DDDesign

The ability to scale sheet layers that 11.5 had seems to be removed in 12.5. I can't see the reason for this. It reduces the flexibility considerably.

For the record, I was also talking about non - architectural 3D modelling. Mostly furniture as well.

The Rhino to Mac porting is great news for to me - as a Rhino user and Windows hater! Yes, the solid modelling in VW could do with an improvement. At the moment (I've just finished a big project) the most frustrating things are fillets, the inability to "pick up" a centre of an extrude, and the difficulty in selecting one of several coincident points or edges. On the latter, VW would do well to emulate how Rhino handles this with a contextural menu. The other thing is - Renderworks has a lousy HLR. Rhino is great for what it can do, but I still use VW to base the project in, and it's quicker for flat panels - and 2D of course. I can do the fancy shapes in Rhino and import them via IGES. It doesn't work too badly. If VW could improve it's nurbs modelling then I'd like to have better filleting (again), blending surfaces, and a 2 rail loft with multiple cross-sections. And maybe actively viewable real-time viewports. Otherwise I eagerly await that Rhino Beta!

I saw this plugin on the Vectordepot site. I haven't tried it myself, but for $10 it might be worth a try. http://www.vectordepot.com/market/vm-034_adobe_illustrator_im.html

First go to the tools tab of the workspace editor. You should find the dimension tool in the Dims/Notes section of the tool sets folder. To assign an unmodified keystoke, select the 'key' setting from the 'use' menu. To assign the actual key, simply select the tool and press the key you want to assign. You will get a dialog if the key is already assigned. Selecting ok will override the previous assignment.

There isn't a direct way of doing this as far as I know, but the following will work, at least on MacOS: 1. Quit VW 2. Move the files, or the folders of the files you no longer want to appear in the open recent list to another location. It doesn't matter where, just somewhere you can find them again. 3. Reboot VW. The files will no longer appear on the open recent list. 4. Move the files back to their original destination.

Esc to 2D is great for me, otherwise there is no other single key shortcut for getting out of OIP and back into selecting - which happens much more than any thing else the esc key might be used for. If you use enter you still have to use x, or whatever. As far as other short cuts, I use my multi-button mouse for most of them - including the esc key of course. That's why it's important for me to have a single keystroke for 2D selection. The multi-button mouse is great, it really speeds things up for me.

I think you're kind of forgetting some of us are on the other side of the world and have a time zone thing. A real-time forum would definitely be a disadvantage. We would not be able to "add our distinctiveness to the collective". "resistance is futile"? I hope not!

Are you rendering in the design or viewports in the sheet layer? Are you mainly concerned with speed for printing or on screen? Viewport renders will speed up if the dpi is reduced via the sheet layer settings. 300 dpi is probably the best you need for printing, 100 dpi for screen. When you're designing maybe you don't need to see the whole model every single time (eg during the design phase) - you can reduce the viewport size, or the perspective boundary. Some times you can use the render bitmap tool - set to artistic render/tapered lines with the taper and wobble options set to zero, although it's a pity VW doesn't give you a HLR setting with this tool. Maybe there are features that are on the model that can be simplified? Eg remove fillets - HLR doesn't display them well anyway. Some geometries are slow to render, and sometimes the way you do things can make a difference, eg in a model with several boolean add solids, it is better to do the adding all in one operation. Have you made good use of symbols to represent repeated elements? eg 6 instances of one symbol can take less time to render than 6 duplicates of an element.

If you want to issue a "sketch", why not just duplicate the viewport, send it to another sheet, and make the sheet, or pages the size you want to print eg in your case letter. The new viewport can then be re-scaled and/or re-edited as necessary. Because I'm always using 3D models, I use annotaions for text, apart from on-sheet title blocks, and comments on sheets when several viewports on a sheet require further elaboration. One suggestion I liked - I haven't tried it yet - is to put personal design notes on the (3D) design layer, then they wont show up in the viewports, which I always use for presenation. This could also be done using a class, but I don't think it is as neat. Where details require further elaboration, I often do this as a vp annotation as well, instead of in the design layer - this might range from adding hatches to clarify sectioning, to a whole new partial drawing of the design detail itself. This means I don't mess up a design layer when I only want that extra detail to appear in that one vp. It also means I can easily add 2D sketches to hidden line renderings of 3d views.

I would go for a bigger screen than 1280 wide. 1280 is not very big once you add all the tool boxes and palettes. The extra money on getting a 1600 wide screen - or bigger will give you the best bang for your buck in terms of working efficiency in real terms (more than processor speed, in my opinion), and will make for a more pleasant working experience.

