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jan15

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Everything posted by jan15

  1. Actually, I thought they do that when you buy a new seat -- give you a free copy of the last version if you ask for it. Maybe that's no longer true, or not in the UK. Have you asked?
  2. I don't understand the problem, digital. It sounds equivalent to suggesting that some files should draw arcs by radius, and other files should draw arcs by three points. Wouldn't you rather have both capabilities in all files? And similarly, wouldn't you rather have the choice in all files either to automatically adjust a text while rotating it so that it reads from below or the right, or else to let it read from whatever orientation the rotation gives it? Just change the setting before doing the other type of text rotation. The difference is easy to spot, so there's no danger of inadvertently adjusting or not adjusting and leaving an incorrect text object.
  3. I'm not saying I like this policy, but it definitely is standard in the software industry, especially CAD software, to continually produce new versions that aren't compatible with the old, and to stop selling copies of the old. I think it's an important factor in sales. It's like the auto industry's annual model change, which inspired the term "planned obsolescence." Once they've re-tooled the factory to make copies of the new installation CD, they would have no way to make another copy of the old one, would they? And who would buy a software product without the printed manuals and decorative box? (just kidding)
  4. Are you using sound? Those clicks are a big help. Between them and the cursor cues and different cursor types, I find selection very easy. For me, the only real problem among the issues discussed above is the pop-up when you inadvertently double-click. Simply not responding at all when the "selected object has no edit behavior" would be very easy to understand. The pop-up feels like I'm being ridiculed and punished for making a mistake.
  5. Ctrl-select copying is a great feature. Once you learn to take advantage of it, Richard, there won't be any problem remembering what it does.
  6. A tool determines what happens as you move the cursor and click. A menu command is an action taken on pre-selected objects. If you could make a tool do what a command does, it wouldn't be a tool. If you want a tool that does something similar to what a certain command does, you may be able to create it using VectorScript.
  7. Yes, that's always the main problem in exporting to DWG -- what to do about all the things that Autocad doesn't have. Autodesk probably could have implemented layers/scale/groups/surfaces long ago, but that would have hurt the incompatibility that's been their strongest selling point.
  8. But with a macro utility, like Keyboard Express, you can override the system and re-assign any key, including the alt-keys that the system assigns to pull-down menus.
  9. On a PC it's usually Alt-0216 (on the numeric keypad only), though it could be different for a particular font -- check the Character Map system accessory program.
  10. Tell them they're not really drawing full size in Autocad either. They're always thinking of the scale at which the drawing will be printed, and setting lineweight, text size, dimension scale, and linetype scale accordingly. The only difference is that in Autocad the user has to manage all that with a pocket calculator, and has to remember the intended scale or write it down. The fear of not drawing full size comes from early Autocad, before viewports, when people would do very strange things to get drawings at more than one scale on the same sheet; sometimes drawing the detail many times as large as it really is so that it can be printed on the same sheet with a general view at a smaller scale.
  11. I was kidding, too. I didn't really think Katie's only exposure to 45's was from the thrift shop. Though, coincidentally, that's where I got my first computer. An IBM PCjr. And it was only a year old. I had to learn 8086 Assembler so I could alter software to run on it. I ran Autocad 1.0 on it, but quickly realized it was of no practical value.
  12. Remembering 45 rpm records doesn't necessarily make her old. They still sell them at the thrift shop. And she's already told us her Commodore monitor came from the dump.
  13. The P in PC was for 'personal' (at least in the IBM model name). It meant that you didn't have to share it with other people as you did with main-frames and minis. The first one I remember calling itself 'portable' was the original Compaq, which folded up into a package about the size and weight of a carry-on suitcase filled with books. Returning for a moment to the original topic, here's a pre-Doors 1955 recording of Lotte Lenya and a chorus singing "Oh, don't ask why" in 'Alabama-Song' in English. There are also clips of two other songs from Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, both in German, and a bunch of other clips.
  14. I'm just going by the Wikipedia articles, which list Minicad 5 as released in 1994, and Autocad R12 as released in June of 1992. I think the latter must be right, since I first used Autocad in 1989, and it was R10, and R11 came out the next year. And I think I first used Minicad in late 1996, at an office that upgraded to Minicad 6 just after I started.
  15. I still feel that way. It's just that now we don't have any choice.
  16. The Wikipedia article says DXF translation started with Minicad+ 2. So Minicad 5 should be able to import R12 DXF files (which can be created by Autocad 2000 and 2005).
  17. It's "Oh, don't ask why," you senile old hippie (just kidding).
  18. Blink, this is the key to understanding Petri. The reason he spends so much time gassing off inanely is so you won't take offense at his insults when they appear. You can laugh at the insults and skip over the long-winded pointless rants. Check out Sir Ralph, in that thread that he screwed up the link to. Petri, I buy you books and buy you books, and you still can't figure out how to post a link.
  19. Sorry, I meant the font, size, and style of dimension text is controlled the same way as any other text. But changing what a dimension text says is done in the Object Info palette. You can unclick the 'Show Dim Value' box, and/or add a leader or trailer to it. If you have a recent version, you could handle scale the same way Autocad does, by zooming in a viewport. VW also has another, older system, in which Layer scale handles all the scaling and dimension and text issues automatically, and all you have to do is decide whether you want to change the point size of text when you re-size objects or when you change a layer's scale. It may be too easy after Autocad. If your version of VW is new enough to have Sheet layers and Viewports, maybe you shouldn't use layer scale, and should opt to import the DWG at all full size and do everything the same as in Autocad.
  20. ...only drawings that have loci in them.
  21. There's a complete Dimension Standard editor in Document Preferences (File > Preferences > Document Preferences). That's also where you set the active Dimension Standard (the one that's used when creating new dimensions). Dimension Standard of an existing object can be changed with the Object Info palette. A Dimension Standard only specifies geometry, not text as in Acad, other than where the text goes. The text of a dimension is controlled the same way as any other text. Dimensions are automatically put in the Dimension class as you create them, which might make it easy to select all of them and change their standard and text style all at once. Or use the Custom Selection command.
  22. It's not something that can be done by pressing a button. Someone has to read the paper drawing and create a drawing in a CAD file based on what they see. It's quicker than designing the building from scratch, but it does take time. If they have a large enough scanner (which gets very expensive above legal size) they can create a bitmap image file to use as a background for the CAD file, which mostly just makes viewing the drawing easier. If they also have vectorization software, that can do some of the work of creating vector graphics from the scanned bitmap image. The last time I looked into that, any affordable software was not much help (including the Trace Bitmap command built into Vectorworks). Sketchup has a training video on how to turn a photo of a building into a rough 3D model of it, surprisingly quickly.
  23. Even Autocad has a 30 day free trial now.
  24. There you go! I knew you could find something negative to say about New Jersey. Now isn't that easier than trying to imitate those lists?
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