PeterT

Sorry, I meant to say "Make Untitled 2 the active window" and import "Symbol Folder 3" into "Untitled 2", and then look at the contents of "Untitled 2" Basically, just make a file with folders 1, 2, and 4 in it, and import a folder named 3. It does not work properly.

I have found what appears to be a bug in importing symbol folders from one file to another and tested it on 2 different computers one running VW 11.5.1 on Mac OS 10.3.9 and the other running 11.0.1 on OS 10 3.8. Here's the problem: Launch VectorWorks and create 2 new blank documents. Lets call them "Untitled 1" and "Untitled 2". In Untitled 2, in the resource Browser, create 3 new symbol folders. Keep the default names, "Symbol Folder 1", and "Symbol folder 2", but change the third name to "Symbol Folder 4". Now, in Untitled 1, create a folder called "Symbol Folder 3". Next, make Untitled 1 the active window, and in the resource browser, select "Symbol Folder 3" and import it into the active document. I would hope to find four symbol folders in Untitled 1 named 1, 2, 3, & 4. What I get instead is symbol folders 2 & 3 and a third blank folder that cannot be renamed or deleted. Can anyone else replicate this?

When setting up Custom Page sizes for th 800 PS, be sure to subtract the width of the plotters hard margins from the size of the page. Defining a page larger than the plotter can actually print will give unexpected results in my experience. For 24" x 36" Landscape prints to a 36" roll for example, we describe the custom page as Height 35.4/Width 22.75. You can get the hard margin sizes from the plotters user guide. Hope this helps.

Just make a duplicate of your source folder before doing the batch conversion, and choose the duplicate folder as your destination folder when doing the conversion. You will get a warning that the destination folder contains VectorWorks files and that they may be overwritten. This should overwrite all the VW files to version 11 and leave the other files alone. Good luck.

Hi Katie, Thank you for responding. I repaired disk permissions, restarted my Mac, and immediatly launched VW 11.5.1. I drew two rectangles, locked them, selected one of them, and shift clicked on the second. Still no selection. I also searched the Apple Knowledge Base with such key words as "locked objects", "selection of objects", "multiple object selection" and found nothing related to the issue I am reporting. Isn't the locking of objects part of the VectorWorks interface? How can this be an operating system issue. I have many VectorWorks versions on my Mac, and testing on the same operating system (OS 10.3.9), VW versions 9.5.3, 10.5.1, and 11.0.1 all allow the shift selection of multiple locked objects. Only version 11.5 does not allow this. Doesn't this imply the issue is with VW 11.5 and not OS 10.3.9?

In VectorWorks 11.5.0 and 11.5.1, when one object is already selected, shift-clicking on a locked object will not select the object. I tested this in VW 11.0.1, and multiple selection works fine with locked objects. This seems to be a bug in 11.5 only.

Hi David, We do not use annotations for these sheets, so I have not encountered this. I presume that you mean your solid fills turned to solid white, the default background color. I think you do, however. have some limited flexibility. You can select your solid fills, and on the attributes palette, change them to any pattern, or if you want, to solid foreground (the third pattern from the top left) and they will default to solid black. Once again though, I guess if you want your annotation fills to be other than a pattern, or solid black, or solid white, you will have to turn off layer colors.

If you don't use colors in your drawings, as we do not, there is a slick way of doing exactly what you want. Activate the document preference for "Use Layer Colors", create a layer link as you have done, and in the "Layers" dialog, set the line color of the layer your link is on to whatever shade of grey you like. We do this with excellent results. We have our "Base Plan" layer set to black lines and grey fill, and our "Screened Base" layer (the linked layer) set to grey lines and white fill. For the Floor Plan sheet we display the "Base Plan" Layer. For our Foundation Plan, Framing plan, Electrical Plan sheets we display the "Screened Base" layer. Once you are using layer colors however, you cannot set individual colors in you drawing. So if you draft a la autocad, with many colors displaying in your drawing, this technique is not for you. You can , of course, toggle "Use Layer Colors" on and off to get around this. (i.e. draft in color, then switch to layer colors when you print)

Barry, That would be great. Check your private messages. I will send you my email address.

... and Organize/Layer Options must be set to "Show/Snap Others", or "Show /Snap/Modify Others"

Barry, How do you access that script? I downloaded it fine, but it seems to be encrypted and importing or running it only yields a VectorScript Error.

We have the same printer, and this is the way it has worked for us all along, it has always displayed the user name, not the job name. It would be nice to see the job name, but I guess I never thought about it. We have always just kept track of the order each user spools the files, and then pulled up the print cue on the plotter to see which user's print was due up next.

Right you are, bc, Larry, and ccroft. It seems to be intermittent. I just quit both applications, then relaunched both, then accessed help, and it seemed to be working fine this time. Nemetschek ought to address this though, because something that "sometimes" works is not really working at all. VectorWorks has a large enough user base on the Mac, where the Safari browser is default, that this must be a bit annoying to more than just me. Thanks all, for the input.

What is the final word on the Help menu using Safari? I have read a previous post on this issue, and half the people said it worked fine, the other half said it did not work. I am on Mac OS 10.3.9, using Safari version 1.3(v312), and accessing help using the pull down menu in VW 11.5. Help loads fine, but none of the links work. If you click the contents tab on the left frame and navigate to a subject, nothing happens when I click on it. Same thing for the Index tab. Clicking or double clicking a line item does nothing. There is also a "Display" button at the bottom of the frame. Clicking on this while an item is selected does nothing either. Everything described above works fine if I use Explorer, with the exception that there is no "Display" button at the bottom of the frame in Explorer. What is up with this?

