Kool Aid

Of course: ?lost?. Well, losing a piece of hardware can be easily covered with insurance. At worst, there'll be a cash flow situation.

Umm? Home market ? the 22%? I never answer to stupid questions: that I leave to the Mad magazine. I'm not snappy enough. The replacement cost of a lost or stolen dongle is, of course ? in terms of US users, who are all on social benefit schemes, as it appears ? huge. Maybe tens of your pesos. Dear me! But indeed: should NNA abandon the ?home market?, the 78% of users would get their software cheaper as they would no longer need to subsidise the unprofitable home market.

Hmmm, indeed. The replacement cost of a lost dongle is, here in the civilized world, in tens of US Pesos, ie. nothing. You see (as I've tried to explain), it is worthless, unless the Thief also manages to get the entire serial number.

No guides, no books, I'm afraid. Ms. Janis Kent used to publish Manuals and I seem to recall that her latest one about VW 8.5 had a section about VS. VectorScript is based on Pascal, which is out of fashion. (My guess is that the reason is that William Gates III never progressed beyond Basic, so there's no Visual Pascal for Appications, only the spaghetti of Basic.) The information sources are - VectorScript Language Guide in the Help System; it assumes knowledge of programming - Vectorlab (http://www.vectorlab.info/index.php?title=Main_Page) - VW Developer Network (http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=Main_Page) ? the VS Function Reference that ships with the progam is pretty much useless - the VS Mailing List by NNA, from which I have been banned for too many times to be bothered any more Us Old Hands ? well, we have the advantage of having had access to MiniPascal and VectorScript programs before the time of Vice-President Robert Anderson, the Sheriff of Texas, Maryland and Nottingham, who locked all plug-ins. Only a couple of months ago I made changes to a plug-in originally written by Richard Diehl himself! (Rich is the Founder & current President of NNA and the former owner of a Toyota Celica from the 1980s?) For you, it'll be hard work. Even harder than to someone like myself.

I don't see SetName here. Be it as it may, object names are a minefield and an extremely useful part of validation and data normalisation. Also, I believe, a moving target. Whatever: for a valid result, you have to establish a unique object name, Set it and test that it has been applied with GetName. If you get "none", "None" or an empty string, keep going and generate new name candidates eg. with a integer loop.

This is truly kool for those of us who work with walls! I've found out that functions of the categories GetComponent | SetComponent (& InsertComponent) accept both wall styles and wall instances for both source and target, as applicable. The documentation leads us to believe that they are for Wall Styles only, but that is misleading! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Yours, Stimpy PS Oh, bugga! Now I have to revisit at least 30 scripts?

Maybe, but most definitaly you haven't got a clue about the issue at hand. Your Sweet Lord, Sri Bill Gates, has dafidantly not resolved the lexical issues about 3D CAD and BIM translations. Difadyntla not.

Most definately. Does your mother possess either?

definately Eediot-speak for "definitely". One of the most common moronic misspellings http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=definately Your mother shoud know, dear Mr. Moron

Indeed. For a short period I was a MiniCAD reseller. Under the then-present implementation in the country in question (no dongles), I was asked ? not once, not twice, not? ? if I could split the invoice as Tom, Dick and Harry were going to pool their resources to buy a (1, one, single) copy of MiniCAD. At least they were honest. I've visited firms without even the first legal copy, but with 10 to 20 users. Nevertheless, the US market of VW is only about 20%. (22%?) My assessment is that even if no-one in the US would buy VW, the price for the rest of us would not go up by any significant factor. In all likelihood, we'd get it cheaper, because we would no longer need to subsidise that minor market. Not to remind you of the fact that the piracy of Belorussians etc. is supported and made possible by Americans. I think we'd get VW cheaper if it weren't due?

So, in the US, the possibility of theft and piracy is the driving force of sales. Fascinating!

