Petri

TANSTAAFL. That is not a service pack, but an entirely new product line. Not that I'd disagree! Item 2 is, BTW, a fascinating one: in VectorScript we have a rudimentary facility for something like this. (For us architects, walls and more recently even wall styles have had similar possibilities.) This is the future of CAD: first intelligent objects, then intelligent associations between objects. Anyway, I'm still waiting for the plain old intelligent objects... None from NNA to be seen...

I believe NNA is more likely to listen to PAYING users' needs... (And even then, the needs have to be expressed in a grovelling tone.)

Someone indeed has in 2003. http://www.vectordepot.com/Plugins1.shtml Print and Stamp: This menu tool will update any date and filenam [sic] stamps that existing in the file [what?]. If no stamps exist they will be created. After the stamps are updated the file will be printed. The source is open soo you may modfiy [sic] the format* of the stamps. It is intended as a replacement for the standard Print command - well, sort of. At least keyboardshortcutwise. "On open" seems redundant - and can't be done. *) Date display format.

When exporting, forget sheets. Just send each layer as a separate DWG. The engineer is not (should not) be interested in your drawings, only your data, and should be able to XREF your design layers the way she or he needs.

There is a feature chart somewhere at NNA's site - can't recall where. Somewhat confusing, but nevertheless useful.

Quite frankly, I don't think I want to pay for another InDesign with Paragraph Styles & Character Styles and Cascading Style Sheets. Few people can use them. Yes, I can, but...

Unless you tell me what is going on, you have no moral authority to request this. Can't you just place a door (factory settings) into a wall and export & import? If you have no problems, by all means report it. But by and large, I'm not at all interested in how NNA's door behaves. You could of course send me the program code: I'm interested in making MY door object IFC-friendly. EDIT. Sorry, Robert - I was shooting from the hip. Project. One wall, one door in it.

So far, import has worked OK, but I have not had a real job to import, just some test files from here and there. Exporting, however, is a major headache. As I have just reported, not even NNA's Plug-in objects export correctly and the process is flawed. In many occasions there has not been any real data in the IFC file - I was this morning surprised that I got a wall and a door go through and come back. (One can open an IFC file with a text editor and view the results. I have many times had all the "general" data, but no actual entities.) The default destination (to which the export dialog jumps to every time) the VectorWorks application. No, not the "normal" application folder, but the one we see as the application. (A special type of folder that cannot be accessed.) After you walk the dialog to the wanted destination and save, you have to go and change the filename: regardless of what options I have tried, the export file gets a name like "The Job.ifc.vwx". So, you go to Finder, Get Info, change the name and convince the OS that you really, really want to use "ifc". In import the only relevant setting is, I think, Object or Project.

NNA's door before and after IFC. Front views (not in same scale.) Not particularly promising.

I believe it works as before: if the rectangle (or arc/circle) has a fill, you can grab the centre point; if not, you can't.

Really? I have not used them since I have my own tools for this and they've always behaved well. (I still use them!)

The "selection" (handles or highlighting) should exclude components in hidden classes. The current situation is most confusing to new users and an occasional problem to everyone I know. With the fast computers of today, calculating the "bounding box" on the fly should not be a huge problem.

I believe there still are better tools available at VectorDepot. Have been for many years...

Indeed. This is one of the aspects of VW that are incomprehensible to most users...

What a terrific question! I don't think this is doable, but it certainly should be! How to control it? Well, at least a Plug-in developer should be able to query the current view or viewport rotation and adjust the text angle. Or enable a "text rotation" feature and have a tick box for "adjusted text rotation". Having every text object "adjusted" does not sound like a good idea: I have enough problems with the "adjust flipped text" global preference. By class?

TANSTAAFL. Julian's excellent plug-in is included in the price of VW Architect in Oz & NZ, but I don't think it is really free. I don't know OzCAD's pricing, though. Nevertheless, Aussies and Kiwis are obviously clever enough to pay for local content & features - good on them! Unfortunately, we in the EU are in a disadvantage: while national distributors are bound to sell only in their designated territories, their resellers may (in principle I believe must) sell throughout our fair free trade area, so any goatherd in e.g. the UK can sell the cheap U.S. version of VW, without any localisation, in the entire EU. But I digress... WinDoor is available everywhere for a pittance (150 ?). Highly recommended for everyone who does not need to comply with national standards or IFC, needing complex doors and windows and having less patience than the NNA door & window tools require.