Have you tried SetDrawingRect? Is that what you you are looking for?

Hi Delmer, Maybe I was not clear enough. I am not talking about grabbing an witness end point an dragging it. I am talking about grabbing the dimension text itself, and sliding it down the dimension line to reposition it. (such that if you were then to check "auto position text" in the object info palette, the text would return to the center of the dimension line) If you do this to a rectilinear dimension where the witness lines are of equal length, holding the shift key allows you to slide the dimension text along the line with the line constrained relative to the dimensioned object, and the resize cursor and screen hint slide right along with the text you are moving. Now, draw a horizontal dimension with unequal witness line length (let's say you pull one witness endpoint 10'-0" up and the other one 10'-0" down, so they are on opposite sides of the dimension line.) Now if you hold the shift key and drag the text, the screen hint travels along the lin between your endpoints and the resize cursor detaches fron the text you are dragging and travels along the dimension line even with a line perpendicular to the path the screen hint is taking. It is hard to describe, but it is just funky. Whe you drag anything else in VectorWorks, wheather you are resizing it or moving it, the cursor and the screen hint stay with the object you are dragging. You never have your screen hint moving diagonally while your cursor moves horizontally while neither are touching the object you are dragging. And with "Full Screen Cursor" active, I have never seen any action where the cursor does not stay at the intersection of the "Cross Hairs" when you move the mouse, but it does in this case.

Starting with version 11 holding the shift key down while dragging a dimension will constrain the dimension along the dimension line. This is a great new feature, but there seem to be some bugs when the dimension witness lines are of different lengths. If you constrain a dimension with different length witness lines, you have to move your mouse diagonally across the screen to move the dimension. Or actually, it is the screen hints that move diagonally, but the cursor moves at a different rate than the dimension you are dragging, so neither the cursor or the screen hint are anywhere near the dimension you are pulling. It is really hard to position the dimension where you want it. Furthermore, if the "Full Screen Cursor" preference is chosen, the cursor "cross hairs" move diagonally across the screen with the screen hint, while the dimension you are dragging remains constrained horizontally, and the resize cursor stays 90? off the line that the screen hint is moving along. If this description sounds confusing, it is equally confusing performing the action. This can not be by design. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?

Have you tried VectorWorks Preferences/Edit/Full Screen Cursor? Perhaps not what you are looking for, but maybe it will help.

Sounds like an "Origin" issue to me. The drawing origin must be in the same location of both files if you want objects to "land" in the same place when pasted from one file to another. Go to Page/Set Origin... and set the origin to "Drawing Center" in both files before cutting and pasting.

I think the translation always goes back three versions, so you should be able to open a MC6 file in VW9 too. Just for this reason I keep copies of version 8,9,10,11 loaded on at least one machine in the office. We still have some older files in version 5 that we sometimes need to open.

Using VectorScript you could pretty easily write a script that would update the Data Stamp. Then if you wanted, you could attach it to a saved view so that when you chose a view it would update, or you could create a print command that would update every time you chose Print. But I don't think there is any way to make it update on its own without doing anything. Try posting to the VectorScript section of the message board and see if anyone might know.

Oops, I think I just realized I am inserting into a string, not a text block. Maybe I will try SetText to get the information on to the drawing. Any comments still appreciated.

Hi, I am trying to write a script that adds a user entered number to the end of a specified text string found on the drawing. The Message() line I put just before the Insert() line returns the correct values for the variables plndig and plnlbl, but the Insert procedure is not inserting plndig after plnlbl as I wish. I am not at all familiar with using DYNARRAY of CHAR variables. It seems I can interchange STRING and DYNARRAY of CHAR variables without errors, but I am a bit confused on the whole thing. I get the script to compile, but it does nothing to the "FLOOR PLAN' text block. Can Anyone help with what my code is missing? code: PROCEDURE NumberPlan; VAR plnnum: REAL; FUNCTION PlanNum(lblhndl: HANDLE): BOOLEAN; VAR plndig:STRING; plnlbl: DYNARRAY[ ] of CHAR; objtype, flrpln: INTEGER; BEGIN objtype:=GetType(lblhndl); IF (objtype = 10) {if a text block} THEN BEGIN plnlbl:= GetText(lblhndl); flrpln:=POS('FLOOR PLAN',plnlbl); IF flrpln<>0 {if text block contains 'FLOOR PLAN'} THEN BEGIN plndig:= Num2Str(0,plnnum); {Message(plndig, plnlbl);} Insert(plndig,plnlbl,11); {insert plan number after 'FLOOR PLAN'} END; END; END; BEGIN plnnum := RealDialog('Enter the Plan Number', '1 '); ForEachObjectInLayer(PlanNum,1,0,0); END; RUN(NumberPlan);[/code] Thanks for any input.

The Northern California VectorWorks User Group (NCVG) meets at the Oakland AIA office usually once a month. Contact Steve Ogburn at ogdesign@pacbell.net to get on the email list. All the other user groups can be found at: http://www.nemetschek.net/support/usergroups.html

If you are not using different colors in your drawing, another thing you can do is turn on the "use layer colors" preference. This is what we do for roof plans. We put the roof base plan on its own layer and set that layer to the grey of our choice using layer colors. This file is saved as a roof plan template file, so we do not have to keep setting up this layer color over and over. Regards, Peter