D Wood

gg67 I would have 4 layers. The lowest would have levels 1 & 2, the next up would have levels 3 & 4, the next layer would have the top floor level and the top layer would have the roof. Walls - you could start the walls from the bottom slab, but (1) that would mean creating look-alike 2d walls on the upper layers (for printing) and (2) it is difficult to have windows above one another in the same wall. I would have walls on the layers I have described, and you can adjust the bottom and tops of the walls, and the vertical position of windows and doors, to fit the floors if you want.

Pat I am running VW12.5.3 under OS 10.6.8 - compatibility is not a problem.

You can also just draw a line across the wall at the angle you want, use the Trim tool and then delete the line.

First they can't spell colour, now it's stories. Stories is the plural of story. The plural of storey however is storeys.

This looks a promising site measure tool, although still in development mode: http://www.redstickcad.com/

You will have to adjust wall textures as well if you "Reverse Sides".

TB Are you sure the window is embedded in the wall? In the OIP, does it say "symbol in wall" at the top of the palette?

Scot My experience of VW12.5.3 on an iMac running OS10.6.8 is pretty good - I've had the odd freeze/crash, and one 3rd party plug-in has lost some useability, but nothing major. 2GB of Ram might be your problem, and I suggest you try to get the max Ram in your new iMac - VW in 12.5.3 or any later version will need more.

Vincent You're absolutely right, and it is because the companies that are playing catch up regard design as just another department, ranking down in the company hierarchy with stores and stationery. Only when a company is primarily driven by design and designers can it deliver innovation and real invention, whether it's phones, computers, software or even marketing.

Ozzie, dear boy: There are enough anti Apple trolls on Mac websites, I'm not interested in reading any of them here - let's keep the discussion relevant to Vectorworks and the platforms it can run on.

Michael I think you mean dumb rather than stupid.

Furthermore Danie this is a users forum, so we not sure which guys you are talking to and precisely what we are are supposed to do to magically make your life better.

Unlikely to run. Anything that requires Rosetta is history.

Me too. I'm running VW12.5 on OS10.6.8. This is a huge problem that dotb has discovered though, and it's going to get worse when as Pat has said OS10.7 Lion really switches things off. Goodbye to Appleworks for instance and years of letter and specification files. We all accumulate archived files and people are going to find that files which may be only a few years old are inaccessible on their new machines running the latest software. As dotb has found out, it's annoying and can be highly embarrassing. When I eventually upgrade my iMac (which will have Lion preloaded by then) I will have to shell out for the new VW, but additionally I am also going to have to buy an external hard drive and load VW12.5 and my files on it and hope I can continue to access them via my old iBook. It seems crazy but you have to keep an old computer, maybe a whole series of them, as part of your archive.

Wow, that's more like it! God knows what anti-aliasing is or what it does. VW12.5 has anti-aliasing but it's either on or off, there are no degrees, maybe progress has been made after all. There are some faint diagonal lines showing from some window corners - I wonder what's causing them? You could also adjust your roof thicknesses or eaves mitre so you get the same vertical eaves cut on each roof slope. HTH.

The thing that bugs me about VW rendering is shown very precisely in Monadoc's presentations - the stop-start pattern on the wall sidings and the interference pattern on roof planes. I have had to resort to avoiding the issue by using plaster finishes or shingles on walls (I have found one timber texture that looks a bit like boards) and sheet metals on roofs, but weatherboards (sidings) and profiled roof textures are out, they simply look awful. The only way around it I have found is to export an image file, rack up the resolution and print on to photo paper. If anyone knows how to get rid of these unsightly effects I will be eternally grateful. It doesn't appear to be any better in the latest version of VW - please tell me I'm wrong!

Jeremy & Grant I use a standard texture called Nature Grass - it tends to tile in large areas, but looks to me like roughly (badly?) mown grass, so it's reasonably realistic. I distribute plants at the sides of the house to hide the horizon, so the house looks contained within a garden. Some people use fences as well. I'm still on VW12.5, so later versions should have more and better textures.

Early days I guess, but it doesn't seem to be a very "green" design. These days it seems de riguer to have solar water heating, photovoltaics on the roof, water collection and treatment on site, no air conditioning, etc., etc. Anybody know who are the ?great architects ? some of the best in the world? who came up with this? I wonder if there's a continuous corridor all round and staff will tear round and round on super-charged Segways?

Oli Could you please add a signature showing your computer and VW specs?

I might have to change my opinion in the Mac vs Windoze argument .............

Does the design have storeys ie are there floors above other floors, or is it one storey where the floor, walls and roof cascade down the slope? If it's the former, I would stick with one layer per storey, if it's the latter, I would have just one layer for the floor. Layers are about walls as well as floors. Too many layers and the walls get fragmented or you're fiddling about with 2D representations on some layers, real walls on others. HTH.

I'm running v12.5.3 under OS10.6.6, and the sky has yet to fall.

Maybe you should put it on the wishlist.

Q Good advice, but good luck with the idea that the sender would purge a file - they would probably stuff it up even more. Better I think to follow your other suggestion. I import the file into a new completely blank VW drawing, then purge, then convert/merge the items I want into simple VW type classes and copy them over to my project file.

Mike, thank you. The surveyor re-sent me the file in AC Lite 2000 and it opened perfectly - well, as perfectly as any AC file does, you know, zillions of irrelevant classes and other junk!