geoform

Does Vectorworks work with PDF readers other than Adobe? I recently moved to an office that uses a program called "CutePDF Editor" which they support/update, and they don't use Adobe Reader at all. I tried exporting a drawing but Vectorworks didn't recognize the CutePDF program. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. I told them Adobe Reader is free to install and maintain, but I suppose the IT department see it as yet another program they have to watch over and redundant with what they already have. I just need to make the case that I need Adobe Reader and nothing else will work (if that's true)

Jim; Thanks for your timely and accurate answer, that did the trick.

I'm running VWX Landmark 2014 sp2 with Renderworks. The installation has been fine until about a week ago when I noticed all of the thumbnails for my resources were appearing as aolid black blocks of color in the resource browser. The resources themselves (plant symbols, title blocks etc.) work fine when placed in a drawing, and the descriptions show up when I switch from thumbnail view to list view in the browser. I tried looking for a setting in my Vectorworks preferences dialogue but didn't see anything obvious. To rule out anything I might have missed, I tried doing a reset on the preferences but no change. This happens whether it's a new drawing or a previously created file. Then I noticed the same thing was happening when I opened up VW 2013. Maybe this is a tech issue, but I thought I'd start here to see if it was something obvious (to anyone else)

Actually, it's even simpler than that: Just click to start your circle (in radius mode) then enter your circumference remembering to enter your unit mark (" or ') and then enter the forward slash to divide, and finally 6.28 (2 pi) so if you had a tree with a 36" circumference DBH it'd look like this 36"/6.28 Then just hit enter to lock in the length No need to hit TAB at any time if you're just working with Length (it's the first entry and by default anything you type after clicking once to start your circle will automatically be entered in the "L". or... You could use the existing tree tool in Landmark, then enter the DBH in the Object Info Pallette (using M5d's formula to yield diameter instead of radius) or just place all the trees first, then go back in and select each tree and enter the data. J

Sorry, that last note didn't come close to answering your original question! Assuming everything's running correctly with your program, it could be a few things: Either the layer you're importing to is set to lower than 100% opacity (Don's suggestion above) or: You have some of your plant classes set up to be greyed. or: Something's funny about the import process (settings?) in which case I won't be much help. I'd check the first two by looking at your class settings, and of course your layer opacity. However, maybe you could try importing again into a new blank (non-template) document which has all the default settings intact. If that still ends up grey, then it's probably something with the way you're importing, or the import file itself. There shouldn't be a problem with versions (ie, you're importing a symbol file from an earlier version of VW), but if you're importing symbols from another drawing instead of a symbol library, maybe there's something set up at the other end that's causing it. I doubt it's anything like that though. John

I adjust the layer opacity in a lot of situations, but when you do that, the plant tags are also greyed out to the same level as the rest of the layer. That's fine if you're trying to screen out that entire layer of information, yet leave it visible enough for reference. However, sometimes it's nice to have all the plant tags fully black and only the canopy plants grey. In that case, it's a little trickier since turning off or greying any of the classes such as plants-color fill or interior line, or even outline will also affect all the other plants. Maybe there is a way to turn off classes on a per-layer basis. I'll have to look into that though. John

I'm planning on buying a version of the Hand-lettered style font called "Graphite". And faced with the choice of either Truetype or Opentype format, I thought I'd better get some background by reading any related posts on the boards here. Most opinions seem to suggest Truetype fonts have been the better (more stable) choice in Vectorworks. But I just did a few experiments and found Opentype seemed to work pretty well, and might actually work better for me. Here's what I tried: Using "Annotate Viewport", I entered several lines of text on a Sheet Layer, then changed the font on each of the text lines to a variety of fonts I might normally use. Some were Truetype and some Opentype. On the screen, both looked fine and appeared without the "empty block" rectangles which show up when a font isn't happy. Then I exported the sheet to PDF at 300 dpi, using both Rasterize and Non-Rasterize Text settings. I discovered that on the Non-Rasterized PDF, Opentype fonts showed up with sharp edges/outlines with no aliasing even at higher magnifications. But the Truetype fonts (at least the few I was using for this test) didn't show up at all. In the Rasterized sample, all fonts showed up, but had obvious aliasing on edges at medium or higher magnifications, (but would still probably be fine for printing). I should point out that this was a very limited test. For one thing, I'm on a PC, and I didn't try printing directly from a sheet layer. Still, this convinced me that getting an Opentype font was probably a better choice. At least for me.

