KenD

Thanks guys, I appreciate the jest. 🙂 Zoomer, I didn't mean to hijack this thread subject with this topic. Windows (I'm still on 10, not a fan of change! It usually brings aggravation...) has snip and sketch built in. It works fine though it relies on screen pixels and some snips can be a bit fuzzy. You have to zoom in as close as possible for best resolution. The problem I was having was trying to get a shot of the cascade or drop down window when I click on the View tab. The instant you click anywhere else but that drop-down, it disappears, there is no way to drag a box or marquee around it with snip and sketch or similar app. Print screen is easy on the PC, one keystroke, but it prints all three of my screens as one image file and by the time I zoom in to crop what I want to share, its too fuzzy. I dont think I could stand less than three monitors any more, now that I have them. I usually have many .pdfs open from the architectural drawings of the job I'm working on, plus vectorworks, plus image files, plus a web browser, plus Outlook, etc.. I need the real estate! The print screen issue is a small price to pay relatively.

There was nothing not understandable to me. I assumed faff was an acronym but I got the gist of what Tom was saying. I love learning new words for picturesque speech. I'll have to work that one in. I had a British girlfriend many moons ago. Without a doubt we dont speak the same language sometimes! I get it. Mac=Awesome, PC=sucks. I've heard it from every Mac user. I appreciate the help and attempt to answer my questions.

No I mean screenshot a portion of the screen. As I mentioned above I cant use the snip or snapshot tool to grab a shot of that "view" drop-down because the drop down disappears as soon as I click away to grab the snip tool. With Windows, there is a print screen key right on the keyboard, but that doesn't allow a partial portion of the screen, only the whole thing, then you have to crop away what you dont want to share. In my case, I have three monitors and it prints all three screens side by side. Zooming in to crop a part of it, the resolution is to blurry. It would be nice if VW had a snip tool built-in to print or export just what you drag a marquee select around within the program/page. I haven't found such a tool. Thanks

Thanks Tom. I was wrong, I was just not seeing it. It's up on the upper right and my brain wasn't picking it up, up there. How did you snip yours? As I wrote above I couldn't. I had to use my phone to take a picture. Also, is there a way to marquee select an area to "export" to an image file or print just an area rather than the whole defined page? Or should I start a new topic on that? Thanks again.

This is what Vectorworks help says too but when I click "View" there is no selection to "show" or hide anything there. Unfortunately I cant show a screenshot because if I try to snip, the view dialog disappears the instant I click out of VW. If I do a print screen is prints all three of my screens and by the time I zoom in to crop or snip that, its too fuzzy to read. However the other method Help describes does work for me. "To hide indicators, deselect Show parametric constraints in the Display pane of the Vectorworks preferences". You have to know, in order to do that, you have to select "tools+options+Vectorworks Preferences". Although rlb didn't come back and confirm, I encountered this issue when using Snip and Sketch on a PC. This does not show when printing to a .pdf for instance. Does vectorworks have a marquee select area type image export? Or is it the whole page or nothing?

Yes I do have a numlock but I actually use the number pad to enter numbers while drawing. Thanks for bringing my attention to the previous view button. It pretty much does what hitting zero does when I accidentally touch a number key and it goes in to 3D mode. I think what happens is I'll start to enter a number before I click in to a dimension cell, etc. in the object info palette for instance. The keypad is just sitting there ready to change to 3D with the strike of a key.

I am always grazing the number pad on the keyboard changing whatever view those do with the stroke of one key. I had to call premium tech support to get out of that jail. Again it was a simple solution, just press zero to return to the plan view. On that note, any idea if there is a way to disable the number pad from changing views? I dont change views (intentionally), I am 2-D plan only. It would be nice to have a go-back feature that we could just select the setup that existed 5 or 10 minutes ago to be able to back out of an unknown situation we didn't intend to get in to.

Thanks Y'all! "Dimension Standard" was definitely what I was not thinking, but that's certainly what it was. I had somehow changed it to BSI which I had to look up to know what it means. Hopefully I can remember this. I knew it was something very basic. I really appreciate you all being here and helping. I hope your kindness is returned in life.

So I'm drawing along (2-D) and got to where it was time to apply dimensions. Out of the blue I have arrows at the ends. The file/template began with this style. This is what I like. Somewhere along the line I must have grazed the keyboard or something causing this, so it must be simple to change. I have hunted around and cannot find where to change this. Silly me thought it must be under Document Preferences+Dimensions...but nope. Units+Dimensions...nope. When I look for stuff like this its never where my mind thinks it logically should be. Obviously its somewhere and maybe even keyboard commands because I changed this without even knowing it. Can anyone point me to the right place? I have since just opened another template and copied and pasted in place so I can move on and not spend so much time trying to figure it out, but keeping the old file in case someone replies so I can learn what to do to fix this in the future. Searching help...was no help, and usually because I'm using the wrong words like "Dimension arrows" and "Dimension lines". They are probably called some technical word I'm not using. VW 2021 Thanks

Trying to insert a sheet metal screw, I'm given three drive types. Regular slot, cross slot and square slot. I want to show a pin-in torx. Anyone know if there is a way to do that without manually detailing the head which strips the object/shape options (front, top, etc.). Thanks

That's it! I'm sure there is a reason it was decided this was better. I wont try to analyze it, just glad to know it now.

Thank you Nikolay, I have looked through these and tried all of the different selections and angles to go at this. I have tried directly editing the text but there is still no choice I have found to position the text of the scale below and to the right of the lines. I can select a style to have the text under the line, but found nothing that allows me to select where the scale text is positioned left to right. If you look at the first image I posted. This is the 2020 object info palette. You can clearly see there is a selection for scale alignment. This can be selected as "right" which puts the scale to the right of the label...where I have always placed it for years. The second picture is 2021. That selection and the easy access text choices are gone. Although I think it has been made more difficult by having to directly edit the object in 2021, I can deal with that, but I dont find the ability, specifically, to align the scale text to the right of the label. I've had to open 2020, create the drawing/scale label styles I want with the scale text to the right, save that file, open it in 2021 and save that as sort of a template to use for drawing labels. 2021 recognizes these labels and doesn't ruin them, but I haven't been able to just make one in 2021 like this. If you can specifically identify how I can make drawing labels look like this, in 2021, I would appreciate it. See below...seems pretty simple to me...or it should be, and was. I hold out that I could just be missing it somewhere tucked in some other spot someone decided was better.

Thanks. Silly me, thinking it could be something simple like right clicking the line selection and it providing an option to "set as default". That would be far too easy.

Does anyone know if there is a way to set the default line type? I know I can select line type, then the dash style and that will be the line going forward until I select solid line...for instance. But when I select line type again, it defaults back to the line it is defaulted to by Vectorworks. I want to be able to lock-in the default line type I plan to use when not using a solid line so that I dont have to take the extra step every time of also having to choose the dash style over and over again. Thanks

2021 has been annoying me with this. Where is my Scale Alignment choice? This used to be so easy. Select alignment, text size, all right here. But now there is this and I have to go digging and edit text size etc instead of simply doing that right on the front of the pallete. I haven't found a way to align my text to the right, under the line. I'm having to pull drawing labels from 2020 documents to use in 2021 in order to make my drawings look like they always have because I haven't figured out if there is even this ability in 2021 anymore. Anyone know anything on this? Thanks