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It's not somehow part of this problem is it? Do you have issues placing the cursor where you want it?

What do you mean by the "overwriting" issue?

I quite often use this method too. One problem that I find with using class to control visibility is that over time, the saved views that are used to switch between options can start to pick up odd classes that aren't supposed to be affected by that saved view. And I have to go in to the saved view settings and tidy up. I think this usually happens when a new class is created, and the already-existing saved view includes this class as "visible". There is probably some way in which in theory I can stop this happening but a dedicated optioning tool might make things easier to manage. Elsewhere there's been a request to allow Saved Views to be shown in a hierarchical menu. That would also be very helpful for this - so I could have a sub-menu that just contained saved views to do with optioning. It's easy to end up with a long and cumbersome Saved views list. Finally - sometimes, instead of using groups/classes to make options I use layers. I make a duplicate of the design layer(s) where I want to create an alternative option. This can feel less fiddly to manage.

Not in a useful way, though, if you want the attributes of the original objects to be applied to the result of the subtraction.

Good question ... I often come up against this and have never found a solution, other than the tedious one of doing each object individually. It's possible to make a solid addition of all the objects you want to cut, and then do a subtraction/intersection on the resultant object, which will cut everything in one go, but then it's all lumped together as one solid object and the attributes of the individual parts are lost.

Isn't this already possible?

So... I am finding that I am getting an annoying effect when using my Spacemouse Pro in VW2025 in Macos Ventura. It's a kind of rolling shutter effect as if the screen is refreshing from bottom to top at a low framerate. I think this started with moving from Monterey to Ventura, rather than from VW2023 to VW2025 because I get something similar in VW2023. My 3dconnexion driver version is a relatively old one, and I'm wondering if I should update to the latest one (10.8.6). I am nervous about changing anything because previous experience with 3dc drivers tells me it can mess things up. Does anyone have a 3dconnexion device running on Ventura/VW2025 sucessfully with that latest driver version?

Yup I've had this too and it's rather frustrating.

This sounds a bit like something I occasionally encounter but it may be something entirely different. In my case, restarting VW usually stops it from happening.

Hrm... this makes me realise another potential limitation of using Materials. Because at the moment I do quite often use class over-rides on VPs for various purposes. For example maybe I am presenting a number of options for a timber finish. I have a "material class" that represents Oak but I want to give an idea of what things might look like with a paler or darker type of timber. In this case I can duplicate the viewport and in the duplicates, simply over-ride the texture applied to that Oak class with some alternative ones. If the material shows up in a number of places - say, structural members but also some manually modelled stairs, then the texture gets replaced in all of these places. I don't think I would be able to do the same using Materials. But could I achieve the same result using data vis instead of class over-rides? Can I tell data vis to texture anything using Material A, with the textures used by Material B? Another example is where I want to control the fill type in a section viewport. Material class X is set up with a solid colour fill attribute, and this is the fill that's applied to any objects using that material class, when they are cut in a section viewport. But I have other section viewports where I want that fill to be a hatch instead, and I can do this by over-riding the fill attribute for selected material classes. Again, I'd have to think through how I'd achieve this with Materials - would it be possible via data vis?

I am realising that if I want to control textures primarily via "Materials" rather than classes, assigning them is rather more laborious. If I want to draw a simple object and then control its texture by class, the routine is: 1. Draw the object 2. Go to the OIP, click once to expand the "class" dropdown which opens immediately 3. Click on the class I want. It seems that if I want to do the same using Materials, I have to: 1. Draw the object 2. Go to the OIP and tick the "use material" box 3. Click on the newly appeared "materials" dropdown 4. Wait for a short delay while a resource browser-like dialogue opens 5. Click on the material I want 6. Click "select". I am yet to find out whether this becomes annoying when I am drawing a lot of new objects.

We need it for saved views, design layers, and sheet layers.

Thanks. Good to know.

Is anyone able to say whether VW2023 runs OK in Sequoia? The official compatibility list seems to say it is not compatible. I have just moved from 2023 to 2025 so will be working in 2025 from now on but it would be good to know that I can still use 2023 for a bit for old projects just in case I run into any issues in converted files.

