quigley

Here is a good link that explains it better, and knowing how popular the imacs are in the architectural world, very relevant... http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/imac-coreduo.ars I've got a 20" IntelMac machine coming next week so I'll give it a good test and report back results of VW 12 running against a single processor G5 Powermac and a Dell M60 laptop.

Going back in the posts a bit, it appears that the new Intel Macs are not dual boot ready (ie MacOSX and Windows XP), as Windows can't be run on them. There are reports of many early users trying to install Windows XP and even Vista with no joy. There are technical reasons in the hardware why this is not the case. I'm sure somebody will work out how to do it but for the average users it will be a no go. What has to be remembered is that these machines are Macs, and will not run Windows software unless Windows is installed, or run under emulation using Virtual PC. Virtual PC will not run under Rosetta and Microsoft are saying an Universal VPC will not be available until 2007. So it looks like if you need to run Windows apps you need to stick to the existing G5s, or buy a PC.

I think this can be done using the OS. On a Mac and Windows you can reassign what application opens what files. Any VW dialogues probably just make calls to this OS functionality.

Depends what she edited it in. The problems might be the preview file. If she uses Illustrator try saving the eps as a v10 files with Tiff preview and see if that works.

Sounds like my problem with 11.5 and 12 on same (XP) machine. Initially I had crashing in VW11.5, but restoring the preferences in 11.5 seemed to resolve this. Both now run stable with Quicktime 7.

Dean, For 3D modelling power VectorWorks will struggle against FormZ. Both are very quirky modellers, but FormZ is built for 3D and has a wealth of features that VectorWorks cannot match. If you can make use of VW hybrid modelling tools (eg wall, floor slab, roof, column, and the plug ins etc) then VW is more productive. If you are modelling from scratch and for high end visuals then FormZ will be a better, more flexible, option.

Katie, I think whatever it was is sorted. I trashed the VW11 preferences and its running OK now. Done a full day's training with no crashes....

First port of call should be the reseller you purchased the software from. In the UK there are a few specialist VARs. If you bought from Jigsaw or one of the other box shifters then the only option you have is to go through Computers Unlimited.

Are there any known issues with installing VW11.5 and 12 on the same machine? Since installing 12 v11.5 has become very unstable on my laptop (Dell M60). I had been using v12 for several days before starting up 11.5 to get a notice about the version of Quicktime. Since then I can't even save a file without a crash. Everything else is working fine.

I have tried repeating on my machines and can't as yet on either PC or Mac. Any ideas anybody? Hopefully Tom will post himself here shortly and explain further...

Has anybody had this problem in VW12 Designer? I have a customer reporting that they can render fine from design layers, but when they create a viewport of a 3D model the viewport rendering options (in Edit Objects-Shape) only shows wireframe and hidden line. None of the renderworks rendering options show in the list at all. This has been verified on 2 different machines. They are running VW 12 Designer, on Mac OS10.4.3.

Peter, Yes. Use the FormZ drafting to see if you get the lines in that. I'm not suggesting you actually USE FormZ drafting ('cos its next to useless!!) but just try it as a test for this situation.

Never had this. Have you set your worksheet font to be Tekton?

Sorry Eddie, I reread your original post. Do you want to count the number of instances of the duplicates? If so, do as I said above, but in the header row column adjacent to the list, type =COUNT. This will tell the cells in the column under to list the number of items, and in the summary row, it totals it up.

Select the database header row, and drag the summary icon (the 3 little icons in the worksheet above the cells, SUM, ascending and descending) onto the column you want to summarize.

Peter, What happens when you create a drawing in FormZ itself?

Peter, Sorry to say this but you are seeing a deficiency in VectorWorks/ACIS. FormZ is based on ACIS, so if you export the same model into VectorWorks as an ACIS file you will get exactly the same issue. I tried exactly the same shape using FormZ and Ashlar Vellum Cobalt (also based on ACIS). There are no lines (iso or otherwise) in that. I suspect VectorWorks is doing something odd to the surfaces when it imports. One of the issues with using VW as a full on 3D application like this is the lack of control over import/export, display of iso lines and so on. Rendering is one thing but producing production drawings requires control over the display of EVERY line. Until VW can handle things like turning off tangent edges, locally editing isolines and edges it will never really compete in the MCAD sector.

Using titleblocks in viewports is not that unusual and has many benefits for those not using Architect. The standard procedure is to create a project specific title block drawing with different notes etc in different classes, and WGR that into the active file, then create viewports from that layer. Class visibilities lets you turn different sections on and off. If anything on the project block changes, it is a single edit to update all the linked sheets. With regards to your problem though, I have no idea what the problem is! Do the plans plot OK with the titleblock viewports turned off?

In the run up to VW12 there was talk of having a plug in or better integration with SketchUp. What is the status of this? Seems to me that the enhanced renderWorks would sit very well with SketchUp if we could get the models into VW intact.

Have you got "Use Hardware acceleration" ON in the VectorWorks preferences? I've been testing on Windows and it seems pretty much the same as before. Not tried Mac yet.

In VW12 select by setting the criteria "Record" is "Callout" is present, this will select the callouts. Another way is to assign callouts to a class and select the class.

When you set the favourites you can multiple select files so you add all to the favourites in one go.

I tried it in v12, worked fine.

Select the marker, change the text size/style viw the text menu. This also applies to most notes and dimension type tools.

The best option is probably to define classes before sectioning and turn those elemenst on and off as required. Mike, might be a stupid question but how do you NOT define a wall without setting components?