Diamond

Hi Alfie, I am working on a project now that is using a 3D survey on extremely challenging terrain. The survey has a reference marker that is kilometres away from the building works. The only thing to do is use a local origin to stop VW acting oddly. We agreed on a wall edge of an existing building with all consultants and set out our building grids on this point as our local origin (vs the world origin). From this we (the architects) set out the grids for the three locations of new works. But this is where the plot thickens. One of the locations is down a cliff 200 metres in elevation below the main works. It was very important that all drawings were using the same local origin as the set out of part of the works was only possible using GPS. Next time I would use GIS, but some of he settings did not match up with VW (I need to follow this up and maybe file a bug). And the problems caused by not using GIS and the inaccuracies caused by the curvature of the earth are a story for another day. Put briefly, don't move the local origin if you can help it, but there are times when you have no choice.

Hello Kevin, One of our Mountain Lion Macs has been doing something similar in 2012. That machine was a clean install and we are working through the issues. What I did was to prevent the machine from sleeping during the day and shut it down each evening. Not ideal. We thought it was a Vw autosave preferences issue of my own making, but it may be a something else. Will keep you posted.

Hi, We are receiving DWG files from clients in China labelled with Chinese Characters. Some of our staff speak Mandarin and Cantonese. We would like a way that the Chinese characters are imported into our drawings. I have tried substituting Chinese AutoCAD fonts for Chinese Mac fonts. It appears the standard Chinese font that should be being used is Arial Unicode. This is able to display both English and Chinese characters (and more besides). Has anyone had any experience (and success) importing Chinese DWG files? Thank you in advance.

Hi Taoist, The only way I have thought that this might work is to have your plans VW drawing on one screen and your 3D views and elevations VW drawing referencing your plans on another. As you make changes to the plans you will need to update your references and 3D views and elevation viewports. This is as close to a multi-view setup as I can think of for VW.

I have had problems with the geometry breaking when importing from AutoCAD as well (having done all of the various import variations). Are there particular ways that geometry is created in AutoCAD that does not compute upon import to VW? In my case I was importing a 3D site and structure survey and ended up with only 3D polygons and path objects. A mass of broken 3D geometry was away from the main survey at point 0,0 and at a massive scale. In fact the only way to get some of the geometry was to export to Revit then export as IFC. But this lost the terrain model and only kept the geometry of the existing structure. I had to overlay both files to get a close to what it should have been picture. A nasty and incomplete solution.

We have an old iBook that has a MiniCAD 7 translator version that was supplied to us by our Australian VW distributor to access our old files. I hope I am not getting Julian in trouble, but I would be very surprised if VW Nemetschek wouldn't give you this service. The reality is that to use/access these old files you need to have an old Mac either to run the old apps or to translate the files for use on a new version of the operating system. There is no getting around this. The best example of this is the US space program. If NASA is going to have problems with legacy data, then we all are. PS Don't believe that any other software will give you better legacy file issues. It won't, and if it pretends to, it will give you issues in day to day usage.

I can confirm that we have been having the same problem.

If you 'right click' or 'control click' on the file you should be able to select another app besides Quicktime to open the file. Or you can 'Get Info' on the file, you can change the default app that opens that particular file.

I am noticing this as well. To me it seems the same in 2011. I think the worst files are where I have imported DWG's.

Hi there Snate. Welcome to the Tech Board. If you are using the Apple Magic Mouse, you will need to go to Mouse in System Preferences and select 'Scroll WithOut Inertia'. Without this selected, Vectorworks scrolling is crazy. I don't think this is an issue with Mighty Mouse, but may be with third party products.

Okay. You have me intrigued. Will give it a go and see if I notice any further hand/arm improvements.

Wow, this thread has brought out all the 'heavies'. I assumed that the more experienced users would be using 'Click Drag'. Clearly I was mistaken. To cure any RSI I was suffering, I have found that repositioning my seating arrangement and monitor height has worked wonders. My keyboard was generally too high in relation to my elbow. By raising my chair height relative to my desk, raising the height of my monitor (eye height about 1/4 to 1/3 down from the top of my screen), and making sure my knees are slightly lower than my hips has reduced repetitive stress pain greatly and greatly improved my posture. Making myself sit correctly hurt a little for the first weeks but now that my core muscles have strengthened RSI now seems like a non-issue for me.

