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baronjutter

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Everything posted by baronjutter

  1. Hi Folks, I've been working in jobs that involve vectorworks for over 10 years so have always had access to vectorworks through work. I'm finally leaving the field but during this time I've gotten into making laser cut scale models for my model train set and the laser cutter I use only likes VW2013, it's also the version I just prefer to use. The folks at Vectorworks will not allow me to buy a 2013 license, they want to force me onto the latest version. I would love to have a proper legal version of 2013 but it really seems they don't want my business. Does anyone have a 2013 serial they'd be willing to sell me?
  2. I'm working with some files and run across something I've never seen. All the doors and windows have a prefix of the architectural office we received the plans from. When I click on them, vectorworks knows its a door, shows all the typical door plugin options, but they are greyed out and I'm unable to change anything, even the line weight or colour. Is there any way to "unlock" these objects or convert them into normal vectorworks doors/windows? I can of course convert them to group, but that destroys the walls and creates a mess in the file. k" https://puu.sh/AHyR8/44d76cd38a.png
  3. I'm using 2013 and trying to draw some curves, I'm not sure the exact terminology but something like a the top of a french curve or a compound curve. I'm drawing railway track plans and I want curves with gentle easements, not set radius curves. So like a curve that starts out gentle but gets sharper as it goes until it reaches a set desired radius. I've mess around with the spiral tool but can't figure out how to get the results I want. The oval tool seems perfect except I don't wan to draw a full oval. I've had some luck making an arc, converting it to a polygon then just stretching it out, but that's imprecise and most of my curves are not simple 90 degree affairs. Am I missing a tool or there just isn't really an option? I've had some luck just drawing many small arcs and decreasing the radius on each arc in sequence but that's a pain in the butt.
  4. Terrible, half the plugins in the file are all "DIALOG" versions. Everything from room labels to doors to windows to elevation marks. I'll just convert everything to groups and work as if I was dealing with an imported DWG or something. Stuff like this open happens when we get filed from firms who also use vectorworks. You'd think it would make things easier but it usually makes it harder. With some messy imported DWG I can just select all, change line colour to black and thickness to .05 and it all works. With a vectorworks though even selecting all and changing the colour won't work on plugin objects for some reason. I'll have to delete all the defined walls, convert them to unstyled walls, select them all and edit their components and delete out all the components before it lets me edit them. So often it's easier to just convert everything to groups or lines in order to make the drawing not a terrible rainbow of thick lines. I'd so love some option where you can actually select truly everything in the file and set all line colours and thickness to some standard and have it apply to absolutely everything from a plugin to a symbol to a wall.
  5. I've received a file from a firm who uses vectorworks, normally this means we're able to use all the proper plugin objects, walls are walls, doors are doors and so on. But in this file all doors and windows are DIALOG door in wall, or DIALOG door in window. Vectorworks seems to know they're doors or windows but all their object properties are grayed out, and attempting to convert them to groups of course converts to whole wall to a group and ruins it. How can I gain control over these objects? How can I make them into regular doors and windows? Here's how it looks when I click on a random door.
  6. Thanks for all the info. I'm just staff here so when it comes to the purchasing/license angle I'm only basing things off 2nd hand info.
  7. So there's no way to fix this in 2015? 2016 isn't compatible with our office computers so I think we'll just go back to 2013 since we haven't found any new features or fixes to old bugs in this new version, just slower printing and a load of new bugs (like over time every button in the interface being replaced with text that says "button" and the program eventually crashing). I know wayyyy back in the day you could just buy vectorworks like a normal piece of software, not pay yearly to "rent" it while constantly having to update to new versions to get any sort of support. Is there no option to purchase the software this way? Like just buy a dozen copies of 2013 and done?
  8. Publish to PDF goes pretty fast, like a half second per page. It's just publish to printer that takes a very very very long time.
  9. So our office has been using VW2013 for as long as we could. I do wish we could just buy the product once and only "upgrade" every few years (if the new version is worth upgrading to). Some other offices we exchange work with finally "upgraded" to 2015 so we decided why not, we're paying a huge sum per year to get these "upgrades". At first we were very confused by the new "publish" system. All we do is batch print and batch export to PDF, we have no need for these saved-sets. There was a lot of stress from this new menu and the whole process just has pointless added steps now. But we got over it. What we can't get over is how SLOW printing is now. Before once we hit "print" a little window would open for a few seconds and quickly spit out the drawings to the printer and we'd be back to work. Now it takes about 5-10 seconds per page to process the print command, so when we're printing out 50 signs, there goes your ability to work for quite a while. It does this regardless of the printer we're sending it to. It's so bad most of the office have gone back to 2013. What could be causing this? Why can 2013 process a huge batch print job in seconds while 2015 takes minutes?
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