matto

That would work so well. Even better if you could buy the base package and also recieve at the same time an expiring trail of each of packs. The best thing is that useful tools will be well supported, and the money will be there for their improvement. The pricing over time will reflect usefulness/userbase. This will make room from 3rd party packs. As well, as imporvements for localization.

You might all ready know this one. in tool> utilities>Create colour chart. the chart prints with index numbers, but sadly not r,g,b code, can be scaled to a size that easier to see.(make sure you scale the text too) then print it out put it on your wall. oh small advantage is it show what the colours print like, conpared to screen, i have one for each of the printers we use and for pdf.

We have had a lot of success if the workgroup reference approach, as it doesn't really open the corupted file, it just reads it. Just make sure to cut the reference after but keep the info once it is in the file. if you can leave the ACAD import layer behind. Then you should make a back up of this and purge un-used objects. And there is no way to recover the saved sheets. so you need to rebuild them.

We had two new project architects join our team from ACAD environments in the last few months. I have to say retraining them to use VW turned out to be very easy. half a day of walking them thru the package to start with and from then a hour every day or so answering question as they start to explore features. it's very much a play an learn system. the licencing for VW means you can start with one or two people on the system, although i wouldn't split a project across the two systems. Then as you get use to it add more seats. Here's where it pays to find a good local dealer. I know the Guy we deal with is a part time Architect too, and it makes the process a joy. Oh the side befit of bang for buck is always good. When people say Vectorworks is intuitive. They tend to mean that people who know how to put things together, like your architects and detailers, will pick up it, as easily as the regular cad people. there are a number of larger offices i know of that the design teams use Vectorworks and the documentation teams use Microstation. Yep you don't have Viewports as such in Vectorworks. the drawing reference system still needs a bit of work to be as intuititively practical as the rest of the package. you can't crop or rotate an updating link. We use the package mostly as an overated drawing board, but the working environment scales so what you know of 2d leads you in to 3d. The 3d still at this stage is most useful for presentation and tends not to translate well to documentation. (although from what i've seen none of the packages really produce much more than pretty 3D). Over All the package tends more to a precision graphic design package model than that of hard code traditional cad, but don't be fooled that it is any less powerful. The Demo isn't the best for trying it out. It's best to do a real project to get use to it. Having someone on hand who has used the package always good, and they will probablely be looking forward to the day that one of the newbies teaches them something new.

Here's the script i use, (on VW9.5.3, macx.2) serveral times a days even while inside groups and with no problems as far as i know. have other people using the script on VW10(mac and win) and no ones said anything. PROCEDURE toogle; VAR bef, aft: BOOLEAN; BEGIN bef:=GetPref(14); aft:= NOT bef; SetPref(14, aft); END; Run (toogle);

Agian this is a Workaround, and reduces the flexiablity of the initial suggestion. if you only want all attributes by class for the ocassional object, there still is no simple way to achive this. the idea is great if the same checkbox could be used to turn all class attributes off as well.

well andrew beat me to explaining that. btw you can find all those index numbers in the vectorscript manual, so you might have a look see if there are any more useful toogles for you.

i have them set up as plugin tools with icons (i know not recommended by VW but i'm a visual person) the one that seems most useful. "view other objects while in groups"

it's great work around but does mean you lose your grid (if you use one). The Suggestion would make a great feature thou, as say a new tab in document preferences. specially if user selectable and an option to print or not print. You could also add image backgrounds. (yes i know this can be done with same workaround) All these would readily improve presentation output, as well as functional issues.

THere should be a localisied Prefernces File for the industry series of VW, the distributor in your country should have put it together to suit local practice. jan15- what you suggest is the old way of setting up walls with cavities which is still in the basic package. but let's not get into that debate again....

these two classes can't be deleted only renamed, and will always be the first two classes created, being the only two classes in the the VW base file. So even if the user has renamed these classes. their index numbers will still be 1 & 2, the the functions will still be the same mostly.

have to agree here there are some symbols you don't want to insert in the wall, but sit happily nearby or independantly. and the on edge option with no breaks just really doesn't work for these situations. and "ignore walls" would be great extar option for symbols and PIO

Have you tried repairing permissions? Strange i know but it does seem to stop VW getting lost and going slow.

Please, please, please That would be the best. with we could have the pop-up for walls and other style based tools as well.

If your on Mac Os X then support for WebDAV is built in to the system, it is useable like any file server. and Vectorworks will see the files just like it see files on other servers. how best to stablely use the function of WebDAV server with VW is something we have been investigating in our office for a while. but we haven't done enough testing to say if its relieable. is anyone else out there "Playing" with WebDAV? would be interesting to hear?

you could get rid of them. or better still make them useful. with suggestions like making them snapable or even editable. Great for lining things up and still making sure things are on the right layer. oh and maybe have a grey and snapable "show other objects while editing a group" now that would rock.

Re-build your Desktop my friend. It Seems that "Repair Permissions" on Mac Os X fixes a lot of same things rebuilding the desktop use to. so i guess like on mac os 9 where the rule of thumb was too re-build desktop every time you install VW. On mac Os X it's repair permissions.

and another vote here. Also could the tabs at the bottom be looked at too. Maybe to be Headings with Drop Arrows (similar to the new formatting palette in M$ Word), but with a greater division than the tabs. so that shape tab, could have Location, size and say custom headings defined by the PIO's

Servers are good where you have multple computers working at the same site. (or at least with a connection) But as you are using a Powerbook to go mobile what you might consider is a file Sync Utility (try a search at versiontracker to find one that suits your system) that way you set up a folder on each machine that contains your files, set the file sync to run as you connect or disconnect the PB. this will keep the versions of file up to date. the good ones will warn you if you have worked on the file in both locations before overwriting. and will mean you have a backup of your files. one with you, on the PB, and the other one on site

i maybe being over simple but if all the objects that should be on that class have a common attribute like they are all simple single lines ungroup. with everything visable a custom selection for class='gl' kind = not lines should get most of your objects. btw i like the class ablity as it is having different it's really powerful. Maybe more could be made of the tree structure to avoid issues like these, and make it more powerful still.

Yep Sure it might be a bit of work to move vectorscript from being MiniPascal to being a framework in Developer studio, and the equivalant in windows, but Java is cross platform and it's performance is being improved all the time. and the C variants for those more add advanced. You can just imagine the good things that could come from such a move

the news from www.slashdot.org is that apple have withdrawn the update for 10.2.8 due to a problem with iMac' and eMac' networking so maybe hold off a couple of days at least

it would be nice to have a small utility application that could convert any previous VectorWorks or Minicad file to the current version. it doesn't even need to be installed. if it was just on the installer disk, so it could be found easily when needed. it seems like there are getting more and more people out there with 5-10+ years of production stored in archives.

thanks katie that helps explain a simlar problem we are having. oh small hint: some corupted files may still be referenceable so try opening a brand new file and try workgroup reference the important layers.

i discovered today how amazingly useful import of saved sheets could be. we have a largish project (12floors) and for some reason the plans file crashes VW when i go to print or page setup. i've referenced all the meanful layers into a new clean file so i can now print agian. but with no saved sheet import i now have to go through and remake all the saved sheets. some 20+ sheets @ 2min each, thats about an hour of time wasted. that could be a couple of minutes if i could import the saved sheets. That doesn't even take into account all the day to day time that could be saved with improving saved sheets.