So... it looks like it's still the case that moving to Sonoma might be a bad idea? Better to skip it altogether and go straight to Sequoia at some point?

This is a long standing issue, that has been reported many times, but seems to be ignored by VW. There is currently a bug filed for it, unresolved.

With VW there often isn't an "intended workflow" as such. This can be a strength and a weakness. Going from my own experience (and others will have completely different approaches) ... once I started modelling in 3d properly, there were a bunch of things that I'd previously have done in 2d that I just started doing in 3d from the outset. Without knowing quite specifically what situation you are thinking about, it's hard to comment on how one might go about it in a more predominantly 3d workflow.

I used to do 3d in SU and 2d in vectorworks. A few years ago I switched to doing everything in VW with as little duplication as possible. My 2d documentation and 3d presentation drawings come essentially from the same model. This is better in my opinion. Where inefficiency creeps back in is with stuff like this, where the VW parametric tool doesn't create a good enough 3d object for many presentational purposes (or in fact good enough for 2d construction detail drawings). Usually I start out with "near enough" version of the stair using the VW tool, and keep this for as long as I can get away with (and sometimes this can encompass some early stage design changes where the basic stair geometry can be easily reconfigured). But at some point I convert it (or build from scratch) into an actual representation of what is to be built. From that stage onwards I just cross my fingers that there won't be any major changes that mean I have to rebuild the whole thing. Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't. Similar applies to the other VW objects which are really no good for anything more detailed than 1:100 or maybe 1:50 scale drawings: windows, doors, etc etc.

Making these kinds of edit completely breaks the stair object as a parametric object. The whole point of the stair object is that it is parametric, so you don't have to remodel the whole thing if your floor-floor dimension changes (for example). Hitting a few undos doesn't "take it back to hybrid mode" - it loses you all the work you've just done. Furthermore, converting it to non-parametric solids doesn't even produce a nice set of solids, it produces a whole load of faces which are a pain to edit and look awful in section.

Yes.

Similar I think to @E|FA, I would want to use them at least for visual purposes. Maybe I have windows which use a particular timber for the frames, and this matches the timber I am using for some internal joinery items. At the moment I can use the same materials class for both - and if I want to make a change to the texture that I use to represent that material, I just need to change it once, in one place, in the class settings. Or maybe I have skirting boards painted to match door architraves, and so on. (How to deal with painted materials is a whole different question of course! Is white painted plaster the same material as green painted plaster? At the moment I have to have them set up as two different material (classes). They both look exactly the same in detail sections but not in shaded perspectives. If I want to change the hatch used when they are sectioned, I have to remember to go and change this in all colour variants. Can something clever be done with compound materials? All for future investigation.)

Bumping this thread instead of continuing discussion on this other thread where "materials" are a bit off topic. Having had a bit of a look just now, it does seem to be the case that they have been further implemented since 2023. In VW2023 materials could not be assigned to the components of door objects for example, but it seems that they can be now in VW2025. It would be useful to have a definitive list of where they can't be used. I'll quote @Tom W. from the other thread... I imagine there are probably a few custom/3rd party plugins where they still can't be used.

I think I'm going to implement a similar approach as you describe & start using materials in my next project. As of VW2025, do we have any object types that still can't accept materials? Looking into this a couple of years back, it seemed there were a few things where this was the case.

You can sort-of do this using "saved sets" within the "Publish" command. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get a clear overview of what's actually in all of your saved sets because all you have is this tiny dialogue... and if you want to see what's in one of those sets you have to recall it. Even just having an improved "Saved Sets" interface would go a long way to providing what's described above. And then, being able to access those "saved sets" as part of the sheet layers navigation dialogue. That would make it quite a bit easier to keep on top of things when there are large numbers of sheet layers.

I don't think there's a way of doing this. The best I can think of is to use multiple view panes, so that you are editing the 3d elements in one pane whilst looking at the viewport (including annotations) in the other. But you'd need to manually update the viewport each time you wanted to see the effect of changes you'd made in the model. What is the reason that you want to see 2D annotations while editing 3d geometry?