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IanH

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Everything posted by IanH

  1. Your designer may not thank you for using the educational version. Vectorworks educational use to contain a watermark (and as far as I know, still does). This will be transferred with any file that you use to ay file that your commercial user will use, including their personal libraries. In effect, you will be contaminating their commercial files with your educational watermark. As regard to the educational license, The License Agreement clearly states that... The Licensee (You) may not If you wish to use the license for commercial work, its use must be approved by Nemetschek.
  2. As someone who just moved from PC to Apple Lion I would say that OS X is very overrated. If anything VW is better on Windows especially i miss full screen, pallette positioning and size of icons. Otherwise what I produce in VW is exactly the same in Windows and OS X. I decided to go Apple for VW because I wanted a laptop and go 64 bit. Apple offered me the better choice as it offered limited options so machine specs were standardised and 64 bit is now main stream on Mac where as its still in minority on PC. I could have bought 3 Windows machines for the price of my Mac but wanted to return to Apple that I left nearly 25 years ago (i use to develop software on Mac/Lisa) when there really was an advantage to Apple but they are so similar in capability its now it just personal preference and availability of software. But I do like the ability to just open my MacBook on my lap and it be instantly ready to work rather than going to my office and turning on my machine 10 minutes before i need it just to leave time for Windows to get its act together. But in reality it is the status symbol of the Apple logo on the iconic MacBook lid that unfortunately is more important to my clients than perhaps it should. I would rather have saved my money and gone with a similarly capable cheaper Windows laptop but many clients confuse individual ability with perceived success and if the first thing they see is a shiny silver MacBook and Apple logo they subconciously instantly think success. The premium price of an Apple product is a small price to pay to jump on that bandwagon. And yes. I am a Mac convert - I now scroll my mouse the wrong way on windows and look to top/left of Window for the close button. But equally happy to use VW on Windows.
  3. Curious if you tried a fast USB memory stick configured for ReadyBoost before going to the expense of an ssd cache.
  4. For the text on the bottom of the circle, can you make it 'other way up' ie not upside down? I think I need to play around with some of the edit settings before trying to use this next time. Think this is all something for wish list.
  5. Yes. I think that is the same. Your explanation makes perfect sense although I was using curves rather than surfaces. Do you think it is a bug or just a side effect of how it works? It was certainly a major issue for me yesterday as It was a work around for another issue with TAP that I was having. I started off with an oval, then converted it into a top and bottom arc. I wanted to put text along these two arcs, but both orientated vertically. The top arc was fine, although it was fiddly to place the text centrally along the arc - I'm sure there is a way to do it, but I had other things on my mind other than reaching for the manual/help. The bottom arc was the problem, and no matter what I tried, I could not get the text to sit vertically along the line. In the end, I rotated it 180 degrees along the path which is the point that I found that I could not fill it. Im sure there must be some way of doing this, but I the finished image was destined for photoshop anyway so decided to achieve it in that instead rather than again reach for the help/manual. If it does not already have it, it would be nice if TAP had a flip text command and a command to allow the text to either be left/centre/right justified along the path or to have it shifted by an angle along the length of the path.
  6. Ok, I fibbed, as I suspect most people don't use the functionality. Can someone please confirm in 2012 wether or not solid fill works with text along path when it is rotated along path. It works fine when not rotated but as soon as rotate is selected the characters have no fill. It doesn't work in 2011 and if same in 2012 I will report a bug.
  7. VW2012 is 64 bit compatible, but thats not the same as being 64 bit. The memory is a limitation of the 32 bit addressing operating systems. In fact, the real limit is, by default (as the 4GB allowed by 32bits is shared equally between application and OS), 2GB on Windows and I believe similar on OS X 32bit, although handled slightly differently. The limit however is per application, so you could have 5 applications all consuming 2GB memory. The system will run dead slow, but you won't run out of memory unless you exceed 2GB in a single application or the total memory in use exceeds your virtual address limit dictated by your page file size. Note, amount of RAM does not come into it, as memory is all virtual. More RAM will simply allow more virtual memory to be held in relatively fast storage before it is paged out to slower hard disc. Without the expense and more importantly, hassle of upgrading to a 64 bit OS, you can do something about this by adjusting the split between application and OS. If you give more memory to the application (3GB is typically a happy medium) and less to the OS, you can take advantage of an extra 50% memory being allocated to Vectorworks. Its simple to make the change and needs a couple of reboots. Best of all, its free. Simply Google "3GB switch" to find the instructions specific to your version of Windows and don't worry if you get a BSOD on first reboot, its simply Windows getting confused that things are a little different from the last time it booted.
