Benedick_Miller

Bug Submitted.

OK - will do. Is it a bug or a feature? ;-)

PS - I realise now that, for classes, if use at creation is on for graphic attributes it overrides use Text Styles on Creation for line and fill colors. So I guess this is a feature in fact? To me it seems to not work as expected - I get the font but not the rest of the class style. I guess it is meant to be this way after all, but I would prefer if use text style actually did apply the text style on creation. Where I work we generally use text styles that are complementary to the class graphic attributes so that text stands out against the objects. It is useful to us to have different text styles and object styles in a single class. We normally only use a single font but different colors, so trying to do what I hoped does not work at all as the only thing left from use text styles on creation is the font (and text size) I understand now that this does not work in Vectorworks after all. Pity. Thanks for all the help.

@Neil Barman yes that is what I am trying to accomplish - it doesn't seem to work for me. It seems to work for you! How? video attached. (In the video I select the Custom Text style, not the Class Text style, but it makes no difference - the point is that the text does not have the class text style applied "on creation" - that's the bit I don't get.) vwx_text_style_test.mp4 text-style-test-scratch.vwx

@grant_pd yes that is what my post is about - selecting use on creation for text styles does not work as expected.

@MullinRJ thank you. I will try your suggestions. As you say: Indeed! The general rule in our company is to usually keep all attributes by class on and use class attributes. To have to turn this off, to write some text, them back on again to continue drawing is not something my colleagues in-house will do, it is too disruptive to the everyday workflow. In that case it is easier & quicker to assign a text style after creating text. In practice, the way i see it, this means that the Use On Creation for Text Styles in the Class Settings Dialog is broken. Pity.

Exactly!

Thank you - maybe talking at cross purposes here, or I may have misunderstood: I am saying that my lighting fixtures (& other objects) need to be assigned to a hanging position for organization reporting etc. EG. Unit Number / Hanging position - this is the set-up in spotlight. Are you saying I need to add a custom data tag to all my lighting fixtures? As I say - maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean? The nice thing about hanging positions is that you drag a lighting fixture on to it and it is automatically associated with it, and this shows up in the object info palette and the lighting fixture dialog. I don't really see how we can easily do without hanging positions ?

@Peter Neufeld - has made good points above. Also, from a lighting design point of view, a single connected truss system may contain several hanging positions, as far as lighting is concerned. For example a simple "box" truss could be thought of as 4 lighting positions. - I don't know the best, or rather the easiest way, to deal with this in Vectorworks. Any thoughts?

maybe someone from Vectorworks would like to comment? Is this a bug, or a feature? 😉

PS - maybe the documentation for the purge tool could be updated to make it clearer that plugin objects/devices cannot be purged. Likewise maybe a note in the dialog would be helpful, as a reminder of the limitation.

Thank you - that sounds like a good idea. If anyone out there has an example of a script that might help me achieve this it would be much appreciated 😉 but I will certainly have a go myself.

Pity...

Hi, I feel like I am missing something here: I have a class and I have a custom text style. In the class graphic attributes dialog I check Text Style use at creation ON and select my custom text style from the drop-down. In the drawing I set: make all attributes by class, in the attributes palette. I select the text tool and enter text - the text is <Un-Styled> - it is not set as <Class Text Style> as I would expect. It uses the class pen attributes, not the class text style. What am i doing wrong please? In the text tool dropdown there is no option for class text style, so I can't use that to set the text to use class text style. I'm so confused! Put another way: how to use the Use at Creation for Text Styles in Classes properly? Vectorworks 2020 SP 2.1 with Spotlight & Braceworks MacOS 10.15.3 (Catalina)

PPS - to be fair the link above is a very old tutorial - maybe it should just be depreciated? On the new Vectorworks University site things are much better 🙂 However, interestingly, the Getting Started: Entertainment Design has a whole lesson on Hanging Positions "Hanging positions are an important part of the entertainment designer's workflow" https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=5&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=10 Just saying 😉

PS - just having a look in the Service Select portal - maybe the Spotlight Lighting Plot basics training materials could do with an update sometime 🙂We don't even have Lighting Positions anymore. I am thinking of new users. https://serviceselect.vectorworks.net/training/webinars/classroom-training-videos/light-plot-basics?searchterm=spotlight

oh yes! me too! Thank you very much for your helpful answers and suggestions.

@jcogdell ah! very interesting! I will have another look at hanging positions - I thought that was good practice! I am old! a couple of points: it is certainly possible to count truss in a hanging position in a worksheet - please see attached file above. That bit worked fine - that was not really the problem. If we no longer use Hanging positions in Spotlight, I still have hanging positions in the real world EG. Truss A, Truss B, and I still need to get a material list of truss pieces per real world Hanging Position - even if we aren't using Spotlight Hanging Positions any more. Do you have a suggestion as to how to achieve that please? Note that in my case putting each hanging position on it's own layer or class is not practical for our company. In Vectorworks help on Hanging Positions I don't see anything about it being depreciated, as you seem to suggest. Maybe the help files need updating on this subject?

I maybe have a bug: I have created a worksheet. OK. Now I Right Click on the row number and click Edit Report. After making changes I click ok. Now the worksheet, in edit mode, is frozen on my screen in front of the Vectorworks window. The worksheets are frozen on the screen, but not visible when a different app is selected. The frozen copy of the worksheet(s) stay(s) on screen until I quit Vectorworks. This only happens with edit report - edit criteria works fine. Vectorworks Spotlight with Braceworks SP2.1 MacOS 10.15.3 (Catalina)

Here is my simple test file attached 🙂 truss count test.vwx

@Trodaire . did this work for you? Looks like I have a similar problem. Should be straightforward, but I can't get it to work! I would like a worksheet report of Truss pieces (by Model Name) for each Hanging Position. I can easily make a report to list Truss pieces, summarised by Model Name, but I cannot work out how to set the Hanging Position Name as a criteria or how to get it/them on the worksheet as a column. Ideally I would like a report that summarises Truss Pieces by Model Name within in each Hanging Position, but for now I would settle for being able to create a worksheet for each hanging position. I feel like this should be simple - so I must be missing something!

I have noticed that Purge Coincident Duplicate Objects does not work for coincident Spotlight Truss and Lighting Fixtures. Vectorworks 2020 SP2.1 Spotlight with Braceworks. MacOS 10.15.3 (Catalina) Is there any way to do this for either object type? Is there a way to make this a feature request?

Good news! Thank you!

Here you state that macOS 10.15 (Catalina) is a compatible operating system however on the Vectorworks System requirements page macOS 10.15 (Catalina) is listed as "testing" - as of today 27th Jan 2020. https://www.vectorworks.net/sysreq Does the above page need updating? Is macOS 10.15 (Catalina) "compatible" or "testing" - I don't see how both can be true.

i am responsible for 6 mac workstations for Vectorworks plus another 20 workstations, servers etc. - of course I keep backups before upgrading the OS on the workstations, but I can't be expected to keep and maintain virtual machines for all of the Vectorworks Workstations "just in case" It is nice that people post their opinions here, but the only thing that will let me update my user's workstations, is an official answer from Vectorworks. We also use various other software (of course) all these other software vendors have a clear position on this question. Only Vectorworks seems to be unsure if it is compatible or not, which is frustrating. We have used Vectorworks for many years and intend to keep using it. We are fine with waiting for a couple of months after the latest MacOS update before updating, however I would say that by 3 months I would expect Vectorworks to have caught up. We pay an annual subscription which includes annual releases. I think it is fair to expect Vectorworks to make sure that the annual releases are compatible with the corresponding operating systems. I have sent the above comment directly to Vectorworks.