PVA - Admin

Does this happen in a new document with any other standard fonts? Or is there a particular font that does this? What are you opening the PDF in? If you open it in another application (Preview, Adobe Reader XI, etc) does the same thing happen?

Submitting request now.

Tools > Utilities > Reset All Plugins... MAYBE. It sometimes triggers objects to re-read all of their OIP fields and sometimes not, it depends on the object I believe.

It looks like they were not able to correct it in time for SP1. It went on less than a month before the SP was released, unfortunately this is often too short-notice for all reported issues to get fixed. However, it looks like a fix is already being tested and should be included in a patch. I do not know when, though.

Unfortunately we have to go with the lowest/most compatible common denominator for compatibility statements. We cant answer "Maybe" to whether a version of Vectorworks is compatible with an OS or not, so if there is a subset of only 30% of users that would be affected, we still have to go with a flat "No". I have plenty of users working with 2012 on 10.9.5 without issue, but a separate group are not able to launch at all, couldn't connect to a dongle, couldn't render in OpenGL, etc. Some were technically "small" problems but bad enough that it rated Incompatible.

That would also work if you scaled it during the import, yes.

Sometimes that just means the letters and the surface they are on occupy the same plane, so they will show through on occasion at certain angles. this is fixed by just moving the letters off the surface slightly. However, I cant really tell from just that screenshot, if you can post that geometry in a test document here or email the original file to tech@vectorworks.net I can take a look.

Does the same issue happen in SP1? If you create a new blank file in 2015, then just add a few lines and rectangles, does that export to DWG without issue or does the same crashing occur?

Will do. We do need that natively. (For the moment, just a general workaround I use to get STLs into Vectorworks is MeshLab, you can open STLs there and then save the mesh as the 3DS file format, which Vectorworks can import currently. http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/1265/Importing+STL+files+into+Vectorworks)

Actually, on Windows I am able to select these reported values from the OIP, on Mac I am not. I'll see if this is an issue or not, then submit it accordingly. It should be select-able. Finding worksheet formula from right click/hover for OIP values would be very useful, submitting that separately.

I like it. Submitting request now.

Try opening a new document, placing a few rectangles then exporting them to the desktop directly with a simple name. "Test" is fine. Let me know if the same error appears. If so, are you able to open and view ANY PDFs on your machine currently? What application are they opening in by default?

I am meeting with a number of my coworkers to discus improvements specific to 3D printing and Vectorworks. I am unable to give many details, but here is a sample of what I am proposing we include natively: 1) Support for scaled export to STL, so that a user could print their model at the design layer scale and have that be the real scale of the resulting 3D print. Currently STLs all export at 1:1 and scaling has to be handled manually afterwards. 2) 3D "Page" area. This would allow the user to show a 3D page area, similar to the clip cube that shows the bounds of their own 3D printer's build plate, customizable by the user, maybe with a few of the more common printers sized included as defaults (Makerbot, Ultimater, etc) 3) Below-minimum size detection. Currently a 3D printers resolution is limited by a number of factors, the main of which is its nozzle size. For instance my printer's nozzle in .4mm, so it can not create "lines" or geometry smaller than that. (If a model is scaled down to fit in a printers build area, a regular problem comes about with handrails, fences and PIO details where the printer cant make the objects small enough, so you either get nothing or a pile of spaghetti where the printer tries to do its best.) 4) Overhang detection. Many aspects of an architectural model are not conducive to 3D printing, such as porches or decks that hang off the side with no support, (if the site model isn't printed with the rest of the building) hanging fixtures inside the model or standard roof overhangs. This would not be encouraging the users to change their model (this is considered an unacceptable solution) but to inform the user that they may need to enable Support in their slicing settings. 5) Manifold STL exports. Currently STLs from Vectorworks often need to be repaired by a mesh modeling utility like MeshLab or NetFABB before they can be printed cleanly, ideally this feature would be included in our STL export process. This is just a sample of my list, but are there any other features that would be deemed useful? Feedback from users who are either interested or experienced in this would be appreciated.

The main reason to use RAID 1 or 5 is the fear of hardware failure on the drives themselves. however even just having one Time Machine drive backing you up will protect you from that, since if either your main drive or the Time Machine volume dies, you already have the other to replace it and then you'd be replacing the dead drive immediately anyway. The setup you describe that does not use a RAID would work just fine for removing the risk of hardware failure, with the added bonus if the nice Time Machine features that let you go back through multiple iterations/versions of files, something that a regular RAID setup doesn't offer on its own.

Turn off all snapping options in the Snapping palette, close Vectorworks, then launch it again and enable the snapping options, making sure to enable the Nearest Point on Edge option in the General pane of Tools > Smartcursor settings. (The above suggestion isn't specific to Yosemite, but on occasion I have seen Mac snapping options get stuck and this helps reset them sometimes.)

Attribute Mapping should work to change the origin of a wall texture, however I believe it can only be used on the regular by-object textures. I think Wall Style and component textures will map automatically to World origin, but there was recently an issue submitted where this did not behave as expected.

I tried! I failed... but I got much closer than before. I am fairly confident it can be done by someone with greater LinuxFu than I. Since after 2015, Vectorworks no longer needs QuickTime, you no longer have to wrestle with that aspect when trying to run Vectorworks on Linux via WINE or something similar. However even after I ironed out all the older issues I had trying to get 2014 running to run under WINE, I hit new issues with it being unable to detect certain DLLs within the program folder upon launch. There are ways of running Mac applications on Linux as well that I haven't looked into, I have only had time to try the Windows versions on Linux thus far. I am going to be messing with it again when I have time. EDIT- MORE INFO: I had tried using Darling to run the Mac version, but its still in its infancy as a project and isn't really up to handling a highly complex application like Vectorworks that has hooks in the OS all over the place.

I will say that the 5K iMac at $2500 is extremely good value for money, especially considering it has a near bleeding-edge GPU with its AMD R9 series M290X. You could easily pay $1500 for JUST a 4K display of that size or more. However that appears to be the only shining star in their regular range for now. The Mac Pro is still excellent spec-wise, but its significantly less bang for the buck compared to the new iMac.

Did this happen with Adobe Reader as well as Preview opening the PDF, or just one of those applications?

Agreed, submitting request now.

They even soldered the RAM on the new Mini to prevent user upgrades, so you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for what will be $59 worth of extra RAM in 6 months. That coupled with the un-upgradeable graphics cards in the Mac Pro... their line is getting increasingly restraining on the user that likes to keep a machine for longer than 3 years.

RAID 1 or RAID 5 for safety. RAID 0 is just for speed and is often better to replace with an SSD these days. Time Machine should work just fine with at least a RAID 1, I've seen this done regularly. I am willing to bet it doesn't care about the physical or logical configuration of the drives, it just needs a target volume with the HFS file system.

For rendering an 3D visualization, no. Skip it and go for an iMac, Macbook Pro or Mac Pro. The Intel series graphics are "acceptable" but significantly worse than the Nvidia and AMD GPUs. If you were JUST doing simple 2D designs, maybe, but not as a main work machine.

Any SKP file imported into a new blank document has this issue for you, or just ones from this source? You can grab a number of test imports from here if you only have SKPs from one place handy: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

Vectorworks 2012 does not work for all users on all hardware configurations in Mavericks. Some users may have never seen issues but MANY did.