line-weight

I suppose you could inadvertently move something in the Z direction, in plan view, without realising it if you had left a value in the Z box from a previous operation.

I guess if the "edit space" of a VP is a thing, then that's where they exist. Like you say they are quite furtive and don't show up in the Visualisations palette. So I don't feel totally confident that they are a secure repository of location info, when it's critical. But there doesn't seem to be another option anyway. The VP OIP does actually let you know if a camera is present: Really the camera settings should be accessible from a button right there. But I am sure this has been discussed/requested many times before.

Ah... yes this does seem to work. Thanks. Feels a bit anti-intuitive as the "camera" doesn't really seem to exist as a physical object as such. It appears to be necessary to do "paste in place" rather than just "paste". Would really be a lot more useful if we could define one camera and then have it apply to multiple viewports, so that any change to the camera viewpoint would only need to be made once.

In certain situations, once I have set up a perspective viewport view manually (I move around in the design layer until I find the position I want, and then create viewport) I want to know exactly what that viewpoint is. In other words, I want to know the exact X, Y and Z it is looking from (and ideally direction of view as well). It seems like the only way to do this is to go through the unintuitive and laborious process of creating a VW camera linked to the viewport. That then gives me a camera that doesn't actually "exist" in the model anywhere but at least clicking on "camera" on edit viewport gives me an OIP like this: That's ok - but what if I want to tell another viewport (with, say, different layer/class/datavis visibility settings) to look at exactly the same view? I think the answer is, I can't, is that right? The only way I can create another viewport with exactly the same viewpoint is by duplicating the first one, and then re-applying all the settings, I think. That was the case when I last looked at this some years ago but am checking that nothing has changed in the meantime.

Are the lighting/shadows here produced/guessed by Nano Banana rather than calculated in VW? I'm guessing the answer must be yes if all that it's being given is a hidden line view?

Have you investigated the pros & cons of "Column" vs "Structural Member" in column mode? I don't see the point of having both things - it's two separate things for users to try and understand, and two separate tools for VW to keep updated or develop. Sadly the Structural Member tool, which is potentially really useful but does have some frustrating limitations, currently seems to be parked with little active development.

I am unclear what "subparts" actually means. I often just tick the box in the hope that it means nothing gets missed but don't really understand what effect it has. As far as I can see it's not explained in the data vis help page. Do I need to tick "include subparts" for any of the "search within" categories below to take effect? The only way I can get the dialogue to show "Objects that meet the criteria: 7" is by ticking "include subparts" and "groups". I find this very confusing.

I never use the column tool. I think this is mainly because there are so many tools that seem designed for legacy workflows and/or haven't been updated in ages, that there is a high level of friction for me in starting to use any unfamiliar tool because I know from experience that there's a high probability that I'll just lose several hours discovering that it doesn't work properly, or doesn't work with my workflows. Because I generally use HSVPs rather than top/plan, I don't need to use something like the mullion tool; if I want a simple vertical element I just make a basic extrude. I know exactly how it's going to behave in shaded view, in plan, in section, in elevation etc. I was curious though, so have just had a look at it. Straight away there are various things that I can't understand without going to look at documentation etc: - there are "architectural" and "structural" components. This isn't a distinction made in other tools that I use, so I don't know what it actually means - are there some rules unknown to me that are going to determine where/when either is visible. - there are also component "finishes" and "classes". Again, I don't think any other tool I already use works like this, so I am going to have to spend time understanding what this actually means. What does the "finishes" class actually control? - there's no preview in the dialogue showing me what the various settings are going to produce in 3d views or sections or whatever. So it will have to be trial and error making changes and going back and forth to design and sheet layers. - in a horizontal section I find that it gets drawn with a dotted line around it which I am guessing is showing the capital above. How do I control that? I can't find anything in the OIP or settings. If I want to find out I'm going to have to go and read the help documentation Additionally, can't I use the Structural Member tool to make columns? If so, why does this tool also exist? Which came first? Which is most likely to be actively developed or abandoned? Who knows, but I've already invested some time in the structural member tool so at least I basically know how it works and already know its limitations. Add all the above together and what incentive is there for me to spend time learning this tool? Very little. Maybe it's actually a great tool but the risk of just wasting time is too high. Some of this is kind of relevant to the thread subject. We always have this scattering of tools with overlapping functions and inconsistent behaviour. I know it's one of the good things about VW, that there are many different ways of doing the same thing. But the inconsistency is a massive problem, it means there's a big disincentive to try using stuff you're not already familiar with. I expect this is why most people actually just use a relatively narrow subset of tools & functions. But I've been going on about bringing consistency to the UI for ages.

