PVA - Admin

Depending on the angle, you can sometimes place either an entourage car or a generic 3D geometry block "behind" the image prop in the view you are rendering to give the ground shadow while keeping the same image prop.

Yes I understand, that's what I was trying to convey. That pressing X twice DOESN'T work in all scenarios so the ESC is a much better choice. Apologies if I wasn't clear. I've been nose down in video editing software for the last two months and my eyes have yet to re-adjust to the harsh light of day. :crazy:

Bruce and Kevin: I have that in as a separate request now for pretty much any tool. Tapping X twice to return to Selection makes sense in many scenarios, but as stated earlier in this thread and elsewhere anything involving text editing makes the X shortcut useless as you just end up ending withxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ahh so ONLY if the Text tool was activated via editing text beginning with the Selection tool, not the normal manual activation of the Text tool. Got it, submitting now.

If that were the default, then during the creation or editing of multiple text objects via the text tool (a common occurrence) you would have to re-active that text tool for each subsequent text object. I see that as convenience for a specific circumstance but more often a hindrance.

Submitting request now.

Submitting request now.

This should cover the how: http://www.vectorworks.net/service-select/cloud-services/movie.php?movie=vcs-how-to As to how long it will take, you would have to run a test render to compare the two precisely. However, it is not capable of creating animations yet, only doing normal renders in viewports located on sheet layers.

Submitting request now.

They started happening around the update. The Who's Online section had been broken for awhile and began functioning again around the same time, in addition to a few admin features. I will keep you all posted if/when I hear anything back.

I get the same issue in all browsers randomly throughout the day. I've informed IT and they're going to be taking a look at it. It happened shortly after a server update.

Not sure where that particular model/image came from originally, its not something I have been working on. It shows off a new feature, albeit in an abstract manner. I'm not going to say "done away with" as there are still things you could do that would hit your own machines max memory, but the out of memory errors where users were just smacking into Vectorworks 2014's much tighter limits should be a thing of the past shortly. I'm sure there's someone out there with a file with 300,000,000 polys all individually textured that will still run out of memory when they try to duplicate them in a 10x10 array or something like that, but it shouldn't be happening under normal circumstances any longer in 2015.

Yes. Rewriting large chunks of the software to bring it to 64bit was a LARGE portion of engineering's time for the last 2-3 years. With that mostly out of the way they can (and have already started to) devote their time to fixing issues and adding completely new features as well. It also gives them a much larger sandbox to work in, with a greater amount of usable memory which allows for the development of more complex and graphics/memory/cpu intensive tools and commands.

I'll do that now! Vectorworks 2015 will be 64bit on Mac OS X (so, any Mac running OS X 10.7 and up at the moment) and will have both 32bit and 64bit versions on the Windows side. This is mainly to allow for Windows XP to still run Vectorworks this next year but I am fairly certain this will be the last year we support XP at all since Microsoft already dropped it in April. Most likely the following year Windows will be 64bit only as well. I can't answer every question yet, but the technical stuff is fine.

It begins!

I had thought it worked for any resource type, but I had only ever used it for symbols. Submitting a request for folder organization for all resource types now.

That situation doesn't seem too complex or at risk of confusing multiple layer scales. The main point there is that you could have ALL the design layers at 1:1 (or 1:48 or 1/4", whatever floats your boat as long as they're the same), then just create a viewport and scale that for it to fit within your page on a sheet layer. The template layer for the leg and the layer that the table geometry resides on could both be at 1:1 without issue, just create the viewports at the scales needed to fit on the page on the sheet layer. If you wanted to show the leg in detail in the same page as showing an overview of the table, the viewports could be scaled differently so that both would be visible without having to mess with your design layer scaling at all. With something like a table, I don't see it being a huge problem to use varying scales since its relatively easy to keep track of. The main problems I run into with users is when they have a scanned in image or PDF where they want to scale the whole layer that the scanned image is on rather than re-size the scanned image, as well as an imported layer of something like county borders from a shape file that they also scale so it fits within a design layer page, but then they attempt to zoom into something around 200,000% which can cause serious issues, rather than just working on everything at 1:1 or 1:48 and properly scaling individual imported geometry and scans to their appropriate sizes. Also, it isn't even that having layers at different scales is WRONG either, it just causes headaches elsewhere. For instance, one sheet layer viewport can only show design layers at one scale, so if you had geometry on two layers at different scales, you'd need two overlapping viewports to show both layers. Having all design layers at one scale prevents that. There are more examples of where varying design layer scales cause issues but they escape me at the moment.

This has gone in as a request in a number of different ways recently, I will add this thread to them.

Submitting request now.

They will be adding native Sketchup 2014 import format support soon, but it will not be coming to a version as old as Vectorworks 2009. As recommended above, I have heard exporting as 3DS will work for raw 3D geometry, but most of my users simply export the file to version 8 and it has then imported into Vectorworks 2014 as expected.

Older workflow support really is the only reason there is still a toggle for Unified view, as far as I know. I'm in favor of it being always on. Some users insist that multiple design layer scales are needed, I have never fully understood why. They often have some kind of odd non-Vectorworks-based workaround they are using for another unrelated reason that keeps them using varying scales. I am usually unable to talk them out of it.

Make sure you have Unified View enabled, and that in the Unified View settings you don't have the options to display geometry only on the active layer enabled: http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/733/Unified+View

Came across this because of a related question today. I never turn it off and most of the calls from users involving it all start with them having accidentally/unintentionally disabled it. Submitting request now.

Happens quite a bit here too. They have identified a few of the causes, but apparently its 3-4 separate issues that all have the same symptoms. They haven't all been corrected yet but engineering is (are?) working towards a fix.

They reactivate silently in the background if they're used regularly and you wouldn't see a message, but will prompt the user for activation I think after 90 days of no connectivity to the servers. In any case, it doesn't "use up" a new activation, just resets its old one.