spudule

you're a star, thank you Michael.

Every now and again I reach for a shortcut and mi it, then suddenly before my very eyes the line tool thinks that it's working in 3d... or at least that's what it looks like, because I can control the end point of the line, but not the start point which goes off on a magical parabolic tour of my screen with no care for my carefully constructed 2d plan. What am I doing wrong and how can I stop it?

Ah I see, I wouldn't have gotten that DVD, because I'm a student. I'll just RTFM.

Thanks Mike, but I was aware of all of these things and your post doesn't really answer my question. Some google statistics: First Search: autocad tutorials Results: 4,660,000 Top Ten Results: These sites have clear video examples that take you by the hand from your first ever session with CAD, all the way up to the advanced stuff. They are also free. Second Search: vectorworks tutorials Results: 156,000 Top Ten Results: (this post is at number 7!) Either the original nemetschek tutorials OR a rehash of the nemetschek tutorials. Nearly all of these ONLY give tutorials regarding the latest features. There is no guidance for a beginner who wishes to learn the individual tools step by step. OR the tutorials cost $50 or more. My conclusion: AutoCAD is a clunky outdated piece of software, but it has an active and helpful community. Vectorworks is a more interactively intuitive piece of software, but there is a long way to go before Vectorworks can compete with AutoCAD in terms of its community input. It was not my intention to drag Vectorworks through the mud, but I'm quite frustrated by the lack of online documentation and assistance.

Should have suspected as much, yours is a commercial site and I haven't been able to find anything regarding the use of the road tools in the free sections. (Although what I did find was useful nevertheless) Surely there is some community available information, this sort of thing is easy to come by for AutoCAD, sketchup, 3dsMax etc. so why not for Vectorworks. A complete tutorial or set of tutorials for the Site Planning tools is all I ask for.

Ok will do. Thanks for the tip, and thanks in advance for the guidance

I'm starting to use vector works and I have the hang of the basic controls, but I would like to a set of video tutorials (or written tutorials if need be) that go from start to finish of an urban planning project. In fact any video tutorials that cover an entire project would be nice.