VincentCuclair

Can you attach the file i'll have a look......sometimes i have noticed you have to group, unlock or convert the letters that cause problems, somehow they are not 'elementary' polygons.

OK thanks Pat! Thats about what i would have expected, in other words, though in the majority architects shouldn't get so cocky

Sorry to hear that Andrew, but we architects are much more important I didn't really mean support-wise i meant user-wise. The reason for my asking is to get an impression of priorities inside NNA and mainly the direction VW is (should be) heading. Don't get me wrong, part of the reason i like VW over other apps is its width, though some have expressed the wish for VW to be more of a building modeler not a 3D modeler, it's the added 3D modeling capabilities that appeal to me. Having said this I believe that to compete with other Apps Architect has to be a better building modeler but i don't want to lose the 3D modeling and other capabilities VW offer so it is important(i think) to keep developing(adding) as many other specialization as possible. I guess it all comes down to the development costs in the end......

Anyone know how the VW user base is divided (in percents) into the different specialization?

Thanks for the feedback Lyndsey always nice to have confirmed that Big Brother is actually listening, perhaps in the future when implementation of this doesn't take as much time and resources (I like to be optimistic ) it can be incorporated.

To see if this is the issue, try changing the auto save to a longer period of time or a larger amount of steps (or switch it off) ....see if it still happens then....

I have no stars?! Why not? What's wrong with me? (i just feel chuffed because it doesn't say Greenhorn any longer.... )

It would be great if all the other polygons ie, circle, rounded rectangle, oval etc. would be recognized when using this tool!

I second this....the usefulness of rating posts is more important! It would be great if you could search through posts according to rating, for most people it takes too much time to read through all posts and pick up the useful tips and suggestions.

I'm sorry guys, it's my office notebook and i'm not at all qualified to clean up a possible 'mess' if something goes haywire. (on my own PC i would have tried but i just don't trust XP and my own competence to take the jump on my company hardware.) To add to this my graphics card has always been unstable.....

I don't feel it's worth the risk , my system is otherwise fairly bug free.......

How do you activate this 'switch'? Why doesn't Windows always have it activated?

You mean to dumb down the PIOs and dispose of unnecessary 2D code. 60% of the code in my own PIOs is actually a crude hidden line rendering, hand crafted in vectorscript, replicating the already present 3D Objects in 2D. I'm quite out of my league here.....but i was mainly referring to the PIOs showing up in different ways on different layers....don't know if this is a PIO or Layer thing...... I don't really know in what direction NNA should go to solve this one.....one thing that happens in ArchiCAD is that you 'lose' objects.....pillars or walls seem to be hanging in between layers and don't show up on either......it's not a bug but a result of a combination of settings that make it this way, ie changing Layer heights but not adjusting wall and pillar Z values.

I guess the main work involves the Top/Plan view (essentially the plan section view) and its representation. Plus of-course the countless hours of making the PIOs sufficiently intelligent.....guys/gals at tech have their work cut out

It is if it suddenly gives you double the RAM memory you're used to for the same price and basic performance!

Even though ArchiCAD still has its 'story' layers like VW this is basically how it works, walls/pillars/stairs longer than a story height show up in the next story up/down as they do on split levels, the representation and visibility on each respective layer can be adjusted as you wish. One 'difficulty' that comes to mind is how to keep track of for example windows, this leads to a wish i've had for a while that lets windows punch holes in more than one wall/object at a time if placed on them, even if they are on different layers.....thus you could create separate layers for each story of windows (other objects) and have them punch holes in the wall in the correct place.

Some settings that have tricked me before: texture can be set through the class itself, or by selecting the object and applying texture through the OIP, or (I believe, never done this personally) by dragging a texture directly on to the object from the resource browser. I don't know which overrides which though. An extrude (or other solids) need a solid fill to show texture in renderings.

Do you mean that when starting an application it first asks if you want to run in 64 or 32 bit mode (if it supports 64 of-course)?

Thanks for the clarification, I hadn't really thought out the implications. It seems like there'd be some thorns doing it the other way too, but I've never used a program that does it that way. Are there other drafting programs that do it that way? Seems almost like damned if you do, damned if you don't: if you draw the (3-story) atrium wall on the first floor, but then have it print by "co-spatial components" on each floor plan, it starts sounding a lot like layers, with the exception that you have one "wall" (viewed as a bunch of identified co-spatial components) vs. a bunch of different walls, equivalent to your co-spatial components. The conversation started with seam lines in elevations: that issue could crop up or be solved in either of these scenarios... Given that one can copy/paste-in-place the wall on as many layers as you want, and probably even OIP them all simultaneously if it came to it, I'm not sure I see the value of the co-spatial approach. And if there is an advantage, could it be met just as effectively by having some way of parametrically linking objects on different layers? I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm mostly arguing the details since I like watching the devils run around. Oh, and it's educational, forcing me to think about the inner workings of VW more deeply. Keith When i worked with Microstation a couple of years ago we were told to work in this way, for example put all facade walls in a separate layer and make them the correct height spanning all floors, i think part of the reason was to avoid these 'lines' when generating elevations....i sometimes do this for external 3D renderings when building quick models in vectorworks, it's faster when there are several rows/columns of windows on different floors (the problem then often is to select and move a certain row of windows in the 'middle' (there is no way to toggle through several objects that are directly over one another in VW to select a certain one).

This might be an obvious one but, what is the difference between 32 and 64 bit, why don't all PCs/Macs work on 64 bit?

Doesn't it do this on restart? Yeah i'm also collecting a bunch of advantages apart from the fact that i'm tired of Windows!

This is excellent stuff guys! So again another advantage in favor of OSX?!

There's another thread about the same issue, perhaps this will help... http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=123621#Post123621

Thanks Carl i'll start testing with that next time! I usually export Jpeg, A3 size at 150 dpi..... That's the way i got it to work in the end, with a reboot to be sure... Nope, talk about essential info on a 3D CAD forum

Could we please have the added function of (total)area and perimeter in the tape measure tool.