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Btw. as indicated above we have done a test and radically simplified the file paths on one project, which seems to result in VW2011 crashing less often, however reference update times seemingly have not improved by much. Has anybody else made similar observations and has any recommendations as to max. file path length?

That does not sound very promising - in our experience the level of complexity & associated problems will only increase as you go into documentation? which I am sure you have also experienced. Are you normally continuing in 3d or are you doing your documentation mostly in 2d - also how are you dealing with 3d external information, such as mechanical or even structural IFC models?

Thanks for getting back, this very much sounds like we are having a similar setup although our projects tend to be bigger. I suppose my real question is if there is anybody out there who is using Vectorworks (which ever version) successfully for projects of that size (300-600 apartments, 80-130MB). To be honest I have serious doubts, thus we would really appreciate to hear from such users. BTW > the irony is that the logic behind upgrading from VW12.5 to 2011 was to avoid VW12.5 no longer working in newer OSX versions... how wrong we were!

Thanks for getting back - to answer some of your questions... 1. yes our files live on a server, unfortunately our project teams are too large (3-7) for them to live locally - one theory we are currently testing is that long file paths might have an adverse effect on speed... did you ever see anything like that; 2. all our workstations are 27inch i5 or i7 iMacs with at least 8 mostly 12 GB of RAM - strangely enough, though we have never seen any of them start using SWAP...? 3. our files vary in size from approx. 80MB to 130MB - we agree regarding the DWG cleanup, which is something we should revisit... do you have any specific tips in this regard?

About 2 years ago we have upgraded from 12.5.3 to VW2011 and to be honest we had not much joy since. Initially, we struggled migrating one project but gave up and simply only started new projects in VW2011? thinking this would make a difference! We are mainly working with large residential developments, in the range of 300-600 apartments, which requires a lot of symbols and referencing of multiple files. Note we do not even bother using 3d, we try to keep everything as simple as possible drawing everything in 2d? yes even elevations & sections. The major problem we are facing is that references are extremely slow to update - the problem as usual occurs randomly thus can not be reproduced easily. To be honest what is well beyond us is that a software released in 2011 does not seem to be able to handle 2d drawings which are referenced into each other with file sizes of around 80-120MB - btw. why they are that size in the first place is rather questionable as well. We are told that we are pushing the software, so we thought we ask around on to understand how other offices handle projects of the aforementioned size? surely we are not the only ones working with Vectorworks at that scale? As 2014 is about to be released and support for VW2011 will be stopped, we are looking down the barrel of once again upgrading in the hope of improvement or switching to another software altogether. Does anybody have positive experiences with large scale projects and VW - maybe you have figured out the sweetspot beyond which it simply does not work properly?

pat, thanks for getting back - unfortunately find and replace text does only replace text not select it... we are trying to separate out specific text (all on same class!) from a consultants drawing. thought about vectorscript, but since i have never used it before i am wondering if it is worth the effort. is it difficult to do and is there any good training material available? ds.

dear all, is it possible to search and select all text boxes based on a specific string of text or word in VW12.5.3 for example select all same markers (text fields containing B2) on a survey for further editing. kind regards, ds.