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matto

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Everything posted by matto

  1. I've said it before (maybe not in this thread, but many others just like it) and i'll say it again. The work arround culture is bad for Vectorworks. and... We need 2d view rotation sooner rather than later. We need it sooner than better modeling or "Live sections", after all for more interesting building we will always have to draw plan and section while modeling in our mind to gain enough understanding for live sections to be of any value. Sections are a design method not just a presentation method. (elevations are type of section)
  2. Was going to say about sketch style as well. Would tend to use sketch to put the slightest wobble in the lines, more so to get the crossing of the lines like that crisp hand drafted look.
  3. I know it's an important improvement. :-) Still there's no need to shout.
  4. Yep have to say we have been using OS X server for about 4 years now. Low trouble nice an easy to look after. Even done several upgrades all in house so we are now sitting at 10.3. We're running on a G4 tower supporting about 20 users in house, best advice i can give "Lots of Memory" that and makes friends with your apple centre guys see if one of them might help with install and a bit of training. As above Networking, use good cabling wire back to central location and it may seem odd but buy and use one more hub than you need, sure it will look like you have lots of free ports but the hubs will be the equipment that gives you the most troulbe, and will spread the traffic. UPS even if it only gives 10min power to server and hubs, will saves lots of issues to with unexpected power event. We run mainly Email, file sharing, which was really easy to set up, although email did take a bit of work with ISP and the ADSL box at our end. Basicely filesharing was set up nice and quick and every thing else was done as needed over time. So much so we have print services, VPN and in house onlt web server for photos and calenders, running only recently as they became useful. Hope that's helpful, any questions just post here or PM me.
  5. I'm not aware of a key to toogle between current and last tool, like you discribed. The spacebar at this stage will switch to the pan tool while held down then "boomerang" back to the tool you where in when you let it go. It even works mid operation, say drawing a polygon to pan the view inbetween drawing two points of the polygon.
  6. The system you discribed sound much like a Wiki. or at lest a combo of a wiki, with calendar website generator, photo site generator, maybe all running under WebDAV server to get the access control. Althought reading more the system is the front page generator that does tie it all together. The hard bit is getting it all to work together. Hey following the Wiki link you posted click web portal and on that page is a list of open source work similar to Sharepoint. most of these seem to run on Apache which is built into to OS x anyway. Having a look at a couple of these myself as we wanted to get something similar going in our office. The issue then is always the hardest Security when attached to WWW. Which is why it might be worth paying a hosting company with the system already set-up unless your just going to run the whole thing just in house.
  7. There was an interesting Article at O'reilly Press about Xgrid. you can start xgrid on any tiger machine, the server version of OS X really only gives you better control and a nice interface. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/08/23/xgrid.html the sticking point is Xgrid seem to only be able to handle Terminal accessed programmes, so a command line based File convertor or rendering engine might be able to take advantage.
  8. If you create a symbol, with say a text object saying the classname and in that class, then keep that symbol in the master file. but place off page in each file. then the class structure should update with the referencing this will take care of the class names, not sure how well it does for attributes.
  9. IF you have wings of the building at different angles, symbols can be your friend. Setup basic format of the building then combine each wing into a symbol, rotate the info in the symbol to on grid for working. then replace the symbol in the drawing so it's at the right angle. Even if you don't do the whole building wing you can still use it for parts such as your lighting, within the the wing. This is even better in recent versions as we now have doulbe click edit of symbol so it fairly easy to get into the area you need to edit. We find this works as a decent workarround until such time as we get that other much requested feature.
  10. Which Linux would you like the programme ported too? I know that sounds flippant but Vectorworks is a very graphical programme so it's not enough to say port to linux you would have to also commit to a particular Windowing system as well. After all Linux isn't an OS as we know it. It's more the kernal that any one of handful of OS can be complied from.
  11. Alanmac, Indeed i agree the test could be rigged in various situations. In my case i had a good connection with in the store I was buying from and had a good control of the test. Indeed I'd avoid big retailers for the reasons you note, and well the good small guys will be more willing to give quality information, and at the quanities talked about here, a good deal too. Matt
  12. quote: Originally posted by alanmac: I just noticed your comment on DVI, the LG is anolog, putting aside the technological differences why is "DVI a must" for CAD work? Alan Try getting a demo of a few screens side by side, a saw Apple (which uses full digital signal right to the LCD) against an Analog LCD and against another DVI that converted into analog before running the LCD. The difference is remarkable, the same drawing dragged half way between the two at a time. For CAD crisp line work is the best you can get. I'd say DVI was a must. That said the difference between the Apple DVI and the other DVI was noticable but not sure if by enough for the price difference. Hey but given the quanity being talked about it would be worth a few calls to see who's keen for the sale.
  13. MiniCAD 3 that's a long back... You made need a couple of steps to get up to VW v11.5. Sadely no way to avoid opening Classic. If you have MiniCAD 3 still running on an old machine you might try exporting as Vectorscript, which could open direct in VW v11.5 but of coarse may loose some information.
