated) DWG/DXF format. This could be a New Feature By Design? Since Homo sapiens is an animal that makes tools (ergo: animals who do not make tools are not members of the species H. sapiens), I made a tool for this just a couple of months ago. Whatever. As an Unexpected and Untypical Act of Charity to you, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, I shall indeed give my tool: PROCEDURE Kill_Fill; VAR i : INTEGER; BEGIN FOR i := 2 TO CLASSNUM DO SETCLFPAT(CLASSLIST(i), 0); END; RUN(Kill_Fill); Should you pass by a Fr?lssis Julgryta, en tia would be appreciated. (Translation: a couple of dollars for the Salvos will do this time. The Swedish peso, krona, competes with the Italian & Turkish currencies - and is losing. "En tia" = 10 SKR = 0.98 euros. Yes, yes: I know that Italy is now a part of the Euro currency region... A cup of espresso no longer costs tens of thousands. )

Well, yes - you can put it that way... The individual companies strive to produce the maximum profit to their owner. With three different product lines, Nemetschek A.G. can compete very efficiently with other CAD-software companies, but it won't erode its ArchiCAD business by compatibility with VW. Besides, IFC will eventually provide quite good compatibility. C4D is another thing altogether.

Right. Sorry. Totally misunderstood. This kind of detailing is not what I'm used to... In one job I did actually have this wainscot thing, although it was, for geographic reasons, called "dado". Yes, you do have to model such things separately. But then again, those are more or less separate pieces of work in reality, too, aren't they?

Ahh, yes, apologies - you are indeed right! It seems I defended the Orthodox User Interface way too vigorously.

Whatever. A Tool means, AFAIK, that you have to click in the drawing area. I see no value in introducing the silly verb-object -syntax in any part of VW.

Why tools, if I may ask?

You're dreaming! Why would Nemetschek A.G. spend money in this? They have a flagship product line (AllPlan), a mediocre, overpriced architectural modeling program (ArchiCAD) and a cheap and cheerful Swiss army-knife package (VectorWorks.) Shoud they fulfill your wish, they'd kill their milking cow.

Why don't you start: paste here something that is useful and in demand... We are all ears for your contribution.

No worries! The "four ways" is quite a fascinating concept and defied at least my logic so in the end I had to resort to trial and error..

Maybe not. On the other hand, the current schema of layers as tables and only one user at a time with editing privileges to each is, I think, quite simple and sensible. With better management tools (project structure, privileges, ability to see who is doing what and to move to any layer of any file easily etc.) and really robust mechanisms for all this might do the trick.

Hopefully I'm not repeating what has already been said. In many (most?) of my reports I have a column for the layer (formula =L), often one for class (=C) and sometimes columns for x & y location (=XCENTER, =YCENTER). These help in auditing both data and the query.

http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=VS:GetObjExtentsInWall ? For the z-value: GetSymLoc3D(h, x, y, z) ? Just theories. I haven't tried GetObjExtentsInWall and I calculate the window's z-location within the PIO.

Yes, yes... But what's the trick for keeping the old data! My objects retrive data from the symdef every time. But coming to think of it: there are other oddities here. Not that I'd actually use the drawing border, but occasionally one has to test these things... In handling the record format of a custom title block, the drawing border did, I seem to recall, a pretty good job. But line weights were totally effed up! The revision table was a disater so that was the end of my testing. Anyway, no help for Matt?

Have you tried to "reshape" the wall, ie. add points to its projection? Or am I missing your point?

Right. Obviously the Drawing Border object is built in such a way that updating the title block definition does not affect existing Borders. (I wonder how they do it... I could use that in some of my objects! Now they just get updated as per the symbol, whether I want it or not.) Sorry, no more ideas.

But it has. When a window is inserted in a wall, it "inherits" the angle of the wall. After that you may need to figure out the insertion method & flipping, if relevant. Each parametric object has an internal coordinate system. Any sub-object is placed in that coordinate system (well, sort of) and in order to determine its angle, one has to use both the parent object's angle and the child object's angle, which is always in relation to the parent. Nice transformation matrix calculations somewhere for all this to be so easy as it is!

Well, I'm notorious for being one of the most frustated and critical VW users, so I can relate to how you feel. So? Not so. At least in the Mac OS, you click the column heading and, lo and behold, the list is sorted. In a CAD-program or a database, one sorting order seldom is enough. So, in VW we "click" as many times as we want. And that would be easier than dragging an icon? Includin dragging it from one column to another? I happen to know that VW users aren't even remotely interested in database management. Coincidentally, just this morning I combined three database reports into one workhseet, on request by a major Government sectori client.

Closing and opening the file does not work? I think it should... If not, try - Tools -menu -- Utilities --- Update Plug-in Objects

Many pertinent points, but I beg to disagree on some. Trying to also give another angle on some others. I've trained scores of users who have never used a database program (and never will.) They find this very intuitive. It takes at max 3 tries & 15 minutes for a person to grasp the idea. After all, it is visual: I want this report sorted and summarised by this, that and that. What did you expect? For the software to read your mind? OK, the "Edit Criteria" dialog leaves much to be desired: my pet hate is that the criteria are placed in a pre-defined sequence, not left as the user wanted. With only 8 to 10 criteria, the ones you delete are not the ones you wanted to delete, but those that NNA puts at the bottom. So, if you need to get rid of Criterion #1, you have to rebuild the query. This is what "my users" cannot and will not do. VW has an emphasis on architectural work (assuming that McMansions are Architecture), but is not limited to it. Depending on what preferences you mean, it may take anything between 15 minutes and 40 hours of solid work to get them to be what you want. But I wouldn't want your defaults even if you paid for me to do so... Obvious solutions? Well, there are obvious solutions only to obvious questions. There are 13 to a dozen with all the answers, but those who know what the question is are few and far between. What you want to achieve may not be what others want to achieve. VW has hundreds of thousands on users in tens of countries - and you think that you are qualified to instruct them all? [rant]Your attitude is just in line with the arrogance of NNA, where the committee knows nothing about things outside the U.S. of A - which is only one third of VW's market, as I understand.[/rant] The sole (and only possible) purpose of a software manual is to explain the tools, commands etc etc. The "how" (Door Schedules for Dummies) is another thing. Various third parties have offered probem/solution oriented books with varying (mostly disappointing) results; there is a legion of consultants and trainers who can look at your particular problem. [rant]The two thirds of VW users do not want to subsidise "architectural drawing" of your McMansions any more than they already do. Eg. this famous door is totally useless outside USA.[/rant] Use that intelligence and experience of yours! And I did say "trying", didn't I?

Charlie, Very good points! However, I'm not entirely convinced. CAD is a different concept in many ways, eg. as comes to the arbitrariness and frequency of user operations and especially in VW and other programs with object-verb -syntax and selection of a number of objects. (I've dabbled with databases since the mid-1980s.) Indeed. BTW, I think that VW's layers are lists of objects within the document.

Dexie expressed a wish and it was granted in, what, 10 hours... Those who consider 10? (US $ 17) excessive obviously do not really need such functionality.

...leaving yours truly as the only software supplier who is able (with some explanation from the user and a couple of hours of programming)! And we can even do Dom Melnikova windows: http://www.dommelnikova.ru/about-melnikov.php or whatever one can draw. Eliel Saarinen's (father of Eero) windows are a piece of cake. http://www.nba.fi/fi/hvittrask With annotation.