jonk..

------ A 30" display takes a lot of horsepower... ------ and a lot of Austrialian dollars

wait, didn't you just say your two vista machines run perfectly?

Situation is, I want to combine two projects into one, but they have symbols which duplicate each other, like ie, project1 has win1a, and project2 has win1a also is there a way to read in a project into another project, and not have symbols duplicate, ie (have a win1a, and a win1a-1) read it in and still have those original symbols show up in the read in project, so there is only one (win1a) and it shows up correctly in both projects?

----------------- i'll try playing with the classes on symbols in such a tree'd structure and let you know how that works. ------------------ that worked, that is how i'll get around having that unwelcome "center line" printing in Symbols. thanks, Jon.

------- Why do you need to print from the symbol edit? ---------- because i import from a complex BIM environment that has excellent management of it's parts, (making extremely complex (symbol in symbol in symbol) possible.) so it is extremely useful to print within symbols (because symbols really are whole environments unto themselves) in such true BIM situations. it is too bad about that centerline, because it actually works to import such environments into VectorWorks... I'll try playing with the classes on symbols in such a tree'd structure and let you know how that works. the only problem with importing such massively "tree'd" environments i've run into is that Vectorworks has an error in the DXF import of a symbol with a scale applied. for instance if the "front wheel" is inserted into the "car" at a 50% scale, vectorworks mistakenly thinks it can't handle the scale (which it can) and makes the symbol a new "group" with an arbitrary name.... then hardwires the 50% scale to this "group" rather than simply importing the symbol normally, leaving the insert, then simply giving it the correct scale applied on the insertation. actually a simple thing to fix, yet the bug report i submitted years ago has gone through 2 major upgrades of Vectorworks with no fix yet.....

notice the dotted centerline in the middle of this "symbol" it prints when i use the "print" command and then save as PDF..

when you say not seeing center line on symbols when printing... i meant, actually being in a symbol, and printing from within the symbol... is this what you meant? if so, i'll have to take a snap shot to show you what i'm seeing... (see pic below) to make my question clear on the visibility, lets make this an illustrative example, lets say i have a car with 4 wheels, the two wheels in the front are the same symbol called "front wheel", the two wheels in the back are a different symbol, called "back wheel" inserted twice in the "top" layer car (same with front wheels)... but both wheels symbols have another symbol inserted in them called "lug nut" the two wheel symbols use the same exact symbol in otherwords. all of these 3 symbols are on the same "class" right now.... or they don't have a class yet so i want to hide the front wheel, and not the back wheels and i don't want to hide the lug nuts obviously in the back wheel either.... how do i select the front wheel and make it a different class? (first question) and what happens with the lug nut symbol that is also happens to be in the first "front wheel" selected? (second question) (better question is how do i make this work?, given above example) Thanks, Jon.

is it possible to hide or change visibility of symbols? why is there a center line at 0,0 in symbols that prints if you print from a symbol? (or even view inside a symbol) can that be turned off? thanks, Jon.

there is a center dotted line at 0 x and 0 y in symbols that prints when i create a PDF... what setting is it that i can turn this dotted line off? thanks in advance. Jon.

i Have two questions, i want to open one project, then read in another project into it, on to a different layer/class/ or something similar. (not sure of proper wording) question 1. what is the easiest way to do that? question 2. both projects have same "symbols" used, is it possible to not read in duplicate "symbols"? in otherwords, reuse the "symbols" in the original project, so they show up properly after the second project is read in. thanks in advance. Jon.

was DWG importing improved at all between V12.5 to V12.5.2? there is something i run into in 2004 files that is causing the import to hang, but only some files... wondering if importing was worked on at all in the latest tweeks... jon.

well i think i figured out the best way finally... there appears to be a bug in the program... all of my parts of the project are actually symbols nested within each other in a hierarchy... which lead to finding this bug. first, i select the symbol that is actually the property line, and took the whole symbol and "converted to line" within the symbol that the "property line" symbol was inserted in, it then no longer casted a shadow, and i can give it the property line style.. perfect for what i was doing, and wanting.... however, as soon as i exited the symbol ((which the "property line" symbol was inserted in, and now it is "2D lines") in other words they were nested) or even go down the hierarchy by double clicking on another symbol, and then return to where i converted the symbol to lines, the lines were no longer there, it just disappears... (this is the bug i believe) i'm pretty sure it is a bug, because i went on to.... get around this, i first converted the symbol "property line" to a group instead, then converted to a line, this seems to stick as a line, if i come back to the symbol that had the "property line" in it, the line is still there now... so i believe that the program is treating the symbols differently than groups... (there shouldn't be a distinction between the two).... especially converting them to 2D lines... Jon.

i'm doing a 3D model for a sun study, i've got along with this model, a "property line" floating above the model so it is in the proper place when viewing from the "top" or "plan".. the Property line is now Casting a shadow, along with my sun study though.. questions are: 1. can i stop the casting of a shadow from a particular symbol or line.? 2. can i show this line as a "property line" style, instead of solid, which i guess in 3D it is not letting me do.? how do i get it to have a line style, while using a RenderWorks, or can the line be forced back to 2D so that i can show the line style and Render it out with another method and combine? (if this is the case, i don't know how to force it back to a 2D element? it is not show the line style right now?, i can't get it to show line style, i'm missing something there.) 3. along with this i had a question on can i hide a Symbol or group, or drawing object? thanks.

