Jesse Cogswell

You could select all of the objects that need to be replaced (which can be groups, symbols, mesh objects, anything really) and use Modify -> Convert -> Replace with Symbol. Then select the desired lighting fixture and make sure that Use records of substitute symbols is checked. This will carry the Light Info Record from the lighting fixture to the replaced SketchUp object. Once that's done, all of the replaced objects should be the correct symbol. Reselect them (I know, bit of a bummer, but you could use the magic wand tool set to matching Symbol Name). Then run Spotlight -> Lighting -> Convert to Lighting Device. This will convert them to Lighting Device objects with the data from the Light Info Record.

There are two ways to do it: Open up the Vectorworks Preferences dialog Open the General tab. At the very bottom is a checkbox for Use dark background Easier option: Press the Quick Preferences button in the upper right hand corner of the workspace Select the Dark Background option If you want a quick toggle that you'll use often, you can use the Quick Preferences box to "pin" it to the top bar

Relatively simple script. This will currently only work when viewing either Design Layers or Sheet Layers directly, won't work inside Symbol edit containers or Viewports. It also case sensitive at the moment, so searching for VT will not select an object containing vt or vT. Let me know if you want that changed, it's simple enough. Once you run the script and select the text boxes, you can then run Modify -> Convert -> Replace with Symbol to replace the Text Object with the chosen Symbol. PROCEDURE SelectTextContaining; {* Selects Text objects containing given text string Developed by: Jesse Cogswell Date: 5/12/2026 *} CONST kEnterText = 'Enter Text to Search For'; kNoItemsFound = 'No Text objects contain given text'; kText = 10; kShowSnapModify = 5; VAR textObjs:DYNARRAY[] OF HANDLE; i,numTextObjs,layerOption:INTEGER; currentLayer,searchText:STRING; PROCEDURE Execute(h:HANDLE); BEGIN IF(Pos(searchText,GetText(h)) <> 0) THEN BEGIN numTextObjs:=numTextObjs + 1; ALLOCATE textObjs[1..numTextObjs]; textObjs[numTextObjs]:=h; END; END; BEGIN numTextObjs:=0; searchText:=StrDialog(kEnterText,''); IF ((NOT DidCancel) & (searchText <> '')) THEN BEGIN currentLayer:=GetLName(ActLayer); layerOption:=GetLayerOptions; IF(layerOption < kShowSnapModify) THEN ForEachObject(Execute,((T = kText) & (L = currentLayer))) ELSE ForEachObject(Execute,(T = kText)); IF(numTextObjs > 0) THEN BEGIN DSelectObj(ALL); FOR i:=1 TO numTextObjs DO SetSelect(textObjs[i]); END ELSE AlrtDialog(kNoItemsFound); END; END; Run(SelectTextContaining);

I can report that I'm seeing the same thing with this file. There has been an issue for a number of years where using the File -> Export -> PDF or Publish options resulted in colors being desaturated in the resulting PDF, so I suspect something similar is happening here. I will say checking the Rasterize PDF option resulted in a closer image but also had random lines cut out, and I suspect it will make any of the actual vector drawing look less than adequate and will result in much larger file size. We might need to wait for someone from Vectorworks to take a look at it PDF Issue 2.pdf

Go to File -> Document Settings -> Spotlight Preferences. Go to the Loads and Rigging tab, and uncheck Auto-position loads when created and Auto-position loads when moved.

If you need to get a character using the Unicode number, you can use the UniChr function.

Here's a link with more information about my Checkbox object. And here's the full Readme file with more information. I'm not sure that it really applies to your situation, I would be more inclined to follow @michaelk's suggestion, but maybe you could find it useful.

You could write a simple function using the Vec2Ang function. For a 2D point, it would look something like this: FUNCTION GetAngle(X1,Y1,X2,Y2:REAL) : REAL; VAR v1,v2:VECTOR; BEGIN v1.x:=X1; v1.y:=Y1; v2.x:=X2; v2.y:=Y2; GetAngle:=Vec2Ang(v2 - v1); END;

