Jim Smith

@line-weight When I need a roof cricket, I have 3 or more Roof Faces that intersect. Even if they all have the same pitch, I have to find a wall to "fill in" the offending space so that it will drain properly & won't be a nice place for snow to build up. The cricket itself will be by nature at a different pitch. Rather than a Roof Face I could use a series of extruded objects & Subtract Surfaces, but that means duplicating a bunch of roof objects. Here's a grab of my playing with the roof in Annotation to get an idea of where & how big the cricket should be. If instead I had a "Real 3D" Polygon tool, I could use to fashion this shape & extrude it is my wish. Subdivision may be good for some users but in my work it isn't a tool that I use as it's not very intuitive, & far too complex to use. That, & I'm not a fan of Blob-a-tecture. 😉

@Kevin McAllister @Markvl - Regarding the roof cricket, I'm old enough, that my drafting classes included a lesson on Ballon Framing! As for how I do this now is I make a Roof Face that mimics the size, angle & location of the cricket. The main Roof Faces will "hide" the Roof face / Cricket, so I then use a 3D Poly to get the shape of the Cricket then in plan I convert this 3D Poly to a 2D Poly & use this to edit the shape of the roof face.

A GC I work with on some projects jokes : "It sometimes takes you longer to model or draw something than it does for me to build it!" He's only half joking, & he's close to accurate in some instances. In this case I'm calling for a cricket on a complex roof, & the roof has been tough enough to model but the cricket has been a real bear. I have used a roof face, to create the cricket but how much faster this would be if one could just draw this as a 3D object. So my wish is for a 3D Object I can draw either on the fly or with the help of 3D Loci that would give me intersection points in 3D. (So I guess that's a 2nd wish.)

I know better but I'm working on a Sunday afternoon & thought I could just get away quickly using the so-called Custom Stair Tool. Funny story ( or is it a Storey?) I can't have more than 2 stairs on Layer. As I said I know better to trust ANY STAIR tool. I'm going to get a dog. I don't like dogs, but at least a dog might bite me if I'm tempted to EVER use a Stair Tool ever, ever again. Rant over. PS What's also funny is that when I use the magic wand there are 6 stairs rather than the 2 that are visible. Why do I feel like the Stair Tool was written by a character from a Kurt Vonnegut novel?

I often don't use the replace symbol tool unless there are many symbols on a page that need replacing, faster often to just select a new one for a couple of symbols or even edit the symbol. How many times have I thought: "Oh, I'll just use the handy dandy Replace Symbol function in the OIP, oh, never mind, they are not sorted, just hundreds of symbols in a long, long, long list!" How about having the Symbol Folders show up in Replace Symbol function?

When one produces a "Roof" the is the choice between expressing the pitch in degrees or as a function, for example 5:12. This is not consistent in the OIP when one works with a Roof Face as the pitch is expressed only in degrees. As one likely knows, even pretty simple roofs often need to be exploded as the model sometimes is too complex for the programme to handle. So my wish is to have a choice on Roof Faces Shape Info in the OIP to choose either degrees or a function of X :12 as it would save several steps.

Like you I carry a sketch book & a pen with me at all times, you never know when inspiration will strike or when one needs to communicate with a sketch. I need to work lots of ideas out on paper before committing to VW. This reminds me of an article I read years ago about Auto Pilot systems were designed backwards; ie the Pilots were often doing the boring repetitive stuff & the Nav system was doing the fun flying part that humans were good at.

Back in the days when a colour monitor was an expense one had to fight hard for, I evaluated several CAD options & chose Mini Cad 3 in large part due to what one of my staff at the time said "oh, that looks like the paper I work on now". The reason some users are attracted to SU is not just because it's free (ish) but rather it is because it's what people are used to & VW could learn a lesson here. I feel that VW has an real advantage over many other drawing packages in terms of drawing management, but I think the software is getting too far away from Drawing Pictures & too caught up with engineer style of YTSIB* . This maybe too much for the present software & I know that others have spoken about this on many other threads, but I would really appreciate a more straightforward visual way of managing and editing EVERYTHING in the programme with a double click. I know there will still be some YTSIB but I guess we need the main functions to be more like drawing. I don't pretend to know the first thing about how programming design works but if I can use an example from my world, we often think of how the building will look, then move to the specifics of how to build it. This is the kind of re-think that VW should consider. Please don't see this as shade on VW or the great people who've made it my tool of choice for over 25 years, rather a wish to change VW & to see VW prosper. *You Type Stuff Into Boxes

So I've been thinking that our old symbol based Title block may need to be re-evaluated as there seems to be more functionality with a newer title block. Then I read this post after looking at Help & Service Select (BTW, most recent HOW TO in the SS on this topic is for VW 2011,12 &13; so there's that). After carefully re-reading @Mik 's original post, & the reply's I come away with the feeling I should just put this idea down, & step carefully away backwards. Yes I will have to give up on some functions, but the main one I was looking for; automating my drawing list, does not seem worth the bother (I now take a screen Grab of my sheets from the navigation pallet that takes about 2 minutes). @Mik 's Crit is still valid not just for this tool but for so many tools, we should have so many more WYSIWYG tools not more boxy-clicky-programmy-whammy stuff. I gets that some folks LOVE to write code but many more of us got into this game because we like to draw pictures; so there's that.

