alanmac

Hi Colin Not used Vectorworks 10 with Artlantis but have used VW 8.5 with Art 3.5 no real problems. I export by "class" option making sure to assign classes to everything. It comes in fine, although you may find the camera not in an ideal postion, but it's only a starting point anyway, and easily changed, added to etc. What version of Artlantis do you have? It should be the latest 4.5. I believe they changed the file format in version 4 but that was long ago and bugs should be well gone by now. Mac or PC ? It's good but has limitations when pushed on complex file sizes and lighting can be a struggle with white surface material. If you go right off it take a look at Cinema 4D with it's plug in to export from Vectorworks. It's my chosen route once I get to grips with Cinema. Its so much more than a render program unlike Artlantis and it's not wildly more expensive. Best of luck regards Alan

I can see your logic when stating its use the only thing I'd consider is if you have seperates at least if a fault develops with a machine or a monitor it means you can still use the other item. For example if the machine was not being used much and one of the other monitors went down it would be easy to swop monitors rather than loading files across then back again. Also upgrading at a later date may cost less with only the computer to buy using the existing screen. Apart from the graphics card spec, not really relevant from what you have stated, the new imac does sound very good when you consider the price of the stand alone 20" Apple display, you are not paying that much more to get a G5 computer with it!

Hi See my replies to this question you posted on Vectorworks forum over at Architosh.com if you have not already read them. Is this what you mean, hope to have helped. alan

Can I ask why you want to clip the surface? Are you going to extrude this to create a 3D piece of pegboard. If not why bother with the clipping of surface, just group them together. I know it's not ideal and you should be able to do it but at the end of the day its getting the job done. Mine slowed to a crawl and I went off and had lunch !! I can understand this slowing down in 3D modeling because you can go back through the hidden groups to edit an object to the first addition/subtraction but if I'm correct this does not work on 2D objects when performing clipping etc. other than in "undos", limited by your specified number of undos and when you save or exit file.

Have you tried doing a section of holes at a time. I was doing some fretwork and it took ages. It may help to do this in 3D using the sbtract solids. I've had problems on clipping and adding surface today. I wanted to create a rectangle but instead of having straight edges to each side I wanted curving from corner to corner, so I created and arc like a wedge of cheese, repeated and rotated it three times. Butted them together. When I selected them all and asked to add surface I got the old geometry error message. Adding one by one was fine until the fourth and final piece - error message again. Can also add surface to any two pieces together but when asking for these to add surface I get the same error message.

One other point, I don't use Renderworks, using Artlantis or Cinema 4D as my rendering program but in Artlantis you are working RGB and the exported/saved image when opened in Photoshop will still be RGB. As I'm sure you know for printing this will need to be convert to CYMK either by you or by the printing process. The first time I printed a render I was so disapointed by the image, colours were so different and the whole image darkened. This is due to the mode change. I'm having to learn to compensate when applying colours and textures for changing over to CYMK once in Photoshop. As I believe it most pdf program just convert the file to an image but instead of processing it to a printer for paper outputting it processes it as an image file read by a pdf reader i.e. Acrobat Reader. Which explains the jagged edges you sometimes see, similar to exporting a Vectorworks drawing as an image/bitmap, because really that's what you are doing. Again a resolution issue.

I think pdf is a solution we should all work towards. Whilst it is a good idea in having Vectorworks Viewer this only relates to one program whilst Acrobat Reader is used by so many software programs to view documents, one can reasonably expect most people to have this on their computers. I'm lucky in that our Mac based design studio also does print work so we have Quark. I compose all the pages of the presentation document, drawings etc. in this, print it as a Postscript file saved on the desktop, drop it into Acrobat Distiller and it creates the pdf with no problems. You do have to check settings etc. I have QuickPDF at home, which has its limitations. With regard to the image quality disapointment posted by other people I think you should look at your settings. As I said QuickPDF (Windows program) has its limitations but it will still go up to 300dpi resolution on document creation, more than enough I would have thought. Screen viewing usually is around 72 dpi is it not. I distill from eps images and they look fine, on screen and printed. If you are in the market for Microsoft Office at the moment they are bundling Acrobat Professional with it, looks like a good deal if you intended to use Office anyway.

