jan15

And that hand has to be the left hand, since the touch-typable numeric keypad (for quick entering of X and Y distances) is on the right.

People who learn from textbooks may be better off using icons, at least until they've weaned themselves off the book. The keyboard shortcuts are faster for some people, but only if we use both hands at once. If you move your hand from the mouse to the keyboard to change tools, that's going to take longer than staying with the mouse and clicking on an icon. But if you use one hand to select tools and issue commands (via the keyboard), and the other hand (on the mouse) to move the cursor around on the drawing at the same time, then that's faster than using icons. And as Larry pointed out, only unshifted keyboard shortcuts are fast. To circumvent VW's problem with menu command shortcuts, I have 24 unshifted function keys that issue the menu commands I use most often. 12 of those are programmable extra keys on my keyboard, and the other 12 are the standard function keys, which I've mapped to menu commands using a macro utility (I use Keyboard Express). I never use shifted keys, and never use icons. Only unshifted letter, punctuation, number, and function keys. No tool palettes. A few times a day I have to pull down a menu to issue a command that isn't on one of my function keys. And, unlike Autocad, I don't have to keep pounding that infernal space bar after any other key.

I don't have a Mac, so I don't know what to say about the faint lines. When I make PDF's on a PC (using pdf995), they look exactly the same as they do in VectorWorks, both on screen and in a print-out. Hey, Mac users! Where are you all today? Maybe they want you to ask this in the "Printing and Plotting" forum instead.

The "Move Page" tool moves the print area around as if it were a drawn object

Takesh, I agree that the default shortcuts make no sense. I completely customized them soon after I started with VectorWorks and have been very happy with it. For one thing, it allows me to use the same key for similar commands in VectorWorks, Sketchup, and Autocad. I was surprised by what you said about changing snap settings, since you come from Autocad. In Autocad, I change and override osnaps constantly (and I even wrote a lisp routine to do it faster using one small area of the keyboard). But as far as snap settings in VectorWorks, I agree with you. I set them once and haven't changed them in years. VectorWorks does have a weakness in the keyboard control of the pull-down menu commands. But that can be overcome with a keyboard macro utility and a keyboard that has user-programmable extra function keys.

The blob part is an Autocad feature. In VectorWorks they look just like on the print-out, thicker as you zoom in and thinner as you zoom out. You can turn off your display of lineweights in Autocad's "Lineweight Settings" user preference. Or, if you want to see what the lineweights look like, you can set up a Layout tab with "None" as the Plot Style Table, and with "Print Object Lineweights" and "Display Plot Styles" selected.

Have you tried a different PDF maker, or tweaking the settings on the one you've got? And are those fills and patterns actually printing badly, or just looking bad on screen? Printing using a plot file is just like printing to a plotter -- i.e. the same problems that you have when you buy a new plotter and try to print to it. The first few times there may be glitches, and you may have to try different things to get it to work. But when it works, it usually works well. You can make a plot file from any Windows application. It's an operating system function. It takes the stream of 1's and 0's that would normally be sent to the printer port, and sends them to a disk file instead. Just install the driver for the plotter that's going to be used (or whatever the print service recommends), and then print as normally, only check the box for "Print to File".

... and maybe specifically an image nested inside the title block, a common practice. In Autocad images have to be externally referenced, but they don't show up in the Xref Manager (too logically consistent), and your colleague may not have sent you the image file.

Very interesting. I wonder if it's the same person, and he decided that only the Flemish are nice enough to sell to.

If 'zet om naar lijnarcering' really creates a hatch definition (as opposed to just making an array of the drawn sample), then it's an amazing achievement, and the wonder is that we haven't heard of it before. Everyone would want to buy it. It doesn't make sense to give it away as part of one local version and to keep it a secret from everyone else.

You could select the arc, then issue the Trim command (which cuts all those radial lines at the point where they intersect the arc), then optionally issue the Copy command (which gets the arc onto the clipboard), then use a selection box to select all the inner parts of the radial lines and delete them, and if necessary issue the Paste In Place command (which puts the arc back where it was). 4 to 6 clicks, depending on whether you decided to Copy the arc to the clipboard (so that you wouldn't lose it when selecting and deleting the radial lines inside it) and, if so, whether you had to paste it back in place afterward or were just as glad to be rid of it.

That message doesn't prevent opening in Autocad, it just tries to scare users into thinking they'll do some harm by opening it. Another of Autodesk's many attempts to damage competitors rather than improving their own product. Tell your colleagues to ignore it. Autocad doesn't embed images in DWG files. It externally references a separate image file, though users aren't always aware of that. They send files to each other not knowing that they have to send the image file also, so it doesn't work even with another AC user.