That's it THANKS @zoomer !

Similar to @Bruce Kieffer 's questions, I just noted something that I'm not sure if I can explain about the Camera View. At one time I could fine tune my camera view, then "zoom out". By this I mean the camera's Point of View was "locked" & "zooming out" was similar to changing the crop of a photo to reveal more of the photo. What seems to happen now, even with "Deactivate" chosen, the POV also moves. I can get the same/similar result by creating a viewport & adjusting the crop, but it's not as intuitive as it once was. Is there a button or setting that allows one to work more like the old technique?

Thanks@Kevin McAllister & @JuanP I was going to ask the same thing!

... I go away for a couple of days & read this!! Jim I want to echo all the best wishes here & hope you take away the real difference you've made in many of our work lives. Thank-you. But I can't let this go without expressing how many of us feel:

@zoomer So can you edit the symbol to add a 2D element after import?

@minotto Did you get this solved? If not perhaps this is a Class issue, I know my doors are often auto classed into the Sills Class.

@zoomer I'm curious if one were to use a Symbol for each floor then explode each Symbol on each floor would the Storey then recognize the walls that now were no longer part of a Symbol? If this were the case, then one could copy the Symbols to each floor, then explode each symbol, to use the storey function. If this works, I'd add a "nested" symbol that would be used and as an outline of each room (say in red) & keep using one floor as a typical floor plan's "parent" symbol until near completion to adjust the rooms as required. One could then add the completed floor plan to the room outline symbol & then explode all the floor symbols again to have the storey function populate. Finally delete the red floor outline symbol from the file. Might work?

I'm now seeing "Ghost Images" as I scroll. I have no idea how to even clearly describe what I'm seeing. A restart fixes the issue for about an hour or two. A system restart lasts a little longer. Anyone else? Any tips?

I'm seeing the same thing. A restart does resolve the issue. I'm also getting an new buggy thing where the "make all attributes by class" will not work, nor will the eye dropper, or the magic wand. A restart solves the issue, but as a fix this ain't a fix if I'm having to restart at odd intervals. Also by "restart" I mean shut the computron down & restart the whole magilla. (This is take 10-15 minutes BTW) The SP does not fix the "rotated not rotated" ghost image issue where an object that's rotated does not appear to be rotated, but has to me nudged to magically reappear. Sorry @RussU , I kinda walked all over your issue.

@Jim Wilson @Rob Books Thanks for solving the riddle. I knew the 2015 file was a 2015 file as it had the date in the title & I must have seen that in the Text file

@Kevin McAllister @zoomer I just tried a know VW 2015 file & text editor does work, so thanks that's an ok work-a-round in the meantime Update: Opening a VW 2019 file identifies it as VW24 ? 😐

Our rule is once a project is out of SD unless there's a good reason, the project is completed in the iteration of VW it was created in. What that iteration is, isn't always obvious. Other than guess, is there not some way that when one uses the "get info" command that the iteration of VW can be shown? Even if one opens try a cold open of the file, can VW not tell me "hey this is a VW 2016 file, do you want to continue?" rather than just telling me what I know, that this isn't a VW2019 file.

Far too often I know that I use this forum as a BMW* sounding board & don't offer Kudos when due. So here goes: The set position command on the OIP (8-10 years old?) is a great time saver. I spent some time today changing some windows & doors on a project. By using the copy & past of existing measurement to quickly find & make the values on either side of a window equal eg: (325 + 455)/2 I was able to accomplish the task a lot faster than I thought going in. So thanks for that VW! * B____ Moan & Whine

Hey @Jonathan Pickup ! I alway just select the wall & choose to Move (Command M) then type in the amount to move the wall by. The other thing that (mostly) works for me is if I have constrained Dimensions (as I often do) I find it super easy (mostly) to edit the values of the chain dimensions & it works really well. We have finished a couple of Dr Offices & the client is often changing the size of the exam rooms (even after construction has started) and using constrained dims makes this pretty bullet proof (as long as you check for PEBDAK's*) * Problem Exists Between Desk And Keyboard

All the stair tools to date remind me of the line from Dante's Inferno often shortened to L.O.S. : "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

Have you just tried to open or have you Batch Converted the file?