An excellent idea. There are lots of users who want to improve tools and the software in general. VW already gets loads of unpaid labour from users who spend time testing stuff and suggesting improvements. It would be great to divert some of that enthusiasm into actually producing improvements instead of it being spent writing frustrated forum posts about tools that never get updated.

I've submitted this as a bug.

Pretty much this problem has been covered in a couple of other threads previously - the question is what the search terms are, that will bring them up... eg. this raises some similar questions

Yup.

Yes - I have a very large number of classes (in the real file - the ones I have posted are just for testing purposes) and would like to filter them to only the ones with "material" in the name so that the selection within that box is more manageable. It's a DataVis I'll only ever want to apply to those classes.

Actually this is not quite true: the datavis appears to still apply to the viewport but the class becomes greyed out in the values box:

I don't know if this is a bug or me doing something stupid. There are two files attached to this post; DV_hatch A and DV_hatch B. 1) Open the file DV_hatch A 2) Create a new data visualisation legend to apply to one of the viewports, using these criteria: 3) Press OK, and under "diplay criteria" choose "objects using function" and "class". 4) Now the dialogue looks like this: Note that nothing appears in the box under "By Values" and the OK button is greyed out, despite it saying "objects that meet the criteria: 7" at the top. Now open the file DV_hatch B and repeat steps 2 and 3. Note that outcome of this process is this: The class *materials-insulation-board has appeared under values, and 8 objects are noted as meeting the criteria. The reason there's one additional object meeting the criteria is that this second file is exactly the same as the first one, except that it contains a simple extrude, in that class. For that value these settings can be chosen: Now it's possible to press "OK" and the result in the viewport is this: The data visualisation is applied to the right-hand viewport and it applies the hatch to the simple extrude, and to the components using that class, within the wall and roof face objects. So why doesn't this work with the first file? It seems that I need to add that extrude in order for it to "find" the components within the wall and roof face objects. Deleting the extrude doesn't cause a problem - it seems like it needs to exist at the point where I create the Data Vis. DV_hatch A.vwx DV_hatch B.vwx

I expect that might be more complicated to implement but it's a good idea!

Simply a button to access them near the top of the object's OIP seems the obvious solution. Maybe there is some complexity that I don't understand, because it's been discussed for years without anything happening, but this seems like a really straightforward thing to do, that would save loads of people's time & frustration.

Found myself puzzling about why I couldn't change the class of a regular window, just the other day. And of course it's because it's hidden away in the "plugin object style options", the trap that's set for us all, not just new users. I really wish this could just be sorted out.

I've run into pretty much exactly the same thing - things inside the walk path are obscured. This is part of a process of seeing if I can get the 2d component parts of stair objects to work at all in HSVPs. Normally I just model them myself (or convert a VW stair to solid geometry). But am I wasting my time doing this anyway? Are the 2d components supposed to be able to function in HSVPs? For example, should the HSVP be able to work out which bits of stairs are above/below the cut plane, and draw them solid/dashed accordingly? In my image above, the bottom 3 1/2 treads (bottom RH corner) are actually below a landing, in this plan which is taken at the upper floor level. At this level, the stairs should be in elevation only and the bottom few treads should be below the landing and not visible. It doesn't look like the HSVP understands this. It also looks like it's trying to draw a break line, when there shouldn't be one.

I'll also be interested to hear if you get any benefits from using Materials. For what it's worth - having tested Door & Window Assemblies a bit myself, I think they will be very useful once developed a bit further, but at the moment they aren't quite ready for use in production drawings.

@E|FA is writing this out something you ever got around to?

I found it here by googling "Vectorworks 2026 viewer" https://designexpress.eu/support/en/vectorworks/vw-en/download-vectorworks-viewer

Yes, it's all a bit precarious, and as you say, current state of the world and location of NV HQ doesn't help. Earlier this year I spent some time extracting myself from reliance on Google for cloud storage and file sharing. I type this on an Apple computer of course.

Are you managing to get cabinets to work in "real-world" UK scenarios? Last time I looked at them they still had various problems including the inability to make the commonest type of corner unit:

Ok, thanks, this is useful to know. I'd need to export with the same file name to make this work?