patrickhubble

Also - how about the ability to show the bubble at the crop perimeter of a viewport.

Thanks Peter, very much appreciated.

Hello all, Has anyone encountered an issue with reshaping / manipulating nodes of / editing walls when in a rotated plan view? The wall node 'zooms off' to an apparently random location. It seems fixed in unrotated plan view though. This applies also for a brand new document. Has anyone got a solution? Thanks Patrick (ps- running VW2008, on 2x2.66GHz MacPro with 4GB ddr2, Mac OS 10.4.11.)

Pat, Thanks for that, I'll try and ask others here to use the Paste in Place method - perhaps it will reduce the occurrences of such things happening again.

DWorks - We try not to use the option key (we have macs) but the copy paste method does not seem to work, as when pasting the objects are pasted in a strange location. Mike - Thanks for the link it looks great - but their demo vid for it seems to be have a link broken? Also - I need more information which they don't seem to provide... for instance does this tool only apply to a current layer, selected objects or a whole document? It needs to be essential if we can control it in this manner, because we do have a lot of 'duplicate objects', just in different layers. I have seen some other tools there which look good - will definitely try some of them out.

I agree with the fact that VW should save the class state in sheet layers. There are times, especially when controlling the visibility of certain standard objects/legends/notes in a titleblock, where you need to control class visibility. There is of course, also no reason why simply looking at another design layer with a certain class state of a previous view should change how your sheets print. There is another additional annoyance that drawing in a design layer, you then swap to a sheet layer and your class has not changed, and you start placing or pasting objects into viewports and they are pasted invisibly (an undo does not save you here as for some reason it does not work, you need to show the class in the viewport and delete the object(s), or, if you have pasted thousands of objects, revert to an old version of the file).

We have recently just had a large problem in our office, when objects in a floor plan were duplicated several times (usually unknowingly) over each other, requiring us to go through the whole floor and delete every wall, symbol, text object etc. which is on top of another. This problem actually occurs previously often, but this is the first time it has happened to us on a large scale. Our duplication is set to not offset, so that we can transfer like walls and other objects between floors, which is a convenient and quick process. When the problem occurs, it usually is quite a while before someone realises (after a few saves). A way to delete or 'purge' duplicate objects, which have identical type and positional data, automatically from a selection, would be a good solution.

Wall caps for walls should be automatic (ie. capped when not connected, and uncapped when they join another). If this may not eventuate, or in addition to it if it does, how about wall caps being toggles, rather than a pulldown menu with "None, Start, End and Both"? More like arrowheads in the attributes palette. Checkboxes would be fine with "Cap Start" and "Cap End" only.

Not a bad idea - thanks Pat. For any other dialog boxes that appear the feature could still be useful. I'd like to also add option-double clicking on navigation palette layers etc. would edit them would be nice and fast, and double clicking on the drawing label object would edit the drawing title. (These are just small wishful things)

When double clicking on a viewport, a dialog appears asking you to edit the crop, annotations or design layer. It would be great to just double click on the radio button, for annotations for instance, and the dialog will close and you edit annotations (rather than having to click 'ok'). This could apply to all/any dialog boxes with radio button requests, and I am sure it is fairly easy to do.

And if you could change the scale automatically on import based on paper size that would be great (we get lots of drawings in pdf format nowadays...).

I of course second this - hatching to elevations has been requested so often it should surely be in the next release.

Ah, yes I am. There doesn't seem to be a way to change the location of the Npoint or 'Preliminary' Stamp - they currently are on top of my plan. I could of course always do them manually, just wondering...

Hi Everyone, I have searched the forums with no success. How do I change the position of the North Point Arrow using VW 2008's default titleblock? Also, I can't seem to change the location of the titleblock Stamp, no matter where I place the text box with :Stamp in it. Any comments appreciated! -Patrick

Programmable objects will always come with restrictions of how customisable they can be - which is why we need to push for more and more complexity within those objects (also more new programmable objects) to make them useable. The potential to save time using the stair tool is enormous - in particular for large buildings requiring a lot of fire exits (which are simple in form). They can assist in section cutting, and perhaps even identifying problems with setout. As Christiaan also says when it comes to change the stairs (inevitable in most cases) it is much easier. If you want ultimate control, you would draft it manually, but then you're back to square one (I'd do this only for unusual stairs).

I think the walkthrough tool / methodology could actually do with a major overhaul. Nowadays, it is relatively easy to get high-powered 3d graphics cards capable of realtime rendering reasonably complex environments (with a bit of optimisation), even with features such as realtime stencil shadowing, global illumination and effects pass / transparency capabilities. The OpenGL rendering type in VW has always been very inferior to counterparts visible in the gaming industry and even now in new programs such as sketchup. Even AutoCAD's hidden-line rendering mode is much more responsive and easier to work with than VW's. Interface-wise - the walkthrough tool and orbit tool will need more options/visual cues to control more accurately and intuitively direction, movement and camera settings. May I suggest that in controls used in the gaming industry (ASWD keys for example) be the standard for such an interface. If VW is heading towards modelling as its main focus for the construction of projects from which information is derived from, a revised walkthrough mode, orbit mode and window/vp viewing system will be essential, as I imagine the way of orbiting and moving through the building will be the only way to model certain areas and components. EDIT - ps: Sorry, in response to your original post, 'Collision Detection' as you have called it is not in VW2008 yet.

