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atari2600

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Everything posted by atari2600

  1. To everyone in this thread: As a lurker on this topic, I really appreciate all the great suggestions and help given. I tried to create some spreadsheets in the past to attempt what you have illustrated, but never got nearly as far as you have (even with some MS Excel experience). I think it's time for me to re-visit the use of spreadsheets in our projects. If set up correctly, I can really see this being a very helpful tool for our estimator. Thanks again for all your collective input.
  2. Why not right click on the file and change the attributes to "read only", prior to opening it? When the other user goes to the file, have them turn off the "read only" state. Another possibility (within Vworks) is to open it as a library favorite. You have the option to open it read-only.
  3. We also end up with the same situation as well; where we end up pasting our final scheme into a different "contract" layer, once it's been approved. Our template basically has a few design layers (one per floor) for schemes only, and draw up the schemes next to each other pasting whatever existing floor info is needed. Most of us like seeing the various designs adjacent to one another. Moreover, we have a Single sheet layer called "Preliminary Schemes" which is set up with three columns of five sheets. Row one is "scheme A" row two is "scheme B", and so on. We have the viewports already made up as well. I am really surprised that VW doesn't emphasize that a person can print more than one drawing per sheet layer. I always thought this was a huge limitation in Autocad. There is nothing like seeing my entire contract set in front of me; all on the screen at once. It certainly makes for easy alignment of titles. Matt
  4. Yeah, I'd love to have a button in my VW symbol library which took me to an online Vectorworks Warehouse where we could upload/download symbols & plug-ins right into our files. (Google is so smart...)
  5. So when you right click and choose "select item" on the respective row in the work sheet, it takes you back to the same door twice? If that were the case, I would assume there's a bug somewhere. What about doing a test by starting a new file, and dropping a floor plan into it. Can you repeat the problem in a new file? (But when I hear that there are five copies of the same door, it sounds like someone copying a floor plan to another layer, instead of making a viewport or a layer link. I know that is a typical issue in my office.) Do you have any outside references in the file? just trying to help....
  6. Thanks for the suggestion. We went through a major template cleaning a few years ago, and tried to minimize & simplify our number of layers and classes. At the time we concluded that electrical planning were more of an "annotation activity" than a design activity. Given that we were going to have a viewport anyway, why not ditch the lighting/electrical layers and simply annotate them with a grayed out plan underneath. I think the group has been rather satisfied w/ the move ever since. Now that there is much more flexibility in the layer stacking, opacity, and appearance on a viewport to viewport basis, we might revisit that decision when we fully upgrade to VW2009.
  7. Ok, a little development here. I just copied my invisible symbols up to my first floor viewport, and they are visible. The only significant difference between my two floors is I have a design layer viewport (of a pdf) underneath of my basement floor layout, from which I made the sheet layer viewport. So now I think I isolated the problem. It seems to involve design layer viewports, and their visibility. When I turn off the class of the design layer viewport within the basement design layer, the symbols magically reappear in the sheet layer viewport! is this a bug?
  8. Hi everyone, I recently started working with VW2008 and have converted our office templates from version 12.5. I just started working on a lighting plan this morning but I have run into a problem. Back when we started using WV11.0 (when viewports were introduced) we had then decided to do our lighting plans in the annotation mode of the viewport, not on the design layer. That way the electrical symbols didn't interfere w/ any of the design layer objects. I now notice, however, that my 2d symbols seem to disappear when I insert them, and the only way I can see them is if I switch the viewport's view from "top/plan" to "top". I am hoping this isn't a legacy symbol thing, for it would be a real pain to redo all our symbols for VW2008 or VW2009. Anyone have any suggestions or solutions? (And yes, all of the classes are on in the viewport, as well as everywhere else...) thanks, Matt
  9. The most automated way I have found is to use the "Class and Layer Mapping" tool. It takes some getting used to, and you can save your results to a .txt file for future recall. Another way is to highlight several classes you wish to "merge" into one of your existing classes, and simply right click & delete them. You will get prompted as to what to do with the objects on the classes you are deleting. One of the options is to reassign them to another class. hope this helps. Matt
  10. I was at a VW conference on Monday, where they gave us a 2 hour presentation of VW2009. The presenter seemed to indicate that a bunch of the 2d add surface/ subtract surface type operations all benefit directly from Parasolids, as well as any curved objects and their subsequent manipulation. I have to admit, I am personally more inclined to upgrade every 2 years, not one. If I had just purchased VW2008, I would probably feel very hesitant; especially since I know VW2010 is already "in the works". (Now since my office is on VW12.5, we are definitely going to upgrade to 2009.)
  11. In regards to your template set up, may I suggest creating a sheet layer with multiple pages set up on it. That way you can export to pdf all the sheets for your booklet at once. We use templates which contain 10 to 25 sheets on a single sheet layer. Not only can we print them all at once, but also have the opportunity to view all of the drawings at once. Useful when it comes to aligning sheet titles.
  12. Ironic that "Simple Problem need help!!!" is the topic header of this thread.
  13. In response to "reducing your file size", I have occasionally (out of sheer desperation) started a completely new blank file and copy/pasted only the objects I needed in the new file. That action, albeit potentially time consuming, has usually resulted in a smaller file size for me. My opinion is that just because some things are deleted doesn't mean the file necessarily gets lighter. ... (I have been using this technique for years and across numerous cad applications, and it usually has some form of success.)
