BenG

I have a different problem with screw threads. I need to draw M42 x 0.75 threads for a camera mount. There is no such model under nuts and bolts in VW2020, so I am trying to use the Model / 3D Power Pack / Create Helix-Spiral command in a metric coordinate system. 1. Draw a straight line for the axis. 2. Specify the Pitch (i.e. 0.75mm) 3. Specify the Start and End radii (i.e. 42/2 = 21mm. Mod later to accomodate the thread profile) 4. Draw a triangle of 0.75mm height. 5. Execute Extrude along path. The result is a spiral of 0.75mm pitch, BUT 47.55mm diameter. I tried to scale the Start and End Radii by 42/47.55, but the diameter got bigger! If I try to make it much smaller, say 20mm diameter, the process fails with an error message. So far, I have found no way to get the correct diameter. It will not go smaller than the 47.55mm above.

I dont see how to turn off the setting for drawing a line tangent ot a circle. I need to draw lines from a circle not tangent to it. Option keys don’t do it. Dont see anything in preferences, settings, etc. related to it. Driving me nuts. Thanks

Pat, Looks like you are on to somethig, but I am having a hard time getting it to work. I can't get a spiral to work. I make the blue and red circles. Put a 3D locus point in the center of the blue circle. Select the locus point and the red circle and then Sweep. Will not sweep - error message. Bottom line is I have been unable to make the red spiral. 2D locus doesn’t work either. With no locus points I get donuts. So, I need a little more instruction. Also, I need the spiral to have a square profile - to make a slot for a pin to ride in.

I am designing a yard tool. I want to twist a cylindrical sleeve and have a pin travel in a spiral cutout to extend the interior cylinder. I can find no way to draw this. I can draw a partial spiral, but I have found no way to use Extrude Along Path to form a spiral cutout pattern to be subtracted from the cylinder.

OK, that got it. Thanks. I did all kinds of mirroring of the profile, but not inside Edit Profile.

Having multiple problems with Extrude along Path. I am trying to draw a moulding profile to go around a rectangular porch post. The post corners are rounded. It only needs to go around three sides - the back is open. I drew a rectangle with rounded corners. Then I drew the moulding profile. I extruded the profile around the rectangle OK. Then I tried to subtract out the fourth side, but VW would not allow it. Nothing I tried would work - “edit the profile” didn’t work…. So, I decided to create the rounded rectangle as a series of independent lines and arcs, with the back side open. When I extruded the profile on a rounded section, it was inverted. The moulding shape was toward the inside of the circle. I tired every orientation of the profile and got exactly the same result each time - inward facing profile. On a straight line, it works as expected. Any ideas? VW2020

To fill in the blanks, I am using Mojave. Haven't changed anything for two years.

The odd thing is that this occurance started several weeks ago with no changes to my VW software. I have allowed several Mac files to update (calendar, etc), not related to VW. Several days ago, it appeared right after I stared my Mac. No other programs were running, only the Finder. When I deleted the Vision app, it all stopped.

@Sky This AM when I started my computer, the Vision Library error message was the first thing on my screen. When I went into the Applications folder, a Vision Library App was outside the VW20 folder. I deleted it. Then I looked inside the VW20 folder and saw a folder called VW Cloud Services and another called Vision. I don’t know the function of either, but we will see what happens.

I am having the same problem, except the error message appears outside of VW20. It pops up repeatedly, even when I am not running VW. About 3 times so far. I don’t use it either. I am not buying the next version of VW because it is an expensive ripoff with little benefit , which means that service will end, so I may delete it from my apps.

I have a different, but hopefully related problem. I am doing mechanical engineering design. I have two problems. 1. I can’t find any way to place an object at the center of the dwg. I use the Center on Internal Origin, which places the object at the center of the Top/Plan view, but in all other views the object is far from the center of the dwg. I have to drag the object in several views to get to the origin. 2. If I want to draw something next to (or attached to) the object, it jumps completely off screen and may require a lot of searching and dragging (or MOVing) to get it back anywhere near the center or original object. Is there a simple way to get objects on center and to stay there?

