Joe-SA

I tested this is VW2025 Upgrade 4 today. Ellipses are now importing in a 'not so accurate' version inside of VW. I can report that the 'Prefill' setting noted early does work to transfer text content to a Redline Object but only in a newly created object made in rectangular mode only. Text alignments remains inaccurate. The attribute issue has yet to be addressed - colors, fills, linetypes, and end marks. Oddly, they do not accept any attribute manipulation after import either. Bluebeam images do not create an error anymore but they also do not import either. But they do not export to a PDF saved out of Bluebeam either. I did not see a direct import of a PDF tool accessed from inside the Bluebeam Connection dialog box, which is what I was expecting. I was able to go old school and save out a PDF from Bluebeam and than use the Import PDF command to bring it in to VW with the 'import annotations' toggle on. This provided an accurate image of the Bluebeam markups minus the image files. It would be slick if right next to the DOWNLOAD MARKUPS button there was a DOWNLOAD PDF button that automated both the Bluebeam PDF Export and VW PDF Import operations.

Well, I just got done testing this feature out and unless I'm missing something it simply is not ready for primetime without significant improvements. Here are my initial observations syncing the Bluebeam Cloud Session to a VW 2025 Document. 1) Bluebeam line colors and dash styles do not translate. Only seeing solid 2) Bluebeam arrowheads and end markers do not translate. Simply missing from the lines. 3) Bluebeam fills do not translate. This includes color and opacity. No fill is present. 4) Bluebeam ellipses do not import at all. VW will tell you an object has imported but nothing shows up where the ellipse should be. 5) Bluebeam images cause the VW Download Markups command to display an error dialog box. Deleting the image from Bluebeam restores sync. 6) Bluebeam vector lines translate as 'closed' polygons in VW. 7) Bluebeam tool chest objects are a crapshoot. Graphics and number alignments are partial or shifted and ellipse objects that are part of these marks are missing entirely. 8 ) Bluebeam highlight objects translate simply as lines. 9) Selecting a Collaboration Object in VW you can see in the OIP a CREATE REDLINE OBJECT button. Intuition suggests this would create a redline object from the collaboration object currently selected and move any notations over automatically. This is not what happens. This button merely invokes the redline tool allowing you to create a new mark from scratch. There is no relation to the original collaboration object. 10) I had feared my class settings were impacting the look of the collaboration objects but I'm pretty sure that is not the case because after import and had no control at all over color and fill of the objects. So if this were a typical picking up red marks scenario I currently cannot change the look of a collaboration mark to yellow or any other color to mark it as picked up. 11) If it doesn't exist a toolbar icon to allow one click update to the DOWNLOAD MARKUPS command for the connected session needs to be added. 12) We are suppose to be able to import an entire PDF from Bluebeam into VW but I could not find how that is done beyond the standard Import PDF command. Bringing in a full PDF of the most recent sheet of Bluebeam marks is likely the only reliable method to get the marks into VW without partial loss of information. I simply cannot give every outside consultant a list of restrictions on how they can and cannot use Bluebeam if they want to collaborate with us. I know of at least one that color codes their marks based on 2 or 3 different categories of information. VW simply won't be able to tell the difference. I'd love it if someone could tell me I'm wildly off the mark here and missing some basic settings that fix all or most of these problems. Simply gaining the ability to translate basic attribute settings such as line and fill colors, dashes, and end markers would make it usable. As is...it is not.

Kevin, I'm not yet testing this but had another question. If I have multiple VW users all with sharing a single Project to their own Working Files and everyone has their own Bluebeam account as well... can each of their Working Files (.vwxw) link to the same Bluebeam session? This is technically multiple VW files linked to a single Bluebeam Session. If so, does it create conflicts if different users download the same Collaboration Objects from Bluebeam into their Working File and then sync them to the Project File? Would you end up with multiple sets of Collaboration objects without any system error?

Thanks Kevin. All this is very helpful. Next step seems to be to test it out for myself. Joe

Kevin, Thank you. This does answer many of our questions. The lack of the two-way interface is limiting as any marks we want distributed would have to be made from inside Bluebeam. The article that was published back on the 26th was a bit misleading when it lists many of the things you can do with Bluebeam 'all without leaving the Vectorworks interface.' That said, collaborating with Bluebeam users and getting their markups linked directly into Vectorworks in real-time is beneficial. I'm assuming the document that links to the Bluebeam session can be a .vwxw Working File and Project Sharing would be a way to get Collaboration Objects distributed to the entire team even if only one Bluebeam account was active. Is that correct? Since there is no 'push' back to Bluebeam and Collaboration Objects are just internal VW objects can anyone that is part of the Project Sharing team 'Check Out' a Collaboration Object and change its Class, for instance? When you say 'full functionality of the Bluebeam Connection' what does that entail INSIDE of Vectorworks beyond linking the document to the Bluebeam session and downloading the Collaboration Objects? It doesn't sound like at the moment there is much beyond that. Can you confirm? Am I correct that the VW Cloud Document Reviewer has the ability to bring 'Comments' from the cloud directly into a VW document but does NOT have the ability to create or sync arrows, lines, polygons or billowed polygons associated with a specific area of a page directly into VW as Collaboration Objects? If so, are there plans to enhance this interface to be on par with the Bluebeam interface? I'd love to be able to give a client access to these features in the VW Cloud and sync them directly into the drawing without the client needing any special software. To do this with Bluebeam the client would need a Bluebeam account, correct?

