Petri

Get two or more printers... Incidentally, at our home office (no capitals), we have an an Epson "El Cheapo" A4 colour laser with a duplex unit. If we choose B/W, we get that; if Color [sic], we get that. A B/W print is almost instantaneous. However, an even cheaper Brother B/W laser prints almost before you say "Print". Now, especially as comes to B/W A4 prints for QS-purposes, having a ?60 printer on each desk... Well, that depends on your hourly rates.

So, what's your problem with sharing your "heavyweight" solutions? When using a particular(ly ugly NNA) title block, the revision table grows upwards. When one that meets my graphic standards (well, not quite: you ruin my line weights), there is no revision table. YOU are being paid by US, but once again you want someone like me to share my intellectual property, while keeping yours secret and encrypted.

I'm out of my depth here... In RW (or Spotlight, for that matter), can we have a "Super Trooper" spotlight that would automatically always point to a named object? Please tell me that I'm an incompetent ignoramus!

Robert, Are you perhaps confusing ptarmigan's humble request of a list of revisions with my feisty wish to have a Professional Revision and Issue Management System Useful Worldwide for Even Non-McMansion projects? I encourage Robert, who I know is a very capable scripter, to share his stuff. NNA's objects, tools and commands are encrypted. I can't improve them; for whatever I try to do with their stuff, I have to try to reverse-engineer them and guess what might be going on. There is, unfortunately, no "Open NNA Plug-in Alliance" to help me in this. (See http://www.opendesign.com/membership/sustain.htm )

We are? Robert has played his hand in VW 2008; I've offered to give him free and public professional advice on how to play to win.

I have it all scripted - 10 years ago! Works just fine and needs only Fundamentals. (Actually, only VW 7.) Well, I do not have an Issue Manager, so I'd rather that NNA's system would become useful than scripting my own. I'm even willing to provide more (& more detailed) info on the subject. But I can of course continue to develop & sell mine, so people here do not have to waste their money in Architect or Landmark - or upgrades.

No, I'm talking about revisions in the normal user-controlled sense. Nevertheless, things like filename and "last technical update" should be incorporated. It is anything but exceptional that one needs to clarify and elaborate the entire revision history or at least its turning points. Photocopying the "revision block" of even 200 to 300 drawings and then retyping everything just seems rather silly, doesn't it? If it is the resetting that causes the confusion: In Finland we do not send any revised data to anyone without a revision code. (In our firm we have a specific title block style for data exports.) For each stage, we start the letter sequence; however, in our firm we like to keep track of the overall sequence: version D during construction might be version 42 in the entire project. With my old symbol/record -based drawing register this was quite easy. Then someone introduced sheet layers that can't be referenced and collating a drawing register became impossible. (I am investigating the possibility of an AppleScript that would "Do Script" for each VW file in a folder (perhaps via Folder Actions?) and generate the data for a drawing register - but I would not mind NNA doing this since I know nothing about AppleScript! And no, I don't care if it does not work on Windows.) Oh by the way: I noticed that in some pre-defined title blocks the revision list grows upwards! Could not find the triggering mechanism, though.

Friends, MacRomans, countrymen - lend me your codes! I come to bury VS, not to praise it. Fabian, I have the feeling that you're out of luck. VS does not seem to handle anything outside the ancient, basic ASCII. Not even UPRSTRING works. (A good indication on how VectorWorks works...)

Well, patterns are technically an entirely different thing than hatches. Anyone with experience in programming in many languages knows this... I'm not saying that NNA should not implement this feature - au contraire!

A most pertinent, appropriate, insightful, relevant (I'm running out of adverbs...) article, Donald! Much to my chagrin, I realised a few years ago that a large number of files, religiously copied to consecutive media, had at some point been corrupted. This did not happen when I was young and nimble in the 1970s... Papyrus scrolls are still readable, but this is Progress. Now, I'd be more than happy to give a go with your DiskDoubler files and files in ancient versions of MiniCAD. Incidentally, I just tried to install VW 8, but obviously I had the serial number only in the manual (recycled years ago), not on the CD. Perhaps I can still install MiniCAD 6 or 7! (The MC 7 CD seems to have the serial number.) Just send a private message and we can go from there. And hey - buy a stockpile of pencils and paper, as long as they are still available!

