Dexie

We produce Masterplans and Design and Access Statements and print all our documents internally. We have a couple of OKI C9800 printers which seems to produce good quality output up to A3 will duplex and has a high print speed. The cost is relatively low compared to others on the market. It may be worth looking at.

Has anyone had any experience/luck importing MOSS .GIO survey files The data looks like the sample below. The Terrain model import options report an error when importing because there is data other than coorinates and z value. I think the data describes an entire srvey including boundary lines, road lines etc. MOSS delete,SURVEY create,SURVEY genio,SURVEY 001,FORMAT(3F15.3,A4) 003,ORDER,4=1,1,2,3,4 001,FORMAT(3F15.3) 003,ORDER,4=1,1,2,3 080,B001,5=0.0,6=0.0,7703 4865.986 5762.688 116.161 4870.425 5752.295 116.471 4880.679 5756.676 116.331 4879.952 5758.371- 999.000 4871.308 5754.679- 999.000 4867.678 5763.411- 999.000 4865.986 5762.688 116.161 .000 .000 .000 080,B002,5=0.0,6=0.0,7703 4882.227 5743.626- 999.000 4883.012 5741.982 116.187 4879.090 5740.230 115.814 4882.341 5732.360 116.111 4880.637 5731.709 116.265 4876.607 5741.253 116.298 4882.227 5743.626- 999.000 .000 .000 .000

Vehicle tracking/ turning circles would be good. I use Landmark for Urban Design projects such as residential layouts. Testing these layouts (which may incorporate de-engineered roads) as to whether they work in terms of vehicle movement would be a real benefit. AutoCAD has an expensive bolt but there isn't one available for Vectorworks as far as I know.

Sometime this happens in symbols if text wrap is switched on.

I will give this a try. Thanks for spending the time to help. Many thanks.

That exactly right. The Z heigth is depicted in text and the xy coordinate is at the text box insertion box. A script to perform the repetative task would be an idea work around. If anyone has the time or unlike me the knowledge. The thing I like about this forum is that people are so helpful an there is always someone who comes up with a solution on another way of approaching a problem.

No that doesn't work there is no external survey data. The data for the 3D loci is just in a number of text box in the drawing itself.

I have a digital topographic survey in 2D which has spot heights in meters but with no Z value. Is there a script available to read the value of each spot height, and insert a 3D locus at the insertion point of the text object with the correct Z value. I am using Landmark. I don't really want to insert them manually and give them a Z value.

I have a digital topographic survey in 2D which has spot heights in meters but with no Z value. Is there a script available to read the value of each spot height, and insert a 3D locus at the insertion point of the text object with the correct Z value. I don't really want to insert them manually and give them a Z value.

Thanks for the suggestions, all of which I do. But wouldn't it be a grat facility? Something for the wish list I think.

Is there any way of producing a number of viewports at the same time. I use small viewports which focus in on plan details to be used in a Key/ledgend in a drawing sheet. Is there any way to draw say 10 rectangle and create 10 individual viewports on the shame sheet layer in one hit. It would save hours.

Possibly the easiest way is to use the wall too, as strange as it may seem. You can make create multiple parallel lines to serve as footpaths/ cycle paths. You can use the fillet tool to introduce curves. The auto intersect but you will have to convert to polugons and combine to create junction radii.

If you import the image file and choose no fill from the Attributes Palette this should turn anything that is white in the image to transparent.

We have recently changed our Vectorworks PC users over to Mac Pro's which seem to have far better graphics capabilities than the PC's. Also you get the benefit of being able to use the invaluable layer transparency settings, something lacking on the PC version.

The drop shadow is mainly for objects in 2D. We produce urban design plans and layouts where presentation is very important. Other companies use autoCAD to produce the linework and do their colouring up in photoshop or illustrator where drop shadow is available. We are trying to keep everything drawn in Vectorworks so any changes are instant and give excellent results. We just need to keep trying to improve the presentation of our schemes.

It would be nice if you could create a drop shadow effect as per Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign etc. It would further expand the graphic ability of VW. At the moment I create a dropped shadow effect by duplicating objects turning them to dark grey placing on a separate layer and turning on transparency in the layer option. This works well but still gives a sharp edge to the shadow. What are the possibilities of producing fading to the edges of a dropped shadowshadow.

Sorry to take so long in replying. I have been on holiday for a week or so. Thanks very much for the reply and I will give it a try and would like to thank you in advance for your generous help.

Doesn't anyone have any ideas. But I don't want to cause any arguements.

I have just imported some shape files exported from a GIS system. The information comes in three parts -1. Area, 2. contours, 3. anno. Each of these catagories has - .dbf, prj, sbn, sbx, shp, shp.wml, shx components. The shape file for 3. anno (annotation) displays lots of single ploygons which represents the position of text for the map eg. road names. In the Object Info pallet under Data there is a record attached to each polygon which includes a field called DescTerm which includes the text that should be located on the appropriate polygon. eg. Toid: 1000000969961542 Featcode: 10169 Version: 2 VerDate: 2007-07-27 Theme: Road Tracks and Paths Change: 2007-07-06 Modified textangle: 310.0000000000 DescGroup: Road Or Track DescTerm: Road Name or make: PhysLevel: 50 PhysPres: Text: SOUTHBROOK ROAD textfont:1 textpos: 4 textheight: 3.00000000000 shape_Leng: 0.00000000000 Is there a routine that will display the correct text eg. (Text: Southbrook Road) from attached records onto the drawing in the location of its polygon from the database file.

I have just imported some shape files exported from a GIS system. The information comes in three parts -1. Area, 2. contours, 3. anno. Each of these catagories has - .dbf, prj, sbn, sbx, shp, shp.wml, shx components. The shape file for 3. anno (annotation) displays as single ploygon which represents the position of text for the map. Data attached to each polygon includes the text that should be located on the polygon. Is there a routine that will display the correct text onto the drawing from the database file.

We seem to have cracked the file saving problem. By shortening folder names to no more than 30 characters. It seems to work. No more crashing and deleting files at random.

By a process of trial and error we have discovered a problem which certainly affects MACs running V12.5 (possibly PCs as well). If you try to save a file where the parent folder on our server (i.e the folder you are saving into) is more than 30 characters long ? then it is possible to get a file save error which results in the file being destroyed completely!

If you import a B/W tif image into VW you select it and from the attributes panel choose pattern fill. This gives you the choice of a forground and backgroun colour. Choose white for the background colour and any colour you wish for the foreground. You the have to select none instead of pattern and this will turn the bitmap image to transparent. We use it all the time.

Sounds like the same sort of problem that we are encountering. Using Windows 2003 Server. Files also dissappearing in front of your eyes as you double clik on them and having to be restored from backup tape. See message posted today.

We are using Windows 2003 Server and Mac OS 10.4.8.