Amorphous - Julian

Thanks a lot Matt!

@klvanov thanks I am using VW2019 SP6. When does VW2020 SP3 come out? I don't want to upgrade till then. Can we add this for the next SP release for 2019 as well? @Luka Stefanovic Many thanks for the helpful tips to get get core thickness. I'll follow your instructions for Expert Formula when we get to 2020. I suppose sequence is counting from the top of the list, correct?

'let's sweep this issue under the carpet for another 3 years' Afterall... this question was only first asked by @Tom Klaber in 2017. How does it matter to revisit it in 2023?

Hi @JMR last when it we ran the script it worked perfectly. The converted objects will appear in the annotation space. I'll try it out again tomorrow.

I'd like my data tag to report wall thickness, preferably the thickness of the 'core' But browsing through the functions, this doesn't seem to be available. Shouldn't reporting wall thickness be something quite basic for BIM? Any help appreciated.

I actually also made a similar post in 2019 (not realising @Tom Klaber had put up a much more comprehensive version as above). I'm 100% on board this idea. In fact- we currently draw our walls as three layers in our VW model- 'Core' and two 'finishes' on each side. It's more complicated but gives us more flexibility to change finishes inside a room.

Thanks a lot @Boh

HI @Nikolay Zhelyazkov I have 300 sheets in my file. What is a quick way to uncheck all 'this titleblock is active' box in all 300 sheets? Today, a team member placed a titleblock on a new sheet, and that took 30 minutes. YES, 30 minutes to just place a titleblock onto a sheet.

Hi. This is a SERIOUS ISSUE. Our basic drawings can't even look correct or professional. And there is NO WAY for us to modify this. Is anyone from Vectorworks reading these posts at all, or am I just wasting my time posting here? With respect, it makes no sense for us as designers/architect who charges for the work we perform, to spend time here reporting software issues if no one has the courtesy to write back. Issue occurred again today, and screenshot below. We cannot modify the position of this callout arm.

As users subscribers of Vectorworks, I understand we may not be in a position to tell Vectorworks what to do commercially. So, may I ask just about the features that has been developed by Giovanni in SmartPaste? I can really see how these features helps with our workflow. Below you can find a video of us demonstrating the process to 'clean up' a file. That is, 'deleting a class' from our Vectorworks file. I recorded it on my iPhone, as 'screen recordings' via Quicktime do not show the 'spinning beach ball', which indicates 'processing'. Our computers have good specs, so the slowless is due to the large file size (2.2GB) and complexity. This cleanup process we'd do class-by-class: to make sure we don't accidentally delete the wrong things within a given glass, or reassign objects to a wrong class in the process. Hence, multiply the length of this video by 50 to get a sense of the pain of this process for us users. I would like Giovanni's SmartPaste tool, or something similar, to relief us from this pain. So, just speaking about this on a user-feature level, and not touching upon any potential commercial arrangements between Vectorworks and SmartPaste, can @JuanP please shed some light on whether these features may come in future versions? Thanks. Deleting a Class.mp4

[UPDATE 2 - 4/3/2020] Not long after saving v330, we recognised the project file is not the usual 1GB. So we are now reverting to an other version, and have to go through that archaic 'copy-and-paste' between versions again. Onto v331. In total, around 3 man-hours lost over this today. ... breathe.... stay calm.... 😉

In one of our project requiring ceiling grid, we end up modelling a panel and 'duplicate array' the whole thing, which was quite inefficient. Agree that it would be great to be able to 'profile' both the grid and the 'panels'.

[UPDATE 4/3/2020] Today, one of us had a file-crash during 'save and commit'. Upon reopening the file, there was an error message saying somewhere along the lines of (we didn't screenshot it): 'I.O operation failed... will recover as much information as possible... if you continue to open this file you may suffer from a loss of information...' Of the 3 of us working today, all of us lost information in the latest Project File. So, we had to copy and paste objects we modelled in our working files back into a new version- v330. We mainly worked in the 'model space' (design layer) today. So it's not too bad, as changes in model can be 'copied and pasted' to the new version. However, on days when we 'create viewports' or work on 'annotations' in viewports, such copy-and-paste between files is not possible/not easy, and losing 2 hours of work between 3 team members would be disastrous.

@JMR refer to the script I uploaded, and created by @Julian Carr on the 23/October in the following post, and you’ll find the script to do exactly what you describe

@JMR I haven't experienced the 'speed exit crashes' you mentioned. It is worthwhile getting someone from Vectorworks to look into your issue for you-? Because I may well be next to experience it. Our office uses Mac (client computers and servers). Do you use Windows? Maybe different platforms experience different problems with PS? Let's hope our reported bugs will improve Vectorworks, so it can become a stable program for all of us. This current period of pain will hopefully get us to stable project sharing in the future. [UPDATE 27/02/2020] After we removed all the 'auto-hybrid' objects from our file, which were were told was the culprit of our constant 'file corruption' issue, we got the 'this file is corrupt' alter during S&C again. Our PS shrunk from 950MB to 488MB. So we're now starting version v329.

Thanks @JuanP for the update. Exciting news indeed! I see that you mentioned 'REDSHIFT ready' is on the roadmap for 2021. Is there any roadmap to fully support REDSHIFT as a Vectorworks plugin beyond 2021? I would be willing to pay for the plugin.

Thank you for sharing your journey on the development of SmartPaste with us @GioPet. It would be a real shame if this great tool would come to an end just like that. @JuanP @Matt Panzer I see you guys as user advocates 😁. Since you seem to understand how we use Vectorworks- can you help investigate how we can get the features/functionalities of SmartPaste into Vectorworks? Seems like Giovanni has already done a lot of work in developing this tool. I'm not an engineer but I wonder if it would be that much work for your engineers to bring in what he's already done? Thanks guys.

If we define a 'hatch' to appear in a certain direction/orientation in 2D, its 3D rendering texture should follow the change. In an experiment, we found that even if we used the 'attribute mapping tool' to properly align the direction of the 2D hatch, this doesn't change anything for the 3D appearance. These two should match. (Note we created this with the slab tool)

Great thanks @markdd. Found it with your help. Very useful tip

Vectorworks sometimes let you skip alerts in the future, by checking 'always perform this action' in the alert message window. But say if I regretted that decision and want to revert it, how do I do so? An example is when you 'Group' something, and Vectorworks asked if you want all the objects within the group to change classes too. I said 'yes' once and checked the 'always perform this action' box, and now I regret having said it. How do I go back on this?

I miss seeing this kind of enthusiasm/excitement from people within Vectorworks @Jim W 😀

Since it's unlikely that Vectorworks will comment on this, can we invite @GioPet to share with us what happened? ( @GioPet I searched for your name on this forum to find you, and recognised you from the Logo icon on your profile) Cheers.

Thanks @JuanP, we look forward to some good news. But the way below is the 11-year-old Maxwell wishlist I referred to above, but forgot to link.

That’s really awesome to know @Diamond I’ll sign up to follow the news. I’m open to getting C4D + REDSHIFT for our office, but than everyone have to learn another software (C4D) just for rendering our models, it would be so much better if a REDSHIFT plug-in was available for Vectorworks directly. Lets hope the guys from Vectorworks will shed some light on this.