Jeff Prince

What make you think people won't find an icon less annoying. Come on man, get real. If you don't know the difference between the user and world systems, it's unlikely you will be able to turn their icons off 🙂 I'm not seeing how these icons are begging for my attention, even on a blank screen.

And that is why you teach people to turn the feature on... You can already see them both simultaneously in top/plan.

If you are asking a question... The user origin/axis can be displayed in both 2D and 3D. It's an option within Vectorworks preferences. Easily shows where the user and world origins are. I was referring to fixing problems created by others due to the ambiguity of Vectorworks allowing for users to make such mistakes.

I do not agree here. Tom illustrated how the user origin is already visible. What is great about that method is they are graphically unique. It become very easy visually identify and discuss the differences because of this. Make them differentiated by color only is just asking for trouble IMHO. Since the existing method is further enhanced by depicting the 3 primary axis, what's to fix? This is definitely needed. Best handled with better documentation and real world examples IMHO. Teaching new users how to navigate these systems shouldn't feel more complicated than actually drawing our projects 🙂 The hours wasted on explaining how Vectorworks georeferences and fixing people's mistakes might be the most costly problem in the program. That and fixing & shrinking PDF issues.

Pretty sure can’t sell a USA version as a perpetual license anymore, Vectorworks went to subscription only at the end of 2022. The new buyer would be getting a non upgradeable 2023 license unfortunately.

Turn on the 3D display within the object style and change to a 3D view.

You can model the typical 3D geometry of the object and turn it into a symbol. You can then place that symbol at each occurrence of the escape ladder. Additionally, you can give the symbol 2D graphics if you will be creating plans from the model. If the escape ladder is part of a windows or door system, you may want to create those using their respective tools and keep the escape as a separate piece.

post your file and someone will take a look at your worksheet.

have you done the Core Associate Certification or feel very comfortable with Vectorworks in general? If so, there is a Landmark Certification available. https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/page/view.php?id=4861 It’s unlikely you will ever see the entire curriculum for the program updated for every release, way too much work and not enough changes to warrant it.

No, people draw, vectorworks just displays the input 🙂 I say this because I have interacted with more than a few people here who drew everything in a design layer, including the title block, as if it was a sheet of paper. Meaning the title block was 24”x36” and the geometry was scaled at 1/8” = 1’0” for example. That used to happen a lot when paper based architects made the switch to AutoCAD back in the day as well. Vectorworks hasn’t really done a great job on UI or explaining these kinds of features. It seems almost intentional. See, even here confusion reigns. You should ALWAYS draw 1:1 for measured things. The chosen layer scale does not change your data input/method of drawing, it just displays the data. The way you wrote that makes it sound like people should draw/data input at something other than 1:1. I know that’s not your intention, but that’s what new users hear and why it is confusing.

Draw everything in you design layers at 1:1. The option to apply a scale to the design layer is just a visualization aide to help you see what it will look like before you print. I came from AutoCAD too, over 20 years in that program. Best advice I have for you is “don’t try to make Vectorworks be AutoCAD”. The best way to convert to Vectorworks is to take the Core Associate Training Vectorworks University. This will get you up to speed quickly with free self paced lessons with concepts that will set you up for success. I’ve had employees try to figure it out as they go and others who took the training. Doing the training is the fastest path to understanding.

Glad it helped. The geometry is not bevelled or subdivided in VW, that was done in Blender. You can see my VWX geometry is an extruded rectangle (wood texture), a rectangular NURBS surface (puffy displacement material), and a cylinder primitive in the discussion I lined too...

Look at the render tab...

There are a couple of strategies here.... Easiest - Grab your walls and slabs, go to the OIP, change your Mode to "by component", go to the Attribute Panel and choose a solid fill color that meets your requirements. For Rendering - Prior to using the command, set up some materials for the floor and walls that meet your requirements. A texture could simply be a color assigned to the color shader of the texture with nothing else. Later you could add more texture and detail to it if needed. While you are creating the room, you can then select those new textures. After you create the room, you can select the object like the slab and change the material to something else if you have existing ones you want to update. This is done in the Render tab of the OIP. You can go even deeper with setting up wall and slab styles with defined components, but it doesn't sound like that is needed in your case.

It will do displacement, adding detail via subdivision, and all the other sophisticated stuff other visualization software does. The trick is you need to know what buttons to push. If your coworker is fluent with Blender, this should not be a problem. How do I know this? I just learned how to do all of it today based on your question during a break from the grind. During the same time since I posted my house example.... I had lunch, went to the bikeshop to source some parts, and the auto shop to buy a window regulator. It's not hard if I can do it that quick 🙂 I tested this by importing one of my VWX material experiments and started recreating the material behavior for bump & displacement within Blender. Blender's subdivision and bump controls are actually very nice. I'm not see what the issue is. Perhaps your coworker can explain where the specific difficulty is? Here's my old VWX material experiment which I based today's learning on.... Geometry imported from Vectorworks. Simple shapes with a subdivision modifier applied to the "puffy fabric" surface which is just a flat plane. And the result created by adding a displacement modifier to the texture and rendering it in Cycles within Blender. What's not to love? Where is the problem?