Right, and the polyline tool in VW doesn't work that way, which is good because that allows it to do things that Autocad can't do. You may not be interested in those possibilities right now, but the thing you're trying to draw can probably drawn very nicely in VW using other tools. Only we can't suggest what tools would work best without knowing what you're trying to draw. So instead of saying that you're trying to use Autocad, you should describe the thing you're trying to draw.

Eric, If you tell us what you're trying to do with the Autocad polyline tool, we can probably suggest ways to do it in VectorWorks by using other tools. VW has a lot of tools that Autocad doesn't have. Usually it turns out that one of those will do the job easier than Autocad can do it.

Polylines can have curved edges and hidden edges, while polygons can't. Is that why you want to convert? But you can hide an edge of a polygon, using the 2D Reshape tool, or add a curve to a polygon, using the 2D Reshape tool or the Add or Clip Surface tools. In either case it automatically becomes a polyline. If you're concerned about exporting, I think they both export as polylines, because Autocad doesn't have a Polygon entity type.

The consultants are wrong. Autocad can make the whole thing into one file with just 5 clicks. Tell them to "Bind" the externally referenced files: - In Autocad's "Xref Manager" (same command as for creating an Xref), select all the xref'd files and click "Bind". - Then select either "Bind" or "Insert" and click "OK". The "Insert" option keeps the layer names the same as in the original files, whereas the "Bind" option adds the name of the xref file to the front of all its layers' names, so that you can distinguish xref stuff from host file stuff or other xref file stuff. Either way, each xref'd file becomes a "Block" (VW Symbol) in the host file. Then they can "Explode" the blocks, or you can Convert Symbol to Group and Ungroup, if you want.

I mean the part about checking "Print to file". Someone said that MacOS won't allow sending the stream of printer codes to a disk file instead of directly to the printer. Is that true?

If you really need to make a plot file, that's a system operation. On Windows, install the printer that's going to be used - just as if you had the printer plugged in. Then when you print, check the box labelled "Print to file". I've been told you can't do that on MacOS.

Yes, dimension styles (and hatch patterns and dash styles) are stored in each drawing file. To make sure those things are in every new drawing file, put them in the template file that you use to start new drawings. To get them into an existing drawing, you could keep a file that has sample objects of each dimension style (and hatch pattern and dash style), and Copy-Paste them into the drawing and then delete them. They bring the style definitions in with them, and those stay after the objects are deleted. That may be the easiest way if you want to update all your existing drawings at once, since you can just Copy once, then Paste and Save in each drawing file. Or you could use the "import" button in the same window that edits dimension styles (and hatch and dash styles). Or you could use the Resource Browser, but I don't know much about that.

Petri: No, actually, Nordic Tango as in the 3 songs I linked to seems diametrically opposed to the Nuevo style of Piazzolla ? with 2 l's, you illiterate savage (just kidding). AQLS is apparently a Tango aficionado but doesn't care for the Finnish style, and that made me think I might like the latter, since I don't like Argentinian Tango.

Finnish Tango! Thank you, AQLS. I thought you were kidding, but it's real, and delightful. Three samples here . Now I have to find it on CD. And the slideshows here should dispel the notion of "grim bleakness".

To create and then edit a custom dimension style: File > Preferences > Document Preferences > Dimensions tab > Custom > New, then Edit.

Is that survey statistically reliable? 132 hard-core Sketchup users to represent the entire CAD market? Other numbers posted recently suggest that VW has 4x the user base of Archicad, whereas the Push-Pull poll suggests VW's user base is much smaller than Archicad's.

Gideon, I don't think it's fair to describe Finland as grim or bleak. I've never been there, but it looks beautiful in photos (and in the recent movie, Kukushka). And I suspect that Petri isn't at all representative. Other Finns have told us that he has a reputation as a curmudgeon there also. His comments can be entertaining if taken the right way. Petri, you obnoxious old gas-bag, stop harassing people! (just kidding) AQLS, it's probably a matter of licensing. If you use a US-licensed copy in the UK, you'll probably be unlicensed, just as if you had copied someone else's installation CD and authorization code, or bought a Region 1 DVD movie. You'll probably have to phone or send an e-mail to get an official answer on that. This forum is great for technical tips, but doesn't usually answer questions like that.

I've never seen that happen. What are you using to print to PDF? I've always used a program called PDF995 (on Windows), and never had the problem you describe. Do those lines print grey? Or just look grey on your monitor with your PDF viewer?