nrkuhl

I set up a surface hatch with a grey background fill and matching lines in order to have a solid grey fill for a membrane roof. I associated it with a texture, and then assigned that texture to my roof. In an elevation viewport set to hidden line mode, the surface hatch background fill doesn't get drawn, just the lines. What have I done wrong?

BOOM. Thanks Alan.

I created a file from scratch - the section viewport shows the hinge marker, but doesn't show the ID tag. Is there a good way to get you a small snapshot of my actual file? We've got project sharing enabled and it's a bit messy with various versions, so the file is big.

Some of my hinge markers and ID tags for doors and windows are currently not showing up in my section viewports. Hinges are set to show on both interior and exterior, all ID tags are set to show in 3D. The only setting I've changed is to have the tags and hinge markers on their own classes so I can control visibilities. The classes in question are on in my viewports, so I can't figure out why they don't show.

+1 to this

I wasn't clear there - I understand the 'what', it's the 'why' that I'm curious about. As in, why was the choice made to create an extra step for me to show fill on 3D objects in 2D views? Making things into Auto-Hybrids has advantages, sure, but it also adds more steps to the editing process for any object, and adds a step to object creation as well. I'd rather not make things into auto-hybrids till I'm out of the Schematic phase of the design, because it just adds more clicks to changing shapes as the design evolves.

I've been running into this a lot lately as well, and it seems pretty silly to me. Is there some reasoning behind this that I'm missing?

As a further wrinkle, this seems to be new to this up/down monitor arrangement. When the monitor was being run in a side by side setup with the laptop, it didn't happen.

Interesting, it does indeed.

My boss ran into an interesting situation with the Attributes panel and his dual monitor setup. He's running a 17" Macbook Pro with Yosemite and VW 2016, and an external monitor. The monitors are stacked vertically, with the external being above the laptop monitor. The palettes are all on the upper monitor per his workspace default, and the main drawing area is on the laptop monitor. In this setup, with the Attributes panel on the upper monitor, if I attempt to change solid fill color or stroke color, the color dialogue shows up on the lower monitor (i.e. not cascading down from the attributes panel, like normal). See attached screenshots. Just awkward for the moment, but, if the main drawing area is moved to the upper monitor, and I click to change the fill or stroke color in the attributes panel, the dialogue doesn't appear. If I set fill to pattern, I can select patterns as expected, but the same things happen when I try to change foregound/background colors in the pattern. Hatches work as expected. Could this also be some sort of Mac weirdness with dual monitors? I'm running dual monitors as well, but on a Mac Mini. My home computer, on which I grudgingly run Vectorworks on occasion, hasn't exhibited anything like this either (and that's a Windows laptop with an external monitor).

Jim, I'm really impressed by how responsive you are to these forums, thanks! And yes, tearing tabs off of the OIP would be pretty great too.

That helps, but part of what I'm struggling with is figuring out how to point that reference marker tool towards a certain file, and figuring out how the things in that file are interpreted by the reference marker tool.

Another small efficiency boosting feature: I'd like to be able to separate my navigation palettes, so I could always see the list of classes and the list of layers side by side, rather than having to click a tab first and then select a layer. The class/layer drop downs share the same drawback of multiple clicks. I'd like to be able to set my class/layer with one double-click action and be moving again.

I realize there are multiple ways to work around this, but they're just that: work arounds for something that is a basic part of every other drawing program I've ever used. Having a hide command with a keyboard shortcut is the sort of improvement that would add a few minutes back to my day on a regular basis.

Is it possible to create custom reference markers to be used with the reference marker tool? None of the pre-defined markers are even close to what we typically use, and I'm trying to get my office away from using copy-pasted groups from old files. Thanks!

Last request of the morning! I'd like to be able to assign PIO styles to any object - i.e. the roof tool is the most frustrating thing on earth, so I often end up custom modeling my roofs, and it would save me some time drawing details if I could assign a style to it that contained a set of components.

For my next request, it would be a huge step forward to be able to hide individual objects from any view (3D or 2D) temporarily. I want per object visibility controls where I can hit a hotkey or right click and say "hide", and have the object disappear from view. Class level control is not fine grained enough for 3d modeling, and farting around with the viewcube takes too long. I'd also like the inverse of this, where I can isolate an object by hiding everything else, also with a one step process.

I know this topic has come up before, but I think it's worth bringing up again. I would kill to have multiple views of a drawing at once. Ideally, views of any type would be available - so I could perhaps have 2 design layers side by side, or a design layer and sheet layer, whatever. For my workflow right now, I want a plan and elevation view almost at all times. Since I don't have that, I'm forced to bounce between a design layer and a sheet layer repeatedly, if, for instance I'm working on interior elevations and making both design and annotation changes. Multiple views would give me back at least 2 hours a week.

Done, thanks!

Ok, interesting, I've never seen that. I'll look into it. I'm only on a Mac at work, in real life I'm a PC, so OSX is still somewhat opaque.

Ok, thanks! Sorry I don't have better info on the crashes, have you guys considered implementing a crash reporting feature?

Has anyone else experienced random crashes in 2016? I can't replicate causing the crash, but the effects are always the same: Recent files list is reset. Viewport double-click options are reset to default Default 3d view is reset. Any options set with the options button on the toolbar are reset to default Basically any option that isn't saved in a workspace is reset to default. All the pop-up hints are reset and pop-up again. Most recent instance of the crash happened while clicking into "settings" on the OIP to edit a door. The same crash has also happened while setting Project Sharing related options, and at least one other occasion that I can't remember right now (sorry I don't have better info).

After implementing project sharing in my firm for our larger projects, here's a few things that I think would make it more user friendly. 1. a "commit and release" option - very often I'm done with all of the layers I'm using, but I don't need to completely close the drawing file, so "close and release" is not a particularly useful command for us. It would be nice to have an option to commit all my changes, and release my current layers. 2. in the layer tab of the navigation palette, it would be awesome if project sharing commands were available when right- or command- clicking on a layer. I'd especially like the option to check out or release a layer from here. 3. this one is pretty minor, but it would be nice if comments for check out/release could be set on a per layer basis. I don't feel that strongly about this because I doubt anyone in my office will ever actually review those comments, but if we did, they wouldn't be that useful. Because of the clunkiness of the check out and release process, we tend to work with batches of layers checked out at a time, even if they aren't all related to a single task. So the commenting ends up being not at all fine grained. Stoked about the feature, just needs some fine tuning!