_James

Hey @Boh - I understood, it's just your 'edit tag data' window is very reminiscent of the old window that would pop up when you edited a custom title block in VW2016

@Pat Stanford - this is great, thank you! @Jim Smith - thanks, but we're pretty well entrenched with the Title Block Border. Like Pat says, it's actually pretty good. Whilst a bit cumbersome we do find it adds value - particularly for keeping track of issues and revisions, being able to batch edit via worksheets etc. @Boh - this is a really good idea. I do miss the old title block border object when the dialog was much more simple like the one shown in your picture, although I don't think i'd go back to the reduced functionality of the old one.

Our title block is set to show "DRAFT" in big red letters properly positioned as part of the object style. It would be great to turn this on via a checkbox in the OIP rather than click "drawing stamp", wait for the dialog to open, and click the "display drawing stamp" checkbox in the dialog.

This is a question more about general office practices rather than being specific to Vectorworks. We are a small architectural firm in the UK, less than 10 members of staff. I can't help feeling that the file structure we used is rather outdated and a legacy of technology from quite a while a go. Our set up is as follows, all of which is contained on a server within the office. - Project Drawings Volume - Project Photos Volume - Project Admin Volume - Office Admin Volume - Backups Volume I guess these are all a legacy of when hard drives were quite small and the information had to be split up across different drives, but i'm only guessing. My main concern is the project drawings volume, which is split into 10 or so folders for things such as; issues, surveys, planning drawings, demolition drawings, GAs, internal details, external details, 3D models etc. This is a legacy of when each drawing was a file individually. Now, as we move forward with BIM and single models from which we extra data, it's common to have a project master file within one of the above folders which seems a waste of a lot of folders and makes it different for people to find things. Especially as some people use the system on way and others another. This got me thinking about what the perfect project file looks like, and what data is included. Is everything (drawings, photos, admin) all within one file? Does this make it slow due to the sheer amount of data (particularly photos)? I'd be really interested to hear how other offices are set up for this kind of things, and perhaps what things they would do differently or what they're planning to do in the future. With coronavirus, i'm sure everyone is thinking about ditching physical servers (if they havent already) and to me this represents a great way to investigate how data is organised and how it could be done more efficiently. Thanks in advance!

@Jim Smith / @Aspect_Design Would be interested to hear how you get on. It looks really interesting but there isn't much information or videos showing how it actually works.

Thanks for the detailed response, @Christiaan, We use G-Suite, so google email, calendars and drive. Yes it is a shame about lack of delta sync. We have an office based server which is working ok for us at present but will likely switch to Dropbox in a couple of years or at a suitable opportunity. I've started making a wiki on Notion like you're doing on Nuclino. I was using Notion before and they seem pretty similar. DigitalOcean looks a bit too advanced for me! Do you use anything for AIs, Certificates etc? We're yet to get on board with NBS Chorus but it's intergration with VW may push us in this direction.

Some great features listed as part of Rubina's presentation, a shame some (or all?) aren't making it into 2021

@halfcouple how are you able to check? If vectorworks gave counts of functions used that would be great

I have a couple of buttons by the thumb which I think are most commonly used for forward and back in browsers. I map these to Cmd-up and Cmd-dwn to cycle through layers. Very handy for sheet layers when checking large amounts of sheets. I also have a button just behind the scroll wheel to toggle smooth or indexed scroll, I map this to Cmd-4 or whatever the keyboard command is for 'Fit to Page Area' so I can always quickly centre back on the whole building. Mouse is a logitech MX master 2 I think. I must say, double esc would be very useful - I still have a button spare below the thumb so will maybe use that.

I agree. How many tools are then in total within Vectorworks? How many could be streamlined into 1 - instead of "Angle", "Angle (Inch)", "Angle (Metric)" and "Angle - 3D", why not have a single Angle tool that can deal with the various ways in which people use the tool. That's 3 unnecessary tools removed from VW. The same for Wide Flange structural elements; 4 tools that should be 1. It's the same for channels, springs, lock washers, plain washers, retaining washers screws, nuts, wood screws etc etc etc. None of which I actually use but i'm sure people do. I'm sure the VW toolset could be cut in half.

