matto

It's been awhile since I stopped by here at the tech board. This wish is an oldie but a goodie and gets a whole hearty Yes Please from me.

Regarding number one,... What you may find useful are "Red Symbols". setup a base version of the PIO you want including any and all common settings that will speed up your workflow. With it selected make it in to a symbol, click the options button after giving it a name. First option you want is the tick box for "Convert to Plug-in Object" and the next one just below where you can select what class you want the object to insert in to. As you pull these symbols into the drawing they become PIO but all set up for you. Maybe not the solution you want but does have some advantages as well to make up for the change.

This doesn't need to a windows only or mac only thing, or a googleapps only thing. There are many open documented standards out that could be adapted to do this same job on all platforms. What Google Apps are already doing shows that most of the features you'd want to embed could be done well using web protocols. Easy to integrate as well, each player only needs to support webviews to render content in their application. We still need a nice documented way to display CAD/BIM data via a webview. btw... the superdog pic really suits the topic.

Yep it was cool idea when it was called CyberDog and any other number of names we've seen as tech demo's and product that died due to cross platform issues. Maybe someone could build the idea based on IFC structured Info.

CS1, I'm going to guess you never worked on a Drawing Board (gee i feel old asking that) We had two waxy coloured pencil blue and red, both of which wouldn't be picked up by the printer. Blue lines for setup or Guides. Red for the Architect to make notes or markup changes for the team. Matt

Maybe 40 storey building for Revit. VW can handle building of 30 storeys BIM or no BIM. BIM, building Info Model. The basic idea is model real world objects like walls, concrete slabs, doors and windows. From there the computer produces the dumb line drawings for you as the promoters of BIM will call them, or the comics as the builder calls. The hope is that this will save us a lot of time on co-ordination services, structure, fittings and all the others things that make up a building. BIM systems are more about how many objects they have scripts for Plug-in Objects in VW languages. VW is coming along. It's a nice objective. Vectorworks has had BIM like feature the whole Hybrid Drawing System could be thought of as Reverse BIM if you want, or BIM done right. you draw in real world objects that are presented in the drawing language we use, but with little or no extra input they are 3D as well. Which can produce co-ordinate elevations, sections and the like. The change in the last few years computers are getting fast enough to render these models fast enough to not get in our way well they where meant to but processors hit the wall and started going multi-core. CAD and BIM have issues with Multi-core.

1. would be great. 2. is Great, it's right there in 2008

Do you still have a NumLock key? That will also activate and deactivate the numeric keypad, with in the Macbook keyboard.

Great series so far. Really interesting. As some who straddles the divide between big and small firm. It really confirms that VW is heading in the right direction. It's mind full of our craft/art of our profession, and of the pressures of delivering quality on time and budget. I agree blindly following IT folks would be bad, but to be understanding that timetables for upgrades and budgets adds confidence in the product in it future and opens doors big and small. And if a yearly Developement cycle means ticking the big feature boxes like 2008 has then bring it on.

You'll see the problem sometimes when a new break is trying to form over and old break. Try using the Wall Break Heal tool over the offending walls end then try and rejoin.

Remember that saved views have one important advantage over Viewports. They don't have save certain aspects, if you just want a class set up, or a just a layer set up, or just a view, then saved views can do it. Viewports are a combo of all and have to be all the time. So in your templet file you could have saved views of just the class configuration for common drawings then when anyone wants to set up a viewport called the saved view then create the viewport knowing the classes are taken care of. Very useful is the old simple saved view.

Well, that is the easy way. Copy, apple arrow to next sheet, paste in place, repeat steps 2 and 3. Or create one sheet complete, then duplicate the sheet, which will copy all the sheet a number of times. If all the viewports are truely the same you could create one sheet then use a class for each of the titleblocks It all depends what you want to achieve your first method is going to give you the most flexibility in the long run making it easy to add layers to each veiwport for the unique parts of each. what you need to ask is, if it doesn't vary why show the same thing more than once?

The workaround to this in VW12 was two have two identical viewports stack on top of each other each set to different render modes. (must give credit to someone else for the idea) It works really well. So well that in VW2008 you don't need two viewports as sheet layer viewports can render in two mode and underlay which you use something that give modeling, shadow, texture colouring you want. Then the top Layer in say Hidden Line, to get the line work you want. Also have a look at OpenGL mode new options. Shadows and hidden line very nice. You be great to know where these options fall short.

If you include Loci in your symbols they will define the cut opening of the symbol. 2D loci on will define the Plan opening. 3D at two oppersite corners will define the model opening all should be on the @Y=0, You can then have the small walls and indeed the roof that relates to each of the clerestorey with in the symbol as well, knowing that the loci define the holes. These loci are useful for many things. Symbols for sliding doors, garage doors. or even framing holes in walls for built-in toilet cisterns. Hope that helps Matt

Or import the the image as an image fill. the fill can applied to any shape and use the Attribute Mapping Tool (option-a) in the default workspace to move, stretch and rotate the image till it's in the right location.