IanH

Do you save the referencing file once the reference is fixed? Also, are you referencing relative or absolute and where and on what device is the reference file stored?

What sort of rendering? Only OpenGL is really dependant on graphics cards. All of the other render modes are calculated by the CPU so, apart from physically displaying the results on the screen, the graphics card speed does not really come into it. I don't know for sure, but I guess the answer to your question is not what is faster, but what performs the best (image quality and update speed) and what is the most stable and convenient. Whilst having both monitors connected to the same card may be the most stable, you may find that, depending on the relative speed of each card, sharing the tasks between the two cards may be the more user friendly once it is all set up. As an aside, I did check out your website and thought that it may be worth noting that your home page runs the risk of being penalised by google with the use of near invisible keyword 'spamming'.

Firefox use to be an (documented) issue with online help, but with Firefox on Vista I have not noticed any issues for ages so don't know if a SP fixed it, upgrading to 2009 did or a change in Firefox. Mind you, I don't use online help very often

Retouch the output in photoshop or use Piranesi to hand or auto render?

All mobile graphics processors are unsupported by NVIDIA. The reason is power management. Each laptop maker institutes their own power management scheme. There's no way for the generic driver to support it. That is not the case. I regularly updates my mothers Compaq laptop with Nvidia mobile graphics chipset from the standard Nvidia website.

VW2009 is heavily dependant on the graphics card performance. The earlier versions of VW are not quite as dependant, but still affect overall performance. Some operations are graphics card limited in their own right (ie if using OpenGL rendering, gradient fills etc), whilst for many other operations, its a case of the more info (ie lines in a complex model, stipples etc) on the screen and the higher the resolution/colour bitdepth the display, the beefier the graphics card you will need to keep the operation of Vectorworks at a reasonable level of interactivity.

Actually brudgers brings up an important point. Whilst the chipset in my Vaio is still supported by Nvidia, when I last tried to update from the Nvidia website, I was informed that I had to use the official Sony ones due to customised settings. As the correct performance of Vectorworks is so critical of the graphics card, it would be worth inquiring whether the graphics card can be updated from NVidia themselves, or if you have to use the manufactured supplied one. Shame about HP, but I know what you mean. I bought a Compaq laptop for my mother and the build quality is only fair. Having used DEC, which was taken over by Compaq, which was taken over by HP equipment for the last 25 years, all I can say is, they don't build them like they use to. If I was buying a laptop again, it would likely be a Dell, but the costs do start to quickly mount up when you start customising by adding the little options.

PDF's hold raster (image) and vector (line) information, often simultaneously. Depending on what you are doing with the PDF, it may be worth making sure that you are being sent a pdf containing the most relevant format. For instance, if you are looking at line based files, then having it in vector format is best as you can snap to the lines. The format may have an effect on speed.

I'm a garden designer and use a laptop occasionally. Some things will always be slow no matter what specification machine you use. But generally no problems although its not quite as fast as my desktop. My laptop is about 3 1/2 years old. Its spec is Sony Vaio FS315S, Windows XP, 1.86 Mobile M processor, 2GB RAM, NVidia GeForce Go 6400. Most laptops bought today will exceed this specification as long as you go with one that has a decent graphics chipset which is the key decision IMHO. My wife has a netbook and I would not recommend going for this style of laptop. They are really designed for apps that are less resource hungry, especially in the graphics department. Screen size/quality, processor speed, min 2GB RAM, decent graphics card are the key features. Don't worry about the likes of dual core as this has little advantage when using Vectorworks.

What version Vectorworks? Have you the latest service packs installed? This is certainly one area that NNA seemed to have addressed across multiple service packs to make sure that you are running the latest versions.

There still seems to be the same old bloat on the Norton feature list, much of which is included in other products. However, if it has been rewritten with performance and foot print in mind, then that's progress and maybe I will give it a try next time I am presented with a PC with it pre-installed on. However, these does still appear to be much duplication with other products, such as web browsers, and it is in areas where multiple hooks into the same part of the OS as other products that can cause conflicts. Thankfully though, non of these areas are likely to be in areas where it might tangle with VW except on a possible install where I am sure the usual 'turn off antivirus' disclaimer may be invoked.

Personally, I would tell him to upgrade, then if he has any problems, get rid of Norton and replace it with something else. I've done this to a number of PC's for people, and they all comment on how their machines spring to life once Norton is removed and replaced with something equally effective and usually cheaper/free. You only have to try and uninstall Norton to appreciate how much of the machine its got its hooks into.

Hi Im not 100% sure what you want, so will give two responses. You answer may be a combination of both. Response 1: The Z value of the is the elevation. In the OIP of the selected stake object (you can select multiple stake objects and do it as one) set the field 'Lavel Reference' to 'elevation' This will then show the elevation for the stake. Do not set the mode to 'Use as 2D graphic only'. You can import survey data in a number of formats from a text file such as Easting, Northing, Elevation and variations on the theme. This will automatically create stake objects and set the correct Z coordinate/elevation. Response 2: If you have a DTM/Site model, then you can create stake objects that automatically take their elevation from the interpolated DTM values. Again, set label reference as 'Elevation', however, this time set the mode as 'Set elev to site model' and select whether you want to take the elevation from the existing or proposed DTM. There are a number of ways of creating the initial DTM. HTH.