I have no idea if this is a VW problem or not, but it is certainly related. My current business is designing plastic motorized microscope stages (XYZ). I design the parts in VW, convert the files to .stl files, read them into a “Slicer” program, which exports the gcode necessary to run the 3D printer. Occasionally, the Slicer program produces a garbled result, so the gcode is garbage. The .stl object looks OK when imported into the Slicer pgm, but slicing shows numerous errors and problems. I have not suspected VW in the past, but recent events make me wonder. First is the bloated file size of VW. We are told to Convert to a Generic Solid, which does reduce file size dramatically. VW should have an optional automatic command to do this as we draw. I understand this means the internal surface joints (from adds, subtracts, P/P…) are not properly executed, leaving internal code conflicts which are not visible to the designer. Generic Solids is supposed to help this situation, but there are no details as to what this means. Sometimes VW says it cannot do the Generic conversion and spews out the famous “fix the file and try again” as if that means anything. Recently, I got a significant failure of the Slicer to properly render a VW file. I went back to the .wvx file and did my best to clean it up. I looked at the wireframe view to see if there were any hidden lines indicating edges, surfaces, etc. that shouldn't be there. After numerous cycles of fixing, exporting .stl, and Slicing failures, I posted my problem on the 3D printer forum and was asked to post the .stl file for someone to examine. Remember, this file comes directly from VW. I hasn't gone to the Slicer yet. The reviewer's comments are below: --------------------------------- Wow, that's quite possibly the most broken stl file I have come across. Imported it into Blender and it was obvious that its broken as I'd say about 50% of the faces are missing and you can see through large parts of it. If you run the 3d print tool on it it reports the following 44604 Non Manifold Edges 1357 Non Contiguous Edges 18832 Intersecting Faces 976 Zero Faces 188 Thin Faces --------------------------------- I then went back to the previous copy of the file (several days before), which sliced OK (but citing numerous internal errors). All I can say is VW doesn’t seem to have a robust way of getting rid of internal conflicts. I have had numerous problems with ordinary commands such as P/P, Add, Subtract, fillet, chamfer, etc. not working properly - as mentioned in many posts elsewhere. Now I can add creating .stl files to the list. Is there any information about detecting and fixing the internal errors VW seems to create?

"I've been using VW since 1994 MiniCAD”. Me from their first version for Mac (92?), including Apple CAD before that. But they never seem to fix the fundamentals. Push Pull works 10% of the time. Fillet and Chamfer maybe 30%. Then randomly on one side of an object, but not on the mirror image side. Convert to Generic is manditory to get the file size down. The view and mode jump around haphazardly. Slow downs and stopping dead for a minute are regular events. Can't draw or select anything. I have to use a memory recycler to get the 15MB back to 3.5MB available. “Fix the Geometry” is useless - tells you its broke. There are maybe 20 macros they could implement to help align/space objects and sve tremendous time. ( I have written maybe 50 macros in Keyboard Macro) The worst part is the rather nasty and aggressive demand for you to upgrade or they will double the price periodically therafter.

For years I have wondered how to use VWs Origin settings. I can't make any sense out of the way VW deals with placement of 3d objects. For example, I create a simple object. I then use the Center the DWG on the Internal Origin. The 2d picture snaps to center. When I click any isometric view, the object is at the top of the “frame/active area”. I can manually center the object in the frame and all is well until the next time. If I am looking at a properly centered object and snap on an edge and drag a rectangle, for example, the newly created part may be completely out of the frame and hard to find. Doesn't matter if the new object is 2d or 3d, it jumps to odd places and requires dragging or cut/paste or translate to get it back to where it is supposed ot be. Why this behavior? This is a pain to chase after all additions to a dwg. Am I missing something?

Update. I repeated the instructions to delete all the .plist files and restarted. The system hung on tranferring old (2017) setups and I had to force quit. However, the dimensions now work.

Contnuing problems with VW18 & Mojave. I tried everything I could find on these forum sites. Finally, I completely deleted and reloaded VW18. Some problems disappeared, others remained. The most annoying is the dimension tool. I cannot create or modify a dimn without a 5 min beachball. I can't even click on an exising dimn without the BB. Any ideas?

Jeremy, You are right. I have done the same thing - made the same mistakes. So, I try to keep that in mind as I draw. For example, I start with small fillets and if they take, I increase them up to what I want. But when one side will take fillets and the other identical side won’t, I don’t know what the cause is. When Push/Pull won't work, but will when I simply change the view, there is something screwy going on. Many times joined edges are not flush when they were drawn flush. I guess an accuracy problem. PP may or may not fix it, but I have been able to use PP to pull the surface way out, and then it will properly make them flush. However, I have used PP to pull a surface out, then it quits working - wont go in or out. Over the years I have learned a number of work arounds and things to try, but it is still very frustrating to waste hours on things that should work.

