Pat Stanford

Others will be able to give you far more help than I can, but consider adding a very thing (0.1mm to 1mm) thick component to the outside of your wall that only goes up to the sills. You can then give that component a different texture than the rest of the wall. But you will have to set the wall to use Component Textures.

vassen sent me his complete file. What I worked out was that it was best to move the model back to 0,0 using Top/Plan view and doing each layer one at a time. Set Layer Options to Active Only. Set Layer to Active. Set View to Top/Plan Select All Modify Menu, Move. The move values are sticky, so you can reuse them without having to reenter. Repeat with next Layer. Once all the layers are done the model will be sitting closer to the drawing origin and the Extract will work. Since the objects have been moved, Viewports will have to be edited or recreated. There is probably a way to move the Drawing Origin closer to the model instead, but this is the way I know will work.

The most important part is to move the objects closer to the 0,0 origin of the drawing. The simple version of what is happening is that effectively all operations in VW are done with a fixed set of numbers (billions or trillions or more). If you are close to the origin, then one "step" in the number might be 0.0000001mm. If you are 1000kM from the origin, then each step might be 10mm (these numbers are purely for example. The real numbers are much different). At a 10mm interval, if an edge of an object falls between the two steps then it might not be able to be selected properly. It is very important to keep you model reasonably close to the drawing origin. When I moved the walls in the file you sent to center on 0,0 I had no problem with the extract tool on any of them.

In many parts of the world the local distributor makes special tools and objects to meet the demands of the local market. These objects are not included in the "International" (read as USA) version of VW. This means that most of us have never seen these objects or tools. The only way to get help with them is to contact the distributor or find a local group who also has the same version as you. Hope that explains it. Even if it does not really make sense.

I found two problems with your file. 1. The object is located a VERY long way from the drawing origin. About 171 KM. 2. There is another wall about 365 KM the other direction. Suggestion. Select All and Fit to Objects. You will zoom WAY out. Near the right edge you should see a pixel or two of dark smudge. That is the extraneous wall. Click to deselect everything and then marquee select the smudge and Fit to Objects. If you don't need this wall delete it. If you do need it, Cut is too you can move it to where you want. Repeat the above with the slightly larger black smudge near the left edge of the drawing. Zoom in. Group the object so you can use the OIP to move them to 0,0. Now everything will be selectable with the Extract tool. If you need your rulers to show the real world locations of the building, read up on using Georeferencing so that you can keep your objects close to the drawing origin while still displaying the real world location.

VW is notorious for making big PDF files. Open the PDF in Preview. Choose Export from the File Menu. Set the format to PDF and the Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size. You can either create a new PDF or overwrite the existing file to generate a smaller file size.

Theoretically, yes, you could edit your walls to have multiple very thin components each in a different class and each with a different texture. Then you could toggle the class visibilities to get different renderings. But perhaps better to just stick to one component and use Viewports with Class Overrides to generate different options.

If there is a file that repeatably crashes, please send it to VW Tech Support so they can take a look and see if there is a problem with the file. Trouble shooting something like this usually goes as follows: Move or Rename the User Folder and restart VW. A new user folder will be created. If still crashing then restore User Folder and reinstall VW. If still crashing then remove user folder, and all VW preferences and reinstall. Since this. is a Windows machine, I would make sure that the OS and Video Drivers are completely up to date before I messed with VW.

I don't think the Data Tag was added until VW2019, but I am not certain. For 2018, you might want to look into creating your objects with Marionette so that the leader can be part of the object. Or even using the Parametric Constraints from the Dims/Notes palette to link a separate leader to your symbol. Or adjust the way you work to use the Callout tool. About the only options I can think of for 2018, but I have not had it installed in probably 24 months.

Simpler usually means less flexible or less powerful. Seeing the questions you ask, I doubt you want to trade those for simpler ;-)

I have not seen any problem, but I don't use Extract a lot. It should see any 3D object. Make sure you have the correct Mode of the tool selected and that you click the green check mark in the Mode bar to complete the extract. Can you post a sample file and explain what you are trying to extract?

