Kevin McAllister

Definitely. And beyond that, shouldn't numeric values (ie. the offset distance with the offset tool) show up when you tab through the heads up display? KM

Ha. I remember that debate. Mike, if the oval tool draws an accurate ellipse as you say (and as I've always assumed), its an "Ellipse Tool" and technically doesn't do what the original post asks for :-) Kevin

bcd, I originally started there, but the pleats of the curtain object taper to a straight line along the top edge of the curtain, so the resulting corrugated material is thinner at the top than at the bottom when viewed from the side. Did you find a way to get around this? Kevin

True enough. In my case I had already done both those things. KM

The end result of my explorations were pretty successful. The original file size was about 37.2 mb. By rebuilding the 3 symbols and purging a few unused ones I brought the file size down to 13.4 mb. That's a huge savings in a file that only has vector based geometry. The leading culprits were actually generic solids. Some of the geometry had been brought in from a Parasolid file and imported in that form. The geometry was pretty simple and easily rebuilt as extrudes, shrinking the file size. Kevin

I was trying to find a way to improved the efficiency of a 3D corrugated material I modelled for a project. Along the way I discovered some things I though I would share in case they are helpful to others. The main tip is extruding a NURBS curve using Tapered Extrude from the Modelling Menu and setting the taper angle to zero. I bet many of you have tried using Extrude with a NURBS curve and gotten the illegal objects error message. For whatever reason, Tapered Extrude works. This approach is slightly simpler than using the Loft Surface tool. The resulting Tapered Extrude is pretty efficient and when converted to NURBS forms a single surface. Kevin

I've been dissecting a file to find out why its so big. The file has no textures, bitmap graphics or viewport caches. Essentially its all 2d and 2d vector based objects yet it is 25mb in size. I started deleting things with a test version of the file to see what objects visibly affected file size. It turned out that the majority of the file size could be attributed to 3 symbols (about 16mb). It was a great learning experience and let for me to wish the following - - all resources displayed in the Resource Browser should have a size associated with them. - when high size geometry is created using various functions Vectorworks should give you a warning. Vectorworks file sizes seem huge at times and mine are only small design projects. I can't imagine how big the file for a 10 story building might be. Kevin

Are your layers set to different scales? If they are, Vectorworks will only let you modify ones in the same scale as the active layer. I would try posting your file or a screen shot, it might help you to get proper advice. KM

I would love this. KM

I did a little experimenting and was surprised by the results. Is your PDF still a PDF Page in the Object Info Palette? My tests showed that a PDF only shows up as a blank rectangle in OpenGL and Final Renderworks unless I ungroup it. When its ungrouped the bitmap part seems to convert to a low res proxy but then its visible in OpenGL and Final Renderworks. Kevin

I wish for proper support for text lists in Vectorworks, including - support for bulleted lists support for numbered lists the ability to control indent between the bullet and the text the ability to control the indent in relation to the bullet on the second (and any additional) line of text when the first line wraps onto more than one line) support for Vectorworks Text Styles within the list framework support for text lists within Callouts the ability to use Markers as bullets The irony here is that the support forum can easily do lists :-) Kevin

Tad, I think this is actually intentional. Vectorworks assumes the elements on the duplicated layer are related and want to be in the associated Viewports. It would be a nice thing to bypass at times (ie. hold down a modifier key to disable the auto linking when creating a duplicate layer) but I'm not sure I would want it to go away.... Kevin

Jim, I think there is a problem with non-US versions seeing the updates. As a Canadian user, I've downloaded both service packs for VW2012 myself, since "Check for updates" doesn't see them. As an observation, Nemetzchek is generally inconsistent as to how the service packs are released. Sometimes they are announced in these forums, other times in a Vectorworks Dispatch, sometimes on Planet Vectorworks and sometimes I hear from my distributor. The announcement never seems to happen consistently across all sources at the same time. It would be great if there was a standardized way of announcing them. Kevin