Thankyou and very helpful. I guess from this we can deduce that if there is an on screen glitch, its going to have nothing to do with the Quicktime. I know of quite a few people who blame VW screen issues on its use of Quicktime and the conflict between Quicktime version as tested and shipped with VW, and that that is rolled out with many iTunes updates which prompts the first use warning.

I've just today gone back to a PDF that I produced and I am having print issues with this that I never had before. Printing from Vectorworks is fine, but not from the original (and a new test file) pdf that was printing fine. I'm wondering if something has changed in the HP DJ130 print driver or in Acrobat. Of course, I may just have accidentally changed a setting somewhere!

I have Laserjet 5MP which I think may be the postscript version of the 5M that you have. Had it since new when it always felt super zippy. Now a days, it feels so slow, even doing non VW stuff, ie spreadsheets or documents. I'm sure it was never this slow, but I have a feeling that it may be something in Vista (no HP Vista drivers so use generic Windows ones) or XP that has changed, possibly the former as I don't personally print much to it in XP that is time critical on output so don;t notice its speed. You don't say what driver you are using or what OS you use.

Dave Could you briefly comment on how much reliance Vectorworks has on Quicktime, especially regarding within a Windows environment? ie. Is Quicktime being used as standard drawing functions as well its animation capabilities, or are drawing functions handled by the raw Windows API, albeit possibly some middleware to provide consistency between the Windows and Mac environments. I appreciate that it may well be commercially sensitive information, but even if it was something along the lines as to whether Quicktime is extensively used or not would be useful to know.

According to my printed documentation for 2008, only use shadows (and the related options of on ground and softness) require renderworks. However, the online help for 2008 and 2009, as you say, also includes use textures and draw edges. I wonder when that changed or if that was a documentation error in the printed manuals? However, certainly the shadows option is/was additionally graphics card dependant although maybe this limitation has been superseded by using renderworks instead.

To avoid confusion with begin and ends, use indentation. There are different styles with this, but all my commercial programming life, I tab (typically 8 spaces) indented after any begin and reverted back before the end. eg. but only using 4 spaces. Programming style is largely personal style so I would format this differently than you have done, but there are some things that are good practice/corporate style rather than just personal style. One thing you could have done is create a single function sub and passed a variable as a scaling factor. Procedure ProSub; VAR id : LONGINT; result : LONGINT; gA, gB : BOOLEAN; A,B,C,D : REAL; FUNCTION DED_ProSub(VAR id:LONGINT):BOOLEAN; BEGIN { initialize dialog creation } id := CreateLayout('Procedure/SubProcedure', TRUE,'Create','Cancel'); { Menu 1 } CreateStaticText(id,4,'Type:',-1); CreateCheckBox(id,5,'A.'); CreateCheckBox(id,6,'B.'); { Layout Dialog } SetFirstLayoutItem(id,4); SetRightItem(id, 4, 5, 0, 0); SetRightItem(id, 5, 6, 0, 0); DED_ProSub:=VerifyLayout(id); END; PROCEDURE DD_ProSub(VAR item:LONGINT; data:LONGINT); BEGIN { SET DEFAULTS } CASE item OF SetupDialogC: BEGIN SetItemEnable(5,TRUE); SetItemEnable(6,TRUE); END; 1: BEGIN IF ItemSel(5) THEN gA:= TRUE ELSE gA:= FALSE; IF ItemSel(6) THEN gB:= TRUE ELSE gB:= FALSE; END; END; END; { Begin Define Sub-Procedures ------------------------------- } Procedure Sub; BEGIN Rect(A,B,C*2,D*2); END; Procedure Sub2; BEGIN Rect(A,B,C*4,D*4); END; { End Define Sub-Procedures -------------------------------- } BEGIN IF DED_ProSub(id) THEN BEGIN result:=RunLayoutDialog(id,DD_ProSub); END; IF (result=1) THEN BEGIN A:=0; B:=0; C:=50; D:=50; IF gA THEN BEGIN Sub2; END; IF gB THEN BEGIN Sub; END; END; END; RUN(ProSub);

Try zooming in quite close in on one of the invisible doors and re-rendering.

Obviously the model fixed itself on my system. My attachment is of very similar view and it differs from your view, yet all I did was open the file, rotate the view and turn on OpenGL. I can make doors appear and disappear at will simply by adjusting the angle of the view to accentuate the doors in the walls. I can zoom right into an 'invisible' door and with careful inspection, make out the frame and the step shape even though the door is 'invisible'. Everything that I see is fully explained by the inaccuracies of rendering items of same colour on a similar plane. I can render in OpenGL, fast renderworks and final quality renderworks and with some views, final quality renderworks will show the doors but not the exact same view in OpenGL or fast renderworks simply because of the extra accuracy of final quality renderworks can pick out the edges of the change in plane.

Are you saying you are using the same function over and over in the same file?

Fine here... but do try zooming in further. Looks like its probably your graphics card. Try updating the drivers.

Zoom in a bit further and put an angle on the door to ensure that the plane of the wall and the door are significantly different that you will see the edges. They are definitely there in my system but hard to spot. Otherwise its the OpenGL on your graphics card causing the issue.

Now you have the test file, the doors are there but they are the same colours as the walls so made them hard to spot. Change fill colour of '*-Framing glazing' class and they will appear.