[VectorWorks 2009 Autosave crashes on network]

I was having some saving issues with Autosave when it is set to XX minutes. Try changing it to XX operations instead. I remember it being suggested in another thread at some point. It seems to have worked for me.

KM

[Why are there lines on my Plexiglas in this rendering?]

Can you detail the viewport rendering settings you are using (perhaps a screen shot of the Object Info palette)?

I think you may find you need to use a combination of foreground and background rendering settings to achieve the look you want. Creating the object as a solid subtraction (an extruded surface minus the two holes as cylinders) is half the battle. The other lines are part of how Vectorworks sees the object in wireframe. The object will need to have a solid white fill and have a transparent rendering texture assigned to it (ie. glass clear texture).

Some rendering modes don't support transparency (ie. Artistic Renderworks). It looks like you have given the object a fill of none as a workaround and now it is rendering as wireframe. The rendering mode you choose for the background rendering settings may want to support "smoothing angle" as well.

KM

[Final Quality RW in viewport printed to Adobe PDF image quality low]

Interestingly I have had a similar thing happen in a file. I have two viewports on a single sheet layer, two different views of the same design layer, set to exactly the same render settings. One renders very clean, one looks pixelated. I checked the resolution settings etc. but they were all ok.

Very strange.

KM

[Improved Tool Consistency]

The dialog box is only when you are in a plan view (or perpendicular to the working plane). Since you are drawing on a flat screen there is no way to set a "Z" height into or out of the screen, so it asks with the dialog box. If you draw in an isometic (or other 3D) view, you get the 3-clicks you want.

As the others have clarified, its the overall sequence of the clicks. I would prefer to define the rectangle on the working plane and then give it a height.

I am not seeing the errors here. I double click on the Drawing Label or Reference Marker and they do open the dialog box. Are you running a custom workspace that started in a previous version of VW? If so, try editing it and remove the tools and then re-add them. Or try one of the standard workspaces and see if they work there.

My apologies with this one as I didn't explain myself very well. My comment is with respect to editing existing Drawing Labels in a drawing by double clicking on them, not double clicking on the tool to create new ones. I am so in the habit of double clicking to edit (it comes from years of using text objects as labels).

KM

[Improved Tool Consistency]

Hello All,

I have been a Vectorworks user since Minicad 5. I really enjoy using the program and have found it quite powerful for 2D work. Recently I started using a lot more of the features, especially full 3D modeling. Vectorworks 2009 was one of the things that encouraged this.

In future versions, one of the things I would like to see is a continued finessing of the tool consistency. Here are a few examples -

1) more consistency between 2D and 3D tools ie. the 2D rectangle tool takes two clicks to make a rectangle. For whatever reason the 3D rectangle tool insists on asking for a extrusion height first, instead of the first two clicks being the same as the 2D tool with the third click being the height.

2) more modifier tools that have select object first functionality (ie. like the Offset tool, which has a mode where the first click selects the object). This would be ideal for the Move Object, Mirror and Rotate tools, among others. Imagine choosing the tool, clicking on the object (or objects with shift selected) and then doing your action.

3) the ability to double click in an empty area of a drawing to choose the green checkmark action box that is used with many of the 3D nurbs tools (ie. shell solids, protrusion/cutout).

4) consistent double click editing across all plugin tools. The Drawing Label tool is a prime example of this. Why doesn't double clicking bring up a basic dialog with the four basic things you input (item number/drawing reference/drawing title/scale). Instead I get the mode bar error. The same is true of the Reference Marker tool. At a minimum double clicking could drop you into the primary field of Object Info Palette This was fixed with some tools (ie. leader notes) but not all.

My two sense for the future....

Kevin

[Rotate Around Hinge Line in 3D]

Thanks for the advice.

Mastering the Working Plane tool was a good workaround. The tool has confused me for some time now. It turned out it wasn't the tool that was confusing, but the demo instructions in the manual for the 3 point mode. I was following their selection suggestion and, of course, because they were selecting a vertical line first, every time I chose to look at the working plane the entire view would rotate 90 degrees, causing great confusion with navigation. Weirdly the select face mode for the same tool defaults to the same thing. Once I understood why it was doing that, I could select more intuitive points....

Now that I understand the working tool, and by choosing views while using the working plane instead of the ground plane as the base, its much easier to do what I'm trying to do.

That said, rotating around a pivot line would still be a great addition.

Thanks again.

[3D Snaps]

Thanks Jonathan. You are a great resource to the VW community.

The "Nearest Point on Edge" checkbox under Object Snaps seems to be the key. It is turned off by default and since I wasn't trying to snap to an edge I didn't think to try turning it on.

Kevin

[3D Snaps]

Have 3D snaps been downgraded in VW 2009?

I stumbled across a tech tip online where you could double click on Snap to Object to set a 3D snap preference. This preference allows you to snap to the centre of circular surfaces on cylinders among other things. It turned out the tip was for VW 2008. (I opened up my copy of 2008 and it indeed works)

The option doesn't seem to have disappeared VW 2009. I though perhaps it had been integrated into some of the other options, but I have not been able to get it to snap to similar points.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Kevin

[Rotate Around Hinge Line in 3D]

I would love an rotate option that allowed the selection of a rotation axis by choosing two points in 3d. Alternately the rotation axis could be chosen as a side of an object. I find myself often trying to fold shapes which is quite difficult with irregular planes that do not related to the XYZ planes.

[Need to bend a Cut Out]

Gerard,

Is "Skew 3D" a plug in or Vectorscript of some sort? Is it commercially available?

I have a project where I am trying to do a variation of Keola's problem.

Thanks,

Kevin