  8. I recall the dongle drivers being on the installation DVD in a seperate directory than the Vectorworks install. Possibly no need for any downloading as I think my hasp drivers were once updated on Microsoft update. No problem installing on PC and home or laptop if you have, as I suspect, an E series license. Im pretty sure that the dongle is locked to the certain digits from the Vectorworks serial number not the drivers so that it also works in second license scenario where more than one dongle may be in use.
  9. Vectorworks is 32 bit Renderworks is 64 bit (on 64 bit OS) Renderworks is the product more likely to benefit from being 64 bit addressing due to the potentially huge memory requirements of rendering so for most, VW being 32 bit is less likely to be an issue. VW (as of VW2009?) is compiled to take advantage of more than 2GB (typically 3GB) virtual memory on Windows based machines. But you need to configure Windows to take advantage of this. Google "3GB switch" for more details.
  10. Only series B license does not dictate where or how many computers VW can be concurrently installed on. The OP scenario may or may not break the other license agreements but I think it would be quite easy to work within the terms of the series E license.
  11. I do design work for other too and its always under their 'banner'. But the design work is always undertaken with VW installed on my equipment. The only potential problem that I see is if you installed VW on their machines. You would need to ensure that you kept within the licence count and could guarantee that no one else used your license. I think with the dongle version it would have been enough to ensure this, but non dongled machines, its probably a grey area.
  12. Are you using any of the Vectorworks Design Series (Architect, Landmark, Designer etc) with the Fundamentals work space or are you using Vectorworks Fundamentals? Last time I looked, Vectorworks Fundamentals did not support referenced files. Its a Design Series feature. Quickly googling this, certainly seems to be true as of VW 2010 but of course, may have changed in later versions. http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_misc/2010/Vectorworks%202010%20Help/Data/15_DesignSeries/18_DrawView/Creating_a_Referenced_Design_Layer_Viewport.htm However, I have seen something similar to your issue with design series and referenced files. In these cases, this has been due to the origin of either of the files changing so the original origins are mismatched so you are not looking at the same place that you thought you were.
  13. OS in this context is Ordinance Survey. Been around far longer than computers - 1791. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/
  14. I didn't think that Fundamentals supported referenced files. Only design series. Maybe it was an earlier version of VW?
  15. Thanks for the link. I was wary about Magic Mouse before I bought but did so anyway as the short occasions that I had tried it, it seemed to work pretty well. But very quickly I became very disappointed as things could go wrong very quickly - normally unintentional scrolls due to a lazy/tired second finger. I bought a wired logitech mouse and its always perfect. Hopefully this app will allow me do the same with Magic Mouse.
  16. Thanks for all those that replied here and elsewhere. Having had a chance to play further and using some of the hints supplied, I have tracked the issue down to files created only with certain templates. For all but one, I believe that these templates were all migrated from my PC - I cannot confirm either way with the other so I can only assume that it is a PC to Mac template migration issue. Im going to have to rebuild a couple of my templates, but they were probably overdue a spring clean. Shame I cannot 360 PC and Mac template files. But at least I have a fix.
  17. I've got a bit of a lull in work so can explore this issue again Just to reiterate the last question, any way of resetting defaults without a reinstall? If I do do a reinstall, what do I do? Just delete VW from the apps folder - Coming from PC I'm new to OSX so its alien to me to not perform a formal uninstall.
