Kevin McAllister

One could also assume that Nemetschek's group of programmers are also focussing on Vectorworks 2010, including its Snow Leopard compatibility, before they will be looking back to 2009...... KM

I think it could be made with some nurbs objects. I've discovered that mastering nurbs is all about practice and learning how the tools respond. When I first started trying to reshape in 3D space it was a bit of a mind bender. I may give it a go over the weekend to see how possible it is. What size of bed do you need it for (width and height of the headboard)? KM

Were any of the troubled objects generated by mirroring? I have had some mirrored objects misbehave, especially when exporting. KM

From what I read in a review of Snow Leopard from Macworld, their Non Disclosure agreement expired last night (August 26) at 6pm. I suspect NNA was probably under the same NDA.... hence no formal comment until today. KM

Thanks Ray. This is good information to have. Clearly VW2009 is not compatible at the moment. Something I would not have wanted to discover after the fact. KM

I must admit I'm not entirely clear on what the "ribbon" interface is, but I do agree with a lot of what Chris is saying. While I wouldn't say its broken, there is a lot of duplication and room for streamlining and improvement. I customize my palettes so the tools are arranged horizontally across the bottom of the screen. I have done so for many version of Vectorworks/Minicad. With my OS dock across the bottom as well I find its efficient for most mouse movement and increases the usable space for the object info palette and navigation palette at the side. Screen real estate is at a premium when you are on a laptop. I used various workaround over the years to achieve this as the palette interface changes. Right now I find that the palette borders use up a lot of extra space. (My current experiment involves stacking the closest 3D equivalent tool above the 2D tool. My work is quite varied, so dividing the tools into categories as VWs does is not that efficient.) Additional duplications include the object info palette and properties dialog, which are almost but not quite the same as I discovered recently. And even I have fiddled with scripts to try and make the prime preferences Chris mentions accessible from the tool palette (black and white is another). Kevin

I discovered something new about this the other day. If the symbol is the only thing selected, a custom move dialog appears when you use the move command (VW 2009). I think that dragging only works in top/plan view. I see that you are using Vectorworks 12, so dragging may be the only option for you. KM

Here are a few thoughts based on my own experience of importing DWGs. Hope they help. You can choose to centre on import (primary setting>model space in the import dialog). This should help with this problem. After years of bringing in Autocad layers as Vectorworks layers, I finally switched to bringing in Autocad layers as classes. I would suggest you try the same. When you delete classes to clean up the drawing, you are given an option to move or delete the objects within that class. So the scattered objects can be brought together into one class or reassigned to other classes, instead of being deleted. Also, classes can be quickly grouped by using the dash ( - ) within the name of the class, so in the class drop down menus they nest cleanly. Usually this means either objects within the symbol in a class that is turned off (may not be likely in your case, since you are importing layers), or that there are loci (Autocad points) in the symbol. Often the points are the WCS/UCS 0,0,0 of the block. Try Vectorworks>Preference>Display and turn Display 3D loci to Always. Hope these suggestions help. Kevin

I have had the best results with DWG or DXF. I suspect you may be able to edit a Vectorworks generated PDF to some degree (especially if its generated by the export PDF option), but I haven't experimented with this too much. KM

This is a good question given that Snow Leopard is shipping on Friday. Will the current version of Vectorworks 2009 run without problems under Snow Leopard? Will Vectorworks 2010 be Snow Leopard ready out of the box? KM

Is it possible to list the starting and ending co-ordinates of an open 3D nurbs curve in a worksheet? I can find functions for the centre x,y,z co-ordinates, but not for end points. I have spent some time looking through the archives and it sounds like it may require writing a script to feed data into a record to do this. Thanks, Kevin

As far as I can tell the length values are for the true length in 3D. I can verify this in two ways - 1) Draw a nurbs curve in plan view with a few points. This creates a nurbs curve with no Z value. Duplicate it. Edit the duplicate by moving some point in the z direction only. Both curves look the same in plan view (ie. the plan lengths are the same) but in the properties dialog the one with a Z value is longer as expected. 2) I had a colleague import the file into Autocad. Using the list function it returns the same length values I am getting. His understanding is that the length shown in the true length, as everything in Autocad is 3D.

Yes, I wondered the same thing. Wasn't sure if I should add it to the wish list or report it as a bug.... KM

I should have searched the archives before posting my question, though there is an ironic twist. So if you right click on the nurbs curve and select "Properties", opening the properties dialog, it shows the length of the curve. I had always assumed that the properties dialog showed the same information as the Object Info palette. Clearly a bad assumption, though I suspect its a common one..... KM

Is there a way to find out the true length of a nurbs curve in 3D space? I thought for sure this could be done in Vectorworks but I am at a loss to find it. I need to figure out the time it will take to travel along the distance of a curve I've drawn. Thanks, Kevin

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

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

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

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. 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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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