jan15

That reminds me of the story of the cat door that a friend built to allow his cat access to the house while he's away. Not wanting to give other cats access, he made it open electrically whenever a sensor detects the presence of his cat, via a device on its collar. To conserve the battery, the signal is sent out at intervals. So the cat has to go to the door and wait a short time, and then it opens. The cat always goes through the same series of motions (rubbing against the door, turning around, scratching, etc.), always in the same order, while waiting for the door to open. One wonders whether the cat thinks that ritual causes the door to open.

It seems odd that selecting objects by clicking on their filled surfaces should vary so much by version, and perhaps by region. 2D / 3D object selectable by fill no / yes (v12.5.2 aus - David) yes / no (v12.5.1 usa - Jeff) yes / --- (v12 usa - Amy) yes / yes (v10.5.1 usa - Jan) Anyone else? Is there a setting for this in Preferences?

I think it's the operating system (both MacOS and Windows) that prevents using the pull-down menus of the main window while in a sub window. It's the same in all applications I have. So the only way VW could get around that would be to have pull-down menus built into each of the palettes. But if you just want to use the mouse to copy and paste, you could get a two-button mouse (if that isn't too unMaclike), and use the other button to get pop-up copy and paste options anywhere.

Yes, same with Windows version. Can't use the pull-down menus of the main window while in a sub window. In any program. Sorry, it never occurred to me that you were trying to use a pull-down menu to Copy and Paste. I've never done that. For me those are always F3 and F2.

On my Windows PC I can paste text anywhere in VW that I can type text, including any OIP cell, the angle cell of the Rotate command's pop-up window, and the Find and Replace strings. That's always been the case, as far as I can remember. Sorry, I can't think of any reason why it's not working on your Mac.

That's very similar to Mr. Hand. Available (in TTF?) for $45.

Is that only in Wireframe or Dashed Line mode? In Shaded or Unshaded Polygon mode I think you should be able to grab it by any surface that has a fill. Unless that's been changed since version 10. So you find that 2D rectangles in version 12 can be dragged by clicking on their fill area?

Yes, you have to think of a Layer as a physical place to store drawing objects, and a Class as a kind of department-name or job title that you assign to an object that helps you to remember what it does and to connect it to its co-workers. That distinction comes in very handy sometimes, so it would be a bad idea to have a pasted-in object go onto the Layer it was on before, or to have it create such a Layer. I'm sure Autocad would do it the same way if it had layers. The thing it calls a layer should really be called a class, since it isn't layered (in the normal English sense of one being above or below another). That's why AC vets get confused about VectorWorks layers.

It must be new with 11, then. Versions 8 and 10 work the way I described. I'm surprised I didn't read something about a change like that, affecting the filled surfaces that were always so fundamental to VW.

You have to use the Layers palette to create the new layer in the target document. But then you can copy the entire contents of the source layer to the same layer in the target document in one operation. With Layer Options set to Active Only, issue the Select All and then the Copy command. Then, in the target file, issue the Paste-In-Place command. With Classes, which work like Autocad "Layers", just pasting an object into a file will create the Class that it was assigned to, if that Class isn't already there.

Is that something new in version 12? It's never been true in the past. A rectangle with no fill has to be grabbed at the edges; but if it has any kind of fill -- solid, pattern, hatch, gradient, or image -- you can grab the filled area and drag it away all in one click-drag.

Well, maybe the Select tool could check the selection set first, and then check the rest of the database only if it fails to find a handle there. But what if you want to select a solid surface that's on top of something in the selection set? In that case, you would expect to be able to click anywhere on the overlying solid and get it, not get the pre-selected object hidden behind it.

David, the status quo is not a flaw. It's great that the Select tool normally selects and moves all in the same click-drag. Grab 'n go. It saves time on the most commonly used operation.

To turn off the ability to change the selection set, you would just have to limit the selectable object handles to those in the current selection set. Just as you sometimes limit selectable handles to those in the current layer, group, or class. A piece of cake.

It's a shame there isn't a key that momentarily turns off the 2D Selection tool's ability to select/de-select objects, so that its many other functions can be used without unintended changes to the selection set.

Symbol insertions can't be re-sized. But if you convert one to a group (using the Symbol-to-Group command), then you can use drag-stretch, Scale Objects, etc. to change its size. If you're going to have several trees all the same size, you can Convert to Group and re-size just once, then use the Ungroup command and the Create Symbol command to make a new symbol in the correct size. Then you can create more insertions of it with the Insert Symbol tool, or just drag-copy any insertion to other locations. The advantage of a symbol is that the geometry in it is only stored in the file once, no matter how many times you insert it; and if you edit any insertion of a symbol (just double-click on it to start editing), the symbol definition and all the other insertions of it are automatically changed. Some of the built-in symbols can't be edited; that's why I suggested creating a new one rather than editing the built-in one that's too large for you.