I have a few plant symbols that are showing a sort of ghost symbol inside them, like it's somehow associated with a completely different symbol, so when the plant is selected, you can see the orange outlines of the other plant object briefly. This happens whether the plant is in mass planting mode or not, yet the ghost symbol never shows up on the plan. I've gone into the edit 2d symbol screen and actually stripped away each of the layers by selecting and dragging each of them off the center of the plant, yet I couldn't find any evidence of this other symbol. And I made sure that while I was doing that all the classes for the plants - components - etc. were set to visible. This was an ornamental tree symbol provided in the Vectorworks resource library, but I had duplicated it so the original symbol is still safe). This has happened to a few other symbols, and I think it was happening to me before I updated to 2013, so I don't think it's anything with 2012. Other symbols I've duplicated/modified or even totally created from nothing seem to be fine. My best guess is somehow I've assigned the plant to two different symbols. I have only a handful of plants that I've assigned symbols to, but I don't have them in any central library, they're just sitting in whatever drawing file I happened to be working on then they were created. So I open up a new drawing and all I have in the plant pull-down menu is the 10 or 12 standard plant symbols. I mentioned that problem because it's been vexing me for a few weeks, but really, it leads me to my main question: I simply want to delete the symbol from the library(s) and start over with a new symbol for that plant. I haven't used this symbol in any other drawings, and it's the first time I've ever used this plant in a drawing as well. So hopefully, there shouldn't be any repercussions. What's the best way to get rid of this symbol, but not the plant definition?

I'm interested in a solution as well, but I think a bit more clarity is in order. First, it's rarely the case that knowing the perimeter of a landscape bed area will automatically yield the bed edging required. This is due to beds being located next to walkways, building foundations, etc. Ideally, the bed edge would be calculated independently. Bed edging can be done in a variety of ways, and with a variety of materials. In some cases, an edge is nothing more than a clean-cut trench between the lawn and a planting bed, so there would be no material to report, but the length of the edge would still be important for labor calculations. On the opposite end, it could be what's referred to here (USA) as a "mow strip" which is usually a brick, stone or even poured concrete curb. These elements might be more like the hardscape objects (although it's still unclear how to get the border only, and then to get a linear foot report) However, I think Bert70 is referring to a middle category where the edge is a strip of steel, flexible wood, or vinyl, so there's no square footage to speak of, only length. I've been using a poly line to indicate these edges graphically on my plans, but haven't yet thought about adding them into a report. Of course Vectorworks knows the length of each individual line, so it would seem like creating a special class for the edging would be a good start. I just don't how to get it into a report from there. Since these beds are also part of a site model, probably NURBS curves are a better way to go. They'd need to be surface-hugging.

I'm pretty familiar with the color palette manager, and know I can create my own color palette, etc., but up until now, have been starting from scratch with each new drawing. Obviously the 2d plant symbols have their own colors, and while I have made quite a few changes to the plant symbol colors, I'm not using any overall system of coordination so often a plan will have an unsettling mix of color intensities, discordant hues, and show other signs that I really need to stop and set this up before I go much further. I'm wondering more about the process of creating a coordinated set of colors. Vectorworks seems to allow good control over just about all the variables, but there doesn't seem to be any way to know if the colors will get along with each other. I know there are sites that are more specific to this task, so If it's appropriate to make suggestions like that on this board, I'd appreciate it.

I recently obtained (for free) an HP DesignJet 700 black-and-white 24" wide printer from an architectural office. The printer seems to be in excellent condition, but I have not been able to find a driver for Windows 7 and HP has discontinued servicing printers of this age. I thought maybe someone had one of these things and had figured out a solution. I'd been looking for a large format printer since I don't have anything right now, and this seemed like it would be worth the effort to get it updated.

Got it. Thanks. I wasn't seeing it in the dialog area for doors, but found it under configuration.

I have VW Landmark 2012, and I remember in 2010 I was able to inset a garage door (overhead), but I can't seem to find it in either the building shell libraries or in the resource browser. Is it something I should have installed but didn't when upgrading to 2012?

Nice one! But I'm not convinced. Please turn to page 516 in your hymnal (if your hymnal happens to be "Botanical Latin" third edition, that is) splendens: shining, gleaming, brilliant. you gotta love brilliant! Now I'm going to figure out what happened to my stake object since it's gone missing from my plugins folder along with a few other plugins. Maybe they've made a break for it. John

Tamsin; I'm convinced that if anyone could get Vectorworks to run on an Atari 2600, you could! In fact, I think you should ditch the Tamsinia robusta nickname and go for something more fitting: Tamsinia splendens