Kool Aid

Oh yes! This "bc" character is a nasty one and shows severe disrespect for others.

Sounds good! The Protestant VectorWorks only offers Salvation as long as you do not Distract from the Scripture. (Objects in VW are of point, line or path type. The Omniscient & Omnipotent Programmer defines the way you work. He or she is not necessarily Benevolent?)

That's Dusty Springfield: Wishin' and Hopin'! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAn3uQX7AGk

I am indeed. I've been a Practising Architect from before your mother was born and have programmed design systems before you weren't even pissing to your pants. Which is likely to be today or, at latest, tomorrow night.

Firstly, we need to be able to have the symbol locations listed (x/y/z). Secondly, we need to have access to every relevant VectorScript call. To illustrate this request: In this I assume that the insertion point of a symbol is stored as a POINT (x, y, z). Why can't we, in a report, use expressions along these lines: = SymLoc3D(x) = SymLoc3D(y) = SymLoc3D(z) I could be more ?scientific?, but I hope you get the drift. After all, we have the procedure GetSymLoc3D(h, x, y, z); A point-expression would do, too; = SymLoc3D.x etc. Thanks in advance! (Just don't forget the symbol instance angle!)

Monkey, I hear you loud and clear and fully agree. But VectorWorks is a road of workarounds, paved with good intentions, instead of yellow bricks. Nevertheless, the integration VW offers is of great value. If only they'd put up the price by 100% and make things work! I consider myself almost a landscape architect, too; at least as comes to large-scale landscape planning and as long as I have real professionals doing the difficult parts. What: I spent a good part of my best years doing slope analyses with colour pencils and cutting layers and layers of 10% grayscale Letratone with a scalpel, to produce background data for ecological analyses? Hey, do you want a Buffer Zone tool? It's on special this week?

Oh, they do indeed! Yet, a few carefully considered free-form features can make quite a difference ? as long as they are not ornaments (=crime) and are buildable. Our little, humble VectorWorks is, by the way, not a bad poor man's CATIA, as Steven Holl's Kiasma Art Museum in Helsinki shows. Kiasma

If VW 2008 works for you, why upgrade? But then again, you don't know what you may be missing??Buying a pig in a bag is not good, either? But then again, if you don't need to consider hiring more staff or increasing productivity, why bother. Skipping upgrades is good, because then you don't need to worry about learning new things? But on the other hand, quiet times are good for learning them. If you only have something to work on, to learn?? Skipping upgrades is bad, because things have changed so significantly. But who cares: the benefits are there, too? Overall and in balance: if you can pay for the upgrade, take the offer. If need be, go for specials at Sainsbury's and make coffee at the office for a couple of months.

But they have: with VectorScript, one can get the x/y/z -coordinates. So, it's there, but not available to you mere mortals.

I'm not against new features, but the DTM has very serious problems. It can't handle large data sets, it produces totally erroneus results even with perfectly valid data, its error handling is remarkably bad. First fix what is broken, then consider new features. At present, out of the box, the DTM works only if your terrain is of the type approved by NNA. It usually is not. Anyway, ?analyses? produced by a computer program are only a starting point and factual evidence for one's findings and real analyses. A computer cannot analyse anything, it only computes? The carbon-based biped analyses and draws his or her conclusions, maybe even produces a drawing. The crappy supporting images are, I think, quite sufficient. I'm also conscious of the price and, more importantly, the usability of the DTM module. We are talking about a module of a module of a low-cost, general purpose CAD-program, not a fully-featured DTM-program, used by dedicated specialists and then interpreted by other specialists. However, an easy (?) improvement ? and maybe a partial solution to the good professor's crayon problem ? would be, to me, to have the ability to define a reference level and colour scales to two directions (above & below.) Meanwhile, adjusting the contour interval may make a difference. Here's the St. Kilda Hill with 3m contours.

Couldn't agree more. However, there are mathematical problems unrelated to the issues I've encountered ? but a part of my problem is the wish to have slanted walls: they introduce another magnitude of complexity. How do you define the slanting vector of a wall that twists and turns, with arcs and splines? Is Gehry's solution ? CATIA ? the only one nowadays? Still surprised to learn that ArchiCAD can do free forms. It used to be the most painfully blocky CAD-program I have ever used (from 1990 to 1994, so my knowledge is not exactly up to date.) CAD was, I think, supposed to give architects more freedom, but the architectural scene in Finland (where ArchiCAD has the lion's share of the market) suggests otherwise. The best buildings are designed with anything else than ArchiCAD! And not ?modeled?, just ?drawn?. Of course someone has generated 3D-visualisations, too. There's a long way ahead!

A match? You need at least somehow equal parties to a match and I don't consider the talented Mr. Brudgers a contestant.

