ErichR

I've only been using VW since the early MiniCad days, yet it still has (increasingly) the ability to bring me to tears. This time it's regarding wall color visibility, which, try as I might for the last two hours, WILL NOT CHANGE. The wall wants to remain white (or maybe it's unrendered, I don't really know). Changed the wall class, making sure the class had the correct color, changed the object attribute palette to a solid fill, etc., etc. This is VW 2010. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Erich email@piarchitect.net

In VW 2010, I started a new drawing, and door sweeps (the arc defined by the door swing) are not showing. I've only been using VW since day one, so I suppose that it's excusable not to know some basic stuff! Please, what's the fix? Never mind - it's the Sills Class that has to be visible.

It appears that it's a printer driver issue. It prints correctly to a PDF, and to a different printer. HP no longer supports the LaserJet 4MV with an OSX10.6 driver. The printer is more than 10 years old. It's curious that the problem seems to be limited to the VW Pattern foreground/background colors.

In VW 10, Patterns appear in reverse (negative) form from the way they appear on screen. This is true whether or not the 'Print at on-screen resolution' is selected. If I switch the background and foreground colors, then the screen appearance is negative. Is this a bug? Thanks to anyone who can answer this.

Re: Bob-H and the Vectorscript. I don't have any experience with scripts. I did name and save the script into Tools/Scripts/PlugIn Editor. Then imported an image of a floor plan, selected it, and then went to Scripts/Run Script. A window opens for selecting the file. It's not to be found. In the Resources Browser, there seem to be no scripts available. It would help to know how to invoke the script, in what context, and what to expect. Thanks.

I don't have any experience with scripts. I did name and save the script into Tools/Scripts/PlugIn Editor. Then imported an image of a floor plan, selected it, and then went to Scripts/Run Script. A window opens for selecting the file. It's not to be found. In the Resources Browser, there seem to be no scripts available. It would help to know how to invoke the script, in what context, and what to expect. Thanks.

The experimenting I've done, and learned from searching these forums, is that VW's Trace Bitmap command, to put it mildly, leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but I think not. Trace Bitmap must be something of an embarrassment to VW staff, since stellar performance is otherwise the norm for this great app. Has anyone been able to make it work at all? If so, I would really like to know how.

Gray means Gray. Why are walls full opacity on a gray layer? I must be missing something. Thanks.

I've used VW on both PC and Mac, and prefer the PC's sticky pallettes. Why can't it be done on the Mac? Never understood this. An upside with the sticky pallettes: the drawing window is automatically sized, since it's restricted to the screen area between the pallettes. This is an advantage if you switch to a new monitor, and the aspect ratio changes. Minor issue, though. Everything else seems to be identical on both platforms making migration, or porting from one to the other, a breeze. I can imagine that workspace refrencing would be unaffected, assuming file structure remains unchanged.

"I've found that the only way to make the section lines show up in plan viewports is to select the section viewport, click "Section Line Instances" in the OIP, and then go to "Viewports" under "Find instances in" at the top of the dialog box; then you need to check the viewports in which you want the section line to appear. "" I'm having a LOT of trouble with this. How does one find out what the Viewport name or number is? If you go to Instances, there is a long list of viewports, but no indication of a reference to where any of those viewports are. Never mind - The Viewport name is on the OIP, at the bottom. Still, very annoying UI.

Thanks. This forum is good. Regarding the stair tools, it's certainly remarkable how sophisticated they are, yet it's ironic that there are so many limitations. Someone, or a team, has spent gobs of time writing code, yet it never seems to quite get there. Just attaching a handrail to a wall instead of to the stair... But there are so many vairiables, can a CAD program be expected to anticipate them all? And what about creativity? Formulaic approaches are not likely to satisfy new ideas. Overall, v2010 amazes me. The whole viewport thing amazes me - how easy it is to use and what a great tool it is. I'm aware this is not new, but it does seem to be evolving well.

Peter, thanks for your quick reply. It was the Mode, and I think I had this problem before. I've only been a user since MiniCad 4...

For some reason I am all of a sudden unable to insert a door into a wall? Any ideas?

All I want to do is create a simple, exterior, concrete stair with a 48"X60" concrete platform at the top, with a legal handrail/guardrail on one side of the stair and platform, and a legal handrail attached to an adjacent wall on the other side. The handrail/guardrail will be set into the concrete, so will be offset a couple of inches from the edges of the stair and platform. This is a simple, and common stair, found at many building exit doors. And, wouldn't it be great if each stair stringer did not show a break line at each riser (on the exposed side)? The new stair tool is severly challenged to do these simple things, it seems, as is the older, custom stair tool. Am I missing something? Thanks for any help.

You've given yourself away, panta. XL is a far more sophisticated spreadsheet/database than VW's worksheet. If you don't get this, then you really are a Greenhorn. However, XL is unfortunately not integrated with VWA. Therefore, XL appears to lack sophistication, and it does (only within VW's context). To be more kind, we can admit that we're comparing apples and oranges - XL appears to to you to lack sophistication, but this is because VWA developers have chosen to not integrate XL within VW.

"Does Excel really have inquiry & database functions relevant to VW? Since when has Microsoft implemented all the functions available in VectorWorks?" But pantha rhei, that's exactly the point. VWA developers have chosen not to make those functions relevant for XL.

1. Suppose I have an XL spreadsheet from an autocad file I want to get into VW? 2. Suppose I have an XL file replete with numbers resulting from formulas I want to get into VW (and I want the same functionality when I import it)? 3. Suppose I want the functionality and ease of use (time-efficient) capability of XL? 4. Why did Autodesk make ACAD XL compatible?

Apparently not. Why not?

I take it that VW2009 still does not import XL...?

IanH, that was it! DPI on the Sheet Layer settings. It's humbling to find out what you don't know. Thanks.

I seem to suddenly have highly aliased renderings in viewports, including Open GL, and Renderworks. I've tried a lot of fixes, but I must be missing something. Any help would be greatly appreciated. VW12.5+ on WXP

gmm18, I put the window in a wall of it's own and stopped the adjacent walls short. Your solution produces a simpler fix. When I tried your method in v12.5, I get a combination of rendered and unrendered lines within the window image. The video doesn't really tell us much more than we already know, although you thought of that method before I did. This is really Mickey Mouse, to use a highly technical term, and very impractical if your have a bunch of windows to be rendered. One conclusion is that VW works best for plain vanilla archicture; get creative, and you're going to run into this sort of roadblock, unfortunately.

Did that with the 3D Reshape tool-cut the wall down to below the sill. No change in the rendered mode. Framing the window with pieces of the wall would be another, but not very good, option.

What can one do to eliminate this effect? Note that the stone wall is not as tall as the window. The brick wall sits on top of the stone and the window goes where it is shown. I suspect VW v12.5+ isn't up to this task. Am I right?

I've researched this problem here with little luck. A file is referenced to a design layer. A viewport of it is created to a sheet layer. Annotations are added. Files are closed. Upon reopening, the referenced file is significantly offset in location from where it was originally positioned. In the sheet layer, the referenced image is, of course not there, but the annotations are. I've tried locking the design layer, but this doesn't help. Any ideas?