I have these simple "line" textures for "sidings" (whatever they are - probably timber lining in proper English), brickwork and various other items. They assume the object colour and are therefore - especially now in VW 2008 - very practical. (However, they do not, AFAIK, translate to AutoCADese.) This possibility alone is, IMABHO, well worth the price of RenderWorks. So, for once, I support the idea of a better elevation hatching system (= lines!) even if it would require RW. Even a RW Pro with Bells & Whistles, requiring Designer.

Has been wishlisted here and elsewhere right after Noah's Ark shipwrecked. Obviously markers of lines are a higher priority. Anyway, text format should also be a part of a dimension standard, as at least I submitted right after a quite jolly tea break with Abraham & Sarah at Mamre.

To make life even more miserable in Belgium (if there still is one by the time DWorks reads this in the Kingdom/Republic of Flanders): Four out of five users hate this approach. They want to freely choose the typeface, size & style (= font to us typographers), but expect that this font is then used in all instances at least in one file, but quite often in every file. Except the ones - instances or files - where they expect the Mind Reader plug-in to automatically intervene and keep the font. Or, better still, change it in a suitable way. Notwithstanding, four out of five users love this approach, too...

The forms don't obviously fit on an A4 with all printers.

Well, even that's a lot more than our Member for The State of Toxic Dumps has ever done! Dear me - 1195 messages of... Personal attacks? Ignorant comments? Unhelpful and stupid advice? Let's settle for Personal Attacks: our newjerseyan's only "contribution" in his 1195 posts has been an unrelenting quarry of Unprofessional and Impolite Personal Attacks. Maybe The Toxic Dump of New Jersey can demonstrate that he (or she) has actually helped someone. I have no recollection of a situation where Mr/Ms Jan15 would have had anything of substance (other than illegal) to say.

This is indeed curious! In VectorScript objects, we have for some time been able to allow the user to define the typeface & size. Case? Well, well, well... At least in VectorScript, one only has the 1960s ASCII code to work with in this respect. What? Why? Even that coding had lower and upper case. My reference is based on the fact that with an alphabet even slightly beyond the literacy of a certain character, famously played by a certain Ms. Julie Andrews, such changes fail. What happens then? Did Americans lose their famous programming skills beyond a certain point?

And here we have a Greenhorn (?) who thinks that it is appropriate to compare our very sophisticated intellectual challenge of Wing-Vong to a mundane everyday activity such as tennis! No soup for you, Steve!

The two-way worksheets (wishlisted by yours truly et al. at least 10 years ago) are a major improvement and the implementation is pretty much flawless. As comes to SUMmed records, it even exceeds my expectations. Not to mention the Booleans! Whoever programmed this feature has done a brilliant job! However... Please, Sir, I want some more! I'd like to be able to edit the default values of data records & options of symbol definitions with the worksheet. Actually, I don't even need this feature. I have a set of scripts that (i) place an instance of every symbol definition into the document and (ii) put both the said data values and other options of the (edited) instances to the definitions. You know - like a global Eyedropper from Instances to Preferences. Now, I'd be more than happy to sell these universal utilities to anyone and everyone, but since my Moral Authority to Request Features has been challenged by a certain Mr. Anderson, a Possibly Official Spokesperson for NNA, unless I give him the results of my R&D so that NNA can reap the profits of my effort, I thought I'd do it this way. You see, I'm all in favour of Competition and Free Market Economy! And why not: I'm so far ahead of Mr. Anderson that he's not even competition! The overall functionality is here today, available in all Dongled Territories through those national distributors of VW who deal with Ultirender, the Finnish distributor. Pricing? I would not know. I only know my wholesale price to Ultirender. Sorry, no U.S.A. or Australia/NZ sales.

Mike, There is. You can query the width of the text object - but I think in most cases the user wants the text width to be adjusted to the box width. (It is funny that 20 year old cheap/free drafting programs we were able to put a box around a text object, but in VW, we have to have a Program for such a trivial thing.)