Thanks Pat. Can see the pluses for both. My whole VW setup (including my workspaces) is about shaving off seconds whilst getting around the screen, which hopefully amounts to days over the period of a year. "Click Drag" is an integral part of that process.

Don't believe the naysayers. Much quicker. Although many users find it hard. Just a mind body co-ordination issue. When doing tutorials I have to constantly remember that most don't use "Click Drag". Since it isn't the default, it isn't used. For power-users "Click Drag" all the way.

Yes, as many upsides as there are to being able to do things many different ways in VW, this is one of the downsides. The openGL is much better in 2011 than 2010 it would seem (besides this issue). We are testing it to keep abreast of the updates, but will jump into VW2012 when it arrives after September. All the best.

Hi Mike, I found the 3D polygons that were showing on the model you posted showed up in different places when I changed those preferences. That said, although fewer, there was still some 3D polygonal vertices showing. Maybe it is best just to go back to the old days in the SLVP of turn off draw edges in the Background Render OpenGL Settings, and turn on hidden line render in the foreground render settings (This is what you are suggesting above?). Cheers.

It seems the main setting that fixes this is turning on anti-aliasing in OpenGL Settings. For your viewports you might want to turn on Mesh Smoothing in your Document Preferences. Not sure if this works with OpenGL though.

My iMac has the same problem. I tried subtracting the circle from rectangle, to see if it was a geometry issue, but that didn't work. Maybe try going into 'OpenGL Options' under pull down menu 'View - Rendering'. I am getting less 3D polygonal triangulation playing with these settings.

You are right, VW will triangulate surfaces. I do know there is a command in Cinema 4D to remove them when importing 3DS format models, but I am not sure that this can be achieved this in VW.

Hello again. I should probably have added, for this project the surveyors are modelling the existing structure, as well the terrain. It is the 3D geometry of the existing structure that is breaking. The terrain is coming through as 3D ploys as it normally would. In our case Vectorworks translates the structure extrudes as path objects and not the full extrusion.

Hello. We are working on a project at the moment where our surveyors are using a Leica laser system that creates a cloud of points and panoramic photos from each survey point. The surveyors are using the points to create a 3D model and survey in AutoCAD. This is proving troublesome as the 3D coming from AutoCAD doesn't like Vectorworks, and much of the 3D geometry breaks. We have had them export both DWG and IFC (via Revit) files to fill in the gaps. Far from ideal. Also AutoCAD users seem to have little experience with IFC files (at least in Sydney, Australia). Also I had no idea VW disliked 3D geometry from AutoCAD so intensely. I would say to anyone needing to go down this road, the way the geometry is created into AutoCAD needs to be investigated before the project commences, to make sure you will get usable information at the VW side. Also it helps if they change their origin point if it is a long way away. VW seems to like the origin points to be close by (not 200km from the building, as was is our case). I hope that starts to point you in the right direction. Cheers.

Hello Shaun. The send to C4D command comes with VW 2011, and doesn't require a plugin from C4D. (It may require Renderworks though). Given that you are using VRAYforC4D rendering engine, I think you can get away with the base version of C4D Prime, as you will not need the Advanced Render Module. Best way is to get onto Maxon's website or ring your distributor. Two questions. Do you have a completely different set of textures for VRAY? I imagine C4D Advanced Render textures are mostly incompatible with VRAYforC4D? Cheers.

I think wait to have a look at VW 2011 that comes out this month. I think it will be a large jump forward in both modelling tools and rendering your model.

I have often thought that something like an online curriculum would be very useful, especially when understanding where potential team members are at with skills. Just looking at finished PDF's or printed drawings do not give a true indication of a persons true understanding of Vectorworks. This may also assist users gaining international work when travelling.

Further investigation of this problem, is that it appears there is a problem with the section line instance changing location and appearance in plan. When I try to locate the section line instance, it appears like a little line with no section reference looking marker. Today the way around it was to un-select the 'use gapped line' tick box in the OIP. The section marker appears again, and I have to relocate and stretch it again in the correct location. Once the viewport is regenerated it shows up in a different place in the section viewport, but at least I don't have to recreate another VP.