Let me guess: you are infuriated for the fact that the newest horse-drawn carriage by His Highness Sri William ?Dropadip? Gates, the Supreme Leader and Divine Possessor & Provider of Kool-Aid of your Cult, does not get Press. This is not a tragedy.

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders, Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail. It is telling that the few sacks of daily mail by yours truly are so prominently displayed. The meagre 22% (or so) of users from North America dominate this so-called Community Board. What little is left, is dominated by members of other English-speaking nations (thank you, WInston.) Do the resident residents from Western Australia represent the Asia-Pacific market (36%(? No more than I represent Eurasia (32%). Now, bare with me: (Sorry, I could not resist: an American correspondent used that expression many moons ago on the CompuServe MiniCAD-forum.) Architects represent some 60% of users. Thus, the Architect-component of NNA ?Integrated Products? development effort serves 60% x 22% = 13% of users. Boy, do they get Press for such a tiny slice!

Was I talking to you? Well, whatever. For my snide, judgmental comments I usually get paid something like 150 U.S. pesos per hour. As an Architect, I advice corporations, Government bodies and educational institutes on how to use their money; as an IT-consultant, other architects, planners etc. It is my business to know what is best for other businesses. Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that I do not really understand one-person operations providing services to private individuals. I don't mind long hours and accept non-billable hours, but there's a limit known as 24/7/52. In any case, I'm the last person to recommend upgrading software in on-going jobs; quite the contrary. The comment about licencing conditions was intended to somehow relay that, but obviously failed. The quiet periods between jobs, however, are ideal for learning and implementing improved functionality of new versions. The wording came from a recent message extolling the savings made from not upgrading. Since I do not know what you do for a living, I can't say whether the new versions are of (financial) value to you or not. I'll take the risk of being totally professional and honest: In recent VW versions there have been few compelling reasons to upgrade. The annual cycle does not appear to bring significant benefits for users. However, in two years the benefits are more pronounced. Skipping two upgrades makes the learning curve a lot steeper ? and the same applies to the cost. In a cash flow business you will want to spread the investment costs thinly over a period. At least your accountant will.

Ahh, but you and your employer are absolutely right! This is one of the many reasons why one should not use symbols as such at all, only parametric objects, if coordinates are important. I think I have somewhere a half-baked parametric object for the sole purpose of coordinates: one can use a symbol in it, but it does little else. And all this only because the talented programmers in Maryland, U.S. of A., can't produce a simple worksheet database function??

Incidentally, the Helsinki Zoo is the coordinator of the Snow Leopard breeding programme of Zoos and thus in charge of the protection of this endangered species. http://www.korkeasaari.fi/service.cntum?pageId=130954

Back to my promotion (2008-2009), I never had to return 2008. And as it turns out I never installed it either. Great going: think of all the money you've wasted or not earned by not taking advantage of new functionality. Anyway: the VW licence seems to allow the licencee to keep all the versions he, she or the Corporation has purchased and not transferred or otherwise relinquished. I'm not a lawyer, but anything else would be unacceptable.

This is a possibility, but only when you are in control of all the symbols you wish to include in the report and accept the funny look. Of course modifying the symbol definitions in this way is also scriptable? Looking at the script I posted: it must be quite nebulous to a non-scripter and I have duly slapped my wrist with a ruler. The lines after the word CONST refer to program constants. (How am I going to navigate out from this nebula? Engage: warp speed! ) The phrases between the single quotation marks in the said section are to be replaced with the names you use: the record name & the field names. For better or worse, the script attaches the record to every instance of each symbol, but as you say, one has to run the script or menu command every time and that is not likely to happen! Now, VW is a quite capable spatial information system program (GIS), but implementing all the crucial features is not exactly easy. For your information, the LOC(ation) function of VectorScript uses the insertion point of symbol instances. If you have eg. polygons that have names, you can perform tasks, including worksheet database reports, based on LOCation. Nebulously yours, Kool Aid, a.k.a. the Sanity Clause. EDIT Did the script actually work? I'm surprised?

Seriously Petri. You can do better than this school-boy stuff...must be an off day. I did not introduce pissoirs into this ?discussion?, you did.

Sorry, no. Thus, you haven't produced any art, although you have all those unfinished model aeroplanes hanging on the walls of your room.

Maybe your export settings have been changed? Make it as simple as possibe, including being in Top/Plan view and no viewports or sheet layers. Yes, I know you knew this. Biting off the heads of a few kyklingar and spreading the blood around is the next step. It seems I've not done any ACAD-exports in SP 4.

Surely That AutoCAD LT Version can read files of an Earlier Version? In 2D?

Sorry. You have to take care of the piss in your head yourself.

Thank you for your excellent contribution to the subject matter. Now we are so much closer to having elliptical/oval walls.