jeparson

to answer in favor of amd processors- i say they work just as well as the pentium models and have much cheaper faster configurations gateway has a great ready built athlon series for beginning currently i am running a k6-3 400 an older amd processor- the complete config is 20gb harddrive, 32mb tnt2 ultra (the card before the geforce chip) 256 mb of ram, 17inch monitor, and k6-3 400 mhz processor if you want a great athlon system- a good investment is a system running either a duron 850 or the athlon thunderbird 900mhz- i recently built one of each for clients- they are incredibly fast and use cheap ram graphics cards for rendering- this is more important than processor speed- get a geforce gts 32mb card- either a guillmont, or the elsa versions- these have the highest ratings for vectors and rendering and are relatively cost effective- harddrives- ata 100 isnt necessary- the ata 66 systems are fine ram- at least 192- operating system- win98 se or win2000- windows me is still moody hope this helps ------------------

we have both pc and mac vectorworks- 8.5.1 and 8.5.2 we can easily print scaled drawings- 24x36 down to 11x17 on the macs, but the feature does not work correctly on the pc's except when using an hp 755 plotter as it is in the plot drivers rather than vectorworks software the problem is this is very paper wasteful when runngin check prints please tell me why the pc vectorworks does not work like the mac vectorworks. this is the third time ive had to post and hope to recieve a real answer this time-- ------------------

we have the same problem reducing images on pc's at our office- we can only get 24x36 drawings to reduce on the plotter which is a hp755 cm vectorworks tech support has never gotten back to me or the company about this issue- scaling works on the macs about 90% of the time showing that it is an issue with the pc software- two work arounds: 1) scale the layers via the layers options- just half the number ie a 1/50 drawing would become a 1/100 drawing 2)use a pdf writer such as adobe acrobat and print pdf's they can scale easily within reader, 3)export the drawings as image files with a high resolution jonathan GWI inc

can avoid having to use plotmaker and just export the dwg/dxf from autocad 2000 as version 13 or 14 which can both be read via the save as option under file-- it works pretty dependably and avoids having to use another third party program quote: Originally posted by MHSB: Did you know if you want to import DWG/DXF files from AutoCAD, you can import them into PlotMaker 2.2 and then export them as DWG v14 that VectorWorks can read.

i convert alot of vectorworks stuff into autocad- i assume it is very similar in nature to that of minicad-- the best thing to do for bringing anything into autocad is exporting out as autocad13 dxf's cause that seems to be the most stable exporter== 14 exporters only work occasionally with hatching and other fills etc. with just plain lines may be safest bet-- i.e black with only lineweights- so try it a layer at a time-- and if that works just exref them all wirthin autocad= they will maintain the same origins. id be worried a little about the version of minicad you are using-- the exporters are much better in the newer versions- ie version seven or even possibly vectorworks also make sure his autocad opens up some other files correctly-- try making just a simple file like a couple of rectangles and export them out to make sure it is not a software problem with your copy-- may have to reinstall or trash pref file and let it regenerate quote: Originally posted by Rick Hall: I am a devout MiniCad user. I have 6.0.1 on my Mac. I have been designing a (15-inch gauge) 'garden' railroad with it. I did the first half mile of track in hilly terrain on MC6. While I have been trying to convert him, my client wants it in AutoCad, and bought ACad 2000 with the Land Development Desktop R2, Survey and Civil Design desktops. He wants me to port it over to the ACad. We have tried a DXF, but got the message 'too few arguments'. Help!!! Can you suggest how I can do this successfully?, please.

In my office we depend on the advertised cross platform dependibilty of vectorworks-- however we are experiencing the following problems when switching from one to the other 1) fonts displayed incorectly or completely differently despite having both fonts on both machines and both are post script variet thus identical in nature. 2) missing images or incorrect images-- when opened from past project files- into the pc from mac-- problems with the images placed within document- and vice versa= despite being a uniform format such as a tiff. if there are any suggestions to these issues please let me know thanks jonathan gwi inc ------------------

i use both macintosh and pc copies of vectorworks 8.5.1 in my landscape office. My coworkers and i have no trouble sending 24x36 inch drawings to the 8.5 x11 printers we have and scaling them accordingly to fit the letter sheet side from a mac, however conducting the same set of instructions as posted elsewhere in this forum-- it seems not to work at all on the pc's== this is very frustrating cause the print software is exactly the same in functionality on both platforms and in any other piece of software on the pc one is able to use the built in print scales to reduce without a hitch. please let me know of any methods around this problem we have an hp 8550, hp 4000, and an epson 720 we are using for letter printers. jonathan ------------------

i have never had good luck with any ati products within autocad type applications esp. vectorworks- our g4 has the rage velocity 128 and it has sim probs- our pcs have been upgraded with a tntnvidia geforce based card for about 150 and it is awesome at vectorworks renderings and using it in 3d applications of vectorworks- it beats out the g4 however to keep using the ati- it shouldnt be extensions that are prob since vectorworks is very quicktime based- something not desirable on pcs- try getting the quicktime 4.1 upgrade and do the full custom install this will replace direct draw and direct 3d in quicktime and fix some probs the other two things to try are ram in the computer- download the newest ati drivers- although on my lap top i had to go back two releases to get the best working driver, after installing them or reinstalling current drivers- get the new directx from microsoft and install it also if still prob completely remove all of vectorworks and renderworks- including everything in the registry- the uninstall leaves alot of stuff- can do via regedit and find command and reinstall it fresh after updating quicktime and ati drivers jonathan parsons greenways inc jeparson@unity.ncsu.edu

are there any better tutorials or examples on animation and landform creation- the online documentation was rather thin thanks

i am just starting to work with the 8.5.1 version of the dtm workspace-i have both a high end g4 and a high end dell- both are giving wierd probs with the modeling after following the tutorial- the pc seems to generate fine for some and then stall out on others and the complexity is rather low - compared to models i have done in other software the other problem for both sides is in the rendering and closing of the sides i am having difficulty achieving a more realistic look in mesh= and the renders on both are rather low quality if not just ugly i apreciate any help

i am a landscape architect using vectorworks on both a g4/256mb ram/os9.0 and a dell pIII650 256mb ram/geforce256 32 mb graphics win98 machine i am experiencing serious probs on both when it comes to importing larger image files- that other programs such as autocad and turbo cad can open relatively easily ? the mac is able to handle it slightly better making me wonder if there is a prob with quicktime 4 or something not right with the graphic drivers using the same file back in forth- we ran into serious probs getting it to print or even open resulting in corrupted image files- i tried using all of the formats in the import option with no specific one working the best- and when it finally opened- working on it on either machine was incredibly slow- the image is a 22mb aerial photograph- what is the best format? are there any patches to the image importing features i also have had probs exporting images with the error of not enough ram on both- yet they both have 256 and both have it allocated to as much as stably possible. any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated- i am trying the quicktime update- but it doesnt make since why that would be such a performance drain- is there someonein development working on a solve for this for the next release? it is only major error still keeping us in autocad