  14. We have run Mac OS X server in the office i'm working for. It's running on G4 tower lots of harddrive space and lots of ram are good. the machine does file, office email, and internal web for photo and calanders. And a previous office ran OS 9 server(AppleShare). Both generally trouble free. There was a bit of trouble when we had mixed OS9 and OS X computers. that was files worked on in X would be read only to OS9 machine and vice versa, although annoying there was no work lost to this. The main on going issue seem to be people leaving files open overnight, they seem to corupt when the backup tries to do it job. The other one to watch, if the network drops out while a file is open then VW seems to stall if it tries to save, if you know the network has dropped you can still "save as". also the minor one of VW handling of it's own back up files, being left in the file system. We have also had the odd blackout as well, where some of the files open across the network corupt as well. I think this applies to blackout happening when saving. On the whole most time lost would be more to human factors than the server itself. Hope that is some use to you? What sort of coruptions are you getting? which server are you using? A bit more information and someone here may have come across the same problem. To reiterate- Generally Works as it should, is trouble free and easy to manage. Maybe 1-2hours a week average, with backup media changing and user issues. The problems tend to be more things "to be aware of" rather than issues. [ 07-21-2005, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: iboymatt ]
  15. I know this may be a bit late. Do you have the DTM package in your VectorWorks? Maybe use a 3d poly to define the edge of the tent, and 3d Locus for the tent posts. then use maybe the triangle mesh to get it produce a tent shape
  16. That would be cool... Maybe a SubEthaEdit model would be good. Where both people see the same view but only one person can edit at a time then hit the big button to hand over control.
  17. It sounds like the plug-in is using a class to draw it's objects on that you have turned off. try opening a new clean file and drawing the same objects. that way you can tell which classes are used by the plug-in.
  18. Did you run Disk utilty Repair Premission after install. On similar hardware i felt VW 11.5 was neutral in speed to 11, maybe a little faster, but that may have been the extra memory added around the same time.
  19. quote: Originally posted by Delmer: iboymatt, Do coinciding origins on sheet layers work for you? Though I've found the origin & grid govern location on drawing layers, they have no influince on PiP for my sheets. The easiest answer would be... Mostly, oh wait just reread your question... No If I create a whole bunch of sheets set one up with title-block and viewport of say a plan. copy and PiP to the others it works everytime. Things from design layers won't work on sheets as all sheets are 1:1 scale. Design Layers are still multi-scale. so pastes between them tend to go crazy, just like an two layers of different scales. Sometimes thou PiP doesn't seem to work right between Sheets but normally after the file has been in production for a while. It was only Kevin's original question that made me think it was odd. Jan15, I to resisted all the joy the new system had to offer, starting out using just those bit which suited me, It's a very nice flexible system like that. Just forgive the AutoCADish naming and the features tend to make a whole lot of sense. (if it makes you feel better sheet layers are referred to as Presentation layers in the VectorScript docs, not sure why the name didn't stick) They show a lot of promise for future improvements as well.
  20. Maybe you need to set solar time for summer? Sorry I couldn't resist.
  21. quote: Originally posted by Kevin: Sean; Thank you for the quick and thorough response. Very refreshing in light of the normal policy of "no comment". Also, congratulations on your promotion. Here, Here. It does make everything seem very positive. So business as usual sounds like the order of the day.
  22. Kevin, I think you'll find that each sheet layer can have it's own origin, which is independant of the file origin. Unless all the sheets have the same origin the paste in place won't work as expected. You can set these orgins either from the sheet layer dialog box or with the move origin tool while the sheet layer is active. (not that I've found a reason to move them, would be curious if anyone has). As for cleaning up classes, well Jan15 pretty much covered it, mostly it needs to be done by hand, just manually working out what is of value whats not so valuable. As you said it's good to prefix all the class names as well just so it won't effect your other work. I'm pretty sure there is a tool at www.vectordepot.com that can rename all the classes with a prefix. Matt
  23. Have you tried Workgroup referencing the file into a new clean file? This works sometimes but not always.
  24. From what can be read in the press release for Apple so far. (i.e. all my comments are made as a curious and concerned onlooker, not as a rep of any of these companies) Apple have said they will support PPC based Macs for "along time to come", that developers will be armed with the tools, via Xcode, to support both processor types in a way that is seamless to the end user. Considering Tiger runs on original G3 iMacs or any Mac with Built-in USB, "along time to come" would seem like a far while. So it seems there is no cut off date as yet when Apple will stop supporting both the current PPC chips and the Intel chiped Mac's in the future will use. One of the hidden features of Mac OS X is that it relatively processor neutral, especially relative to the Old Mac OS. This was stated as being the reason a transition to Intel processors is possible. If the move is being billed as trivial, then by the same logic it's just as trivial to always keep the PPC support in future versions of the OS. Although as design professional we all know the difference between "trivial" in marketing speak and reality. I know I'm also curious to hear if this news changes NNA's plans for Vectorworks, but given that the WWDC lasts until Friday, and developer test hardware is months off as well, add time to digest, I wouldn't expect any announcement for a few months yet.
  25. Here is where Work group references can be really useful, instead of copy pasting the info out of the dummy file. 1.Set your origin to a known location (building or boundary corner) in your main file. 2.Then import the ACAD file into a new file, and set the origin of that file to the same location. 3.(add steps here- like clean up the mess of classes that seem to come with every ACAD file) 4.Now go back to your Main file and add the dummy file as a Workgroup Reference. If you set it manual update it will only update when you tell it to, which would probably be a good thing in your situation.
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