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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?

It's not clear exactly what you're asking for - how would this work? A menu item that offered import of text from other files? How would you identify which block of text you wanted to import?

Persevere with Horizontal Sections - they are not very actively promoted by VW, and I don't think a lot of people use them at this stage but as I understand it they will increasingly become the future of how VW works. Neither the "top/plan" nor horizontal section approaches produce ideal results - they each have their pros and cons depending on what your priorities are. By the way, in your OP, I think one of the problems with your stairs is caused by the arrow having a solid fill.

It's crazy that those stupid "ceiling main" and "sills" classes are still used by default. The names make not the slightest bit of sense for any current day user and I'm sure that pretty much everyone gets baffled by them at some point. Even if they don't mess up your drawing they probably sit there messing up your class list, because you're not quite sure whether it's safe to delete them.

Have you just got used to & accepted the two click route now?

I don't really like detached palettes but I could give Saved Views its own section in one of my sidebars I guess, separate from the rest of "Navigation". Not very efficient use of space though.

It's not really ideal because most of the time I have the Navigation palette showing "saved views", which I use all the time. Double clicking the classes or layers tabs means that I then have to switch it back to saved views.

So, am currently moving from 2023 to 2025 (skipping 2024) so am starting to use the "new" interface for the first time in real life. The main thing that's bothering me so far is: It's long been my habit, if i want to do stuff within layer or class settings, that I get to the relevant tab of the "organisation" dialogue with a single button press here or here: But now this seems to require two clicks - one on the button, then another on the top item in the dropdown menu that now appears. Maybe I'll just get used to it but this feels like it adds a lot of friction to a process that I used to do without even thinking about it. Especially with classes, I am quite frequently wanting to go in there and adjust things. Is there some other one-click method of getting to that dialogue that I'm missing?

I don't plan to try that other method in VW2025 - but I hope to continue using the one using the clip cube & flipped viewport, because it worked fairly well in VW2023.

By the "other method" do you mean the one where you flip a HSVP?

I haven't noticed that particular issue - however, to make my RCPs I haven't been using the method described in the post that you quote (because it's too much fuss having to set all the classes individually). Instead I have been using the slightly unofficial method suggested by @Matt Panzer in this post. For what it's worth, that method seems to have worked ok. So far I have successfully used it in working drawings for one project in VW2023. I've just started migrating to VW2025 and haven't really tested in that version yet.