@Pat Stanford - do you know if there's a way to show the symbol as 2d geometry, rather than an image? In similar files we have to this (such as electrical schedules) the 2d symbol is shown as an image, which then creates a larger file size when exported to PDF rather than or old way of having a legend with 2d geometry in it on the sheet layer.

@Christiaan - did you come to any conclusions on this? Interested to hear your thoughts as we are looking for something similar

@A McDonell that's a shame to hear the problems return... I agree, the big frustration with the space objects was ultimately wanting to use Energos. The space objects can really underpin (undermine?) a lot of useful functionality.

I have to say, after contacting VW UK about this I had a good experience on a call with a member of their tech support team who renamed my user folder, forcing VW to set up a fresh one. Since then I am having a much better experience with Spaces and the file is much more usable. For context the file is a single house, with approx 15 space objects within it.

Thanks for the input guys, some really good points. And big thanks for the worksheets @Boh!

Could you use class overrides in viewports to show the demo class as the same as ‘none’ in the viewports where you want them to appear normally?

With the release of SP3, our practice will likely move up to 2020 from 2019 once we're all back working in the same office. I'm therefore setting up templates and resources and wondered what are people's "must-haves" for templates? I thought this would be a good way to share functionality of their templates and how practices use it to remove some of the repetitive tasks to work quicker. Some things we already have: - Class structure with attributes to control the appearance of objects - Standard door sizes for the UK preconfigured with preferred line weights and styles etc. - Worksheets for electrical symbol legend that automatically counts objects and displays this in the legend and door/window schedules - Up to date furniture and symbols etc. (if anyone has some simple beds in UK sizes that would be great!) that auto-class - Wall, floor, roof types with U-Values - Custom space tags to display room name, area and finishes if required - Standard timber sizes as symbols for wall studs/furniture construction etc. What other functionality are people getting from their templates?

I know this is an old thread but it would be great if we could do the following: - Recognise different wall styles within a document/viewport and display the description from the 'data' tab of the 'edit wall style' dialog - Control the opacity of the visualisation to still show the wall, or at least an idea of its construction underneath the visualisation. Ultimately, for our office, the most powerful use of data visualisation is exactly as the OP; scope drawings: Whilst I understand and could set up the way of tagging walls via a record, I doubt I could get the rest of the office to do it. It would be so much simpler if the visualisation was pre-loaded into the template and the wall style descriptions were pre-written as part of an office-wide shared set of resources. All they then have to do is select the visualisation from the OIP and put the key/legend where ever they would like it. I get that the workaround of creating a record is quicker than manually annotating over the walls, but for us where we're doing 1 house, maybe 2 or 3 storeys, people would say they could draw the boxes quicker.

Also interested in this. We're currently setting up our template in preparation for 2020SP3, currently we don't use spaces but are thinking about it and it would be handy to know what it's like in advance of setting up a custom tag for room names, areas etc. quickly. I've previously read very mixed negative things about the space tool in terms of it slowing down the whole model but in theory it sounds useful.

archicad has had a nice lindab plugin for years - this would be a good start but i agree, having it built in would be great.

@Luka Stefanovic this is great news!

Hi @Luka Stefanovic, This is really interesting - looking forward to the webinar on Friday. Will this work on Mac too? I know chorus is cloud based but previous NBS plugins were windows only if I remember correctly.

This may be fairly niche, but for anyone in the UK with a service select license the UK distributor is running a webinar on Energos this Friday (13th) at 2.30pm - more details at: https://designsoftwaresolutions.co.uk/learn/vectorworks-service-select-training-events/ @Tamsin Slatter - will things like the above be covered in the webinar?

Hi @michaelk and @Matt Panzer, Thanks both for the suggestions - problem solved!

Hi Matt, Sorry, still no luck. Would you mind taking a look at the attached file? Door Data.vwx