PeterT

Raymond, Thanks for the input. I am not sure what OS you are on or what browser you use, but I am ona Mac, and using Safari, when I click on the left pane and try entering text, all I get is a bunch of alert sounds. And what do you mean by "FIND string works"? I do use the "View By Class" mode quite a bit, but for example, when I was trying to find the procedure for deleting a layer, naturally I looked in the "Layers" class, but there is no "Delete Layers" Procedure there. As there is a "DelClass" Procedure in the "Classes" class, it was not my first thought to look in the "Objects" class, where after much back and forth searching I finally realized that "DelObject" works for layers. My point is simply that until you know the name of the procedure you are looking for, it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Fortunately, the more scripts I write, the more procedure names I remember.

Is there any way to delete a workgroup referenced layer in a script? "DelObject(LayerHandle);" does not seem to work on referenced layers. I would also settle for removing the entire reference itself, but I cannot find any way to do that either.

For us novice scripters it sure would be great to have a search field in the VectorScript Function Reference. Most of the procedures I need are usually there in the Function Reference somewhere, but until I increase my procedure vocabulary I spend a lot of time hunting down the procedure I want because I do not know the name of it. If I could search for keywords, maybe I could find procedures more quickly.

Thanks, Sorry, I guess I was in a hurry. I just tested "SetName" and it works fine.

Is there a way to change the name of an existing layer in your document using Vectorscript? I do not see any "RenameLayer" procedure in the Function reference. There seems to be a "RenameClass". Could I use "SetName" using the handle to a layer, or does this procedure only work on objects?

Preferences are only saved when you quit VectorWorks, so if you make changes to preferences and subsequentally VectorWorks crashes, the changes you made to your preferences will not be recorded. The only way to be sure preferences are saved when you set them is to immeadiately quit VectorWorks, then re-launch it. Is it possible this is what is happening to you? Or are your preferences changing within a session without you having adjusted them at all, and without VectorWorks crashing?

This has also bothered me for a long time. Maybe Katie or someone else from Nemetschek could tell us why Vectorworks has to write something to a disk just to open a file. It would seem to me that nothing should be written to the disk until you save the file. I think it is common office procedure to eventually burn older files to a CD for archiving to cut back on the storage burden of the file server. In my office, we are constantly goiing back into the archives to look at older files. I seems an unnecessary burden to have to copy a file to the local drive just to view it, and then remember to delete the file from the local drive after viewing. I agree that CD's are "Read Only". But "Read" is all I want to do.

Check your preferences on both machines. Go to VectorWorks Preferences/Display/Adjust Flipped Text. Is this preference perhaps turned "on" on one machine and "off" on the other?

Just another word as far as the mini goes, if you plan on upping ther ram beyond what it comes with, it has to be installed by an Apple dealer, there are no user installable ram slots. It would be best to order the ram upgrade along with the mini.

As far as the toggle goes, if you just want to put a VectorScript on a Script Palette for double clicking try this one: SetPref(14,NOT GetPref(14));

Just as command "T" will not trim a round wall, command "J" will not join a round wall. Both of these commands should be implemented for round walls just as they are for straight walls. I have previously posted to this message board on this subject on 8-22-02, 5-9-03, and 2-29-04, so I guess this is my 2005 posting.

What do you have set for the "Image Quality" in the Print Dialog? We use the "Normal" setting on our 800PS and the quality is fine. For us, with the VectorWorks resolution set to 300 dpi(Preferred), setting the HP driver to "Best" quality only slows down the spooling to a crawl. I don't know what kind of drawings you plot, or what resolutions you require, but try experimenting with these settings and also the "Maximum Detail" checkbox for the best compromise between speed and quality. Before our HP 800PS we had a DesignJet 230 and also used MicroSpot's Raster driver. The HP driver takes some fussing with, but once we settled on the right settings, we feel the quality and speed are at least equal to the Raster driver if not better. Also, we plot over AppleTalk, but I don't know if that would make the difference. Best Luck, Peter

Hi Tom, I see what you are loking for. The "Set Attributes Default" for Patterns is a bit of a misnomer. It does not let you "set" the default pattern that appears in the attributes palette when you choose a pattern. It really just lets you edit the last 36 patterns in the palette to your liking. The first 36 patterns are fixed, and cannot be edited. This has nothing to do with which pattern appears in the fill graphic when you set the fill to "Pattern". The pattern that first appears is always pattern #3. It never remembers the pattern you had the last time you chose "Pattern". Maybe you should post this on the Wish List section of the message board. I don't see why VectorWorks couldn't remember the last pattern used, and save it as the default. This would be an improvement. You can certianly save a "Custom Attribute" as Katie suggests, but it would be nice if the last used pattern could be remembered in the palette, like the color is remembered when you choose "Solid" fill.

G-Pang, Are you saying that in VectorWorks 11, if you open a document, and only change the page orientation from portrait to landscape in the Page Setup and do nothing else, then choose "Undo", it will undo the page orientation change? And if you close the document without doing anything else, that it will ask you to save the changes? It does not do that on my machine.

