David Holcomb

I would like to be able to differentiate visually between the dashed hidden lines of different classes. How can a class color be passed to the dashed hidden lines in a dashed hidden line rendering?

I would like to be able to select the rendering mode by class (or layer) in viewports. In particular, I frequently want to render external components as dashed hidden lines while using Renderworks for internal components. This can be achieved outside of a viewport by assigning the various components to separate layers, setting the view to include all of the layers, and adjusting the rendering modes for each layer. However, I have not been able to achieve the same effect within a viewport (displaying non primary layers as grey is not as effective).

The VectorWorks solids kernel (Solids++) kernel developor IntegrityWare is a leading STEP translator developer, so Nemetschek already has a reasonable path forward on this. http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2004/090804.php http://www.integrityware.com/products/translators/translators.html

Please implement international standard based CAD file interchange (STEP - aka ISO-10303-21). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303-21 It is becoming progressively harder to make due with IGES based file exchange as it is abandoned in favor of its successor standard. I have more and more contacts that can no longer easily output IGES files and would much prefer being able to interchange a current file format.

Xgrid is Apple's technology for automatically spreading computational tasks across many processors - a version of this was implemented for VATech's G5 supercomputer. IMHO this is the type of breakthrough technology that makes Apple truly shine. Get rid of the trailing ')' to fix the link.

Being able to offload large rendering tasks (via xgrid http://www.apple.com/acg/xgrid/) is by far the most useful new feature I would like to see. It would greatly increase the value of Vectorworks to me (allowing Vectorworks to be used for large projects).

The ability to put in stars (and ideally the moon) into a Renderworks background would be useful. The feature would resemble the current snowflakes background with a luminosity and stellar density settings.

I have 100s of polygons on a 2D sheet. I need to scale all of them while preserving their x,y coordinates. My presumption would be to select all of them, while keeping them ungrouped, and then use Scale Objects.... However, even when the objects are not grouped, Scale Objects treats them as if they were and scales not just the individual objects, but the space between them. How can I scale multiple selected objects, while preserving their absolute position?

My problem with using the secondary dimensioning standard for the decimal display is that I almost always have to have both U.S. Customary and SI units on every drawing. I use U.S. Customary for the primary and SI for the secondary. What I don't understand is why the button is available at all under primary dimensioning for fraction/decimal mix if it is not possible to select this option. I do have fraction / decimal mix enabled under general display settings, but still cannot enable it under primary dimensions. How do I type in dimension values as an override as you indicate in your reply? If I key a value into the "Length" text input area of the Object Information Pane of a Dimension - 0.971" for example which is the true length of the associated object - I continue to get 31/32" displayed on the drawing dimension. I do not understand how to override this. Note: 0.971" is what is displayed in the "Length" text input area before I rekey the value. [ 03-03-2003, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: David Holcomb ]

I am trying to enable fraction / decimal mix for my primary dimensioning standard. I have specified this in the Units-General Display. However, when I then go to the Units - Dimension Objects (Primary) panel the only selection that is active (other buttons are grayed out) is fractional units. How can I get the Fractional / Decimal Mix button to become active? What I would really like is for the precision specfication in the Dimension Panel to allow me to specify either a fractional or decimal precision for a particular dimension. I have thus far only been able to specify one or the other.

I have been running the CPU monitor application while VectorWorks generates an animation and noting that almost all of the processing is occuring on a single processor? Wouldn't it be natural to have the even and the odd frames generated on separate processors to recognize that modern Macs are dual processor machines thereby doubling the movie generation speed?

What I would suggest is having some settings in the subtract solids command for situations like this to leave things like a 3D locus at the surface center of the hole being subtracted. Essentially what I am looking for is an easy way to tell a machinist exactly where I want a hole put in a part and how big the hole should be. I need to be able to reference the center (and/or centerline) of the hole from front, right, and top projections as well as being able to put in a diameter reference.

The problem with this is that the centermark is a 2D object not a part of the plate, so I cannot reorient the plate and keep the centermark. This is just an example of a more general problem with 2D dimensioning and labeling of 3D objects. I would like to be able to dimension 3D parts once and have the dimensions display preserved if I rotate the part or decompose into lines for displaying different projections on a single layer.

I would like to be able to dimension 3D objects more easily. Ideally, when I have subtracted a screw hole from a plate (subtractsolids), I would like to still be able to locate the center handle of the screw hole to be able to reference it to the edges. VectorWorks should also recognize that the hole is still a circle and allow using the diameter dimensioning tool.

Is there a current way easy way of generating an STL file? The only way I have been able to find to generate an STL file from Vectorworks is to generate a MiniCAD script file, move the file to an older Mac that still has an ADB port (so I can use the CADMover dongle) and then use CADMover to generate the file.

Thank your for your file translation offer. While this likely would be useful, I don't have a Gerber visualization software route and hence your output would not be checkable for me. While I certainly would not in general try to do a comprehensive validation, being able to do a coordinate spot check is important to me. Please post an add if you do get a package working well enough for commercial release. My current fabrication route is to send both a dxf and and eps file to the fab house. The dxf defines the shapes and the eps provides a fill information.

I would like to be able to use VectorWorks to generate my lithography mask artwork. To do this VectorWorks needs to be able to generate Gerber files. This would be a very useful feature for me.

Any possibility of integrating an optical ray tracing add on package like RayCAD (www.raycad.com) for AutoCAD into VectorWorks? and/or producing an optics industry package.