Kees W

working on a network is not VW's forte, to put it mildly. One of the biggest problems for us is that VectorWorks insists on saving the backup file in the same save path as the real file. When the network is slow, this means 10-30 second stalls while the backup is being saved. It also means I have my server littered with VectorWorks Backup folders (since VW doesn't clean up after itself either) Even symbol libraries on the server, loaded in the resource browser cause us stalls and even unexpected quits. We have no such problems with any other application. (btw, working locally also creates problems, like team members unknowly working on the same file, and thus overwritting each others changes at the end of the day)

How is your automatic save set up? (prefereces, under session tab) VectorWorks has the very annoying habit of creating the backup file in a folder at the same location where the actual file resides. When a file is located on a network, this can cause large slow-down when the network is busy or otherwise slow. When working on large files, I actually have to turn auto-saving off for lack of an option to create a local backup.

jim, try adding .mcd at the end of the file name. I know this sounds like a windows solution, but I've seen OS X get pretty picky about those extension too.

I just found a huge bug in add surface when used with small objects. this happens here on every file and is 100% reproducable. Create a new file, with scale 1:100 or 1:20 even. Create a circle with diameter 1mm. draw a rectangle, say 2x8mm. Make sure the objects overlap, select both and use "add surface". VectorWorks 10.5.1 on OS X 10.3.6 or OS 9.2.2 will crash on all of our machines, every time. I don't usually draw objects that small, still, VW bombing out like this in such a situation is pretty bad.

Have you seen InDesign CS's palettes that dock to the sides of the screen? (They slide out when you click on them) On the workstations, I want my palettes in plain sight, but on the small screen of my iBook, it's a really nice touch.

There are utilities like "Cocktail" or "Onyx" that can run maintenance scripts, repair permission and delete system caches. Running those tasks has cured most of the (few) problems I've encountered with OS X. you can find the utilities on www.macupdate.com.

Yes, if your files were created in MiniCAD 6 or later, you only need to install VW 9. Anything earlier requires an earlier (non native) version. I believe VectorWorks 8 can still read MiniCAD 5 and maybe even v4 files, so I would try that first. You can update your copy of 9.0.1 to VW 9.5 for OS X compatibility, btw. (http://nemetschek.net/downloads/vectorworks/) [ 08-20-2004, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Kees W ]

Hi, we have been encountering a rather annoying problem with VectorWorks 10.5.1. (On Mac OS X 10.3.5, different G4 machines with plenty of RAM) When working with drawings that contain a lot of symbols, clicking the replace symbol button in the info palette will popup an incomplete list of symbols. Symbols will show up in the resource palette, and are embedded in the file itself. Especially symbols that have just been created will not show up, even after saving, closing and reopening the file. This of course renders the function next to useless. Are we doing something wrong? Does anyone have a solution for this? [EDIT] the only solution we have found is to paste the symbols to be replaced and the replacement symbol into a new file. Replacing will then work. This is of course less than optimal. [ 08-20-2004, 10:24 AM: Message edited by: Kees W ]

any news on this front? I've found myself having to offset a lot of free-form shapes to create walls, and the subsequent gazillion points in the offset makes it impossible to alter the shape after the offset/clip surface procedure. very annoying indeed. Was this adressed in VW 11? Or was anyone ever succesful in creating a plugin that does work?

I get this message, on a Mac, when i try to render something with the bitmap tool at 300 dpi or higher. If my selection is too big, it'll put that stupid message up (The width of the image exceeds OS limitations). I usually end up batch rendering, anyway. (wish I could batch render saved views, but that's a different story) I have another image related problem though. When I try to import an image file (or create an image fill) in VW 10.5.1 on Panther (all updates) the open dialog is slow as mollasses and when I browse through several folders, VectorWorks will invariably crash. I was suspecting a QuickTime 6.5 incompatibility, but didn't see anything here, so I suppose my machine is a little out of whack? G4733, 896Mb RAM, only VectorWorks running, problem may be related to having classic running, it seems. [ 04-20-2004, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: Kees W ]

