PeterT

This is not true. When you edit a symbol by double clicking it you are editing the symbol definition, just like if you edit it from the resource browser. You should have the same options. I find it much faster to double click a symbol on the drawing if you have one, rather than navigating through nested symbol folders to find the symbol.

Please add a "Use this same action for all imports" check box to the Resource Name Conflict Dialog Box if the "Replace..." or "Do not import..." choice is selected. I just pasted 50 symbols into a file to replace them, and I had to click the "Replace" button and the "OK" button 50 times in a row. It would be nice to only have to click OK once. Also, it would be nice if there was a Cancel button so if you decide you don't want any of the choices you could exit the entire operation without 100 clicks.

This has been asked before in other threads, but why can we not get some LUMBER grading categories into the "Series" pulldown and some typical wood beam sizes into the shape and size selection of this beam calculator? The "Material" pulldown offers two timber choices, but really, has the Nemetschek team ever seen a wide flange beam made of wood? I guess they don't get out of the office much. I am sure there are plenty of people doing steel buildings, but there are also many of us working in Type V construction where the term "steel beam" is frowned on for cost reasons. There are a myriad of choices in this tool for Steel Shapes, Series, and Sizes, but not one for Timber. Why do they even offer the Timber Material choice? Could we not at least have a shape selection of "Rectangular Sawn Wood Beam", then a Series selection of, for example, DOC PS-20 (Visually Graded), and Size choices of say 4x4 to 4x14, 6x6 to 6x12, then an additional pulldown for typical lumber grades such as Select Structural, No.1, No. 2, No. 3? These are only US grading standards of course, but there must be something similar for other countries. Since you have 12 choices for steel beam series can't we at least get a couple of wood grading standards in there? Maybe the wood beam calculator could be in a separate Tab Pane, or maybe have two buttons for the Beam Properties, one called "Select Steel Shape and Material" and the other called "Select Wood Beam Size and Grade". It seems wrong to lump the wood materials in with only standard steel beam shapes from which to choose. On a side note, it would also be nice if the "pictorial representation of the configuration" would actually update to the correct picture of the configuration, rather than be stuck on the "Simple supports, concentrated load" picture.

Please add the "Symbol Options" choice to the Edit Symbol Dialog when you double click a symbol instance in the drawing. When you edit a symbol in the resource browser you get "2D Component", "3D Component", and "3D Wall Hole Component" and "Symbol Options" edit choices, but when you double click the symbol, you get everything except the "Symbol Options" choice. Why should the two dialogs be different, especially when they have the same name (Edit Symbol)?

O.K., I finally figured it out. You are right in part Nicholas. You do have to be in the sub-face mode of the Push/Pull tool, but the rest of it is just as important. Once you are in the sub-face mode, you have to first select the planar face you will be doing the subtraction with, then you must also select the 3D object you are doing the subtraction from. With both objects selected, now if you click on the planar object and hold down the option(alt) key and push in, you will get a subtraction. So to do an addition or subtraction from a 3D Object with a planar object drawn on the face of the object using the push/pull tool, you "simply": 1. Put your 3D object in a 3D view 2. Set the Plane mode to Automatic 3. Draw your planar object on the face of the 3D object (I drew a circle) 4. Activate the Push/Pull tool 5. Choose the sub-face mode in the mode bar 6. Select your planar object 7. Select your 3D object 8. Highlight and click-hold on your planar object 9. Hold down the Option/Alt. key 10. Push in or pull out your subtraction or addition It only took me two weeks to figure out how that tool works, now I will move on to the next tool...

Please add a "Selected Walls Only" checkbox to the Dimension Exterior Walls dialog. This way on a very complex plan you could dimension small portions at a time by selecting individual exterior walls. This command does not do too well with such things as courtyard plans or where you have multiple plans on the same layer. If you could isolate areas to dimension by selection, you could work around some of the commands limitations.

Here are some very basic wishes for the Heliodon tool: 1. Make it so when placed in the drawing by default, the entire heliodon object will be above the layer/working plane so Open GL shadows on the ground will render at the layer/working plane level without having to move the heliodon up in you drawing. 2. When the Heliodon is selected and you open the solar animation dialog, please add a daylight saving button inside the dialog. You can change the date inside to dialog, but to turn on/off DST you have to exit the dialog and check the box on the Info palette, then open the dialog again and re-animate to see the results. 3. When you export an animation to a movie, please allow us to save the export with the date of our choice, not just the 3rd day of the month. If the intention really is to only allow saving a movie one day per month, maybe you could make it the 21st rather than the 3rd, as the solstice is a popular choice when saving animations. Really, who saves animation of June 3 or December 3 anyway?