A little bit about my background, I am a freelance lighting designer for theatre, dance, opera, and museum exhibitions. I used SketchUp extensively early in my career shortly after Google acquired it and made it free back in 2008. I was working for a state college at the time as the assistant technical director / shop foreman and resident lighting designer. At the time, I greatly appreciated how easy SketchUp was compared to creating 3D assets in AutoCAD or 3D Studio Viz, and it could be easily imported into the WYSIWYG lighting software. However, it was the bane of my shop foreman existence because of the separate, not free Layout software needed to make construction documents. It was very common at the time for students to design scenery in SketchUp, then plate it in Photoshop. So we would get beautiful plates that were not to scale and had some dubious dimensions on them. So I would need to redraft the scenery either by hand or in AutoCAD to create construction drawings that we could actually use. In 2010, I started graduate school and gained access to Vectorworks. It was like hitting a brick wall learning Vectorworks and for my first year or so, I loathed the software. Drafting in 3D was very clunky compared to SketchUp, and drafting light plots was more difficult than WYSIWYG. However, the final plates out of Vectorworks were much easier to read and easier to notate with more control over line weight and line types. So I would build 3D geometry in SketchUp, then export 3D views as 2D DWGs and import them into Vectorworks to create the final plates. This was clunky, but at the time it was the most efficient way for me to get the best of both softwares. During one of my summer breaks, I forced myself to sit down with Vectorworks and redraft my SketchUp projects from the ground up. I learned how to use the Add/Subtract Solids commands, the variety of Extrude commands, and Sweeps to recreate the geometry. After that summer, I stopped using SketchUp entirely. Vectorworks has a couple of "super powers" that make it stand out from other pieces of software. One of those is that nearly every object has its 2D and 3D components begin separately editable. You can make a symbol that has incredible 3D detail to look good in a rendering, but simple 2D geometry so that it looks good on the plate. The other super power is the ability to attach data to objects. ID numbers, material notes, how much time or money an object will cost, basically any piece of data can be attached to any object to quickly generate reports and takeoffs. With the development of Data Tags, it has never been easier to keep drawings up to date as things change. A door has moved to the other side of the wall? Just move it in design layer space and the plan and elevations are automatically adjusted, with the ID callout moving with the door. A particular item has been swapped out for a more expensive version? If the data is set up right, reports and takeoffs will be updated automatically. This is one of the reasons that it became so popular with lighting designers, we need easy to read 2D plates for installation but with relatively complex 3D information (making sure lighting fixtures "make the shot") while also containing all of the patching information (channel, dimmer, address). In the last year, one of my museum clients has hired a new 3D designer that exclusively uses Vectorworks. I met with them to talk about how we had 25 years of Vectorworks / MiniCAD files of every exhibit, gallery, and external site for the organization, and that they had free access to a license and training as part of being an employee of that organization. They argued that SketchUp has come a long way since Trimble took over,with extensive options for rendering and plate generation. To avoid the Principal Skinner "No, it's the children that are wrong" syndrome, I looked back into SketchUp for the first time since 2011. And, as a lighting designer, there's not really a way for me to use the software. So instead, I now budget an extra 10+ hours in my proposals to cover the time for me to redraft all of the assets from scratch. As others have mentioned, while you can technically import SketchUp files into Vectorworks, the final results can be very slow and clunky to use. If I'm in a hurry and file size isn't a problem, I'll export a DWG/DXF from SketchUp to serve as the 2D component and import it into an empty VW file. Then I'll import the SketchUp into that file and create hybrid Symbols by marrying the 2D geometry and 3D geometry. You'll have a couple of options on how to translate the geometry, neither of which are great. You can import the assets in as either Mesh objects or 3D Polygons. Both are "heavy" in terms of file size and processing, but textures can be processed differently between the two and Mesh objects tend to be a little easier as long as you don't need to edit them. One of the really difficult things when importing SketchUp is how SketchUp handles curved objects such as circles and cylinders. SketchUp internally understands that an arc is a single unbroken curved line, but renders it as a "segmented" line in order to be more lightweight in terms of processing. Unfortunately, when you import that, VW sees the segmented lines rather than the arc. This isn't a huge deal in 2D geometry, but if you were to extrapolate that to a turned table leg, suddenly what was a simple sweep in SketchUp becomes a mess of tens of thousands of 3D polygons. Now imagine that you have four of these legs for each table, and that you have a dozen or more of these tables, suddenly you have a 100,000+ 3D polys that could be a sweep turned into a symbol. That's a huge toll on file size and processing power. While it's not the easiest thing, Vectorworks is a very capable rendering software as well. I appreciate that I can create all of my finished plates and renderings in the same file, so that I'm not updating different files every time something moves or changes. And if you're already using D5, Vectorworks now supports that as well (though I seem to remember seeing a thread about the connection not being great with the newest version...). Here is a screenshot showing a couple of Viewports from a project from a couple of years back: I recognize that Vectorworks is very expensive compared to SketchUp, and that the push to the new subscription plan, to be quite frank, sucks. Does your organization already have a Vectorwork license for you? Is the technical director already using Vectorworks? Do your projects involve collaborating with a team outside of just the technical director that are already using Vectorworks? While @Jeff Prince's concerns about increasing the software cost and your time to turnaround drawings are all very valid, if you are part of a team and the only one using SketchUp, you also have to consider their cost of adapting your drawings back from SketchUp and it's likely that your software costs are already being covered by the company. My recommendation would be to try Vectorworks for a little bit and try to recreate some of your SketchUp assets from scratch. Learn the translation of concepts from SketchUp to Vectorworks (Push/Pull to Extrude, Follow Me to Extrude Along Path) and how each approach 3D modelling. Dive into plate generation using Sheet Layers and Viewports in Vectorworks, and how Data Tags can make annotations easier to generate and maintain. Play around with the D5 integration and see if you can get similar results that you are seeing with SketchUp. See if your organization would be interested in covering the hours for you to take the Vectorworks University courses. If they want you to make the switch, they should be willing to pony up the money to help you get there.

