IanH

A Windows Cinema 4D plugin was included with my UK VW 2009 disc if that helps you.

I have not tried it but have checked its in the VW documentation which it is, but in normal Pascal, the ABS (absolute) function will convert any number to a positive.

That's quite similar to what I am looking at writing, but a bit more complex. I am basically writing a North Point but the text is sensitive to page orientation. I had 70% completed that. I am now looking at adding lights representing the sun to that, so North Point and sun orientation remain in synch. It would also allow multiple simultaneous suns (say am/midday/pm or even every hour) so that you can average light levels over the course of the day). At the moment, sun positions are not linked to North Point except via re-entering the sun position each time and when I create multiple suns representing different times of the day/year, I end up having to create multiple sun positions which can be error prone - I thought it would be a perfect starter pio for me to write until I decided to add the sun positions and realised that I probably did not have access to the VW 'set sun position' algorithm and had to write my own - not a problem if I could find a compatible algorithm.

I'm sure that I have seen a post that is possible, but I have just spent the last 30 minutes searching for the solution. I think it may have been posted by Robert Anderson as one of his little nuggets of information. I'm in the process of migrating to 2009 so I am taking the opportunity that starting from scratch offers me and sorting out the niggles that found their way into my 2008 config. I'm trying to set the default options for the drawing border. I want to turn off the grid and adjust the margins, plus ideally, change the line weight for the border itself. I thought it was something to do with setting up the border, then deleting it, saving the file etc. But even double clicking the drawing border config, changing the settings, everything reverts back next time I place a drawing border. Just a link to the correct procedure would be fine. Thanks

Select an object (ie a plant) then use the data tag of object info palette to examine the record information for the objects that you are interested in. Hopefully someone else can help with your other problem - I don't very often edit worksheets.

OpenGL is a hardware based render that is implemented in the graphics card - this is why it is quick for interactive rotations. Different graphics cards implement OpenGL in different ways, often using a mix of hardware and software emulation and often as a subset of the full implementation (shadows for example is not available in all OpenGL implementations). So you may well see different results using different hardware and/or video drivers. I suspect what you are seeing is due to the implementation of OpenGL in the graphics card. Personally, I would stick with OpenGL for quick and dirty screen previews and use a renderworks mode such as Final Quality Renderworks for presentation views such as in SLVP's where you don't need the interactivity but need a consistent result.

I am looking at writing a script part of which will create then update a number of suns (lights) as if they were created with Set Sun Position. Does anyone know if the algorithm for set sun position is accessible from vectorscript (bearing in mind that I need to update some of the parameter values across multiple instances of the light) or where I can find an alternative algorithm. A while back I found a couple of web sites with various algorithms but unfortunately the interesting links were out of date and the others were not quite what I was looking for - either fixed location, some other parameter not doing what I was expecting or me being mathematically challenged. The parameters that I expect to update are likely to be lat/long/timezone (at creation), then page north, date and time as required. The script is similar to create solar animation but either for a static time or a cumulative set of sun positions over a range of times. Thanks Ian

The worksheet objects are editable. Make a copy of one first and bring it into your current document resource browser. Then place the worksheet on a design layer. You can then edit it by right clicking on the worksheet in the design layer. To change the field records, you may need to show 'Database headers' - this is under the little dropdown triangle probably below the cross/tick towards the top of the worksheet window. You can also use this technique to fix the latin/botanical name error. When you have finished editing your sheets, you can then save the document resource back to a favourite or template file so it is available in future projects.

If you do receive an answer from NNA, you know that it will be Your fighting a loosing battle persevering with 11.5 - go on, you know that upgrading makes sense! Seriously, I went direct from 11/11.5 to 2008 and stability much improved - although having a physical paper manual may also have had something to do with it. I can't remember the V11 plant tool much other then I know it was bad/constricting enough for me to develop my own way of doing planting plans without the plant tool. It did improve by 2008 and I do now use the plant tool for graphic representations, but I still mainly use my old method with planting plans as it allows much more responsive control when planing plants and fits perfectly with how I was taught to do planting plans. On paper, not making full use of the plant tool, you could say that I would be adequately served with Fundamentals, but for me, design series offers so much more than just the Landmark extensions.

Unfortunately some of the recommendations appear to be out of date and do not mention later models. What is also important are the graphic card settings. Maybe someone has worked out the best settings for various types of graphics card?

There were significant changes to the plant tool between 11 and 2008. Until I get my upgrade to 2009 tomorrow I can't say for sure, but I don't think too much, other than having better control of the plant tags and additional plants in the database for some regions, has changed in 2009.