When doing a solar animation with Open GL and showing shadows on the ground only, here are some things to keep in mind: The shadows will render at the point of the lowest object in your drawing. If there is any object below your layer plane the shadows will cast at the level of that object. This includes the HELIODON object. If you place the Heliodon on the drawing in Top/Plan view, then go to a 3D Open GL rendered view with the checkbox checked to show shadows "On Ground Only", your shadows will project on some plane below the plane your objects are drawn on. Your objects seem to float in the air up above the shadows. If you go to a 3D wireframe view, choose front view, then use the Flyover tool, you will see that in 3D, the Heliodon object is contained in a 3 dimensional cube that extends below the layer plane. To fix this, just 3D Move the Heliodon up a few feet and the shadows will move up to the layer plane as expected. Since the heliodon can really be placed anywhere in 3D space, why wouldn't they make it such that the default placement of the heliodon would be somewhere above the layer plane/working plane? Or if not, maybe they could mention this vital piece of information in the Help system.

Why is it that whatever date I set the heliodon tool to render, if I save it as a movie export it will only save it as the 3rd day of the month. For example, I set an animation with shadows in Open GL for December 21 from sunrise to sunset, but when I click to save the export it names the file December 3, and when the movie is played back the time/date label on the animation also says December 3. Same for June, I set it up for June 21 and it gives me June 3. Is there something I am missing or does this thing only animate the third day of each month, no matter what date you set?

As an alternative you could use tab panes to get to more choices. The first tab could show choices, the second tab could show additional choices. Of course, If you want to add the choices one at a time and see them all at once, this alternative would not work.

I was a bit frustrated with this too, but once you know, its not as bad. In fact, in MS Excel it is similar, first you pick the line weight, then you click on whichever lines to apply it to. The excel interface is a little easier to understand though. Also, if you are just looking for bold perimeter lines, you can set a bold line weight to the worksheet object on the drawing from the attributes palette after exiting the worksheet and it will only affect the perimeter lines.

I would like to see a Class pulldown choice added to the Format Text dialog such that pre-formatting text would place the text block in a particular class when it is created. This would especially be good when saving text styles. Wall Styles and Slab Styles both have a Class pulldown choice, why not Text Styles? Currently, I have had to write Vectorscript menu commands for each individual text configuration if I want text blocks in certain formatting to be assigned to specific classes.

Hi, I am just getting into solids operations and the VW help seems to indicate you can use the Push/Pull tool the add or subtract from a solid using a 2D planer object drawn on the face of the 3D solids object. I have exhausted all possibilities on this, and the only thing I get when pushing or pulling is a separate extrude object, never an addition or subtraction. This is the case whether or not I hold the option (alt) key before the end of the operation. I know how to subtract solids using the menu command, or using the new automatic planes and Push/Pull mode of the 2D object tools, but not using the Push/Pull TOOL. The VW Help clearly says: "The Push/Pull tool interactively reshapes planar geometry, creating bosses (protrusions) or cutouts on solids by adding or subtracting volume from a solid." Can anyone enlighten me on how to create a "cutout" from a solid object using the push/pull tool?

I believe the Help links in version 9 point to the help file in your Vectorworks application folder, not the website. Have you removed the VWHelp folder from your Vectorworks application folder, or perhaps changed the names of any folders along the file path?

So I guess to try and understand it better, it seems you could say that DeleteResourceFromList only deletes the the resource from the list during the current running VectorScript, so you can perform actions on a custom tailored list. But when the routine completes, since the actual resource is still in the file, the resource will appear in the list again if you build the same list in a new routine. Does that sound right?

Thanks I will try that. But just curious, how can you delete a resource from the list without deleting the resource itself? If the resource is in the file, doesn't it have to be in the resource list somewhere? So I guess the next question follows. To get rid of the resource (from the file) do you have to both delete the resource using DelObject AND delete the resource from the list using DeleteResourceFromList? If not, then when would you use DeleteResourceFromList?