What I shared should take you directly to the edit container of the passed in object. So if you pass in a handle to the Symbol Definition, it will go into the Symbol Edit for the definition. For your PIO, are you creating a copy of the Symbol geometry in the PIO or placing the Symbol directly? When you say you want a button to add a rectangle to the Symbol, do you want it to be unique to that PIO or to add the rectangle to the actual Symbol Definition, thereby changing every instance using that Symbol Definition?

I was never able to get the EditObjectSpecial command to work on editing a Symbol, just editing the path or profile groups of PIOs. But @JBenghiat shared a wonderful nugget of information that can get you into the edit mode of any requisite object (Symbol Definition, Viewport annotation group, Group, etc). The only trick is that it will not launch the Edit Component widget that you would traditionally get when editing Symbols. The key is SetObjectVariableInt(<handle to object>,9743,0); It's not in any formal VS documentation. Passing in a 0 will get the 2D edit, I believe it follows the standard projection numbering for 3D edits, I typically use 7 for 3D edits.

Adding an extra 0 to your color script (as in 40000) will produce a rectangle like this:

What are your fill settings when you run the script? You don't specify a fill color in your script, so it's likely using your active fill color, which may very well be black. If you want it to be white, you would need to add SetFillBack(LNewObj,65535,65535,65535); Also, keep in mind that color 0,0,0 is black, 65535,65535,65535 is white. The color you specified in the script above is a very dark green, practically black.

In this case it might be better to use SetPenFore instead. The code would look something like this: PROCEDURE DrawRect; BEGIN Rect(0,0,100,-50); SetPenFore(LNewObj,0,4000,0); END; Run (DrawRect); Handles are a tricky thing to get your head around, at least they were for me when I first got into scripting. But they are also usually the "safer" way to script so that you aren't changing your active settings between creating objects. The LNewObj function will always give you the handle to the most recently created object, so typical operating procedure is to create an object, then use LNewObj to set all of the attributes and parameters of the object, then create the next one. You might also need to include a SetPenBack with the same colors you used in SetPenFore. In my experience, setting the pen color requires SetPenFore and setting the fill requires SetFillBack. You don't really need both fore and back unless your fill type is set to Pattern, but if you're feeling unsure or paranoid, you can include both.

I wrote a menu command called Transfer Parameter Values back in 2022 that might work for you. If you have a plug-in object (such as a Lighting Device) selected and run the command, it will launch a dialog box allowing you to select individual parameters to copy. When you press the Transfer button, it will essentially start a "paint bucket" mode, where you would select objects of a matching type one at a time. When you click on an area of the drawing that does not contain a matching object, the parameter values will be copied to the selected objects. You can even store presets for different combinations of parameters along with their values, which can be recalled separately if desired. To install it, follow the instructions below: Download the attached Transfer Parameter Values.vsm file to the Plug-ins folder of your VW User Folder. The easiest way to get access to this is to open the Vectorworks Preferences, select the User Folder tab, and press the Explore (Windows) or Reveal in Finder Window (Mac) button. Restart Vectorworks. Add the menu command to the workspace: Go to Tools -> Workspaces -> Edit Current Workspace. Select the Menus tab. In the box on the left, find and expand the JNC category. In the box on the right, find a menu to place the command in, such as Tools, Modify, or Edit and expand it. Click and drag the Transfer Parameter Values command from the box on the left to the desired menu in the box on the right. Press OK. Transfer Parameter Values.vsm