we work with workgroup referenced files of a server a lot. Since the otherwise great addition of true auto saving in VW 10, our server is littered with VW backup folders. I have set Retrospect to ignore them, but I'd rather not have those folders there at all. Also, and more importantly, when working on large files, while autosaving, the related stalling of VectorWorks becomes quite noticable and annoying. I therefor requets an option to always autosave to a local folder of one's choosing. Simce VectorWorks doesn't clean up backup files after a user requested quit, this would make it easier to clean up after oneselve too.

quote: Originally posted by Kees W: I have just moved two users over to VW10. We want to test the water a little before upgrading the whole firm. So far, any new feature or advances have been completelly overshadowed by significantly less reliable snapping (as compared to VW 9.5.3) Both users are working on different projects, and have different Macs. Both are running OS 9.2.2 (The cost of upgrading to X, inclusing all software is too prohobitive, especially since OS 9 works pretty much flawlessly for us) The complaint from both of them is that the cursor does not reliably snap to the corners. It'll show the cross, but when they click, the cursor will change to the white arrow and will be slightly off the corner. This is extremely frustrating for them. Snap to grid is disabled, we have been playing with the snap radius, but nothing so far has made much difference. I myself am using VW 10 as well, but on OS X 10.3.3, and my problems are less severe, though especially when inside groups, it's not great. Are we doing something wrong or is VW 10 flawed in this regard, especially under OS 9? hardware used: Dual G4 867/512Mb OS 9.2.2 G4 733/512Mb OS 9.2.2 G4 733/896Mb OS X 10.3.3 Kees de Wit Drost + van Veen Architects BV (the Netherlands)

we have snap to objects, snap to intersection, constrain angle and smart points enabled. smart cursor cues is enabled, and I removed the "y" toggle from the workspace to avoid accidental deactivation. snap to loci and floating datum are disabled. My problem with snappping when inside groups in OS X seems to be seperate from the OS 9 problem. I created a little vectorscript to toggle the show other objects in groups preference, toggleing it seems to resolve my snapping problems. My OS 9 users are getting more frustrated by the day though, and I hope we can find a solution before I have to downgrade them. Kees [ 03-31-2004, 03:59 AM: Message edited by: Kees W ]

my VW 10.5.1 is exactly the same as ccroft's describtion from 8.5. This is on a Mac, it sounds more like nemetchek is simply suffering from microsoft's flawed design guidelines.

I have just moved two users over to VW10. We want to test the water a little before upgrading the whole firm. So far, any new feature or advances have been completelly overshadowed by significantly less reliable snapping (as compared to VW 9.5.3) Both users are working on different projects, and have different Macs. Both are running OS 9.2.2 (The cost of upgrading to X, inclusing all software is too prohobitive, especially since OS 9 works pretty much flawlessly for us) The complaint from both of them is that the cursor does not reliably snap to the corners. It'll show the cross, but when they click, the cursor will change to the white arrow and will be slightly off the corner. This is extremely frustrating for them. Snap to grid is disabled, we have been playing with the snap radius, but nothing so far has made much difference. I myself am using VW 10 as well, but on OS X 10.3.3, and my problems are less severe, though especially when inside groups, it's not great. Are we doing something wrong or is VW 10 flawed in this regard, especially under OS 9? hardware used: Dual G4 867/512Mb OS 9.2.2 G4 733/512Mb OS 9.2.2 G4 733/896Mb OS X 10.3.3 Kees de Wit Drost + van Veen Architects BV (the Netherlands)

yes, I would strongly suggest working with classes as well. In addition to the snap function working properly, you can use class attributes to quickly change color, textures etc of all objects of any one class.

doh, I can configure Retrospect to ignore any folder named 'VW Backup' This makes things more workable. However, the problem of slow network writes and the resulting periodic stalling of VectorWorks remains. I would still prefer one central local folder. It would also be easier to clean up after oneself this way. -Kees

quote: Originally posted by Katie: Close VW. Go to the user home folder> library > Preferences Delete the VW 11 Prefs file. You'll also need to delete the trash can. Restart VW and your problem should be solved. VW 11, eh? when? I have tried this 'solution" and it works, but after a while, the problem returns. I assume the prefs file has become corrupt. It seems to happen more often on our OS X machines, though OS 9 isn't immune either. Is there something we can/should be doing to prevent this from happening at all?

