Petri

Mike, You are - as you say - a firm, not even a small one. You are not a consumer. Nevertheless, when you bought VW is irrelevant. What you have has as much life in it as you give it. Just don't upgrade the OS! No-one is forcing you. Growing? Instead of brand-new computers, buy second-hand machines - especially as you seem to be cost-conscious. Or does that only apply to the software you use to earn your livelihood?

This is country-dependent. Here the dimensioning/set-out is done by the architect. It was the same also in Awstraya. Anyway - my plug-in works now fine after I fixed some stupid late night programming errors; the VectorDepot object has obviously worked fine all the time.

Oh, indeed! Why would they have worried about two years old software? If either of you are architects: would you, for free, redesign a building, years after you got the building permit, because someone has meanwhile set up new urban design guidelines?

Two years ago? Even a year ago? I don't think so. Mr. Apple is no more forthcoming than Mr. Nemetschek. Tens of my objects & scripts need to be reworked, hundreds of hours need to be spent. If all that would just go away by buying a cheap upgrade, I would not spend hours on this board complaining.

No. Getting complicated. When inserted, a "red" symbol becomes an instance of the parametric object (I don't think there is a direct equivalent in AutoCAD) it was created of. The good old symbols (black) can display "linked text" from the attached data record. In AutoCAD, this might be "show attributes" or something. Whatever has already been inserted, stays that way as comes to any dynamic items such as text. And this is how it should be!

Dear me. NNA should have - two years ago - warned that VW 12 may not work with a possible future Apple OS. What? I'm using VW 2008. But you are right, too: a thread dedicated to "MiniCAD 1 should work with Leopard" is not for me. However, Good onya, mate! So, what's the problem?

Christiaan, I thought that everything had been said on the subject, but...

I'm very tempted to say that the Plant tool is useless, but... In the query, do you have the "In Plug-in objects" (or whatever - you get the drift) option checked?

Try with VW 2008.

Ahh... You are here, too - not only there! Maybe also everywhere? If you can't live without Leopard, I don't see how you can live with superseded and functionally inferior VW 12. Moving to Leopard would seem to be a big commitment, too, but obviously your firm makes its money from the use of operating systems, not the use of applications. Right. VW 12.6 for Leopard might be warranted - but not for free! It would also be rather pointless: the new features of VW 2008 are well worth the small price. You don't need them? Fine. But you do absolutely need the features of Leopard? --- The issue has been truly discussed to death. Here, there and everywhere. I have nothing new to contribute and, with all due respect, neither do you. Leopard = get the upgrade. No upgrade = don't get Leopard. Well, unless you can successfully argue with Mr. Apple that you are entitled to a free OS upgrade because paying for one "is a very big commitment that deserves the right timing." Hey, maybe you get free new Macs, too!

VW 12 was released some two years ago... 12.5 was a free update.

I'll elaborate a bit: I need to be able to assign home-brewed objects to default IF-classes, with all relevant data. Unfortunately, NNA does not provide eg. hollow-core prefab slabs, not to mention entire floors made of these. "My" users won't be able to convert a floor into an IFC-entity and specify it accordingly. Beams, columns etc: the Devil (=detail) needs to be able to be defined en masse. Of course a proper Floor object (multi-component, of "path" type) would do the job, but we don't have that, either. Having said that: the overall implementation of IFC is good. It just needs to be made better!

You should indeed! And also keep a machine capable of running the old software & OS. (I ditched my first MacPlus only some 5 years ago and only because the Jasmine BackPack - or whatever it was called; you know: the unit you installed at the back of the Mac - hard disk no longer worked and the System diskettes were dead, too. What a pity - although being very young, it would have been nice to revisit MiniCAD 3!)

Jackpot - all your statements are wrong! (But I'm quite flattered about being called very young. I feel that way! I'm still curious and investigate things before jumping.) EDIT On second thoughts: I've lost the innocence of feeling immortal.

Very courageous, Minister! I would not convert all, only those belonging to jobs that are less than, say, 50% complete or are less than, say, 3 months to completion and do not desperately require the use of new features. Completed jobs I'd definitely leave alone. I realise that the users may complain about needing to use two versions, but there may be unforeseen ramifications. These may include delays caused by the Learning Curve or the Unauthorised Implementation of Non-Vital Fancy Things. But then again, if I ever err, that will be on the side of caution. --- I'm pretty sure unlocking is AppleScriptable. Maybe even Automatorable. --- The new-fangled viewport business is a mystery to me. I'd keep things as they are for the time being.

Bruce, I couldn't agree more, but am not sure if millimeter-accuracy is needed and whether every detail needs to be modelled. (Your list does!) The question in my mind is whether VW can, efficiently & in reality, do all these things, but it could be just me: I haven't managed to learn to master NURBS. Also, the DTM module still does not seem to do things I'd want in this respect, but this can be caused by lack of skills, too.