Easiest one time way to do this is to Group the objects and then move. Or maybe just select them and use the Move By Points tool. If you need them to be retained relative to each other, for the long term you will need to consider other options. Group Constraints (From the Dims/Notes palette. Only work for 2D and Hybrid objects in Top/Plan) Symbol Design Layer Viewport

If you are using VW2020 or even VW2019, take a look at the Data Tag tool. It can be used very similarly to a symbol but with text editable through the OIP and will handle leaders. And as a benefit, it you want, you can design tags that will only allow you to tag certain types of objects.

konst where are you located? I think the Tag/Label object is probably part of a localization and likely provided by the local distributor. You probably need to contact their tech support or find a local forum for the localized version to get the answer you are looking for.

You probably want to fine a local IT expert to set up a virtual machine. It is not really hard, but there are a lot of small details that you will want to get right. There are a bunch of choices for virtualization, some commercial (Parallels, VMWare Fusion), some of them free (Virtualbox). The commercial ones have better support. I don't think that MacOS is officially supposed to run in a virtual machine, but I know it can be done, but I have not actually tried it myself in a very long time. I think the last version I tried was Mac OS 10.6. Craig's list might be a good place to find someone local to you to help.

What version of VW are you using? I believe that only VW2019 and VW2020 are compatible with Catalina.

I like the idea, but am concerned about the complexity of making this work. Classes are hard enough to keep track of and it is too easy to lose items by mis-classing them. Any more complexity is likely to make the situation worse. I agree that Active Only is rarely useful in a drawing with nested object or nested classes. My typical work around is to try and make sure that "container" objects (Groups, Symbols, PIOs) use only one (or a few) classes. Then to simulate Active Only, I set all of the classes to invisible except the classes of the container objects and use the fact that the Active Class is always visible and the arrow keys to step through the classes to check visibilities. Grant, can you explain further what you mean by "limit class filtering to Parent or Top level"?

Also, if you are really stuck on Mohave and VW2017, you might want to consider installing a Virtual Machine (Something like Parallels) that could run an older version of MacOS in a window so that VW2017 will run correctly. You might ask JenK who just did something similar how she did it.

Totally different issue than what Wes and I were thinking. It is a lighting issue. In VW, until you place a light into a drawing there is a "default" light source. As soon as you place a light, the default light is turned off and the scene is lit only by the placed lights. If you put the lights on a layer or in a class and set that L/C Invisible, the default light returns. Your LFxt Rec DnLIght symbol contains lights., but they are placed below the floor pointing down, so no light from them is shining on the scene. Set the Electrical-Lighting class to Invisible and your model will display with white walls. HTH

Select the walls and make sure that the Attributes Palette is set to use the By Class options rather than being manually set to a black fill.

If you already have a border in place, you don't want to use the Title Block Border (TBB) tool to edit it. Just use the Selection Tool to select is and then edit the setting in the Object Info Palette (OIP). If you want the Border only, you can convert your existing TBB to Unstyled (or it may already be Unstyled) in the Style pull down near the top of the OIP. Then click the Edit Title Block Layout button. This will show you the Title Block in the drawing window. Edit (or delete) what it there to be what you want and then click the Exit button at the top right. You should now have a border with not Title Block. If this is something you want to use repeatedly, you can save the style using the New Plug-in Style from Untyled Plug-in from the Style pull down in the OIP.

This is not at all usual behavior. If a restart does not fix the problem, you should consider delving deeper before the problem gets worse. If you are using a custom workspace, try one of the stock workspaces. If this is only in a single file, send that file to VW Tech Support for them to review and possibly fix. If it is in multiple files you will want to do more troubleshooting. I would do the following testing in between to see if it solves the problem. 1. Create a new User on your Mac and test there. If the problem exists it is a VW installation problem. If not, it is probably your user folder. 2. Drag your VW User folder (or rename) out of Application Support and Restart VW. A new folder will be created. If the problem still exists it is a VW installation problem. If not, it is a problem in the user folder. 3. If it is a problem in the user folder and you don't need any of the stuff from the previous folder, just proceed. If you need the stufff (templates, workspaces, etc.) then drag them back one folder at a time and test (restart) between.

Hopefully someone else can tell us how to do it, but after a quick review of the Vectorscript documentation, it does not appear you can create s Space Style using Vectorscript.

Try restarting VW. I have no trouble identifying the selected class/layer in the Navigation palette when in Dark Mode.

I can't get mine to re-dock either. Hopefully someone will let us both know what we are missing. In the mean time, you can close the file and reopen it to get it docked again. Help says just to drag title bar to Tab area. Not working here.