Some friendly advice to NNA: Filename: should be inserted automatically. Date of object update: ditto. Layer name: this too. Last revision: as an (automatic) version code in the title block; then at least it would be possible to get the current drawing versions exported to word processing or something. Global changes should be doable for selected fields. Revision table should be a symbol & record-based thing as the title block is and able to grow upwards (assuming NNA wants to comply with eg. the SFS-standard). Mapping of user's fields and PIO assumptions should be made easy. (No, "strings" are not easy.) Resetting the (visible) revision codes while maintaining a "hidden" sequence number is essential in complex projects. I think we all agree that each revision should be a separate data record? It's not that hard, you know! Finally a little note: in the Issue Manager, there does not seem to be any indication of the layer in question (with Next/Previous -buttons.) While in an ideal world this may not be an issue, in the one I live in, it is. More later, I hope. Like the big question "how does one generate the current list of drawings across 100 VW files".

While the use of a custom title block works reasonably well in NNA's system, revisions don't work. Don't get me wrong: the system is on the right track, does a lot of things in a quite clever way - but since it does not do everything required, it can't be used at all. Well, it can, but it is silly to do some things "with the system", others "manually", yet others both ways. Or maybe I'm missing something, like a button which allows one to select/define one's own revision table style.

Agreed. However, there are some situations where one might like to have this setting at object level: space groups (eg. departments) could be rounded to full square metres (or even to nearest 5 m2) while individual spaces would be at an accuracy of 0.1 m2. But at the end of the day, who cares! I have this in my own Space object, but am thinking of getting rid of it to make the user interface cleaner.

Mr. P. seems to know what copyright means...

Thom, Yes, there are improvements. I am yet to test the reliability (which used to be a problem) and large data sets (another problem), but why did they have to make DTMs unusable when exporting and ruin the user interface!

I'm not sure if I follow... Here in my Space Exploration Lab, the Space object shows areas at the accuracy defined in the Units dialog and this is exactly what I expect. IMABHO, it is not a workaround, au contraire. I'd call it Consistency...

Dear me! The Katie has deleted my message! The DTM module was far from perfect when it was programmed by COMPUneering. (Sorry, Erez - this just is how I feel.) Nevertheless, the conceptual framework was there. Data sets, layers, classes - just perfect! After NNA took over (as, in an extremely unprofessional manner, made known to yours truly by a certain Vice President), the DTM module has become even less useful than before. This is something one might call an achievement: take a half-useful product, make it useless, be proud, send dissidents to Gulags.

Well, Mike - actually "such rigid rules" make life easier for everyone. Since each drawing of a building project is a legal document, I think it is beneficial that drawings adhere to a national standard, not a firm's "graphic standard". Should I ever need the services of a lawyer (do I have to repeat the reference to California, New Jersey, lawyers and toxic dumps?) I'd hope she or he would concentrate on the content of correspondence, not her or his letterhead. Things like "graphic standards" are one of the reasons why architects are considered useless, but expensive, idiots* in projects. [Censored], [censored], cryin' out loud! Who gives a large rodent's posterior about the [censored], badly designed sorry excuse for a logo, for [censored]s sake! *) To paraphrase a certain Mr. Lenin. I take that even the esteemed Ms. Katie won't censor comments about Mr. Lenin, although he, too, was a card-carrying totalitarianist. Just a bit too benign for Ms. Katie, wasn't he?

In Finnish and in compliance with the SFS-standards?

There isn't? Hmm... I wonder if the person in charge of Content Development at NNA has ever worked as an architect. This is pretty basic stuff!

Mr D. has no idea about copyright, so you better explain what it means.

I could of course test this, but I'm lazy and have never used the Issue Management system by NNA... How odd! (Not.) Multiple drawings from a single VW file, via Sheet Layers. Some are revised, others are not. From ptarmigan's message I gather that this is doable, but only if one uses "drawing borders", whatever they are. Oh yes, now I remember: they were needed in the Palaeolithic period when you had Blueprints made by a Bureau and the drawings were trimmed by a cutter. (Memo to NNA: today's printers cut the paper automatically.) But I undigress: this is doable? Sans borders?

You didn't? Yet you rave and rant for not having Cruise & Climate Control, V8 turbo and 12-speed transmission, having paid what amounts to a deposit for a Trabant. Tough.

Oh Lord! Did you think you would get a Rolls Royce for the price of a Mercedes Benz?

No, you won't.