TiTaNiuM sAMuRai

Yes, I'm talking about holding down the Alt key while making a window to select all items the window crosses. As I suspected, the behavior is by design, but please refer to my first note as to why it's inconsistent and inconvenient. Is there a particular reason -- or two or three -- other than ease of programming, why the group _boundaries_ are used?

If you do an alt-window entirely within an unfilled rectangle or polygon, the rectangle or polygon (or circle, etc.) is not selected. This makes sense. If you do an alt-window somewhere within the boundaries of a group, regardless of whether or not you cross any member entities, the group is selected. Let's say your gridlines are grouped. You do a crossing window to select some items on the floor plan, perhaps to delete them. You can't do a normal window, since many other objects would be included, and there are enough objects such that it would take some time to click them one by one. Anyway, your grid group becomes selected. But you don't know this. Why? The OI palette says 'edit selection', but you're picking ten walls and one line. Okay. The grid group shows its handles, but you'd have to zoom out quite a way to see them. The group's boundaries are used to determine whether or not the group is selected. You're not looking at a chunk of extra math if the member objects are tested as individuals; it'd be the same as though they were ungrouped. The only difference is that if you cross a member object, the entire group gets selected. PLEASE??!!!

Is there any 3D component to your symbol? What was the view when you last edited the symbol?

If Katie's response doesn't help... neither will mine, but I know what you're talking about. I recently set up an older computer to plot to our large-format, but it kept coming out at 50%. He has OS8.6, and VW8.5.1, I believe CarbonLib 1.4, but I didn't spend time on it. Are you using the same printer description file to build the desktop printer? Has the file been changed?

Why not just have it set to the last value used? If I click YES, it will default to yes until I click otherwise. If I click NO, it will default to no until I click yes. One extra variable, one extra value in the prefs file.

It also would have been nice if the drawing area limits to determine whether or not to pan (while stretching) were adjusted for the presence -- or lack of -- rulers.

I had made a copy of the VW application file, and set the second file to 'Open in Classic Environment' (Show File info). However, the dock shortcuts to these files didn't follow suit with this. You'll have to make conventional aliases.

VW 951 OSX.1.4 I know that someone else had the problem of the Object info focus not moving to the next field for a record when 'Enter' is pressed. I've just done something to one of my symbols that makes the 'move to next field' behavior work for the record. There's another, similar, symbol, that uses the SAME record, but does not proceed.

A modified record copied / converted from v8 didn't work, but a fresh record correctly did decimals as you said. Nonetheless, what if I want NO default value for a number type?

I can't get the first field -- a number type -- of a new record to hold no default value. It always sets itself to 0... despite the fact that it should read 0.000 if anything, since I told it to use 3 dec. places. BBD? Behavior by design?

It appears to be necessary to use Tab or Enter to get the y-value to 'take' the x-value when changing the value for either the reference grid or the snap grid. Why? Why not grey out the second field, when 'symmetrical' is checked, and update it to whatever is being entered in the first box? Or, update it when one clicks in the second box. VW has this technology, since it is how the Export Image size fields work.

I don't know if this is a quirk with the mac or with VW, but WHY does every dashed line style have an unequal space for the first short dash?? It's as annoying as hell to fix it manually for every new file, which is inevitable despite making up templates. Can NNA fix this? Additionally, as of 9.5, is the dash style of a line, when copied and pasted, stored as a reference number only (dash style number) or does it have dash length information also? In VW8, some copy-pasted lines would keep their old style, thereby making up a new style in the new drawing, sometimes they'd just use whatever appearance was defined for that particular dash style number...

I can't get my scene to render with antialiasing and transparency at the same time. Unless I turn on raytracing. In which case, the scene renders without textures (no reflection) yet may be doing transparency when passing light through glass (although the glass appears opaque), and then crashes when the render is complete. Detail level has no effect. Shadows are mapped, NURBS are off. Now get this:If I raytrace the shadows, turn on both AA and texturing but leave off transparency, glass uses the glass texture's colour (instead of the object fill colour red), but reflection isn't done. What gives? The file was originally created in v8, so I'm going to try a transplant to fresh v951. Can I submit this somewhere?

Katie: If you'd like a reference for explaining texturing items, I strongly recommend POV-Ray. They take the long way around explanation, but the docs are intended for serious users. Nonetheless, object properties are well-explained.

Custom Renderworks, High Detail, mapped shadows. No AA, no raytracing, no NURBS. Textures turned on but transparency off, I get soft shadows from holes in a solid subtraction. If I then turn on transparency, all shadows are hard. What gives? BTW, exactly what items does the 'detail level' affect?

Is there a way to specify the antialiasing threshold?

From importing dwg's, not dxf's. Importing into blank (but not fresh i.e. classes set up ) or filled drawings. Problems begin to appear a week after.

I noticed that also some time ago. What's the deal with NURBS rendered?

I started testing 9.5.x at Christmas, but we decided to do our current project on 8.5.2 since it was an evil we knew. There's no point in sending the dozen or so such-corrupt v8 drawings, Katie Mike & Gunther, but I will send as many v9 as I can when I return to evaluating 9.5.x ( and then start using it in production).

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, ALREADY! This is obviously a case of a corrupt drawing. Importing AutoCAD always carries this risk, one which has not been really FIXED by NNA. It's been around since at least 8.0. Usually, though, the situation has been one in which class names took on the names of symbols. Purging unused classes removed those names, deleted all instances of that symbol, and left you with blank class names. Imported AutoCAD wasn't always the only culprit. If you cancel making a new class while in the naming dialog, you'll get a blank class also. Recommendation:Unless the following would cost you tons of production time, do not import AutoCAD stuff. Pull your VW stuff into the CAD drawings, re-assign attributes to the CAD elements, copy and paste them into a blank drawing, then copy and paste into a template of your own. Also, don't rely on the VW8 -to-VW9 translator. NNA still hasn't fixed it 100%. Translate a 8.x drawing to 9, then copy the elements to a fresh 9 drawing. P.S.NNA has likely not had a ton of reports about this behaviour except from me, whereas the majority of users report little or no problem with imported material. However, I know for a fact that 80% of the CAD people at our office haven't noticed the bugs I've caught. There are many script issues I'll never even see. i.e. not all users look at the product as closely or in the same way as others.

The last time I used AutoCAD seriously, R14, grouping was a feature of the program. The VW manual says that the closest approximation is an unnamed block. Why not export VW groups to AutoCAD groups for capable versions?

Or perhaps a preference setting to determine whether or not the None class is visible or not. This would, however, require that that class be handled independently...

In addition, the vw files in the textures directory have textures defined, most of which are based on images. Where / how are the images now stored?

Is there a location where the images used in shaders can be found as separate files? Is there a way to extract the images -- other than a render of a textured plane saved to an image file -- for manipulation to suit my needs?

Unless I missed something, the vw9 manual mentions nothing about import / export behavior of dimensions. AutoCAD 2000 drawings imported to vw9.5 show no text in the dimensions. Is there a way to fix this?