Ross McLee

And this is where my understanding of VW (from my AutoCAD transition) becomes a little clearer. Hatches are a resource and attached/associated with objects of course! I didn't even think to look in resource manager for hatches, I was looking for a reference within the symbol definition itself. One last thing, (in my case I don't have any hatches in use at the moment but in the future ....) how would I know to edit "vsAudioZone", where is that stated? Thank you again @C. Andrew Dunning.

Hi @C. Andrew Dunning - That's the bit I couldn't do, where in the symbol would I find the hatch, defined? R

Hi all, I'm new to spotlight so forgive me if this is a simple question. How can I change the appearance of the dispersion range? I'd like to change the hatch pattern for starters. Will this change be applied to all speakers in my drawing or do I need to apply it separately to multiple same or different types. thanks, R

@Jesse Cogswell. Thank you so much for this script - it works a treat. Only feedback I have is that the viewport is placed away from the sheet layer (page) origin. if the x/y could default to 0,0 that would be great. But otherwise, this has saved me so much time. ( have done lots of viewports i bulk, and just gone into the navigator and set the x/y coords for all the viewports to 0, in one go (a great feature of VW!)

@DaveMvM Once you have got your file permissions sorted - I can recommend opening the TXT file in excel, and using it to sort (alphabetically) each connector type to your liking, then save back as a tab delimited file. Note that the file structure includes signal type/header information and separator bars so that the drop downs are easy to read. We have since saved our Excel and TXT file versions of the file (and the other txt files) in our workgroup folder [....\Workgroup\Plug-ins\connectCAD_Data] so everyone in the team has the same selection of options for consistency. If anyone in our team wants to add more signal types, connector types etc they can edit the Excel version then save as a tab delimited file. Use the "Refresh Signal and Connector Lists" button in ConnectCAD Settings to update ConnectCAD with any changes you have made.

@nwfonseca I am running VW 2021 (and am new to VW generally so don't have any experience of previous versions to compare performance with). We noticed that the required specs have gone up too, significantly. During the open house event last week, I raised performance and memory/processor management. The VW team were quite open to ideas on how to improve performance, my main point being that as a user I don't want to spend any time or effort in troubleshooting what might be causing performance issues, rather that VW is clever enough to know what are the optimal settings for the hardware I have, and to manage the resources effectively to give my a responsive experience. Identifying bottlenecks, excessive or unnecessary geometry which can bulk out a file. We even discovered that geometry [accidentally] placed far beyond the origin or other main geometry has a massive impact on performance. I am looking forward to my new machine! - when graphics cards are available AND a sensible price!

@Hans-Olav - Interesting thought... I haven't ventured into that domain yet... I shall have a 'play' ! R

Hi All, Perhaps an obvious question, or may be not.. but is there an easy way to summarise and view all the objects in my drawing so that I can make sure everything is in the correct class or on the right layer. As a VW newbie I have found myself drawing objects onto the wrong active design layer or creating objects in the wrong class. Sometimes I spot it at the time, or make a note to myself to correct it later. I know. Discipline! Some examples: Walls and doors should be in walls and doors classes (and only on certain layers) Televisions should be in an AV-TVs class and on the AV-Equipment Loudspeakers should be in the AV-Loudspeakers class on the AV-Equipment layer I only expect polylines in my audio zoning layers I was wondering if there was some means of checking things over via a worksheet for example and possibly correcting them from the worksheet too, perhaps. Spotting the things that are clearly out of place? TIA Ross.

