Don Seidel

I’m very thankful to have such a great BIM software, and thankful for all work of the great folks at Vectorworks! May all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Don Seidel

Anyone traveling to Phoenix May want to check into early voting, as the Summit ends on Election Day. I for one won’t get back to San Antonio in time for voting. Early ballot for me!

While a Filemaker user for some 20+ years, I enjoyed the fact you could get an awful lot accomplished without fancy scripting/programming. My point about it being year 2017 is that ODBC is supposed to be the magic key to link to different DB's. As long as you have assigned fields in each DB to sync, the process should be just so simple. There's only 3 options for crying' out loud; force data one direction, the opposite, or sync (with most recent entry as conflict resolution). Yes of course the programming is more involved that that, but why on earth can't the interface be just so simple? For example: I take a Window plug-in and insert it into a wall, with options I choose. It's done. Next task. There's no desire or need for me to learn the programming language to make that happen.

Vectorscript? Why? It's (year) 2017...VW is supposed to "connect" to an external DB without fuss. Particularly on the Mac OS and particularly with FM Pro, it should be a snap. One should NOT have to be a VS or DB Geek to set it up and make it work, and yet the instructions are not clear & simple. I've looked but never seen a simple VW file example w/ associated DB.

Some of us who've drafted cabinet elevations for, say 40 years, have a difficult time finding the efficiency in modeling cabinets to create interior elevations. At the moment, VW has several cabinet-model tools (not unlike the several stair tools) which can be confusing at best. Each has a different approach with inherent advantages/limits. Most offices either draw "realistic" cabinetry, or "schematic" cabinetry, which might offer some direction in choosing which VW tool to use. However all the VW tools offer far too much lifework for the "schematic" (one--line) documentation of cabinetry. Bottom line: if I can still draw it 2D much faster than modeling it 3D, what's the point of 3D cabinetry? Most projects for us have only minor interior elevation changes. So the up-front time to model Cabinets does not return time dividends. The new Custom Cabinet tool holds promise, but needs several tweaks to be useful. - More control over position and orientation of pills - door swing lines for Hidden Line render mode - adding a shelf (shorter depth) or a clothes Rod

in the most basic form, a Site Model would be great to show a 2D plan with Existing and New grades (contrasted by line style). WHAT is the workflow to create this? Does VW only respect Site Modifiers to show exist vs proposed?

Agreed. It's a 3-factor combination of physical size, resolution and viewing distance. I'll pass on the curved and stick with 34" UW. eGPU now allows even a modest machine great graphics performance !

Anyone using a CURVED Ultrawide monitor for VW? I can see how it would be great for gaming, video editing and similar tasks. But wondering if the curve "distorts" (perceptually) the VW workspace. I've always enjoyed big monitors, but at some point a monitor can be too big for practical desktop use.

Please create a WORKGROUP REFERENCE TOOL that would convert VWorks files having workgroup references by ABSOLUTE path to RELATIVE path. The problem is opening VWorks files w/ absolute references when they have been moved to a new server and/or archived. It takes a LONG TIME to go thru each search and cancel for linked files just to open 1 file. And if you are opening such files REMOTELY, it takes forever. If there was a utility to convert linked files to RELATIVE workgroup references without opening them first, this would be a great help.

Please create a LEGACY BATCH CONVERT TOOL for opening old Minicad and Vectorworks files (Macintosh). This utility could be easily updated w/ each new version of Vectorworks. The current work path for Mac DOES NOT RUN on Intel Macs (requires running classic). Any why require users to install an old version anyway. Write code to translate & open old files as best a.s possible.

It would be great if you could alter the CAPITALIZATION of notes in Databases for the General Note or Callout Notes.

Similarly, you can link text to record and display the 3 values alongside each symbol. But note that the values here (or in Tom's script) are NOT dynamic. You have to re-run the script whenever you move the objects.

Ahhh... The Z- Value coordinate. Been working on that for years. As an architect, I often spreadsheet X & Y values of objects. These are DYNAMIC values in a spreadsheet. Move the object and refresh the spreadsheet for the new value. Handy! I have long bugged NNA Tech as to WHY Z-value won't work as X & Y do (dynamically). The program obviously KNOWS the z-coordinate of any object, as displayed in the info palette. Just can't seem to get anybody to fix the code for the spreadsheet. All other solutions are work-arounds with big limitations. Will others please lobby VWorks Tech?