Jim Smith

For some reason many items, Door & Window objects especial, seem to be more "STICKY" than they were in past interactions of VW. This is very time consuming when numbering doors or windows as one must click several time on a blank part of a floor plan to release the door then select another door repeating this just to renumber doors. It seems the X key used to release an object now I often make a mistake with numbering as I think I've released an object only to find I've renumbered an already renumbered door. To quote the old song That ol dark rum: "I feel I've got a dog wrapped round my leg! "

I love how walls that have constrained dimension may be altered by altering the Dim's value. Another big help would be to be able to adjust a walls length relative to other objects. Imagine it being similar to the way a door or window may be moved with the SET POSITION button.

I would say this is one of the great things about VW there isn't "ONE WAY" to do things. I had a client who was in manufacturing & imported a lot of ACAD files to fit his stainless steel features into. He needed to not only share shop drawings with his client, but also to export files to his CAM system. As a result his Design Layers were all 1:1 but we were able to produce details at 1:10 and drawings at 1:25 or 1:50 and CAM files liked the 1:1. This simplified the import of ACad drawings. Having the ability to customize the viewport's line weight scale allowed us to produce not bad looking drawings none the less. Not ideal, & generally as Neil suggest, Layer Scale is generally at what our output is on all other projects.

I thought I had wish listed this some time ago. Anywho you're 100% correct in your suggestions. Here in Canada the AODA (2005!) has made L shaped Grab Bars mandatory. I add a circle to the plan & I have a symbol that I use for the elevation details so I only rely on the PIO for the plan.

As Robert says part of this is understanding the advantage of VW's "Layer Scale" and using Scaling in individual viewports that makes VW very, very flexible. From the coaching I've done for new users it's mostly a question of "Time On Tools" to understand the advantages and different approach of this software over others. No two softwares accomplish the same task the same way. That's why a LA I know continues to use Illustrator rather than ACad; however having seen what we can do she is interested in trying VW. To put it another way, so called "Scaled Line Weight" imported from ACad users drives me nuts. So it really depends on your point of view & expectations.

Yeah, that would be helpful as well. Perhaps a choice something like three Radio Buttons that one chooses to: 1) Include / Exempt : Title Blocks 2) Include / Exempt : Symbols 3) Include / Exempt : Worksheets

This happens from time to time where a consultant doesn't feel there's a need to adhere to a graphic standard as it relates to fonts. I'm not pointing any fingers at my friends with iron rings, but.... Anywho is it possible that a file could be mandated to just have one font? As our standard is to have 90% of text in the Annotation Layer, it means someone (me generally) has to open many viewports & select all change fonts to what they should be. It would be great if I could have a preference to mandate fonts on one.

I'd like the Parking Spaces Tool to be able to add spaces together in a similar way to when one has several polygons selected the resulting area is displayed. So if one has four groups of parking spaces selected with a total of 72 spots one could tell the total at a glance.

Was there ever any fix to Auto-Classing? This seems to cause me grief on almost every project.

I've always wondered why an object's Line Type gets changed when the object becomes extruded, this is most odd, frustrating & frankly causes more work than it should do. I would like the ability to show objects above in a 2D plan without having to produce a hybrid symbol.

I do see your PoV & your work is always an inspiration and what you've covered is great for order of magnitude stuff however; for our firm we need to have control & sign off.

Awsome ! Thanks very much!

Generally we calculate areas by classes that are essentially Sub classes. While clients need to see these sub class information, Building officials are only interested in the overall uses. For example the city only needs to see Residential, Office, and Mercantile areas but the client needs to know more sub headings for each area. What we now show on a spread sheet is each Class & a the spread sheet then totals these cells. Here's my question: I would like to have a second spreadsheet that just has the totals. Is there a way to write a formula that would allow me to say total all the Mercantile areas rather than having five or six Cells of areas then a Total? I've tried =AREA(((L='Main') & (C='xxx'))+((L='Main') & (C='yyy'))+((L='Main') & (C='zzz'))) But that don't work. Any thoughts I'm thinking I might just use the same spreadsheet but just shrink the cells I don't want to see.

I'm an old enough of a bunny to remember Dumb terminals where everything operated off one mainframe. At the time a pal who teaches digital design (I think he was using hypercard to do stuff) answered my question about digital imagery saying " Pixel density will take decades, if ever, to reach the image clarity of film". He may have been correct, but whither Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, and Fuji? I think Cloud Based may become the default, but hopefully long after I'm retired as I strongly feel while the business model may, in some ways be different, the FaceB analogy is valid. MY Data on SOMEONE else's Mainframe is the issue I'm totally against. I'm happy to be a luddite on this issue. Now where can I get film for my Polaroid Swinger?

This might allow for illustration of door stops within a door frame.

One stair to rule them all? 😀

Agreed, I've toyed with the new system & have kept a series of symbol based Title blocks. If I were designing a Sheet/Title Block / Revision system it would be graphics based - ie double click on the title block to create or amend. Secondly I'd update the Navigation Pallet to what Tom describes as a Centralized manager; graphic in nature so one had folders & sub folders from CD through Permit Construction & Contract Admin; like what is physically represented in an office works with sticks & binders.

Gotca! Could you use the Navigation Palette to more quickly find the sheet you're looking for? I think this has been requested before, but it would be good if the Navigation Palette allowed for nesting in a hierarchical view similar to the way Classes may be viewed in the the OIP.

Is this a question of navigating to a particular Sheet?

This is correct, but you need to also think about it as an investment. Firms often pay for trainers to help staff improve their skills. Think of Johnathan Pickup's training, he has great resources (I've several of his books) and they cost time and money; but they pay for themselves in improved productivity. For example I've looked at the issue this way with new tools. The first two projects I used the camera match tool on I knew that I couldn't charge all my hours to learn the techniques. However I thought of the projects this way: "Someone just paid me to learn a new skill!" So on both projects I only charged about 1/3 of the hours spent on the first one & with some experience about 2/3's of my time on the second. I did the additional work/learning on my own time.

I've just add a Wish List Item on this topic. I think a Cloud based Mini Cad file conversion would be a helpful addition to service select. If you think so you may want to add your opine to the thread.

I think a Cloud based Mini Cad file conversion would be a very valuable resource for many. I know that I and others have had some success converting files for some people but sometimes what's out there doesn't convert. I know there are firms out there that started with MiniCad and are now looking at retirement and may want to pass on MiniCad files. A Cloud based conversion would be a good idea to add to the Service Select.

A good night's rest & a full restart resolved the issue. Funny how many times the old chestnut of "Did you restart the computer?" seems to fix things.

Using the Space Bar to get the Boomerang Mode to work seems to have stopped working. I have restarted VW and this continues to be an issue. I shall restart the computer later to see if it is still an issue, but in the mean time, is this something that's been happening to others?

We have some projects that we want to revisit for minor changes/additions. I don't like to batch convert a file unless there's a good reason to do so & I would like to open the file in its' "native" format. The date of a file doesn't always tell me that info until one opens the file. For example, a project could have been started in VW 2014 and worked on until 2016. It could have been one of four different versions of VW. Short of adding some kind of note in the folder it would be helpful if there was some way to quickly identify what version of VW a file is.