[surface hatches not lining up with open GL]

I made the following post, and just realised this issue has been raised before by @clint29 and @Kevin McAllister.

If these issue still concerns you gentlemen, please do vote it up.

 

 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

[UPDATE 13/03/2020]

 

The following issue has been bugging our file for over a year now. 

 

None' class will erratically - after save & commit- turn its default line colour to green. It is always this same green. 

We can go months without this issue, but it suddenly came back again recently. 

It is quite difficult in PS situation to change the settings of a class like 'none'. Because it is commonly used by many others on the file and causes a permission issue. 

So this becomes one of those 'weekend file admin' things I come back to the office to do. 

[Can Multiple People work in the same viewport Annotation concurrently?]

I am not entirely sure about permissions related to 'viewport annotation' in 'project sharing'

 

If we have three people wanting to do different things in a viewport, say:
1 - one is tagging walls, and;
2 - another is dimensioning the plan, and;
3 - another is tagging the doors

Can all three people be in the viewport at the same time? 

If so people can concurrently work in a viewport, then when does a viewport require 'checking out'?

[Force Select Design Layer Objects when inside Annotations]

Say you are annotating (in annotations).

 

And then you realise, 'Oh, I need to edit that thing before I annotate further' (be it dimension, etc).

 

Normally, you'd have to exit annotation, click back into the design layer to edit. Once done- click back into sheet layer, and then back into the annotation space to continue where you left off.

 

By the time you're done with all those mouse clicking, entering and exits, you would have already forgotten what you were doing before. 

Much better if we can 'force select, and edit' right from inside the annotation space, and once editing is done, click 'exit' to re-enter annotation space.

[Toggle Shortcut : Display Lineweight as Colours]

I see, good to know! Hopefully someone at Vectorworks will pick up this suggestion. 

[Toggle Shortcut : Display Lineweight as Colours]

@markdd I'm still on 2019 (Waiting for 2020SP3) so haven't used the new/advanced features of Data Visualisation yet. 

When I posted this I did wonder whether Data Visualisation can do this. 

Would data visualisation be able to give a one-click solution to toggle between the two display modes?

[Toggle Shortcut : Display Lineweight as Colours]

It would be so good, if, with one shortcut button, we can display ALL lines in the document AS colours.

 

So, regardless of class, we can have:

0,05=RED

0.13=GREEN

0.18=YELLOW

etc etc etc (customisable)

 

We should be able to access this on both Sheet Layers and Design Layers, so we can check for lineweights at any time. 
 

 

[Could we modernize the Extrude Along Path command?]

Please integrate some functions of this Vectorworks Plugin into it:

http://www.vectordepot.com/VM-042/Mouldings Manual.pdf

 

Very important to consider how it looks in TOP/PLAN view. We don't need messy wireframes. We need plan-friendly objects. 

[Data Tag- How to Report Thickness of Wall]

Hi Pat, thanks for writing. In our instance, it turned out the issue was leaving the referenced 'Survey' layer (DWG linework) hovering over our 'Proposed GA' layer in the viewport, which contains the wall objects. 

When we turned off the referenced 'Survey' layer, then the wall tagging worked again without issue. 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

52 minutes ago, Tolu said:

You said the Walls are missing in the Viewports. Are the Walls also missing in the model space? 

 

Yes, missing in the Viewports and also Model space. Otherwise we won't be doing 'copy-and-paste' from a previous version back into here 😆

 

This is another wall that went missing. Our team member tagged this door (door 20, type G) just a couple of hours ago tonight. After a few rounds of S&C the wall is gone. 

He's given up and will continue tomorrow. 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

Another viewport with another wall just disappeared (let me be clear, it is a viewport. We don't change our classes here)

As you can see, we tagged a wall here previously. The wall has now disappeared.

We are now copying the walls back from a previous version. We are not imagining this. 

10:44pm now here and I was intending to issue this drawing set. But we will no longer meet this deadline. 

 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

12 minutes ago, Tolu said:

This looks like classes are turned off in that specific Working File.

 

This is taken from a VIEWPORT. 

 

All my walls that are masonry are on THE SAME CLASS.

 

No, the classes were not turned off. Here's another screenshot viewport of another viewport I didn't post up. 

 

 

Sure, I didn't know about the 'filters'. But me and my team know something as simple and checking if our classes are turned on before we spend time making a post.

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

15 minutes ago, Matt Panzer said:

 

@Amorphous - Julian,

The Filter popup is set to "Invisible Classes" in the video.  This may be why they disappear from the list when you make them visible.

 

13 minutes ago, Tolu said:

Hi Julian,

The screen recordings you provided show that you have class filters turned on. You are only showing invisible classes.  

Your classes are not disappearing.

 

Never used that function before... thanks for pointing it out. I'll let the team know

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

[UPDATE 2 12/02/2020]

 

Things keep going missing throughout the day. Walls disappearing on one terminal but not the other. 

 

Frustrating as hell. 

We are onto version v336.

 

[Data Tag- How to Report Thickness of Wall]

@Luka Stefanovic in one of the viewports, the Wall Tag with the above mapping seems to work just fine (we do Data tagging in Annotation Space)

However, in anther viewport, the Wall Tag doesn't pick up on walls (does not show highlight in red), but rather wants to tag other non-wall objects. I get the following

 

I'm not sure I completely understand the question, and the available choices.

message:
 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

Lately, with all the issues we go through, I can't stop asking myself....