As far as I know, it has always worked like this. We have been using this since MiniCad Version 5 or so. Regards, Peter

Adrian, Are you sure you are not using VectorWorks 11? I just tested the page setup in VectortWorks 9.5.3, 10.5.1, and 11.0.1 and the only one that fails to save a page setup is VectorWorks 11, at least on a Mac. This is definitely bad, and I assume it is a bug. The other way you can test it is open a document, do a page setup, change something in the Page Setup, exit the dialog. Now see if you can "Undo" the change. In VectorWorks 11 the message bar reports "No Undo History". You can also just close the file, and VectorWorks does not even ask if you want to save the changes. VW 11 does not see the Page Setup as a "Saveable" or "Undoable" event. I do not have this problem in version 9 or 10. The work-around is to do something else besides the Page Setup before you close the file, such as draw a line and delete it, or any thing else that will trigger the Save event. I hope Nemetschek will fix this in 11.1

David, Try this: First, turn on the VectorWorks Preference "offset duplicaions". Next, draw a locus at point B. Now option drag the locus to point C. Select you circle and choose Edit/"Duplicate". That's it. The Duplicate command will remember the last distance/angle of the option drag and your new circle will appear at point D.

Hi K, We also plot from Mac OS 10.3 and VW 10.5.1 to an HP DesignJet 800PS, and I have recently also had problems crashing. My machine was crashing when I invoked the print dialog when the 800PS was set up as the default printer. When I set the default back to our laser printer I could pull up the print dialog fine, but when I switched it back to the DesignJet as default, once again, as soon as I called the print dialog,...Crash. I resolved my problem by running First Aid and repairing permissions. While it was repairing the permissions, the log file was listing hundreds of lines of errors, all of them HP plugins or printing prefs. I don't know how they all got corrupted, but repairing permissions fixed it. Hope it works for you. Regards, Peter

Does anyone at Nemetschek see any problems with Mac users upgrading to OS 10.3.7 while using Vectorworks 10.5 or 11.0? Are there any video card, printer or other driver conflicts? Has 10.3.7 been beta tested with VectorWorks? Seems prudent to check before upgrading these days.

For B&W only, just put SetPref(10,TRUE); before the last END statement.

Hi David, We have pasted from MS Word to VectorWorks with success before, but it is not so easy. The most important thing is that when you paste, you must choose "Paste As Picture" in VectorWorks. This will paste a bitmap image of exactly what you copied. There are some oddities to be aware of though: Copy the text in Word in no longer than 11" lengths or the pasted image in VectorWorks will be clipped off at the 11" length. If you have a 2 page letter document, for example, copy and paste one page at a time. This 11" limitation seems to be true even if you format in Word for legal or longer. When you copy the Word text, be sure to copy the format as well, which in Word, is an invisible format marker following the text that is formats. If your page is full, sometimes this marker will be on the following blank page. If you try to copy text from the middle of a formatted text block, it will lose its format in the pasted image. Also, any format change in the middle of a text block such as a Font change or a Word "Style" change, or a different tab setting on one line, will give unexpected results in the pasted image. Even if it looks good in Word, when you paste it into VectorWorks, the bad formatted paragraph might turn blue, or might lose the right margin, or add a carriage return, etc. What this means is, you really need to scrutinize the image after you have pasted it to verify there are no anomalies. If you find anything looking not right, go back to the Word document and check the offending text for any formatting errors, fix them, re-copy and re-paste. All this said, with all these oddities, we have almost sopped using Word, and do most of our note strips right in VectorWorks text blocks. Of course, the limitations of VectorWorks text is that tabs have to be equally spaced, and you cannot do double justyfied text ( i.e. column format). But I would almost rather deal with the limitations of VectorWorks text than deal with unfriendliness and oddities of Word. I too, loved the days of WordPerfect, but with OS X, those days are gone. Hope this helps.

Already sent to BugSubmit. Thanks for verifying.

I have found that if I draw two non-parallel lines and then lock them, they will still join using the "Join" command on the Tool menu. This seems to be true in both VW 10.5.1 and 11.0.1. It would seem a locked object should not be able to be re-sized, even using the Join command.

I have the same problem as this one with the Templates folder, but I have found a work-around that may work for the "Standards" or "Workspaces" folder as well. I would like to use the Templates (Stationary Pads) that I have created years ago and keep on my network server. I update these templates regularly so keeping them on each work station in the individual VectorWorks folders is not practical. If I make aliases of each template on the server and put them in the Templates folder on my local machine, VectorWorks will not recognize the files in the "Use Document Template" pull down in the create "New" document window. However, if I make an alias of the entire folder of templates on my server, copy that to my local VectorWorks folder and rename the folder alias "Templates", VectorWorks will now open any of the networked templates. i.e. VectorWorks will not open alias templates in the local Templates folder, but if the Templates folder itself is the alias, it will open the templates inside. The only hitch to this is that the server must be mounted on the local machine before VectorWorks is launched in order for it to see the folder. Hope this works for the other folders as well. Regards, Peter

Is the pull down menu in the resource browser supposed to be alphabetical? In VW version 11.0.1, I noticed that symbol folders in the resource browser pull down menu are not all shown alphabetically. They are alphabetical in the browser display, but not in the pull down menu. Upon further investigation, I found that in the pull down menu, the folders are displayed in the order of their creation. This has got to be a bug, as it is certainly not that way in version 10.5.1. Version 10 had display problems of its own, which seem to be corrected in version 11, but now the folders are out of order. Stepping backward through nested symbol folders was much easier in version 9. I find the pull down menu that was added in version 10 to be cumbersome at best. But can we please at least get it to display correctly? PeterT Mac G4 1GHz, OS 10.5.3 VW 9.5.3, 10.5.1, 11.0.1 [ 12-03-2004, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: PeterT ]