I use referenced viewports all the time and thankfully they have always been rock solid. However, make sure that you are using the latest service pack and, as I understand it, there may be issues with circular references ie file A references file B which references file A.

Bug submit.

The symbols stay with the file that they are created in rather than a global area available to all. To make the symbols available to all future projects, you can either add them to your default template where they will be automatically included when you create a new file, or, probably better, put them in a plant symbol file on their own. You can get easy access to this file by including it as a favourite. You may want to check out the locations of the user folders area - check under the tools menu for options/vectorworks preferences/user folder. If you click on the explore button, you will get a list of folders. Any file that you store (best saved as a template) under libraries/favourites will appear as a favourite in the resource browser next time you open VW. Alternatively, you can add favorites via the resource browser - the triangle next to files at the top. Hope this helps

I have requested a hierarchical plant structure with NNA which may help you. It becomes unmanageable having a different plant symbol for every different species. The irony is that the plant symbol is converted to a group on placement. It would, IMHO, be far more elegant if, as in real life, plants were based on parent properties. So if you had a mix of plants of same genus but different species, cultivar etc , then, depending on how you organised the hierarchy the placed plants would use the same parent symbol and properties but the placed plant would only differ in name or some other property such as container size. Until then, if you use the Vectorworks plant tool, you are going to have one symbol for every species/container size that you have to create.

I think this is very true. When I went from student to commercial license I got the printed manuals. Its amazing how much less 'buggy' the software became as I learned the correct way to do things and what features the software actually offered compared with what features I thought it offered. It is quite clear from a number of posts that appear on the boards that the manuals and help files are often not the first point of reference when a problem arises. However, I am also not saying that there are genuine bugs, some of which really should be resolved via SP's even if the version is current. It is not unreasonable to expect support for at least one prior version (ie 2008) because peoples expectations of their software do not suddenly stop the morning that the new version is released.

For an idea of upgrade costs, I'm using UK retail pricing to give indicative pricing for upgrading over 2 versions. In this case it is 12 to 2009 Landmark 1st license. ?268 IIRC VW 12 - 2008 ?260 VW 2008 - 09 ?528 Total ?455 VW12 - 2009 Difference ?73 ?520 VW10/11 - 2009 So to stay current version, the cost is ?73 compared with skipping a generation ie 2008 plus time learning new features and working round new version bugs. Cost New ? 999 Landmark 2008 ?1110 Landmark 2009 FYI. Cost of Architect 2008/09 upgrade is ?288.89 which is more expensive than the Landmark Upgrade.

The upgrade to 2009 is quite modest. I heard from an unhappy VW user who upgraded to 2008 about 6 months ago then found that he was going to have to upgrade again to 2009 if he wanted to stay current - the hint of yearly updates rather than bi-yearly updates came a year ago with the name change to 2008. I did some prices for him and the cost of his double upgrade from 12 - 2008 - 2009 worked out very reasonable compared to the upgrade from 12 - 2009 - still quite a reasonable percentage (40%) of the full unit price even on a 3 year old product. Compare this with Adobe CS4. I bought Adobe CS3.3 Design Premium on 28th July, the day it was released. Less than 2 months later, 24th September, CS4 is launched and the upgrade cost is 42%. That is a heck of an upgrade price.

If you use gradients and colour images/image fills, they always print in colour irrespective of the document settings. You can achieve similar to above using layer colour override on a viewport, but it still does not fix the issue with gradients and colour images. If you use viewport attributes, you can do it on a layer by layer basis and have more control as to what components (fill/line etc) are set to what colour. This can be useful if you want to pick out the contents of a certain layer and print in a different colour - ie red. I use it for demolition items and I know that some people use this feature for highlighting fire controls and circuits. If 2009 does not already do it, I can certainly see a valid reason to treat gradient and image fills in the same way as colour solid fills when displaying/printing a document in B&W only. Whilst you can sometimes do this in the printer prefs, it would be very useful to have the option of having a simplified black outline/white fill instead of a greyscale rendition of the print.

