walzo

I've noticed that when saving a file, or exporting one, or opening one, VW defaults to the last location used for that action, rather than the one the current file resides in (as is the behavior in almost every other application). When saving and exporting a great many files, in a variety of locations, this problem becomes very time consuming and leads to filing errors very easily. My boss and I are pulling our hair out over this. Any ideas? Should I move this over to the feature suggestion forum? -O

Thanks for all the thoughts guys. It's true, encountering randomly missing features in a fairly expensive product DOES make me want to upgrade, but it also makes me want to gripe. I'm basically locked into VW because of the industry I'm in (entertainment), but I'd certainly explore other options if I were able to. I hope the CAD industry in general gets a little more of the spark from faster, cheaper, nicely designed, user-friendly software vibe going around other spheres of production software. Jumping from Illustrator or Lightroom over to any CAD package feels like stepping back in time 25 years, when the user was expected to adapt to the software, rather than the other way around.

Nevermind... it appears that I had a fair amount of content outside of layer page boundaries (as I don't pay much attention to them), and left checked the option to delete those.

I've noticed when running a purge, VW doesn't seem to be able to correctly detect which layers are empty (it almost always purges just about everything). Any ideas? This is a bummer.

I'm setting up a custom title block with an associate record. I've gotten Sheet-specific and Project-specific records to input correctly, but I've had no luck using the '_SN' suffix to automatically insert the correct sheet number. I've seen instructions to enable 'Automatic Drawing Coordination' under document preferences, but I don't see that option. Suggestions? Do I detect that this feature has been removed from Fundamentals, or am I just doing something wrong? Thanks, O

At my place of work I am limited to using a Fundamentals license, and I'm discovering some pretty surprising limits to it, given that this is a $1600-ish piece of software. 3D modeling, but no section viewports? PDF printing, but no batch PDF printing? Adding two extra clicks to view my classes and layers? Adding two extra clicks every time I want a unified view? Does this make any sense? I hate to gripe but the logic of VW Fundamentals eludes me. I understand that the more expensive licenses include industry-specific add-ons (eg. theatrical lighting and event planning tools in Spotlight), but why are Fundamentals users crippled in their basic drafting needs? Who is this product for exactly? Please add some of this basic functionality back into Fundamentals, or do away with it entirely.

Is there a way to set a default render mode for 3D navigation? Thanks, O

Thanks Peter. Alas, I can add the function in the workspace editor, but I can't use it (it returns a 'not authorized' message). What a tease.

Is there any way to improve the quality of the 'unshaded polygon' render mode? I'm seeing feint artifact lines in the shaded areas (image attached). I realize that 'final shaded polygon' mode eliminates these, but an unshaded render is really what I'm looking for. Thanks!

I find 'final quality polygon' to work well as a render mode for iso views, etc. However curves often show up in very large facets / very poor quality. Is there any way to adjust this? Or do so in another line rendering mode? Thanks, O

Thanks again. Sadly it appears that Unified View is one of the features oddly chosen for omission in Fundamentals. I'm going to try my best not be snarky about this, but in general I wish the line between the Design series and Fundamentals was more consistent. Obviously something like creating risers and moving light fixtures automatically is an advanced, industry-specific feature and should be included in Spotlight. However something like this would seem to be part of the core workflow.

And as a bonus question: What's the best way to keep all my design layers synced up when I rotate the view in 3D? Thanks guys you're saving my life here.

Thanks a million for the quick replies. Now that I realize I've been drafting everything in the screen plane, is there anyway to move everything in bulk to the layer plane? I see that this option is only available in the OIP for certain objects (apparently not groups).

Hi, This might seem like an basic question, but as someone more familiar with Sketchup and ACAD it's totally baffling to me: Is there a painless way to view 2D objects on a plane in relation to 3D objects in VW 2011? Like, at the same time? All I can come up with by googling around are video demos discussing the marvels of working planes in vague terms. My traditional workflow is to draft in 2D, and extrude into 3D as needed. This becomes pretty confusing in VW when 3D objects suddenly start existing in an alternate universe as soon as I start modeling them, and un-extruded objects sit stubbornly on my screen like a ghost image on an old CRT. I really don't understand why VW separates these two ideas in such an unintuitive way. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,