@Mark Aceto Mark, That would be easy enough if I didn't have 29 years of MiniCAD/VW files.

@MaWi Unfortunately, optoner is mostly right. I am a scientist, not an architect, so my comments are related to the Designer set of tools. (Yes, I know Nemestchek has abandoned all fields except architecture/landscape). After I spent a month, fiddling with the buggy VW/Mojave, I finally reloaded VW from scratch, which seems to have fixed the crashing, hanging, and dead commands. Yesterday, I decided to design a shoe horn. Here are some of the commands that worked some of the time, but not others: (VW18 sp 6/Mojave / 2013 MBP, 2.6 Ghz, 16GB, 1TB SSD) 1. Add solids 2. Subtract solids 3. Push Pull 4. Fillet edge / chamfer edge 5. Randomly jumps between rendering/wire frame 6. Randomly jumps between views For example, these objects are obviously symmetric. On the horn part, I went down the left set of edges doing a fillet. Worked OK, except refused to work in one spot. I then started down the right side in the same order, same tool, same settings. It would not fillet any edge. My solution? Cut the horn in half vertically along the long axis, copy and reverse the side, then join the two halves back together. Time wasted - about two hours trying every trick in the book until that one worked. This shoddy behavior has been going on for years - all versions of Mac OS and VW. I have sent numerous files to Nemeschek for fixing, which they do. But I am tired of the money rat race for no fixes to very old problems.

I don't buy the comments about VW warning not to upgrade. As others have said, I don't spend my time pourimg over the VW forum. They could have sent a note to all license holders - they can send an automatic update notice, can't they? But there is a bigger problem. VW/Nemestchek has gotten very greedy. They want to force you to spend $1500/year for trivial upgrades. I have been using their CAD programs since about 1990 and they have gotten progressively worse about forcing upgrades. This year I have opted out. Then I found out from a support tech that VW doesn't intend to do any more Mojave compatibility fixes to VW18. Feature upgrades is one thing, but fundamental usability fixes are another. VW has become very user unfriendly. I can make VW18 do what I need on Mojave with many workarounds I developed over the years, but I don't think they will ever see any more of my money.

@JimW Jim, My VW18 SP6 program is sort of having a meltdown. I get a spinning beach ball (about 5 min) somewhat at random after selecting a function (dimension, rectangle….). The flyover tool has stopped showing the origin point and may rotate about a global axis rather than the selected point. I get the VISION Library dialog randomly. The Snapping window will not stay open. I followed all the suggestions for clearing out .plist files - twice - and the problem just moved around. I have reloaded the .dmg with cold boot. No improvement. I tried to follow the instructions in this thread about deleting the RunTimeCache folder, but I can't find it (see attachment). What do I do now? MacBook Pro.spx

I am also having multiple problems with VW2018 SP6 on Mojave. 1. Freezing: It seems random and can last from a couple of minutes to 10-15 minutes. Beach ball spins. The FORCE QUIT window shows VW as “not responding”. This happens multiple times a day. The available memory can be high or low. 2. Jumping to other functions: It will sporatically jump into a different view, or pop up a dialog for some functiion I am not using at the time. Seems random, but changing the window view is most common. 3. Push/Pull, Fillet, Chamfer, Add, Subtract will work when they feel like it: Sometimes just changing the view will make it work. I have to use all kinds of work arounds to get the job done. Sometimes I have to redraw the whole object to get a component right (think hours). It may happen on a complicated dwg (lots of mods creating internal conflicts), or a simple one with no mods. 4. Update: I just drew a simple 2D triangle using the 2D polygon tool. VW locked up immediately when I finished the third side. Lasted about 5 min. I repeated this 2D Polygon test many times. I now have another ~ 5 min wait for the program to come back. I have 2.25GB free. Appears to 100% defective every time I use it. Maybe I need to reload VW18 sp6. What is the best way to do that?

Oops!, Now it says “ can’t load Vision Files” everytime I start up. It seems to run OK after I dismiss that notice. How do I get rid of that?

Got it. Thanks.

Jim, I am having a lot of long hangups in VW1018 SP6 in Mojave, so I am trying to reset preferences. The address: HD/Users/Library/Application Support/Vectorworks/2018 does not show any of the .plist files above. What I see is in the attached file. Please give a more complete address.