Terra, My current MacBook Pro is great - I am amazed how fast it is, especially given the previous machine was a dual processor G5. No longer do you feel that a laptop is at a disadvantage compared to a desktop machine. I've had Macs all my life (since the SE, circa 1988) so I'm totally biased. Over the years, as a member of a kind of ethnic minority, I've had to put up with all sorts of arguments from PC users from, in the old days, "why do you need a GUI - DOS is more efficient (really!) to "PC's are faster " totally ignoring the time spent just trying to get the software to work or dealing with viruses. I've never been able to understand why Windows users invest energy in defending a crappy operating system sold by a near monopoly, but there it is. These days I try to avoid wasting my time arguing the pros and cons, and it's getting easier partially through the iPod making apple a household word, and therefore more 'acceptable'. (I had a Chinese student recently refering to my my MBP as an "iPod computer"! The switch to Intel has also helped. But the simplest way for me to avoid arguments now is to say: ask Mac users and PC users if they actually ENJOY using their computer and compare the answers.

It depends on the font. Some fonts come with a specified bold version (eg Arial), which will work how you want, otherwise when you select bold it is emulated using thicker line weights. VW's type menu does not allow you to see which font is which - Font book (Mac), will help get more information, or there are other apps that have this explicitly in their type menu, such as InDesign.

Have you got the viewer position set up properly? If not, set 3D view (View>set 3D view). I find it's easier to do this in top view. Then you can click to specify the user position, the direction to look towards, and the dialog askes for user hight and perspective. This gives me reliable results. I haven't used Renderworks camera - I'm still doing it the old, pre VW12 way.

A possible work-around: 1. Ungroup the dimension (ignore the warning note) 2. resize the text box to 1 character wide - this will give you vertical text. 3. reposition text box if necessary. 4. Re-group This isn't entirely satisfactory, because the dimension won't automaticallly update, but it might do for the occaisional use.

My trick is to convert an extrude to nurbs, ungroup, edit the texture of each face, then regroup. Once I have this object I duplicate and reshape as required to form other objects that require the same surface texture setup.

My tests with 10.4.9 and VW12.5 (opening a blank template) give me a boot time after restart of 22 seconds; quit and reboot 6 sec. (not sure why the difference occurs). This is about 10% faster than with OS10.4.8. Render times are the same. My files open in a few seconds anyway so this time is not significant to me.

Kurt, what computers are you currently running? Are they Macs? I'm assuming you want to upgrade to intel Macs mainly because of performance - but there's a chance that running v10 on a new Mac may be actually slower than your current setup. In which case you'd have to question upgrading unless you also upgrade your Vectorworks. As an example I had a dual G5 2MHz Mac, and upgraded to a 2.15MHz Macbook Pro. VW11 ran slower - BUT - upgrading to V12, rendering was twice as fast as the G5/VW11! A very satisfying result especially consisering I "dropped" from a desktop machine to a laptop. (by the way, the MBP is a great machine, I think) . he new Core 2 duos would be 20-30% faster again.

Click on the update button in the Object Information Palette - exactly the same as you can do in VW, and I would say that this would generally be a quicker method of updating viewports in VW rather than accessing the view menu.

I would think it would be easy to write a script for this - especially if you have your locii in their own class.

Speaking of consistancy, I'd like to point out that the fillet edge tool gives an option for a variable radius, whereas the chamfer edge tool does not give the analagous option of variable set-back.

It sounds like you don't have your cursor cues on, or you're not using them correctly. Regardless of snap-to settings (3 pixels is typical) if you get a cusor clue appearing, you have, without any doubt, selected the required point. Maybe you could also try the audio cue - check the "use sound" box in VW prefs. I find it useful. The fact you are using guides for moving objects in what is a relatively simple model, is a clear indication to me you haven't understood the use of "smart points" - they are one of the fundamental techniques in VW, and if you don't understand them, it is no wonder you seem to be having problems. I suggest you review their use from the manual. The resolution settings have nothing to do with the innate accuracy of VW, merely the rounding off of dimensions.

I still don't get why you have such an issue with this. What you want to do is select a dot in the OIP and gets its position. Putting aside for the moment that in your example you could be selecting one of 2 dots - front or back, what's the difference in difficulty selecting a dot in the OIP, and selecting a "dot" in the actual drawing (in what ever view you choose), to get its position? And the method you describe will be even less effective with more complicated objects. Look, there are issues we'd all like to address in VW, but seriously, this is not one of them. Maybe it is a different method than you're used to but If you want to see it as a problem, you're just making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself.

G_Hannigan, I loved the pic. I've been thinking of getting 4D for a while now. I've used 3D MAX, but I wanted something that would do a similar rendering job but be able to run natively on my Mac. I was wondering how you find 4D to use - esp with regards to VW exports, and do you have the basic version or have other modules such as the advance render module?

It would be nice to be able to edit a base 2D poly of an extrusion, and keep all other objects visible - similar to the "show other objects when editing group" mode.