Really? Obviously the contributors of VectorDepot are better programmers than you have at NNA. Hey - this is needed. Go and buy the technology from the talented programmer in question!

Right - a few more hours of free entertainment. As I suspected, MOSS is an American file format: "MOSS - an export file formate r[e]adable by the U.S. Department of Interior's MOSS public domain GIS." http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/~anp/format.txt (They do not pay too much attention on spelling in the U.K. nowadays...) The Canadians seem to use it, too. http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/gis/gistrans.html "MOSS format All three of our GIS's (ARC/INFO, Genasys, and Pamap) support MOSS translators, although it is an extra-cost item with Pamap. The MOSS format may be suitable for our data, as it carries a single alpha-numeric tag on each feature (point, line or area), along with the coordinates of the feature. This makes it easy to maintain links with Oracle over the translation. MOSS stores each polygon as a bounding shape (ie all vertices required to define its boundary) independently. This leads to duplication of the arcs separating polygons, because each of these arcs is included in the MOSS file twice. The ARC/INFO CLEAN command removes the duplicate arcs, but the Pamap Clean Vector Data command does not. Does Genamap's VERIFY command ??" While VW is, if pushed, a 2D GIS-program of sorts, the DTM tool is anything but. Even this "duplication of arcs" may cause problems - at least it flags possible problems. The lexical differences between MOSS and VW may be significant. Can't find documentation of this MOSS, though. It is, I think, supported by MapInfo and ArcView. At least I've been offered MOSS data from systems running under the said GIS-programs. GIS, however, is not of interest to NNA (quoting a very senior person there). I have no idea why they have SHAPE import & export. EDIT Progress! http://www.blm.gov/gis/ "This directory contains a miscellaneous collection of GIS utilities and some data files. The executable programs are in EXE (DOS/Windows) format. Included is a PC version of the public-domain GIS program MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System.) Also included are conversion utilities between some of the popular GIS and graphics formats (MapInfo, AutoCad, ESRI, Tiger, VPF, SDTS, and MOSS, and probably some others.) The programs were contributed by various parties and are in varying states of development. All material dates from 1998 or before. GIS data files include an outline map of the 48 states, with county boundaries, of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) district boundaries, of the coastlines of the world, and miscellaneous other sets. Origin and accuracy of the data is unknown." Unknown seems to be the operative word here: the 48 states? Even I know that there are 50 states. Or is it 51? Is Australia finally a State of the U.S. of A. - has George John W. Howard succeeded in his quest? Anyway, the free conversion utilities might be worth a look. EDIT2 Sorry, I should call it a day, but is "GIS's" (in "All three of our GIS's") correct spelling or just Canadian? While I am always right on factual matters, English is only my third language so I may occasionally err on some of the finer details. EDIT3 "Vendor GIS formats in wide use proprietary formats ARC/INFO export MOSS ERDAS" says http://www.fws.gov/pacific/gis/plan/sec6.htm Fawlty punctuation aside, the U.S. Federal Fishermen classify MOSS as a proprietary format. Interesting... In the U.K. one should not be expected to be able to use proprietary file formats - the E.U. must have a Directive on this, filed right next to the Cucumber Shape (Maximum Allowed Curvature) Directive.

You should, too, Mr. Schoolmaster.

Seconded, despite the conceptual problems this poses. I'd be reasonably happy with dimensioning even only in isometric views.

I don't specifically want to be right. I just am. As always.

Superseded software has a tendency to be incompatible with the latest operating systems. My point is that if one has the money to buy a new OS, one might also have the money to buy the current version of an application, compatible with the OS that was in this case released well after the application in question. Please tell me how many past generations of an application have to be made to be compatible with new operating systems. Hey, if you pays the money, I won't complain, but if you expect MiniCAD 1 to work with Leopard & Vista for free, I do.

The ever-so-trustworthy Ultirender (www.ultirender.com) has a tool for this. They sell it only through national distributors in dongle-protected countries, though.

That depends. MOSS-files are typically from municipal GIS-systems. A consultant, even working for the municipality in question, may not be in a position to negotiate. (I've paid for data needed in jobs done to LGAs to sections of the same LGAs. This, I think, is called Economic Rationalism.)

All play and no work makes Jack an unproductive boy. 3D-modeling is generally not the propers means for producing working drawings. As comes to some of the issues in this thread, why do I think that 3D is hardly worth the effort? The Contractor (bless his soul) is just going to build the thing. I'd concentrate on matters that matter and assume some professional skills at the other end, too. At least in The Netherlands one can leave everything to the Powdered Toast Man. No meaningful communication is required. (Les Bays-Pas, nul points.)