Andrew Bell@NV

Those objects predate parametric objects, and viewports, and I think even by-class overrides, as does the decision to force lines in hidden line rendering to solid. The (intended) behavior certainly could be changed, but needs interface consideration (we don't want to break old files that depend on the old behavior), etc., and thus would be an enhancement.

Walls, pillars, floors, and roof faces can show as dashed lines in plan view, but show as solid lines in 3-D views.

Vectorworks intentionally forces objects with dashed line styles to draw as solid lines in hidden line, so objects can have a dash style in plan view but show as solid lines in rendered views. So the backdoor you discovered, allowing class styles to avoid this change in viewports only, was not intentional. An ugly workaround, at least for your example, is to duplicate your underlying viewport, set the duplicate to hidden line, update, convert to group, and then enter that group and change the line styles to your desired style. Of course that won't update automatically. I've added an enhancement request that links to your post and pic for Vectorworks to have more flexibility in allowing dashed lines in hidden line, possibly as a Line Render Option.

If you really want a touchscreen VectorWorks pad, there is the Axiotron Modbook.

You can still buy a new computer with Windows XP, and it is still the most widely used OS in the world. You haven't been able to buy a PowerPC Mac to run Vectorworks on since August 2006. NNA doesn't want to drop support for older hardware and OSes that people are still using, but continuing to do so hamstrings the newer versions (as newer versions of tools and libraries aren't supported for the old OS), and takes lots of development and testing. At some point it's no longer resource-effective to do so, and Apple's decision to drop support with Snow Leopard is pretty much the death-knell for the PowerPC. And as the owner of one of the latest Intel Mac Minis, I can tell you they run Vectorworks quite nicely.

No. I am saying all the service packs for 2008 were generally bug fix upgrades, not additional features like the old .5 releases (which could add bugs.) And NNA promotes the upgrades based on new capabilities, not bug fixes. The only possible exception I can think of is Parasolid, but that was also promoted as faster and that it would allow us additional capabilities. I'm not saying anything about NNA's level of support for older versions, I'd say that's unchanged. The original poster implied it had changed.

I'd say it's quite the reverse. Now NNA has yearly updates with only bug fixes, rather than major and minor releases approximately every nine months. New features introduce new opportunities for bugs, and now there are fewer of those opportunities . Also, Parasolid licensing means NNA is paying more for a more reliable solids/surface modeler, rather than less for a cheaper but less reliable modeler. But as always, if bugs are hindering you in your work, report them to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net.

A coworker of mine said that SP2 was 82099. If it's 82613, it should have a fix for that problem then. (Note, however, that *that* fix causes a problem with stretching walls in Rotated Plan views. We have a fix for the bug caused by the fix, but it's not released yet AFAIK.) Even us NNAers are running into confusion with these version name changes...

The recent files list is a list stored by VectorWorks, not something linked to the actual files. Use the File Open dialog to look for your files and they should be there.

The bug is still in SP2 (build 82099, unless I'm much mistaken), but should be fixed soon for VW2008.

It is a bug, but the workaround is fairly easy. Put 3-D locus points in the symbol at the top and bottom endpoints of the wall, and the wall hole-cutting code will use those to determine how to break the wall.

I made the mistake of going into Costco recently. I walked past a 65" LCD, 58" plasma, 52" LCDs, 50" plasmas, 46" LCDs ... when I finally got to the 42" LCDs, they looked so *tiny*.

Yes, iMacs work well with second monitors. You will need a mini-DVI -> DVi converter (unless the new Macs have changed), which will cost around $20. I've hooked up my 17" Core Duo iMac to a 42" LCD TV on occasion (at up to 1920x1200). You can either mirror the original display or have a separate one. The VW 12.5.3 release should hopefully solve the Leopard/VW interface issue.

I do, but that's because I pull Dave's out instead of mine.

There is an active bug for this issue, so we have several files we're already looking into. The odds are good the cause of problems with those files is the same as with your file. So if you haven't sent it in already and would find it difficult, you may want to hold off.

There is a bug with entering wall distances via the databar and the horizontal/vertical constraints on subsequent segments. This was introduced while making changes to support 3-D editing of walls, and will be fixed in the next bug fix release. I apologize for the inconvenience.

While multithreading could be a significant performance improvement, NNA has a finite number of programmers each with a finite amount of time, so everything has to be prioritized. Writing multi-threaded programming is challenging to write and even more challenging to debug, and until fairly recently would only benefit a relatively small number of users, while risking adding bugs and perhaps even slowing the code for the remaining users. So other improvements took priority. With dual core, quad core, and even eight core machines becoming more common, NNA will probably consider raising the priority of making multi threaded code. Before that, however, it's best to see if there are improvements that can be made that don't require multiprocessing, as those will benefit everybody. Hidden line, for example, was significantly optimized for VW2008.

Can you buy a copy of OS X Tiger off the internet (ebay or the like)? You should be able to set up a multiple OS install, so you can switch to Leopard when you have a compatible version of VectorWorks. Amazon.co.uk has some folks selling it, or you could look to ebay or the like.

There should be a fix in the next service pack for this issue. My apologies for the inconvenience.

VectorWorks 2008 is a 32-bit application, so it is still limited to 4 GB or less (probably less), regardless of the OS. Certainly VectorWorks will have to go 64-bit at some point, but I couldn't tell you which version will do so.

Can you isolate the objects that misrender and send me a file?

2008 takes advantage of multiple processors for RenderWorks rendering and a few other things, but there's still quite a few things that could be rewritten to use them but aren't yet. With the growth of dual and quad core chips, and dual processor machines, I'd expect this to become an increasing priority for NNA. There's no specific limit on the number of processors it can make use of that I know of, and it's unlikely any future changes would have a specific limit. VectorWorks is a 32-bit application, and thus can address up to 4GB of memory. Windows and OS X both have limits somewhat below that on the upper limit a 32-bit process can actually make use of, but that number is specific to the OS version. I don't think VW 2008 will run on any OS that has an upper limit of less than 2GB per process, so that's typically a good amount. Someday the computer world will switch to 64-bit OSes and applications as the standard, and no doubt VectorWorks will switch with them, but NNA hasn't announced any sort of schedule for when this might happen. That would raise the upper limit to 16 billion billion bytes (more bytes than currently exist on all the computers in the world now, probably), so the limits will be on how many slots a computer has and how big memory chips you can buy.

Do you have a sample file for this?

You might also send the file to tech support with an explanation of the problem. That way we can use it to help us try to optimize performance. I did some viewport optimization recently that will show up in a future VectorWorks release, based on a user's submitted file.

Robert, you can even make it shorter than that, as VectorScript allows one-liners: SetPref(9, NOT GetPref(9));