  18. Hi Tamsin Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately it did not work. It was really odd but I could not send to the surface. Maybe a clue to the underlying issue, but if I have created only one site model, would you expect send to surface to give me the option of sending to 'site model' and 'site model-1'? I tried sending to both but either way, no joy. However I did make some progress before I gave up with the retaining wall command. I found that the result seemed to be dependant on either class or layer visibility - I think layer visibility. I had the site model on its own layer and when I was in 2D I had turned this layer off. I also had two saved views, which changed the working layers and class/layer visibilities. As a belt and braces approach, after I had set these all to all visible and show/snap/modify others I found that the edge modifier that followed the terrain came to within expected values. However, the whole site modifier got shifted about 12m off from its correct position and could only be fixed by restarting VW. Also, whilst the terrain modifier did follow some terrain, it was not the correct terrain as part of the model exceeded the height of the retaining wall. So I could not even move the site modifier back to its correct position. Something is definitely not right - this shifting should not be happening at the very least, but without being able to recreate the issue with a smaller model and a few steps, its not going to be worth submitting a bug, especially with me being on VW11. What I did end up doing in the end was taking your suggestion of creating a 3D polyline, sending it to surface and turning it into a site modifier. Visually the results look correct although I suspect that cut and fill calculations are way off. But it still was not plain sailing. The terrace around the pool was a hardscape slap whilst I got the site model correct around 3/4 of the pool area. However, when I turned it it to a hardscape pad, its position too was way off. This was done in isometric view. However when I redid in top/plan view, it worked fine. I think what I'm going to do is to revert to my 2D only plan and rebuild the site model a fresh... But this all got me thinking that I am having a senior moment - I can't work out how to view what site models are in existence and if it is possible to correct underlying data in the existing site model.
  19. * The Blessing - Torchwood - a hole through the earth between Shanghai and Buenos Aires I am having a problem with the retaining wall site modifier. I think I can see what is going on, but I don't know why and more importantly, how to fix it. I have a site model built with survey data between approx 45.6M (45600mm) and 51.6M (51660mm). All design layer levels are all at Z:0. I am now in the processor of adding terraces in 3D space and associated retaining walls. I have a pool area currently with a hardscape (currently) slab at Z:48225. On three sides are retaining walls - 1500mm high, Bot Z:46725 and delta Z:1500. From the 3 walls, I have created a retaining wall site modifier. On the inner (terrace) side, the retaining wall is offset:0 below wall top. On the outer (grass) side, the site modifier follows the terrain. On creation of the site modifier, I can see that the site modifier has gone wrong, or is not as I would have expected. The pad offset and side that follows wall top would appear to be correct (pad offset at 46725 [bottom of wall] and right modifier edge elevation at 48225 [top of wall]), but the side that followed the terrain has a modifier edge at 0. Updating the side model to reflect the retaining wall modifier predictably goes horribly wrong, with the outside edge being incorrectly forced at 0 elevation rather than somewhere between 46725 and 48225 depending on the terrain. Attached file illustrates the issue. I cannot seem to fix this. Setting the elevation of the outside modifier edge to within the expected bounds simply shows a flat line - so it has not followed the site model but simply offset by 46725. So I cannot fix the issue. This only appears to affect the creation of the retaining wall side modifier when the follow terrain option is used. If I set if as an offset from the wall, it works as I would expect, but not how I need. Thinking that this might be an issue with having the level data at 50000 or so and design later Z at 0, I tried this on a simple test model. The result was correct and as I would have expected. So it is something to do with this file/model. I have also tried it on other walls in same model. Exactly the same incorrect result. I hope that its user error that I can fix, but I cannot find anything obviously different between this and the text model other than complexity. I cannot even find a work around and am basically stuck. If I convert the pool terrace to a pad, which I will eventually do, the modification to the site model is not as desired, so it needs the retaining wall modifier to follow the site model data to achieve the correct result.