To take a great shortcut feature from Bluebeam.... Is it possible, when editing/modifying a polyline type object to add/delete nodes using the ctrl key. This can be done from the reshape tool, and/or the selection too to speed modifying up, without having to change tools or their option settings. holding the ctrl key down and clicking on a line a vertex node is created. If you ctrl+click on an existing node it is deleted. Tool tips appear with + or - to show what will happen when you click. Its a nice feature ! 🙂

Would it be possible to add colour information to the OIP class drop down list to make selection of some classes which relate to the (by class) attribute colours to be applied more obvious/quick and simple? E.g. Class A, B, C, D, E and F will apply different colours to various objects, it would be handy to be able to select them based on the colours displayed in the drop down not just the class name. Just a though, as always! R

Hi, A nice feature from 'another product' that I enjoyed, was the ability to edit values of a block/symbol directly on screen without having to go to the OIP each time. Pressing CTRL and double clicking on the (often) text value would allow you to edit the value in-situ. Without ctrl you would otherwise open the symbol editor. Just a thought ! R

On a similar thread to file name display fields being too small in "open recent files": When CTRL+Tabbing between multiple open files the filename/path displayed in the pop-up is too short to display the full filename/path. If the two files have similar names except for the last few digits they are not easily distinguished when switching. Making the width of the pop-up automatically scale to the file name would be good or truncate the file name where there is commonality between them (e.g. root path) Cheers, R

I have asked this before @Thomas K. Unless I am mistaken it is work in progress for a future update. I'm open to recommendations too. I'm no scripter, but wonder if a script that takes the end node coordinates (socket positions) and redraws the circuit but in reverse order is some how possible to automate. @Conrad Preen is your man here. 😉 R

@Conrad Preen, LOL - Don't be worried! ConnecCAD isn't so much of the learning mountain. More that Vectorworks platform as a whole - it is very different from my AutoCAD past experience (I bet you hear that a lot). Having got used to a way of working, change is always tricky to adopt. The things I struggle with are... Where/what is the link between ConnectCAD and Spotlight? Setting up a workflow and platform environment that works for everyone so that we can work as a team. Sharing files, tools, scripts, symbols. Creating a workspace, shortcuts, menus that we share Crating and sharing a set of device symbols quickly and easily Help files and training videos often don't go into much detail (just concepts) or don't give real life examples I still don't get how to edit a device that I have multiple instances of (e.g. I need to add an extra input to an LCD because I have decided to use a different model) - I have to do it to each one individually (or do it once then copy paste it, then renumber/name them so they are unique). Loudspeakers - I need to keep track of how many and where they go and what speaker channel they are on, but don't really want to draw a few hundred of them Matching devices shown in a schematic and on a layout drawing, assigning them rooms (E.g. on my schematic I know "LCD 58" belongs in the board room, because I am drawing the board room schematic, but when I run Update "Rack Layout" I have LCD 1-100 and I have to remember where each one belongs) - I know you were looking into adding only update selected devices. Keeping drawings tidy and in the right classes (most of the time this is dealt with in ConectCAD but outside that, It can get messy and difficult to maintain I have lots of scripts now which select all ???? and then I make sure they are in the correct class Matching up real world information in schematics and layouts. Installed power and data provision (by the electrical contractor) I still haven't come up with the best way to do that. Synching between Devices and Equipment Items change. sometimes I end up with orphaned Equipment Items because I have renumbered my schematics. Text sizes making them legible on different paper sizes at different scales Putting an LCD on a wall using the Spotlight TV tool uses a symbol for every different size of screen, based on an old LG model. In AutoCAD I created single dynamic block that had a lookup table in it, which had make, model, length, depth, width, VESA mount size and offset. I would simply add a new make and model to my library block and everyone used the same block each time. There wasn't a huge list to choose from. The block had plan, section and elevation (2D) based on the dims in the lookup table. All of these things take time to accommodate and find a way of working. I get that... but if it isn't out of the box and it requires some kind of scripting and extensive knowledge of how VW works then it becomes a bit of a "mountain" 🙂 I appreciate the efforts you; the rest of the VW team; and forum contributors put in to keep the wheels oiled too. I'll be joining the open house next week and look forward to hearing more about where VW is going. As I have mentioned to Tom White, we would be more than happy to get involved in beta testing. Rgds, Ross

@Daniel Dickman ... and the world is a better place or it. CTRL+A....CTRL+- ..... ahhh much better !