Can anyone help explain how to delete a symbol definition from a file? I have tried using both - DeleteResourceFromList (fldrlist,symindex); and -DelName(symname); and neither one deletes the symbol defs from the resource browser. Here is the subroutine that I thought should delete the symbol definitions using DeleteResourceFromList: PROCEDURE DeleteOldSyms; VAR fldrlist, numitems,symindex : LONGINT; symname : STRING; BEGIN fldrlist := BuildResourceList(16,0,'',numitems); FOR symindex:= numitems DOWNTO 1 DO BEGIN symname := GetNameFromResourceList(fldrlist,symindex); IF (symname = 'Old Symbol 1') OR (symname = 'Old Symbol 2') THEN DeleteResourceFromList(fldrlist,symindex); END; END; Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Callout text only rotates and un-rotates in VW version 2012. You would check the "Rotate Text" checkbox in the Object Info palette and enter the negative value of the plan rotation angle, and the callout text would return to horizontal. Or as Farookey says, you can also grab the handle out to the right of the text and rotate it manually. This does not exist in VW 2011 or before. You may want to add your computer/software version information to your signature so it shows in your posts. I am thinking you are not running 2012 yet.

We are on Macs and have never used Quartz Imaging since it was introduced. We have always set tabs in our text column blocks using the tab bar at the top of text blocks in edit mode. I find it very frustrating that as of Vectorworks 2011 you no longer get any tab bar when editing text if Quartz Imaging is not active. Previously set tabs hold and display properly, there is just no way to set them or adjust them without turning on the preference for Quartz Imaging, editing you text, adjusting the tab, then going back into the preferences and turning Quartz back off. Tabs worked fine in VW 2009 with Quartz off. This problem started for us in VW 2011 and has not been fixed in 2012. We prefer not to use Quartz Imaging because it greatly affects to look of printed text. Bold text gets so bold it is hard to read, and text underlines print at about 1 mil thickness. This is not acceptable to us, as we use bold text and underlined text in may places in our drawings. Why have tabs now become dependent on Quartz? I still can't believe this is intended.

I am running a script which uses ForEachObjectAtPoint, and it only seems to find objects on the active layer, even with traversal options set to all objects, and layer options set to show, snap, modify others. Is this as intended? It sure does not indicate this in the Function Reference.

Actually, you can make any custom unit mark you want in the "Units" dialog. You do this by creating a Custom Unit. In the Units dialog, scroll down to "Custom" at the bottom of the "Units" pulldown menu. In the "Custom Units: Length" dialog, name your custom unit (perhaps "CAP Milimeters" or similar), put "MM" for the unit mark, and set the "Smaller for Larger" section to "There are 1 Units Per Millimeter", and click O.K. Set CAP Millimeters as your current unit, exit the Units dialog, and all your dimensions should now display with the unit mark MM.

Nothing wrong with spell check. Continuos is a word... just not the one you want. continuo; (also basso continuo) noun ( pl. -os) (in baroque music) an accompanying part that includes a bass line and harmonies, typically played on a keyboard instrument and with other instruments such as cello or bass viol. ORIGIN early 18th cent.: Italian basso continuo ?continuous bass.?

odedya, I suspect your problem is that your VW 12.5 application is running when you try to open the 2011 file. That may be why you get the unrecognized file message. Have you tried quitting VW 12.5 on both machines before trying to open the file? Or have you tried dragging and dropping the file onto the VW 2011 app icon in the dock to open it? Also, you should be able to choose Open... from the file menu of VW 2011 to open the file in 2011.

It is not really that different. In VW version 2011, in the dialog you have to choose the setting of whether or not to replace your deletion with a locus. And also, it is here that you can check a box to "Always replace Symbol Instances with loci". In my experiences the ellipsis simply means you will be presented with an additional dialog box with additional choices, and the action will not take place until you respond to the dialog. Any menu command without ellipsis should execute immediately without any further choices. In VW version 2009 it was just a confirmation dialog, but they have added a few things to the dialog now...

I know this is a minor point, but shouldn't the "Delete" menu item in the Resource Browser have an ellipsis (dot-dot-dot) after it? Since it does not immediately delete the resource, but opens a yes/no dialog with other choices offered, it really should display as "Delete...".