Another vote from the North Pole. The core issue here is called ?the lexical problem?: each program has its own lexicon, into which, somewhat incorrectly, but in a relevant fashion, yours truly includes handling of alphanumeric data. Syntactic issues are solvable, lexical aren't. IFC is an attempt to provide a uniform lexical system, in which each program can use its own syntax. However, this approach must operate at the Lowest Common Denominator principle. If, say, OmnibusCAD can't handle NURBS and ScalarWorks has an ingenious, but proprietary, NURBS system, the programs can only communicate with 3D-triangles. So, a NURBS-surface is deconstructed into 3D-triangles ? but there's no way to reconstruct a NURBS from those. It just fell off the wall and all King's men and all King's horses? Be it IFC, DWG or any of the fancy, unintelligent 3D-formats. Each conversion loses any high-level data created by the ?better? program. Conversions become mumbling conversations and hand-gesturing? (For the IFC-experts out there: yes, I know there are budding features? Going to keep breathing, though.)

Exactly! We were also expected to leave a gap? In fact, the gap was expected not to be exact, but one that conveys the idea and intention. The problem is that computers & software are totally autistic and don't have any intelligence whatsoever. Even if they would, no perceptive capabilites. Anyway: a good set of rules and a thin white line could be drawn around each pseudo-intelligently drawn edge. Easy (?) for simple shapes and basic elevations, but not quite as easy in other situations. Ahh, the good old drawing board and the times when architectural drawings were art! (After over 20 years of using various CAD-programs (+Photoshop etc), my wife has gone back to the drawing board?)

The immediate problem has now ? having been properly stated ? found its solution. A closely related issue is that the ObjectVariableInt 124 (break mode in PIOs) does not do anything when Set. It is supposed to control the Wall Break, but nothing happens in a PIO. I might just as well have tried to Pick Lamp when there's none available. No, I have not bugsubmitted this, because every time I bugsubmit something related to VS I get either nothing or a message telling that ?we do not support custom scripts?. In fact, the last 200+ bugs I've submitted have had no replies. Anyway, I would like to have my PIOs behave: if they are supposed to be inserted on a specific edge, to create or not create a wall break or to be ignorant of walls altogether (yes, I am aware of Charles Chandler's Event at Vectorlab), I want my instructions to be followed. At least when the documentation leads one to believe that the current XYZZY does something.

This has been fun! Not sure of any valid results yet as there are Interestig Issues, but I'm optimistic. I somewhat underestimated the effort and overestimated my spare time for today. It may well be that my Window tool does what I believe is the issue at hand only on Saturday, not Thursday as my previous Vapourware-announcement stated. Nevertheless, here we have three instances of my Window object. From left to right: 1. The sill i(bottom) s above the designated sectioning level 1. The designated sectioning level is between sill height & window head 3. The window head (top) is below the designated sectioning level http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/1311/almostthere.png There are Reasons for graphic oddities. I know how to solve this, but the Current Solution I know is inelegant and therefore not satisfactory. It has merit, though. Andrea, I have no idea why I had not thought of this before! Thanks again!

Can anyone tell how to find out on which edge a symbol or PIO is inserted? Not in documented object variables, as far as I can see. EDIT Ha! Got it: http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=VS:GetSymbolOptionsN has an example script.

The VW dongle in the EU is not what you assume it'd be in the U.S. of A. Works fine: you get a replacement in less than 24 hours for a fistful of Euros. You chose to make an argument about something you don't know about. That, unfortunately, is not my problem.

So, it is immaterial to get reliability? What is material is to remain a devout Windows-adherent? OK.

Dear me ? this profound ignorance of a Homo americanus: a distant predecessor of H. neanderthalis. The Dongle is the only know means of preventing software theft. So why are you so upset? The replacement cost of a dongle is in tens of US Pesos. A stolen dongle is useless, unless the serial number is also stolen. Even the combo is commercially next to worthless, because the thief cannot upgrade. In an office of 200 licences, there only needs to be one network dongle. There are even plans for travellers. Can you perhaps provide proof that Americans, the nation of champion levels of criminality, is immune to software theft?

After some research: no, I don't have an alternative. But why should I? Only because you want to be able to use pirated, stolen, cracked software? What is your problem with crime prevention?

Methinks Master Brugders confuses price with functionality.

I believe the MacOS RAID-functionality does not require such arcane knowledge of Scripture.

Will it be available on Thursday? In my system I believe it will.

I think I'll implement this into my Window object on Wednesday.

Well? Cloud computing is an option. But such concepts are not viable: one may want to use VW in South Pole.