Matt Overton

Is certainly landscape and outdoor areas I hit a need for this most often. Trying to get a wall accurate enough for elevations and sections while not making plan view confusing.

I assume applying a top cap would make the wall appear soild in Top/Plan view.

@Pat Stanford If you merge these threads might they be enough votes to final get some attention for an "improvement" here. https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/79202-option-to-commit-working-file-when-closing

Reference your model into another file for the elevations set that file to metres primary - mm secondary and hope you don't need to dimension to much. This is a workaround at best and not reliable one but might get you over the hump till they fix tools they should allow unit override. (space I'm looking at you)

So a batch import into own file and then create Referenced Viewport in current file option?

Ok this doesn't happen often but it does seem odd the first thing the Vectorworks updater does is insist I did something wrong. Maybe the Updater checker should prompt a save and then trigger the app to quit before launching an update.

Viewport styles are in the roadmap so fingers crossed that will include overrides.

Best not to revive a 2017 thread. Hopefully with lots a key features for project sharing ticked off there might be time to look at some quality of life issues like this.

Seems to me this low hanging fruit should have been dealt with by now.

The Sweep... command allows the profile you are sweeping to pitch upwards as it goes. Allowing it to overlap each full circle and create a corkscrew path like you see on the outside a stadium. That might help you do want you need.

Given one may walk is an important part of that then the structure is inherently part of the floor.

So if you created a schedule of slab types used in a file to give the builders would you call it a "Slab schedule"? Now that I think of it - is there another resource name that I'd need to schedule that wouldn't match the name of the resource or it's plug-in. Problem is the VW naming requires a mental translation of language to construction terminology. Like for instance a young grad talking about the slab in the model to a senior director who was getting annoyed because in was a timber structure. I see no problem with ceilings being made with floors, they are after all structurally weak floors. I mean ideally the ceiling could be part of the Floor(Slab) and certainly the ceiling is always designed in the context of the structure above (Floor or Roof) and everything happening in between.

It could be upgraded with the rename to be the basis of all slab like objects. ie A slab if decomposed could be a group of "simple slab"s. Also benches and other things we use simple single component slabs for.

Yes very much in favour of a "Best Practice" workspace to not only ship with the program but be the default. Older versions of this then become legacy with say version number. Good to see a start finally tagging some legacy tools.

Deprecated tools should probably be removed from the default workspace at the very least.

So the only reasons to use the floor tool is that the Slab tool has issues that should but haven’t been attended to? Have to say yes annoyed on a regular basis by both these things and slabs. I’ve avoid relying on textures for anything other than set~dressed images. walls and roofs could certainly use improvements here as well. Maybe materials 3.0 might get there. Yes, more than once stumbled on a coworkers slab that has 10s of modifiers in it because they’ve used clip surface on the entire object. Then again the slab modification interface basically requires modifiers to be clipped out and reapplied with no way on knowing what each modifier applies to. Big room for improvement that should happen instead of keeping 2 overlapping tools.

Also why can the numbers all be 100%? Would seem like it should use real world measures like having a "bulk" material that makes up the remainder after the additive materials are added by percentage.

Oddly only updated to SP1 this morning and before posting to confirm it hadn't been fixed. Updates isn't even reporting SP2 as available (well not here at least).

I'd forgotten Floor even existed. Does anyone still use it and if so couldn't it just convert existing instances to simple styled instances of the new improved and well named Floor Object. Why was it not upgraded other than VW annoying habit of reinventing the wheel and leaving 2 half features in the software? Anyway sorry not so much an exclusive floor thing more a materials thing now I've had a look at the interface. Many Components of Walls, Floors and Roofs are not monolithic like VW assumes/allows them to be. They are made up of repeat a material (that is generally structural) then in filled with another material. Timber Joists, light weight steel and the like. So hopefully Materials will get an update to handle the non-monolithic combinations of materials, some time beyond the current road map.

UI doesn't make good use of the space assigned so that percentage of sub-materials is not visually clear as a default. Still in SP1

Yet but there is a ceiling tool that does grid ceilings but not flat or raked ones for which we use the roof or slab tool for. I don't think any of them would handle an exposed grid ceiling. Again would rather they produce better tools that cover the full gamete of the object name. Still to me the generic is Floor not a type of floor would still make it more consistent language wise even if we co-op them like we co-op so many other building fabric tools for parts of the model.

As per title Slab object should be renamed floor object to be consistent with Roof and Wall. Oh and also upgraded to handle timber and framed structures.

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting using Materials just that the way the engineers have talked about materials reducing the load on classes it would seem like this suggestion wouldn't fit with current thinking. I hope I'm wrong.

I suspect given the how "materials" were described as taking the load of classes that the engineers aren't inclined to go for a feature like this that would take the load off classes by making them work better.

I take it from that comment the supply of Vectorworks trained staff in your market is pretty good? Certainly a round here VW being targeted at small practice and treating teamwork/3D/Bim/Use of styles/Use of classes/..... as not core skills the training base of potential staff can be hit and miss. Training always has to be a thing but at times it seems cross-training someone from another BIM package is better than trying to upskill an existing VW user.