I've often suspected that certain crashes are caused by the Autosave. Especially when the system hangs while rendering Sheet Layer Viewports. But its not a behaviour I've been able to replicate to file a bug submit. KM

I would tend to avoid moving the origin ever. Files seem to do weird, non-repeatable things after doing it. I always move the objects relative to the origin instead. You will also soon discover that the 3D origin is fixed, it is only the 2D origin you are moving anyway. Ultimately the only way I've found to clean things up is to cut and paste into a new file. Depending on your file, this may not be a quick process. Kevin

Please, make the rendering progress bars accurate and useful. It doesn't reflect anything remotely close to reality when rendering viewports. The bar is often all the way across and rendering isn't complete. Please also add the progress bar to the Dock icon on a Mac. Kevin

I totally agree. I think I may have actually bug submitted this behaviour..... Autosave needs a general overhaul anyway. It always seems to be in the way with the dialog popup. I also think it often causes the system to pause at the end of rendering viewports. As a Mac user I would prefer if full Lion versions / autosave was enabled in Vectorworks. That way Vectorworks would reopen into its last state automatically.... Kevin

That's pretty cool. Although I always wonder why Nemetzchek chooses to put toggle keys on the right hand side of the keyboard since most people would prefer to keep their hand on the mouse for efficiency.... (I know you can probably change it but...) Kevin

I agree. I think it would still be an elevation. Its somewhat subjective. As an example, if you drew a car in Vectorworks facing forward when you choose Front view it would be a true front elevation of the car. If you then rotated the car 45 degrees and chose Front view it would be a front elevation of the model space or scene, but no longer a front elevation of the car. To complicate things further, Vectorworks 3D space is a sort of cheat anyway. Since it doesn't incorporate perspective in the working view like other programs, all lines are parallel as you rotate the model adding to the confusion. Using the example above with the car positioned at 45 degrees and knowing the Front view doesn't include perspective, I agree with Bruce's observation that Front view is not a 3D view but actually a 2D projection. Kevin

The problem is that screen plane currently has better snapping. Snapping in 3D has improved a lot in VW 2012, but its not perfect yet. Once that gets sorted out things will be easier. I still use screen plane a lot for guide lines to make 3D objects. The OIP also needs improvements for 3D (true positions). As an example you can't easily set the centre of a 3D object to 0,0 in top view unless you group it first. Once grouped, you can set its position in the OIP. It sounds like the tape measure tool is still stuck between worlds. Kevin

Ride, Canadian customers use the same version of VW as US customers. SP2 (or SP1 for that matter) never showed up when VW checks for updates. I downloaded it from the online link. You can find it here - http://www.vectorworks.net/downloads/ServicePack.php?major=2012&servicepack=2 Kevin

Ha I know. For whatever reason the Callout Tool doesn't seem to retain the last used settings like other tools. Perhaps this is a bug.... KM

This is a great question! I am also curious if you can make the tool default to marker -> callout position instead of callout -> marker position. KM

Hi Chris, Sorry to hear about your disappointment. Call me naive, but I would have thought with an installation that big your local dealer would be right in there with proper information and support up front. I recently doubled my RAM from 4GB to 8GB and as you say, Vectorworks is not taking advantage of it. The single core problem is a big one. Vectorworks would likely breath new life into itself by taking advantage of multiple cores. Even my laptop, which is a three year old Macbook Pro, has two cores. A new version that took advantage of that could extend its usefulness instantly. I think it behooves Nemetzchek to start talking with users about these issues and giving us a road map for the future. That way we can make good choices about current and future hardware purchases. Thanks for posting. I hope you get your challenges sorted. Cheers, Kevin

I had this happen twice yesterday. Both times, the problem continued when I chose "Save As" yet the file still saved even though I was given the warning. After each occurrence I restarted my machine and found a Vectorworks temp file in the folder along with the original file. Upon deleting that, things returned back to normal. I have seen this happen before but usually when the original file is moved or changed as bcd mentions. In my case, nothing was moved or changed, which makes me think this may be something different entirely.... Kevin