I'm finding this intriguing but I'm left with questions that I don't believe I can answer without testing myself. Perhaps with a trial account. After reviewing the recently published articles and watching the associated video here are my current questions. 1) Are the VW Collaboration Objects that sync with the Bluebeam Cloud completely independent from the current VW Red Mark Tool and Class? Is there a way for the Red Mark Tool objects to be Published to Bluebeam Cloud? 2) Is the Vectorworks Cloud Document Reviewer completely independent from the Bluebeam Cloud? 3) Can it be confirmed that downloaded Collaboration Objects can be 'yellowed out' and Re-Published back to Bluebeam Cloud? Sometimes you get burned when you just assume. 4) Does every VW license in my office need their own Bluebeam account in order to use this feature? Is it one VW account tied to one Bluebeam account only or can multiple VW licenses link to a single Bluebeam account? If not, how does it work with Project Sharing? It seems if one person on the team is interfacing with Bluebeam, that is Publishing and Downloading and bringing 'Collaboration objects' into a VW Project Sharing File those objects would get dispersed to other users who are also sharing that VW file. If they do not have a Bluebeam connection would they be able to see those objects? can they interact with them? Certainly not Re-Publish but could they sync back to Project File and the one who does have Bluebeam then publishes? Is this even viable? We do have some external contacts requesting the use of Bluebeam but most of our projects would not require it. For a 10 person firm that doesn't know exactly which projects and which employees are going to need it and when....we don't necessarily want to dive into a $3300 annual Bluebeam subscription for all of us. If we just get a couple accounts how would we jumble those between VW Licenses on a as needed basis? Is getting one Bluebeam account and just running through all the scenarios my best option? I'm sure there are many more questions to come. Joe

Echoing some of the earlier posts in this thread. Vectorworks Architects Users also need an Image Prop based Plant Tool for flushing out our model presentations. It doesn't have to have anything beyond the visuals that a Landscape Architect would be interested in. The current VW full 3D tree PIOs are horribly memory intensive to the point that they are almost unusable beyond a handful of trees. We upgraded to Designer to see what was there we would be interested in. At the time Hardscapes were only Landmark but eventually moved to Architect as well. We have found the Plant Tool being the only tool in Landmark we really covet....and we really really do. We shouldn't have to create our own library of static Image Props to make something similar. Simplify it, strip out all the specifications, whatever you need to do but please give VWA's the Plant Tool.

For what it's worth...when you choose Roof Faces over Roof Objects you lose a lot of the parametric controls. Overhangs are now a direct edit of the perimeter instead of a new number in a box, for instance. For that reason we tend to divide complex roofs up into a series of Roof Objects. Every Gable might be a different Roof Object. You lose the ability to join roof surfaces but if you are finding it hard to nail down a particular seam you can always duplicate the Roof Objects and explode to Roof Faces and connec them to find your line. Use that line to edit the 'clip' polygons you've used or to shape the Roof Object or the edges of the Roof Object itself.

I don't have any experience with it but you could try the 'Project Sharing Server' that was introduced a few years ago if you have not tried it already. My understanding is that this was designed for in-house server management as opposed to the cloud.

To be clear....the biggest issue is that once the Project File (.vwxp) file is deleted and then replaced during a Save and Commit process it is no longer set to MAKE AVAILABLE OFFLINE meaning it no longer exists in your local dropbox folder but resides only in the cloud. When this happens your Working File (.vwxw) located on your local drive can no longer 'see' the Project File. You have to tell the Project File you want it available offline again (on your local drive) for the two files to see each other. Issues arise when this happens in the background on your station as a result of your team members Save and Commit. Using 'Safe Save' mode as suggested above seems to have resolved this problem. This setting does default to being 'off' so you must remember to set this every time you create a Project File.

Curious, would a Surface Array of a symbol have actually 'bent' the scroll around the surfaces? I don't have a need for this tool typically but it was my understanding that it does 'bend' symbols along a surface. Can anyone confirm this?