We have just upgraded to VectorWorks 10. We're very happy to finally see an autosave feature that runs without user interaction. However, this feature currently saves a backup file in a folder in the same directory as the current file. We work with workgroup referenced files that reside on a server, and this is causing several issues. Firstly, when the network is busy, autosaving causing a very significant (up to 10 seconds) pause in the operation of vectorworks. Obviously, the larger the file, the bigger the problem. Secondly, we now have "VW backup" folders all over the server that are needlessly being backed-up by Retrospect and causing us to run out of space on the tapes. I therefor would love to be able to have the option to always save the backup file to a local folder of my choosing. As it is currently, we really can't use this otherwise extremely useful feature. Kees de Wit Drost + van Veen Architects [ 03-18-2004, 05:51 AM: Message edited by: Kees W ]

you can edit solid substraction with edit group command (in organize), or just doubleclick it if you have vw 10. you can also edit the 2d base of an extusion this way. this is one of my favorite features of vectorworks. the blend edge tool is a bit iffy. Once you blend an edge on an object, you can no longer use the edit group command. And, as you discovered, often it won't work at all, even when the geometry seems as though it should allow it. i would go with the polyline for the body too. it helps sometimes to use a few lines and "clip surface" to cut the shape into smaller parts before extruding. make those cuts at the "top" of your curves. after you extrude, blend edges, etc you can add the solids back together. good luck

all emacs have g4 cpus and run os x nicely. it has a geforce 2mx graphics card from nvidia, you cannot change it. not the newest or fastest card, but good enough. you should buy as much ram as you can afford, just don't buy it at Apple. Get the stock configuration and add 133MHz SDRAM dimms from your local pc shop, much cheaper. Installing ram is covered in the manual and easy enough to do yourself, even if you've never seen the insides of a mac before.

illustrator allows you to export as dxf, which you can subsequently import in VW. You can even copy paste between the two, but going through the system clipboard, you will loose precision.

Been playing with the freshly arrived VW10 this week-end. I must say, so far I like what I see. Nice improvements in many areas, and it his a more speedy and solid feel to it, well done. The only thing I can't come to terms with yet is this new resource browser. After batch converting the texture and symbols libraries, I'm no a little stuck. how do I actually browse with this browser? I can't seem to manage to add a folder to my favorites. I can't add them as files to the favorites, because I'll end up with a gazillion files in there, completelly unstructured. how do I browse my textures folder? Manually importing them one by one is not acceptable. Heck, how do I browse any folder? I found the option to find resource on disk, but that doesn't stick, open a new file and do it all over... I must be missing something.

I've been using the VW 9.5 beta in OSX 10.1.1 for the last few weeks. It's looking quite good, very stable, though noticably slower than running the same version in OS 9. I hope this will change before the release.I have one weird problem, where when I try to open a file containing a large image, VW in OS X tells me to increase the memory size. To my knowlegde, this is not possible/nescesary in X. I also get this message when I try to rendering any model with RenderWorks at 300dpi or higher.This is on a Dual G4/450 with 640Mb RAM.Is this just a bug in the beta, or is there something I can do to make VectorWorks be a little more agressive about grabbing RAM in OS X? N.B. no matter how complex the drawing, or how many I have open, VW always reports 20Mb available. In contrast, I just received Illustrator 10, and it notes over 400Mb available when starting out.