Yeah, I don't know if I would be so quick to assume your coworker is correct. You can take a Vectorworks model built with walls, doors, windows, etc and bring them into Blender without any tricks or difficulty. Even default library items like the VWX 3D cars come in textured correctly. Remember, the number of people here on the forum is a fraction of the total users, you might get good VWX advice but you probably aren't going to get the best Rhino or Blender support since some folks have a strong bias against them. You get all kinds of armchair "experts" who haven't even installed the programs giving advice. Anyhow, I opened an old VWX BIM project and imported it into Blender in under a minute... Does your coworker actually know how to use Blender? It's a complicated looking program at first, but like anything, some education helps. Like the old version of Twinmotion, Collada import is your friend here.

I wouldn’t consider myself a business expert, but I’ve had a pretty broad set of experiences working for myself, firms from 2 to 1000+ employees, and even a government agency. I’ve also lived and worked around the US and abroad where I was responsible for developing clients and fees for projects of all sizes from small local to international mega. In recent years, I have evaluated the purchase of a few small firms to develop opportunities in other regions. What I have learned? Across the board, small firms with aging leadership have the greatest self imposed difficulty with raising fees. Most younger firms do not have that issue and throw their hat in with the big firms on large projects, especially if the founders left big firms. Big firms adjust their fees nearly every year and have multiple rates, kind of like hotels 😉 They have accountants and economists on staff to advise on such things, not architects. Chefs and Architects generally make the worst business managers, that’s why you need a numbers expert on or advising the team. Why do older smaller firms have this problem? It is just psychological. As we age people generally think things are getting expensive, when in reality they have just failed to adjust for inflation. Look at car and house prices from the beginning of your career compared to today. Then look at the fees you are charging. Ask yourself why are you charging 1990s prices in a 2020 ‘s market. the quicker you can adjust your perception of your value, the better. Generally, we fail to raise prices out of fear of losing repeat clients to the competition. That may be valid and you might lose some work when raising fees, but those are the relationships you probably don’t want anyhow. Why? they will trap you from growing your business and you will end up pigeonholed into a type of work. Plus, if a client doesn’t want to pay the fee needed to execute the work properly, how is that going to work out during construction? They are going to burn your time with uncompensated CA most likely. Based on what you said, your MEP consultants have figured this out and adjusted their rates. You are getting pinched as a result. You likely want to keep working with the same engineers for efficiency and good relationships you have likely formed… so rates need to go up on your end. If you compare your fees to the industry standard % of built project cost, I’m guessing you are woefully underpriced. It should be an easy fix if you can convince yourself of these things.

I just dabble in Blender, but it does displacement mapping natively and can host several rendering engines with that feature too. Setting up materials is very robust and different from Vectorworks. Geometry can be formed and manipulated in ways not possible in Vectorworks, see Mobius Strip discussion on this forum for instance, easily and quickly done in Blender. Just take some time doing tutorial research and I’m sure you will find it can completely replace or compliment what you are using now. The price is certainly right and the community of helpful users is huge.

send PDFs or DXFs ?

Did you know you can take a screen shot with your computer instead of a photograph? You should mention the version of Vectorworks and Operating System you are using to get the best help. Also, when you have a problem item, it's always a good idea to do a screen shot with the object highlighted so people can see what the OIP says. In this case, select the object, and hit the render tab on the OIP so people can see how the object's rendering characteristics are set up. That information will get you the best help.

They aren't that tight. I've done a bunch of small commercial work over the years and the architects are getting paid well. The people who don't charge enough go out of business, usually because they get burned or burned out by cheap clients. Things are really starting to feel like past recessions, the last one left a lot of people getting stiffed on fees. That's why you bill against a retainer with new clients and replenish it once it has been depleted...

You need to activate “trailing zeros” at the bottom of that screen.

The company I was consulting decided to stick with AutoDesk since we couldn't get timely information on this topic directly from VWX customer support. FYI Autodesk provided a full demonstration and testing environment to help make the decision within a week of the initial request...

Just drag your tool pallets to the edge of the screen and they will dock there. Watch for the blue highlighting to help with positioning. It’s awkward the first few times you do it.

Maps, especially old ones, are cool. Storing them gives us an excuse to keep our flat files 🙂