For the most part elevations in VW are good and useable - but there needs to be flexibility to determine which objects have which lineweight in elevation, different to their lineweight in plan. (Rarely are they the same) If lineweights by default are thick for objects close to you, and thin for objects far away, this would be an advantage. This 'default' lineweight setting can be overridden by perhaps a field in the Render Obj Info or something similar. If individual objects could also support this property, perhaps for instance window openings can be given a thick lineweight, and frames and sashes a thin one (thinnest possible). Also - having hatches shown on elevations would also be a boon. The hatch will be different in elevation than it would be in plan though, so this would have to be treated the same as the lineweights.

Hmmmm, thanks Mike - I didn't quite realise that DLVP cannot have different views to the design layer they reference. Major shortcoming as they can only be really useful for plans at this point in time - sections and elevations seem now to be back to annotations of SLVPs. Perhaps the ability to enable SLVPs to reference other sheet layers would be useful then, and a workaround that is currently possible? Or even allow a SLVP to reference another SLVP...

It would be useful, when relinking a workgroup reference that has moved, that it notes the name of the file the reference originally refers to and for which you need to search for. (Something along the lines of "Please locate 'SurveyDwg.vwx'...") At the moment, if I have a folder in with all my references in it, I move the folder and VW notes that it cannot find the references (which is fine), however when it asks you to find the file, the dialogue finder box which appears does not have the name of the filename you're supposed to search for, and if you choose the wrong one, all references to the original file in your master document are replaced by all sorts of incorrect references from the wrong file. This is mainly pertinent when a file has multiple references. It should also allow you to choose a folder, instead of only choose a file, to search within for the references. Something along the lines of Search Paths for compilers perhaps?

I wholeheartedly agree with the points Matthew has made regarding sections - VW needs to make both options of section drawing easier, or choose a direction to concentrate on. With the introduction of Section Viewports recently, and indeed the introduction of 3D tools and capabilities some time ago, VW looks like it is heading in the 'pure 3D mode' direction (which I happen to agree with). However, as Petri said - small jobs can be done manually and a certain size is required before all this becomes worth it. The capability for larger jobs needs to still be there though, or people will just 'jump ship' to other packages. I think it's worth noting that a program can't do absolutely everything if you want the flexibility to change things - but that's a subject for another topic, and probably another era in computing and architectural practice. For the immediate future, perhaps small moves such as placing section viewports on design layers, so they can be referenced to details later, would satisfy the current shortcomings of these viewports. And then having parametric constraints capable of linking points in objects to points in the section viewports (ie. constrain a distance between a skirting and a wall/floor point in a section, and it moves when that point moves) - as a reasonable, immediately possible, solution?

I like this as well, and I can see from your pics that you've picked up some other things I would like to see: 1. Tread numbers (even have tread levels if possible, based on layer levels). 2. ability to dot in stairs on demand, or show double break line with stairs still shown. 3. Ability to control the stair arrow a little more (offset, direction, lineweight etc.) 4. Custom text, and alterable in terms of location and content.

Yes - or even follow the interface Adobe has in their products, with 'tabs that could tear off to form different palettes'. Have a look at their navigation palette in Photoshop - you can tear off the thumbnail 'tab' as a separate palette.

When moving a callout object to a different layer with a different scale, the text wrapping or max text width value no longer works properly (try to make it bigger, instead it makes it smaller. Even typing into the OIP does not work). You can solve the problem by moving the callout object and redirecting where it points. (However, it is still a bug). On another note - I think there should be a bug reporter forum for registered users of VW. A lot of other software packages use this method to keep an accurate track and active list of bugs from users. When one is reported, it is given a unique ID number and sits in the stack. It is also given a status (ie. Pending, Fixed, Not A Bug, Unfixable etc.) so that the reporter or anyone else who encountered the problem knows it has been done before and whether they should do anything about it. Posting in forums like this gives the bug a chance to sink under everyone else's forum posts and potentially lost forever.

Hi, Using the navigation palette is very productive - an excellent organisational tool. I use a dual screen, one widescreen dedicated to my drawing window, and the other screen dedicated to palettes (and other things). It would be great if you could allow multiple instances of the Navigation Palette - so that you could have columns going down the window of Classes, Layers and Saved Views (even sheet layers etc.). This allows for us to see everything about a drawing when looking at the screen, and to turn layers, and classes off and on quickly.

Just a note : in VW2008 the Edit Note... button in the callout tool does not change all the callouts when multiple callouts are selected. Very frustrating! This was not the case in 12.5, when you could edit multiple callouts at the same time. Please fix!