  14. We have a sheet layer w/ just a single title block symbol on it and nothing else. On all the other sheet layers are viewports of that particular sheet layer, with a smaller sheet-specific symbol overtop the lower right hand corner of the title block. That way we make the global changes once on one sheet layer, and sheet specific items on only the sheets that require it. This seemed to be the simplest way (and the most fool-proof) way of making global changes vs single instance changes. gotta love viewports
  15. We simply have a single title block on it's own design layer, and viewport that. We then have a specific "sheet" symbol which contains all of the information specific to that particular sheet. Therefore we only change the project name, address, and that stuff in one layer, and deal with the other drawing specific symbols separately. We also create one single sheet layer which is set up to print our entire set of drawings, so we don't have to mess with a bunch of sheet layers. No offense to VW, but we found the "document setup", "model setup" and "drawing manager" toos to be far too complicated for our needs.
  16. I was bothered with this specific issue for some time in version 12. I had even tried creating details entirely as annotations within a viewport, so I could scale them. I could then scale the viewport to whatever scale I needed, and have some of the design layer show up behind. Eventually our company settled for creating a single design layer called "details" which was set at 3/4"+1'-0". We realized that 99% of our details could simply be done at this particular scale (residential remodeling) and this solution allowed us to make symbols of our various details as well. But frankly, we found it easier to simply have all the details arrayed in the design layer, so all we had to do was viewport the ones we wanted. All the text was done right there on the detail. No referencing, no additional layers, no worrying about class visibility, no fuss. I hate to admit it, I would like to have the symbols be scalable. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had to do all that stuff above. For myself, my wish for VW is to always remember "don't let the tail wag the dog..." If I have to do all this stuff just to present a handful of details, is that really an ideal solution? (I.E. Sketchup is so successful a 3d program because it is both simple and intuitive. )
  17. I use the click-drag feature often to draw lighting plans, so I can "spline" my wire lines between light symbols. On the other hand, if you are not intentionally holding down the button while clicking the mouse, I would suspect there might be a bug (or a severe lag between your mouse response and the cpu).If you happen to hold the button down while clicking, your line will become a curve, until you click again.
  18. Hi there, I am noticing a "random" problem. When I insert a few sheets of a pdf into my drawing and close the file, the pdf's become "rotated" on several co-workers computers. It happens randomly and inconsistently. Some pdf's are fine, and some are not. It does possibly appear that when I insert more graphically heavy pdf's, they may get rotated more often than a pdf with text on it. anyone experience this before, or have a work-around? (p.s. we are on version 12.5)
  19. In lieu of the VW window schedule, I just pdf the window schedule report out of my Anderson IQ software. I've played around with the VW schedule and I concluded it wasn't intuitive enough for our needs.
  20. I can understand the statement: VectorWorks only supports True Type and Post Script fonts", but we have been using the same fonts at our office for YEARS on many previous versions, and have had no issues like this. I can open the same file in VW12.5 and I don't have this issue. I also can't imagine the fix to be all that difficult. by the way,did VW ever support open type fonts? Or, is there a way to convert Open Type to True Type fonts? (As a tester here at my office, I'd hate to hold off a 40 license upgrade for the company, but there is no practical way we can upgrade unless we are sure this font issue is dealt with. By all means we have thousands of projects with a particular font, and to know that our font all of a sudden doesn't work seems kind of ... lame, perhaps.)
  21. Hey all, I am testing out VW2008 for my office, and I am having the same issue with our open type fonts (they show up as Arial until I double click to edit it). Does anyone know if there is a fix for this problem. Although it appears to print fine, the appearance on the screen reverts to Arial font.
  22. Limei, First, thanks for sharing a bit about your process. I tend to be the one of the testers here, and it can certainly be a hassle, especially on top of a normal work load. In terms of money, we certainly weren't affected by the new release. It is more about the feeling of finally having something actually work "the way it was originally intended to", to all of a sudden have a newer and supposedly better product appear with the intent to replace the product we finally got working. For example, when I buy a car, I expect to be able to drive it, at least over normal roads and under normal circumstances. The mere fact that I had to keep all of my current VW files on my local hard drive for fear of them being corrupted over the network, was a significant problem to me, and prevented the rest of our users from updating until the 12.5.2 version came out. For me, that would have been like buying a car which had the unusual tendency to break down whenever I got on a highway. Most people would have probably brought it back to the dealer in a heartbeat. Yet I know this is the way it is in the world of software development, but it does get tiring to be a user that doesn't know whether to enjoy the product that "gets the job done", as you put it, or test drive the new product which should get the job done better or more quickly. I don't know. I still remember when AutoCad R13 came out. Boy, was that version a huge flop. Something about the 13th version of things... Makes me worry just a little bit with VW 2008. I do admit that I'd much rather be on a 13th version of VectorWorks than ANY version of AutoCad.
  23. Our office updated from 12.0 to 12.5.2 in mid-August after living on 12.0 since it came out. It took that amount of time for us to conclude the upgrade was stable enough for our network. A few of us were testing the revisions between 12.0 and 12.5.2, and kept getting corruption errors with files that were being read off the network. It wasn't until the most recent update that we were able to bring all 26 users up to current. Imagine our surprise to see a NEW version of Vectorworks out about a month after we updated. It will take a lot more than a sales pitch to persuade us to spend $11,000 on an upgrade anytime soon. Patience can be a great virtue, especially in the computer world.
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