The Polygon tool draws a square from a center point. You drag the half-width or half-diagonal.

Right. We can't customize the modes of a tool. This has long been a sore point. Often the mode that comes up first is one that I never use. And if you want to bounce back and forth between one tool and two different modes of another tool, you're out of luck. The worst example of this was the old Extend tool, dropped after version 8. The first mode was useless, and maybe that's why the tool was dropped. But the second mode was a great tool that's much missed. It extended any clicked object to the selected object, even when the selected object was off-screen. There've been many complaints in the forum about that being dropped, but nobody at NNA understands what we're talking about. They keep trying to tell us that a new tool does the same thing. Perhaps the new tool does what the first mode of the Extend tool did (which was not much), but it doesn't do what the second mode of the Extend tool did.

Yes, any tool can be put on any palette. Pull down File > Workspaces > Workspace Editor, then maybe "Edit a copy of the current workspace" (and assign a name to your custom workspace). Then go to the Tools tab. All available tools are shown in the left window, and the ones in your workspace are shown on the right. There's also a tab for Menu Commands, with the same format. Drag from left to right, or delete unwanted tools or commands on the right. Dragging a tool slightly more to the right can make it a sub-tool of the one above. You can also click at the right end of a tool line to assign a keyboard shortcut to it, with or without modifier keys as per the checked box at the bottom of the window. Also, it sounds like your polyline reshape tools are on a docked palette, which you should be able to undock just by grabbing it at the top and dragging it. And there's a "VectorWorks Preference" for enabling or disabling palette docking, in case you never want to use it.

See what I mean? All that craziness becomes a habit that people can't kick. If using Autocad required hitting yourself in the head with a rubber mallet every 10 seconds, people would be complaining that VectorWorks doesn't have a mallet. They'd want to put it on the Wish List.

Yes, that's the rub. And they're all so stubborn. There's something about using Autocad that alters the brain and makes it stubborn. All those variables with names like ACADLSPASDOC, ATTDIA, and AUDITCTL, and whether to make the text 6" high or 6 3/4" high, and the dimension ticks 3" or 3 1/2" to print correctly at the current scale. It drives you crazy. And learning to do all that is such an ordeal, like learning the NY city sewer system by walking through the whole thing. It makes you think that learning another CAD package is going to be the same kind of ordeal, and you don't ever want to do that again. So that's something to consider. Therapy for all your CAD operators.

One other caveat: when you do that Paste-in-Place, you'll be pasting all the selected things onto the active Layer, regardless of which layer(s) they were on before. But they'll still be in the same Class they were in before. So if you want to maintain the distinction of the AC Layers, import AC Layers as VW Classes. That's a good idea generally, since AC Layers aren't layered -- they're more like Classes. I've never used workgroup referencing. I remember reading on this forum that it's like xref's but with some improvements. I always hated xref's.

Note that David is referring to working in VectorWorks with only one hand. I use two, and find VW faster at 2D drawings, even though I have a lot more experience with Autocad.

One low-tech way to do it would be to draw a rectangle over the part of the master plan that you want to use. Then, while the rectangle is still selected, issue the Trim command, which cuts everything else at that rectangle. Then use a selection window to select the rectangle and everything inside it, then Cut, then Select All, then Delete, then Paste-In-Place, which leaves you with only the part of the master plan that's inside your rectangle. Since you're talking about imported dwg files, which are always full of unused Symbol definitions and other garbage, it might be better to do the Paste-in-Place in a new file. The Trim command won't cut things that are in Symbols or Groups, so first you'd have to convert any of those to simple lines, arcs, polylines, etc. Use the Symbol-to-Group and Ungroup commands. And to get it to cut things on other layers or in other classes you'd need to have Layer and Class Options set accordingly. I should also point out that I have all the commands mentioned above assigned to unshifted Function keys, so that whole operation of getting rid of everything but the stuff inside a drawn rectangle would take me less than two seconds, including getting rid of symbols and groups. With the standard user interface it might be impractical to do this 80 times, because of the number of pull-down menu commands involved.

Good idea. Sounds like you're all set. I assume you've discovered that the keypad Enter key has special functions? It moves you into the first cell of the Data Display bar, and then cycles through the other cells. And it also exits from the text editor.