J. Johnson

Hi Kizza- I don't have any trouble with font size. You can change the display font size for the finder by right clicking on the desktop and selecting "show view options". This lets you adjust font and icon sizes on your desktop. Within vectorworks, all menu font sizes are fine for me. The extra screen real-estate just means less scrolling and zooming in and out for me. (saves time) Hope that helps.

I'm very happy with my 27" i7. Reflections have not been a problem for me. I think positioning with no window behind you is definitely important. Enjoy.

I second the duplicate & rotate. I rotate 90? all the time, and not just because my desk is L-shaped.

Check the dpi settings in the sheet layer, document preferences, and the print dialog. Also, is there an image somewhere in the floor plan? good luck.

I did try fixing everything with fontbook, but that didn't help. I did however find this temporary solution which seems to work for me. Read the thread and use at your own risk! https://discussions.apple.com/message/13374743#13374743 I hope this helps those with similar problems.

Since I updated my system to OS X 10.6.7 my preferred fonts have been just beastly in my existing files. They're smeared up and down the page, and generally make putting out decent looking drawings difficult. I've switched to other fonts for the time being, but I'd like my drawings to look the way they have! I don't think it's a VW thing from my reading elsewhere, but has anyone found an easy way to deal with it while Apple is coming up with a bug fix?

Hi Nicola- One way to do this is to simply draw a short line as a marker, and move it the distance you want up the wall to show where you want the connection. Not sure what the tool is called in Italian, but I use "duplicate array" quite often for setting multiple points at the same distance. Hope that helps. Jake

Hi- I would love to have the ability to take the contractor for a spin around the 3d model of the building on-site to help elucidate details and design intent. Also, I think quick detail sketches and drawing markup would be great to have in an ipad app. In fact, I've already had contractors asking when I'm going to start distributing drawings sets in ipads... I think they just want the ipad. Perhaps this should be a wish list item?

I'm also in the market for new mac hardware, and trying to decide between an imac and mac pro. These are the questions I'm asking myself and comments in regard to which makes more sense. Hopefully someone can provide answers or guidance on the first 2 below: 1. # of CPU's. I've read that Vectorworks really doesn't take advantage of multiple CPU's. Does that mean 4CPUs vs. 8 doesn't really matter? Will the speed of the CPU make a big difference? 2. Graphics card choices: This only really affects OpenGL rendering, not renderworks or other rendering modes. Correct? Those are processed by the CPU I believe. 3. More ram is a no-brainer. Just don't buy it directly from Apple. 4. After working on a 30" monitor for 4 years, I've been forced back to hacking away with my current 20" G5 imac recently. This is nearly intolerable, and will be moving up to a 27" screen with either the imac or mac pro. The less zooming/panning I do, the better.

I would suggest using 3d Polygons for the silk screening. If I recall correctly, that's what I used to show a historical painted sign on the face of a building that needed to show up properly in renderings. If the polys don't work, then extrude them 1/64" or something and apply whatever texture/translucency you require. Have fun- Jake

I've had luck in the past using a space instead of a zero in front of door and window tags. Haven't tried it in 2009 yet. jake

When the details are referenced in, they are at the bottom of the list of layers in the navigation pallate, so I have to scroll down to find them. Yes, there ends up being many layers, but the ones I need access to are at the top of the list. Also, we have been experimenting with having separate model and sheet files. The model file contains most of the building information, while the sheet files reference in the model information. The first project we did like this had only one sheet file, which made it difficult to concurrently work on the same project. We have since split it up into a number of sheet files which workgroup reference the model file. One of those sheet files is for all of our detail sheets, so most of the referenced layers are only the details. The other sheet files are sheets sharing similar information: notes that are shared, etc. So our plans are all in one sheet file, our elevations and sections in another, our enlarged floor plans and interior elevations in another, and so on. So the number of referenced layers are typically just the layers in the model file. At each submittal, we break the references, but keep the referenced layers in the file, and lock the file so if the references change later, we still have the "moment in time" of the submittal. Probably more than you asked for.... Jake

I concur with PeterT's method. However, we do workgroup reference the layers into our set. This allows us to create a viewport of each detail, with only the detail layer referenced in the viewport. Then when we want to place another detail of the same scale on a detail sheet we copy and paste the viewport, and turn off the layer of the first detail and turn on the layer of the new detail. If all the details are drawn, (as presumably they are, being in the library file) this allows for very quick setup of your detail sheets. Our detail layers are named with the title of the detail (we typically have very descriptive titles), so to find the proper detail for the viewport, it is a matter of simply scrolling through the layer visibility box and clicking on the visibility of the layer. The whole procedure is much easier than it sounds. When I first read about this technique in some earlier threads, it took me a while to understand how this would work, but setting it up is easy.

It would be nice to be able to scale the bubble elements of the window, door and room name tags in viewports of different scales. For example, if I want to include an enlarged bathroom plan at 1/4" or 1/2" scale, the room number box and window and door tags (if shown) are too big. Thanks.

I suppose I will add this as a wishlist item. Thanks-