elepp

Yeah. The general silence on those quintessential tools is one of the most puzzling parts about Vectorworks for me. Nothing seems to get as much attention in this forum as these two tools, plus stairs, from the users. A rough roadmap would clear things up a bit. Maybe the walls and components have to be updated first, before some real change for the other elements are possible.🤷‍♂️

That's very true. Nevertheless it seems some companies manage to elicite more excitement and brand loyalty than others, e.g. Apple, Archicad, etc. And I am always puzzled by their devotion. On the topic of Ifc-Export, my experience was that we have a decent export. There is just to much expectation linked to it. People always expect it to turn automatically into a native format, no matter if they use Archicad; Allplan, Revit, etc. That was never the intention so far with either IFC2x3 or IFC4. They are mostly for referencing, hence "Reference View". If your software kind of manages to transform it into some native objects, good, but it's not a given. Every use case has different demands for the ifc model. The structual engineer needs only the load-bearing walls as IfcWalls, the hvac engineers need mostly IfcSpace and for energy analysis you need to have one IfcWall with the different components as IfcMaterials and IfcSpaces (Eventhough here most BIM-Software is lacking in so far as you need, I think, at least 3rd level space boundaries for proper energy analysis) Ifc-Export is a very dry and boring technical topic, that, at least in my case, had a long, long learning curve.

The new smart markers are very much appreciated and were overdue for a redesign. The possibility to link the marker with a viewport and export that to pdf is a nice feature. Where our office runs into issues though is that we draw our details in seperate files. Our projects usually are too big to keep everything in one file. Being able to link to other files and coordinate them would be a great improvement for smart markers v2.0.

Works like a charm for me! You are the man @PatStanford! Thanks a ton! And thanks for keeping it entertaining as well 😄 Sometimes scripting looks like magic, but you make it very easy to understand.

I think the issue is with symbols that contain more than just the space. I created a new file with only spaces in symbols and it worked.🤔

I gave this a try as well, because we have a project with different apartement units in symbols. Would be really handy to calculate the area like this. But like you I can't make it work. Vectorworks becomes unresponsive. Just duplicating the symbols inside the example file works, but adding new symbols causes issues.

Not sure if it's a Big Sur issue, because we have that as well working with High Sierra...🤔

I've also read this open letter and the subsequent discussion are very interesting. I am hoping it's kickstarting a general discussion about the use of digital tools amongst aec professionals and who should develop them.

I am also excited, even though I have the feeling this year more beans have been spilled in regards to VW 2021 than the years before.

Yes. That sounds good. We always fight with the same issue. Having the overall thickness of the wall as a seprate field would help a lot in maintaining a clean ressource manager.

Did you also send a message to ComputerWorks about it? Don't know how much VW Inc. can do there.

There is definetly one BIM solution missing in this fine list 😉

Hi, I was very excited about the stylize image feature, but am disappointed that it limits me to only a few styles. Hoped I could choose my own example, because that's how it came across in the design summit. Any future plans for an enhancement? Regards!

Hi, I don't know where else to post this, but I wanted to just drop this idea somewhere. It's not a real project just a thought experiment: What if we use the Vectorworks data visualisation to highlight if appliances are turned on or off? The process would be as follows. We create our appliances in Vectorworks with a record, that has the state of the appliance in a boolean format. This record would be linked to an external data base via sqlite. This data base is accessed via Google API in Google Sheets. Now we could use Zapier or ifttt to check the status of our smart appliances and update the record field in our Google Sheet. This is written into the sqlite data base. Now we update the records inside Vectorworks. Using the data visualisation we could highlight turned on objects, but also control them from inside Vectorworks. Has anyone ever tried that? Any experiences with something similar? Regards, elepp

What bothers me about the way it has been working and seems to be working in the next release, is the two tabs for information. I have the object tab for information and the data tab. So i have two spots where i can put in my door/window data. In my opinion there should be only one tab for that and you structure the information in that tab as you see fit.

For me a necessary function is that i can assign phases also to components. Lots of times we might want to remove the cladding and insulation but not the structural part. A simple database attached to the whole wall will not cut it. If they plan on developing this functionality, it needs to be done right and not with the least amount of effort necessary. Regarding the unit plan object @twk mentions. That would be an absoulte game changer for us. We do a lot of residential projects and the floorplans of the apartments are very similar. We try to solve it with symbols, but their limitation in regards to refernce heights etc. makes the process very cumbersome. Some kind of mix between Symbol and PIO would be great.

Hi, have you checked out this video from ComputerWorks: She describes a very interesting workflow regarding provisions for void. Regards, elepp

Hi, From a german user to a german user: Renovation/ phasing -> Exactly what you wrote. I am very curious how it is implemented. As far as I know no cad/bim software has managed to handle it well. Renovations are some of the most difficult projects to properly organize in Vectorworks. Smart elevation benchmark -> Höhenkoten in german. That's something that should've been available since ages. Curious though if it will be able to have them in floorplan-view as well as in sections. In Germany it's very common to have elevation benchmarks in floorplans. AFAIK it's not used in the US. integrated finishes -> Refers to "Ausbauflächen". The space tool is very limited atm regarding wallpapers, plaster, tiles, etc. Rooms can have a complex collection of all these things. This one if very high on my wish list. Regards, elepp

@Amorphous - Julian Glad to hear that and seeing forward to your report on its success. We would like to tip our toes as well into those waters, but are a bit scared.

I am really amazed by your patience and consistency in posting here. My office gave project sharing a couple of tries but after a few issues, that are not even close to yours, abandoned it mostly. We use it from time to time as means of providing a source file for our ressources, that is than referenced into our drawings. When they talk about the other BIM software from Nemetschek and its collaboration capabilties they get dreamy eyed. So I am also waiting for an improvement and better consistency, because I believe that it's going to be more and more essential in a BIM-focused World to have this possibility. All the best!

Enscape has their road map on their website. https://enscape3d.com/features/ If you scroll down, there are some nice things listed 😉

Hi, IFC generally does not support colors or materials yet. I don't know how it is in Tekla BIMsight but in Solibri there is an automatic color set that is applied to ifc entities. You can set up your own though, that is apllied to the model. Maybe something similar is possible in BIM sight. In Solibri is you right click on your model, you can choose the color set. Hope that helps!

The new live data visualization on the design layer is a very handy feature and has been long overdue. Nevertheless new feature immeditaly ask for improvements 😉 We would like to have the possibility to visualize components of walls and slabs. It would be very helpful because that way we could limit our use of classes drastically. ATM we have a class for exterior walls and interior walls, these are broken up into load-bearing and non-load-bearing walls. I think this is unnecessary because this information is already part of the wall and slabs used. Plus, not all the components of a wall/slab are loadbearing. The data visualization tool "as is" only colors the whole wall/slab, even though we have the option to assign load-bearing, insulation, covering etc. to each component.

We have this issue crop up as well. We couldn't find a solution so far. For some unknown reason the .lck-files are disappearing on our server and than this warning pops up. Interestingly enough is that if this happens it's also not possible to generate a proper backup-file. I suspect permission issues. We work directly on the server but have the backup locally. We work with High Sierra and connect to our windows server via afp (emulated by acronis connect). We had to resort to that because we had issues with smb in the past and our server admin is reluctant to give it a try now. Maybe you have a similar setup and this information helps narrowing There is also another thread regarding this issue: But so far no one from VW Inc. chimed in with a solution or assistance. Our local distrubtor is also not able to help here so far.

I'd like to add also the space tool bucket. Three different buckets and three different behaviours.