Robert Anderson

Pedro, please submit a bug for this. See the link at right.

Tom, do your "walls" and "interior walls" start from the same (bottom) elevation? If you have a "Ceiling" story-layer, then you don't need separate layers for "walls" and "Interior walls". Just constrain your exterior wall tops and your interior wall tops to different story layers. Particularly for users who have used the old "delta-z" process for a long time, it's kind of a mental shift to think about how the story layers work differently.

Dieter, I have posted a bug on this.

Dieter, it seems to me that you are using more and more extreme (outlier) examples to support your position. For multiple buildings, best practice (now as before) is to have separate building files and consolidate them on site using referenced DLVPs. Multiple identical layers can also use DLVPs, just as before. Nothing has been taken away.

You can draw a section line (in elevation mode) to mark and automatically create interior elevation viewports.

Locally to you (if LA means Los Angeles and not Louisiana) are the estimable Dan Jansenson (who is in a business sector similar to yours) and Pat Stanford (who I believe does startup consulting). I'm sure you can search the Community Board database and find their contact info.

Displayname, try turning off viewport caches.

Matt, I agree that you can attach a record to a layer. But I don't think you can attach a record to a class. A layer is a container, a "thing", part of the drawing list. But a class is really just an attribute.

You'll have to make a symbol for this. Think about how you want it to look in plan -- will you be doing an upper wall cut? Or is this strictly for the elevation / model? Generally, you just want to model it as accurately as you can. You'll probably want to use transparent textures for the stained glass. If you have reasonably accurate head-on digital photos, you can use them.

To create a sawtooth in a wall, use the Reshape tool in a 3D view to add "peaks" to the wall. Do a search for "wall peaks" in the Vectorworks online help to see how.

Bruce, the best rule is, if it shows up in only one view, then it can go in viewport annotation. Otherwise it should be "in the model", i.e., in a design layer. Your best option is to add 3D dimensions in the design layer. The automatic-plane feature of Vectorworks 2012 makes this a snap. If you want to hide them in a particular view, just hide the Dimension class.

Bruce, who told you that you have to do dimensioning as annotations in viewports? View-specific dimensions may best be put in viewports, but really, there are lots of times it makes best sense to dimension on a design layer. That's why we have a standard Dimension class. If all dimensions were in viewports, there would be no need for that class.

Generally, do not expect any major feature changes in service packs. Major feature changes occur at releases. Only bug fixes and very, very minor tweaks occur at service pack releases.

Dieter, by the way, Y-joins have improved in Vectorworks 2102 such that I can join the wall containing the door to this junction. 4-wall joins are still a challenge! (See image)

Dieter, you're bringing 4 walls together at this intersection. Which two of the walls form the boundary that you would use to bound the slab?

Will, you're right; the only way to have ADC for interior elevations is what I first posted above: use a section line set to "elevation" mode with a marker appropriate for interior elevation. I was just talking about graphics earlier, referring to the Space object.

Will, if you've dug into the Space object you will have seen that it can use a similar symbol (classed as you like to show in some plans and not in others). Although by default we have used it to show interior finishes, it could equally show interior elevations.

Jim, this is straightforward using the "advanced viewport properties" in Object Info palette of the viewport. (See pic)

DWorks, that's quite a list of problems! FWIW, we did do quite a bit of work on wall joining. But I'd like to see some concrete examples, if you don't mind. Would you email me a problem file that shows what you are trying to achieve but can't? There may be an easier / more straightforward approach than what you are using...

Vectorworks 2012 now allows you to set the background color of various working environments: Plan view, 3D views, and Sheet layers. The yellow you are seeing is the 'canary trace' style default for (probably) Top/Plan. Can't explain the zooming-in. Keyboard / mouse issue? Are you using any custom 3rd party mouse drivers?

Will, you are right. If you switch to Elevation mode, the breaks are removed from the Section marker. As you said, you can use a crop if you want, but you may want to look in the "Advanced Section Properties" dialog. Lots of interesting options there.

Chris, with the 2012 release we did not give Stories any special navigation capabilities. What would you like to see in this area? (I think this kind of feature has potential, but exactly what the feature would do is not so obvious to me.) DWorks, we did consider embedding Story-levels at wall components, but frankly we felt the complexity of this would be overwhelming for most users and would provide little additional benefit. Would you mind providing an example of a wall condition you cannot do with the current system of Stories, wall-height bounding and wall/slab interactions?

Will, as you've discovered, to make the line disappear, just give it invisible attributes ("none" pen). And you most certainly can make it zig-zag, either at first entry or using the Reshape tool on the Section Line object. But the extent of the line itself is important, especially for interior elevations, as you will want to set the IE view to the extents of the Section Line. Hope this is helpful, R.

Will, you can use whatever symbol you want for the section line marker, and use the "elevation" option for the Section Line to draw the marker at the center of the line. Easy.

Chris, I've never had any problems with the reliability of this feature. If you have a repeatable situation where you can get it to fail, please report it as a bug (with a bug-file). Thanks!