  20. What Mac are you using? Whilst you were rendering, if you could do a screen dump of the task manager performance monitor screen (the bit showing the CPU, memory, disk graphs and usage figures) and post it here, I can take a look at trying to see if there is a bottleneck somewhere. Also, if you could, go to the processes tab and sort based on descending CPU to see if any other processes are hogging the CPU. The Windows licensing has nothing to do with cores (processors within a single physical processor), its physical processors. However am I right to think that you have a single processor dual core Mac? Windows XP was available in a number of forms. XP Home does not support multiple processors (but does support multiple cores), XP Pro supports multiple processors, I forget if it supports more than 2, ie quad. For instance, if you had an Apple Mac Pro, a dual processor machine each say with quad cores, if you were running Windows XP home, you would only be able to use one of the physical processors and will see 4 of the cores in the task manager, so 50% of the total CPU power will be available to you. If you were running XP Pro, then you would get the advantage of both physical processors and will therefor see 8 cores in the task manager. I cannot think of any other explanation why you would see render times 5x slower on the Windows partition than your OS X one. However, I have never run Windows on Mac hardware other than in Virtual Box and even there performance in a graphics based app was quite reasonable compared with running same app on my MBP. It sounds like something is fundamentally wrong - possibly you could post your virtual memory page file settings and also available disc space on the Windows partition. PS. As I understand it, whether a Mac runs true 32 bit or 64 bit is down to the machine. Some Mac models boot in 32 bit kernel (the heart of the OS) mode by default, even though 10.6 is 64 bit. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3770
  21. XP is 32 bit or 64 bit. Matt doesn't say what it is. Renderworks is 32 bit on a 32 bit OS otherwise it would not work. Render speed between 32 bit and 64 bit addressing is generally going to be minimal difference, especially with Windows which has a slightly more efficient 32 bit virtual memory architecture than OS X. There will be the odd exception to the rule, but in my experience of running identical VW11 renders on Windows 32 and OS X 64, Renderworks is not one of them. The benefit of 64 bit address space is the amount of virtual memory that a single application can address, not speed - its 64 bit data (rather than address) word length that greatly benefits speed and that has been around for years irrespective of whether you run 32 or 64 bit OS. If virtual memory is exhausted - it will simply run out of memory and give an error. With a 32bit OS, this limit is going to be somewhere between 2GB and 4GB (configuration specific but 2GB default on Windows. With 64 bit addressing, virtual memory limits will not be a factor with current technology. If you don't run out of virtual address space, then a 64 bit OS has given you very little.
  22. Is your Mac multi processor? Different versions of Windows are licensed to use different numbers of processors. If the version of Windows that you are using is licensed for less than the number of processors that you have on your Mac then the extra processors will not be recognised. I had an old quad processor PC and had to run Windows Server for it to recognise all available processors otherwise I could only run 2 processors. Look in task manager to see how many processors are available to you. Each processor, core or hyper thread (if enabled) should show up in the task manager. Ie A 2 processor, quad core, hyper threaded machine should show 16 graphs in the performance monitor tab.
  23. You don't mention what bits are 5x slower. I have recently moved from Windows to Mac and must say that the experience is very much the same between the two - neither stands out as a better platform than the other. My Mac is 4 years newer than my PC and its video card but speed differences are as I would have expected. Faster renders due to more cores on my Mac and a bit quicker screen redraws due to the newer video card. But otherwise, I don't think there is anything that cannot be attributed to anything other than more modern hardware. Maybe something is crippling your Windows performance on the Mac hardware, like drivers or something.
  24. Thanks Tamsin. Will give both a go. The trees work brilliant at moment as they have given me the control that I needed to match shadows with an original photo. And having them there is not an issue as they are in part of the photo that I am going to mask out anyway. But it was such a nice effect, I was thinking of finding a more flexible solution for the future.
  25. I would reiterate that the license is transferrable too. Newer versions of VW (2011 on) are dongle free yet still require legal ownership of earlier versions if upgraded. The serial number controls this. Apart from the legal implications, if you purchased a 2008 version that has an upgrade associated with it, it would be useless to you if you ever wanted to upgrade in the future, such as would be necessary if you ever upgraded your Mac. If buying an older version, make sure that the license is officially transferred to you. It is relatively straight forward so if a seller is reluctant to do it, then alarm bells should start ringing.
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