Hi Mark I use stipples alot. Hopefully their use has been improved in 2009 - sounds like the resource browser changes have made them more accessible. The main things to look out with stipples in 2008 (and possibly 2009) are: Stipples can be excruciatingly slow, although understandably so considering the number if points that are generated. I create a separate layer just for textures like stipples so when I am working on the drawing, I can turn the whole layer off. Some people also say that once a stipple area is created, turn it in to a symbol. There may be something in this so worth trying as a stipple area within a symbol does sometimes appear to update a little quicker. If you use existing outlines as stipple areas (using object from polyline rather than freshly redraw a stipple area from scratch from the resource browser), you cannot use a previously saved a stipple in 2008 without having first converted it into a hardscape and telling the hardscape to use a named stipple as the joint pattern. This makes it tricky to apply the same stipple settings to multiple areas of a design. A quicker work around is to create rough set of stipples, then do a multiple select and change the stipple settings of all selected stipples in one operation. This gives uniformity across multiple stipple areas. When creating stipples in 2008, all the great settings are in the lower settings of the slider for stipple density. Often, the slightest of nudges of the density slider will make the difference between poor stipple and a great stipple. Stipples are also very dependant on the pen size. Make sure that you have selected the correct pen size prior to setting stipple settings. Apparently stipples were not quite so finely balanced as this. Preview the result. I export to pdf to see a more true reflection of subtle changes to a stipple, but even so, it may end up looking different in print than on screen. When using the fade stipple from edge setting, care is needed in settings to avoid the void looking too geometric. Its all down to subtle changes in stipple settings. Hope this helps as stipples really do help to give drawings depth.

I agree within reason. Many companies do provide customers with access to their bug reporting software (bugzilla etc) so they can track the progress of customers own reported bugs, or be emailed updates when the status changes. In the UK, your reseller and/or Computers Unlimited should also be notified of any critical issues so that they can take up the issue on your behalf.

Unfortunately with software, you don't actually buy the software, just a license to use it. So you are tied to the license conditions, rather than any consumer friendly legal rights. That said, software is extremely complex and often general purpose so can be used in many different ways. As has been said before, it is next to impossible to make any reasonably complex software totally bug free, especially when used in so many different ways for so many different things. So it would be unreasonable to expect a refund or fix in every case where the software did not perform exactly as the user had wished. You would however expect the developers to have a list of known bugs (you do report bugs when you find them in the correct way don't you?) and some form of priority to fix them or classify them as 'user error'. Its such a tricky area but taking a very simple example. I recently reported a possible bug with regarding exporting of transparent objects to JPEG and PSD files. NNA came back to me within the week requesting a test file which I supplied - it was trivial to reproduce. Overnight (for me) they came back with the response that it was 'now fixed in 2009'. What about 2008 I ask? The simple example suddenly becomes more complex, as I don't know if it was actually meant to work the way that I expected it to - no one ever said it should output transparent objects with transparency, I had just assumed as this is how export to pdf worked. So it may not have been a bug in 2008, but a new feature in 2009? I have no idea. But a customer responsive development team would, if technically possible, put the bug fix in a prior supported version and issue it as part of an SP at some point. But then again, maybe I should have submitted a bug submit earlier, before 2009 came out. Re: Space tool and cut and fill calculations (which would appear to give the correct result but not display them in a way that some people expect them to so its arguably user error). I wonder if NNA has professional indemnity insurance to cover the situation where their software produces an incorrect result?

I'm probably going to upgrade today to 2009 and will take a look. [edit]No immediately accessible stock for upgrade so not today[/edit] That said, I don't use IE (Fireforx user) and come to think about it, IIRC that when I did use IE even with 2008 help, IE would ask if I wanted to override the Active X settings everytime I went in to VW2008 help - it was a popup at the top of the IE window. Possibly worth checking your activeX settings on IE.

Im not asking that. If they can already export in prior version format, they can save in that format automatically without user intervention. It does not require a file format change, just an intelligent save function and a file export that is 100% reliable - which it may or may not be already. As far as I am concerned, the ability to transparently work in consecutive versions is a software improvement.

As far as I am concerned, if NNA supply an 'export as [former version]' here, then there is absolutely no reason why they cannot provide a transparent way to 360 files created in a former version. Yes, there will be functions that are in 2009 and not in 2008 that possibly cannot be exported, but, if you open a 2008 file in 2009, 2009 should write that file out in a way that is compatible with 2008. For files that use bits that cannot be exported correctly, a simple message saying that you have use a file that is incompatible with a previous version cab be display giving the use the option of what to do. Many people will be working in a mixed version environment, especially people are working in workgroups. I personally feel that, and especially now that releases are 1 year apart, it is important to have the ability to open a 2008 file and save it (rather than having to think about exporting it) in the original file format that it was produced in. If it can be exported as 2008 now, then VW should be able to know it was opened as a 2008 file and have the option to automatically save/export it as 2008 without the user having to think about it. Many other applications manage it, and not just text based ones. [red rag to a bull] Or maybe NNA do not trust their ability to export in a former version so put the onus on the user the take the risk of it possibly failing. [/red rag to a bull] I can personally see many people not upgrading simply because they work in a mixed environment and having to manually convert files is too much of a problem to manage.