Jimmie

That explains why I can't get any points to constrain in the 3D view. :-/ This tool doesn't seem to be built around mechanical design, so I guess I can't fault it for not having these features I've previously taken for granted, but it's a bit painful.

1. Constraining geometry is fairly close to what I'm talking about. Scaling would work in the given case, but I want a general variable that perhaps a gearbox has a width, and the rod inside is width + clearance, so that when I change the width of the gearbox the rod length will change without changing any other dimension of the assembly (scaling would break it). Another specific example is that if I change the rod diameter, then all the gears on that rod will change according to the new diameter. In Solidworks this can be a single variable, and is trivially easy to do. 2. Symbols may be the terminology Vectorworks uses, so that may be what I have to learn. Basically I'm used to creating an assembly, and it gets grouped as an object. I can then create X instances of the object, and I only need to edit the underlying object to make a change to all of them. I'm actually building a gearbox that drives a chain to another gearbox right now for work. I've managed to get a simple model from McMaster parts up fairly quickly, but for me this is basically a sketch without being able to set some of this variables. Having some sort of list of the variables I can change would be ideal, but I can at least work with doing them all individually. This is a relatively simple project, so it's good for me to learn a new CAD program with. I found some info on Vectorscript that looks like it can do some of what I'm talking about, but that's a steep learning curve for a quick project like this.

I just started a new job that gave me Vectorworks 2014 as the CAD package. We have a ton of Mac users, and lighting/event designers, so it makes sense for most of the company, but I do mechanical CAD. I'm used to Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor, and Onshape, so I use the parametric features quite a bit. I'm going to miss the mechanical-specific features of those programs (seeing the mechanism in movement, etc), but I can live with basic CAD. The quick questions I have can be answered with these: Let's say I have a box, and I want one side to be X, one side to be 2X, and one side to be 1/2X, so that when I change X all other sides change appropriately. In Solidworks I just create a variable, and all sides are defined in relation to that variable, so a single change in one variable results in the entire drawing being correct, changing anything tied to that variable. What is the method of doing this in Vectorworks? Let's say I make a mounting bracket and I need 100 of them in a particular installation. Now a designer comes along and says we need to change to a different mounting standard. How do I create an object that when I change one, all others change? In Solidworks I just make it a part, and I just edit that part. It takes only a few seconds to make such a change, but I've not seen anything like that in Vectorworks.