(1) If I didn't run this practice, and haven't already invested/committed so much time and resources into Vectorworks, would I work in an office that uses Vectorworks?

(2) Weighing everything up, does Vectorworks aid, or hinder, my work?

(3) Is it unrealistic to expect Vectorworks to become a snappy, responsive, efficient & stable program? When may that happen?

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

[UPDATE 12/03/2020]

 

Something strange happened with one of the terminals today. 

 

We noticed some walls disappeared (only on that terminal), and after searching for classes, all classes then disappeared (see video) in the navigation panel. 

 

We then tried opening the file again, When we look at the 'classes'. They start disappearing one-by-one (see other video) in the navigation panel. 

 

Then, other terminals also had 'all classes disappear' upon refresh (see screen shot)

 

Onto another version. Many hours wasted. 

 

 

 

 

[Data Tag- How to Report Thickness of Wall]

Thanks @Julian Carr for helping out on this one. The above formula changed to 
INT([Component.Thickness])
Will give the desired result

[Data Tag- How to Report Thickness of Wall]

Hi @Luka Stefanovic I'm wondering if there is anything I can add to this formula that will give me the decimal places I need?

[Data Tag- How to Report Thickness of Wall]

Hi Luka. Really appreciate the detailed instructions you provided... worked brilliantly!

Except for one thing... I now seem to have too many decimal places 🙂

 

What should I do if I want it to be rounded off at 0? Thanks. 

 

[Assign class to a plant]

Thanks for the quick response on this @Frank Brault, but it is simply too much work to do this for every plant we input into the document, especially during design phase when we are exploring different design options. 

To be Frank, this problem applies to everything from Plants, to Furniture Objects, to Technical Drawings symbols. 

On another post, we discussed a tool called SmartPaste by @GioPet, which has since been discontinued. I wonder if Giovanni can share with us whether his tool can help with a situation like this too?

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

[UPDATE 2 10/03/2020]
 

All terminals on v333 suddenly couldn't save to server. 

The Project File suddenly seems to be locked up for some reasons. No one can save and commit without this error message. 

 

Onto version v334 now. 

 

[2021 Architecture Wishlist]

Just now, jtempleton said:

@Amorphous - Julian how do you deal with windows in this scenario?

 

Haha I think I just beat you to asking that question. As above, empty openings. It is very cumbersome. 

[2021 Architecture Wishlist]

1 minute ago, CiaMariaPia said:

I'm evolving toward the same approach because of the time/effort I've spent trying to get styled, multi-component walls to clean up properly at intersections and to accommodate the multitude of small variations in wall thicknesses my projects seem to have (lots of old, existing walls).  Could you help me understand three things about this approach:

 

Hi @CiaMariaPia I'm glad that others are seeing similar problems with current Wall Styles. Hope the engineers at Vectorworks take note. 

 

2 minutes ago, CiaMariaPia said:

1.   Is this an approach you take for rendering or are you able to use the same model to generate floor plans?

 

We generate floor plans from this as well. But honestly it gets very messy and cumbersome. Think about how it works around doors and windows. We generally create two empty opening around doors and windows for it to all make sense (one on each side)

Problem arises again when we need to move the doors and windows. It is very slow. 
 

4 minutes ago, CiaMariaPia said:

2.   How do you handle the physical appearance of the wall in a "Plan" view?  The axonometric sketch in the Wishlist response seemed to have voids within the wall at various intersections.  Do these show up in your plan views or is there some way to suppress/hide that inner linework?

 

Very well pointed out. This makes our plan drawings look weird.

 

We'd love to have an approach that balances between 'modelling', 'architectural drawing' and 'rendering'. But this doesn't really exist in VW as it is now. 

There has been other posts that talks about this. In particular about stone/tile/wall joints, I will link them in later. 

As for your question about plan appearance, what we do to suppress it is to cover over it in annotation space. 

 

6 minutes ago, CiaMariaPia said:

3.   Do your wall finishes have real thickness (3-5/8" for brick, 1/4" for ceramic tile, 3/4" for wood, 0.001" for paint, etc) so that the "core" matches up to the structural core plus airspaces or does the finish have a negligible thickness so that it disappears inside the wall line when plotted?

 

Depends at what stage you're talking about. It makes sense at concept stage to just allow for a 50mm finishes zone, which takes care of everything from 'Decorative wall panelling' to 'screed + adhesive + stonework'. 

We control 'renderworks textures' with 'classes'. So by changing the class of an object we can very quickly change the appearance for the purpose of design exploration. A wall with no build-ups makes more sense at this stage. 

 

Later, towards design development, we can then have different wall styles that show the real substrates, material thickness and hatches.

 

IN CONCLUSION

 

Our method is not ideal, it is only to 'work around' the counter-intuitive nature of 'Wall Styles'.

 

Hence, if VW can change how 'Walls' and 'Finishes' works, per post by Tom Klaber and myself, we save ourselves the pain that you pointed out in your three questions. 

[Ongoing Project Sharing Issues: A record from one issue to another.]

[UPDATE 10/03/2020]

 

Today we had another PS issue. Onto version v333.