A couple thoughts on this... My first thought is that what you are describing is a feature not a bug. People typically want to be able to continue to be able to work while offline including syncing to their .vwxp file located in their local dropbox folder. As soon as they get back online the folder will sync to the dropbox cloud and back down to the rest of the team. However, if while working offline you are checking out new objects or layers... that pipeline that tells the rest of the team of the status of these objects is temporarily shut down so you risk creating 'conflicted copies'. That is, multiple Working Folders that contain changes to the same areas. This is the case regardless if your Working File is communicating with your Project File or not. It is more likely to occur if they are not talking to eachother. Vectorworks does do a 'status' check of the Project File before syncing to it and if it is out of date with the same file in the dropbox cloud it will prevent you from checking out new items or committing changes. Usually this causes a delay of a few minutes while the dropbox queue catches up. I'm curious if while you are working offline if this is what you are running into. If so, this is the 'feature' that is preventing the future conflicts. I would presume you would be able to work within the status of what was under your control at the moment of last contact between your local version of your .vwxp file and the cloud version. That is, creating new objects or making changes you already have checked out. Changes to that current status will have to wait until you are back online to avoid conflicts. You may need to grab a big working area while you are online such as checking out whole layers to allow you to do the work you anticipate. An emergency alternative might be to save your .vwxw file as an .vwx file breaking the link to the project file all together. You can either use that new file to re-create a new Project File or you can cut and paste your new work over to a fresh Working File at a later date. Admittedly a lot of this is speculation. I do a lot of remote drobbox work but very little of it while offline. I'm not sure there is another way beyond what I've described. Joe

I made this one a couple of years ago using the Custom Stair tool and a series of 3 radial stair segments all in one object. There is actually a 4th straight segment making the top tread. Certainly not simple and had a major fuss factor with hard to predict results but we got very close to what we needed in the end. The structural stringers came later. Joe

I'm looking for some clarifications on the best way for a group of people to share VW Cloud Services Presentations when they are all also using Dropbox for Business. Upon install each VW User gets their own Vectorworks Cloud Services folder that defaults to their USER FOLDER. I understand that each user could continue to create VW Cloud files here and pick and choose which files they want to share with specific other users. However, with this method files that have not been shared are invisible and inaccessible to everyone else on the team. This is essentially how we have used the service to date. At this time we have not attempted to do much sharing of these files. That leaves me with questions. Each of us can integrate our VW Cloud Services Account to our own Dropbox Account which is part of a larger Dropbox for Business Account allowing the VW Cloud App to navigate into our full folder structure of Dropbox including both shared and personal folders. If we were to create a VW Cloud Services folder in the shared section can everyone simply locate their presentations in this folder? Can I place my VW Cloud Services files in the respective Project Folder we already have established for each of our projects? Will everyone be able to open these files no matter who created them? In this setup does it matter if they are shared between users inside of the app? Do two people have the ability to work on the same files simultaneously? What if each user modified their Default VW Cloud Services folder to a common shared folder in our Dropbox folder structure? Can the application handle that much integration or can it only manage the sharing that occurs inside of the app? My goal here is to promote the use of VW Cloud Services presentation tools amongst my whole team. I'd like to place our VW Cloud Services files in the same Dropbox folder as all of our related project files instead of some common folder dedicated to VW Cloud presentations. I might like to have a location where past presentations can be opened and reviewed by anybody in the office without having the rely on the creator of that presentation to have specifically shared it to everyone who might like to open it or review it as a sample file one day. I'd also like the ability to pass off development of presentations from one person to another without necessarily, again, relying on the original creator to go through the act of specifically sharing it to that person. What I want is to essentially be able to work with VW Cloud Presentations amongst my whole team the same way we work with .VWX files and .VWXP files within our Dropbox for Business folders. Can I do that? If so, is there an existing resource that might help me do that? I've poked around the standard repositories of VW information and I'm not finding what I need readily available. Hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. Joe

I'm a little late to this thread but the issue with Dropbox 'replacing' instead of 'updating' a .vwxp file can be solved with one or both of the following two things. At least when working out of VW2023, that is. In VW2024 Project Sharing received a revamping of the backend programming so it is likely that none of this applies past VW2023. First, always have 'Safe Save' activated in the Project Sharing - Settings dialog box. See graphic below. I believe this is one toggle that is administered to the .vwxp file by the person who created it and it remains active for every user. If you ever need to recreate the .vwxp file you'll need return here and toggle this back on. Best to make it a natural part of the creation process. Secondly, I've been advised by Dropbox to 'Re-Index' our dropbox files. This is done by logging out of your dropbox account and logging back in. All of your local dropbox files have their location assignments reset so dropbox knows where everything is. Long before we discovered Safe Save we had 'replace' vs 'update' issue resolve itself after 're-indexing'. A couple of other generic tips which may not be self-evident: - Make sure you are giving your computer time to sync your file back to the dropbox cloud. Don't shut down your computer too quickly after closing VW or your local .vwxp file won't sync out of your computer. - Don't locate your .vwxw file in your Dropbox folder. Every single change you make will get added to the Dropbox Queue and slow down your .vwxp file's ability to properly communicate in a timely manner. Always locate .vwxw files in a local folder. - We've had problems arise when multiple .vwxp files are present in the same folder. - The Network Protocol setting only impacts those locating their .vwxp files on a local network drive. It is meaningless when you are placing it on a cloud drive. Joe