I have a project where it is made up of all symbols, inserted into a final layer... I want to select all the polygons no matter what symbol they are in from the final layer/project, and change a solid fill on all the polygons in one step...... can this be done? thanks, Jon.

oh, at the bottom of the "upgrade/demos" link, they had a link to the 11 tuts.. i think that was all of them... thanks for the links... jon.

yes, thanks for those.... those appear to be similar or the same type of tuts i remember seeing, but they had many many more of those, they seem to have just disappeared from the site which is a shame... they were for VectorWorks11, but are very relevant to 12, i hope they realize how much those type of quicktime tuts make people want to upgrade.... jon.

anybody know what happen to those nicely done tutorial quicktime movies that VectorWorks did and i believe had on their website? thanks, jon.

well it appears .ps works on some of your systems... strange... i'll do some more checking.. must be a problem on this end... (and i'll check out the 300 dpi results too) thanks, jon.

hmm, well tried using .ps save option and there is a bug that only lets you use an 8.5x 11 paper size... at least when i choose my 24"x36" paper size option it only saves as 8.5x 11.... also you need to open the .ps file in photoshop, then save PDF from there, or preview makes a mess of it anyway.... any ideas why the .ps save option will only save to 8.5x11? jon.

that was good advice to do a search, i found this below from "mike m oz" which appears to be something that might work... the original problem is that a PDF produced from the "save as file" option in printing is just terrible in VectorWorks, compared to a vector plot from a PLT file.... whether this is an Apple problem or VectorWorks doesn't matter to a Vectorworks user, they get bad results, and VectorWorks should work with Apple to solve the problem.. VectorWorks also should have a "vector" type of output option that can be used with service bureaus, including being able to use a cutter, or Pen plotter.... to create models and perspectives... a question i have related: someone was talking about using Adobe to create the PDf since it was a better PDF, but how do you do that from VectorWorks? is that a two step process? i'm just not getting what they mean here....how they are using Adobe to create a VectorWorks PDF??? thanks for any help on that... this below is what i found it might help someone else out too..... ------------------------------------------------- Use this procedure with OSX Panther (the process is similar for Tiger but a bit easier) I discovered it purely by accident after being very frustrated with the quality of the OS X Panther Save to PDF option on a Mac. (The standard of VW drawings printed that way is very bad with poor linework and lousy colours. In my view it verges on the unuseable.) This procedure produces very good results. - When printing select Output Options and choose Save as File : Postscript. This creates a postscript file. (Do not select the PDF option!) - Double clicking on this postscript file will open it up in Preview. In doing this Preview converts the PS file to a PDF file. - Save As a PDF file by just adding .pdf to the file name. - Do a get info on the file created (Command+I) and change the 'Open With' application to Acrobat Reader The quality is excellent - the linework is crisp and the colour translation is good. The only drawback is it can only be done one sheet at a time. (Elsewhere on the NNA site I have read that to use Batch printing you need to purchase Adobe Distiller for OS X so that you can select it as a Printer.)

quote: Originally posted by mike m oz: Educate them about the advantages of using PDF. unfortunately, there is a big difference between the quality of PLT's and PDF files... PLT producing the better line drawings of Perspectives... jon.

the one thing about symbols that seems really awkward is double clicking them should be to open/edit a symbol, and single clicking on one should be for selecting it for inserting a symbol.... i'm constantly trying to edit a symbol, only to find i've just selected it for insertation... anybody else think that this seems awkward for what in every other program would be to open/edit? (double click) (or is there a preference i can set?) i've tried to make a quick type key... customize but with no success....

some times i get a request for a "PLT" file of the work i've done in VectorWorks... anyone have an easy way to create PLT files from Vectorworks files?

"...and that can only be done in Autocad." wouldn't that be an excellent thing for VectorWorks to add to a future version? to simple ask in the input dialog box where the Xrefs are so so we wouldn't need AutoCad? seems like an easy thing to add, since importing would know that there is an Xref request in the DWG file.. jon.

if i have a couple autocad DWG files, one of them xReferenced into the other. What is the procedure of importing them so the xRef DWG is properly situated in the other file within vectorworks? Or is this possible? thanks for any help. JonKai