Hi Chuck Guess it would be too much to ask the tech people to reply as this is about exporting your VW drawing into Cinema 4D to render it, thus not using Renderworks. The plug in allows you to export the file in a format recognised by Cinema 4D. Once in Cinema you can render, apply materials, animation etc. all the usual stuff. What it also allows is for updating - but only in one direction, the important one! Any changes you make to the VW file can then be exported as an update to the Cinema file which will keep all the details you have worked on but also update to reflect the VW file. It's a similiar plug in to the Artlantis one, made by the same people in fact. Go to Maxon web site for more details - http://maxon.net/index_e.html Look in the left hand side bar you'll see Vectorworks in the solutions. Regards Alan

Hi I need help from any listers or from people known to you with knowledge of Autocad, especially those who made the switch to Vectorworks, or still use both. I apologies in advance for the length of this email but I need to get all the information across so as to maximize the help given. If it gets to be a problem for people I'll gladly deal on a personal email basis rather than the list. I have worked as a Studio Manager for two years in a small exhibition design and construction company in the UK. We mainly design and build stands at trade shows. Previous to this I worked for 11 years, including this company, as a freelance exhibition stand and display designer. Several years ago I took many months to search out the ideal CAD program to use for this type of work realizing my board based days were numbered and I needed to convert my hand drawn marker pen visuals into computer rendered images as this was the way presentation was going. I was introduced to Vectorworks, or Minicad as it was known then and realized this was the ideal program for me. Relatively easy to learn, could create 3D designs as well as draughtings and was reasonably priced. Why pay in excess of ?3000 for a program when Vectorworks did as much and if not more in my opinion at not much more than the price of Autocad LT !!! I started with VW 8.5. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Vectorworks to be an industry standard amongst companies in our line of work. I know Autocad, Microstation has a presence but because of it's Mac based early background Vectorworks, I believe, became the favorite CAD program of creative designers. When I worked for myself the program I used was never an issue, clients only got plans, elevations and visuals from me, never files. I was rarely asked to supply working (constructional) drawings although I can. I use Artlantis for the visuals, soon to change to Cinema 4D. This was also true when I started employment again, and my original employer took me on with a view to introducing CAD etc. into their studio. As a graphic design as well as exhibition design company they had a Mac based studio. I, on the other hand had used Vectorworks in Windows. I now work with both platforms, Mac at work, Windows at home with no problem. We merged with a local competitor last year. We sometimes, very occasionally get files from companies using Autocad and I've managed to open these without too many problems. We rarely send files to sub contractors for fabrication work but recently we did and a new member of staff in production created these in Autocad because the company doing the work for us uses Autocad and he had used it in his last position in a shop fitting company. This unfortunately has created a chain of events were my MD is being persuaded by others within the company that we should be using Autocad, it's better, everybody else uses it, why are we doing two lots of drawings etc, etc. A meeting is scheduled next week to discuss the company infrastructure and I want to go to this meeting with the reasons why we should continue to use Vectorworks as opposed to Autocad. Why can't I learn Autocad was one comment. Quite frankly I'd rather choose another career or employer than work with that program. The annoying thing is up until now we have only done and been asked to do drawings for the purposes of presentation, the production department wanting to do their own hand drawn 1:10 scale drawings/setting out themselves. What I need is strong reasons why Vectorworks should be our program of choice. I don't know that much about Autocad and I don't really want to know much about it, it's interface looks dated, confusing and cumbersome compared to Vectorworks. It seems to me these programs come from the following train of thought - you draught in Autocad, you "design" in Vectorworks. I know the obvious price, the VW Viewer advantages and the fact we have studio Macs. Also am I right in thinking that you cannot create reports, spreadsheets of parts etc as you can in VW so to create estimates quotes etc. This would help greatly with our modular display system of which I have created many symbols but not created and linked these to description, records yet. What I don't need is a meaningless rant about Autocad. Practical and valid reasons to put to my total technology inept MD please. Sites and links if you feel these will help. The ease and compatibility of dwg/dxf export and import to cover any requirement for Autocad files. Once again I apologies for this emails length and thank you all for your tolerance and postings in advance. Lets make sure any new licenses purchased are VW ones!