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late breaking news .... I contacted Nemetchek Support by e-mail about this issue. Donal Ward replied that he had not encountered this problem before, and advised me to re-install VW12. After reinstallation the SketchUp plug-in is now working. Whatever the problem was is a mystery we may never fully understand. Thanks to Donal.

Thanks Geroge, bryn and dcont - but, as described above, the "Import SketchUp" command does not appear in any of the menus in the workspace editor, and when I run the plugin installer it gives the alert as noted in my original posting ("No installation was necessary... etc"), and the installer will not proceed further. Perhaps someone from Nemetchek can comment?

Would like to import some files created in SketchUp. According to VW User's Guide it is simply a matter of adding "Import SketchUp" command to the workspace, using workspace editor, but I can not find the command anywhere. So I downloaded "InstallSketchUpImport1200" from the website, but when I ran the installer it said: 'No installation was necessary. The files to be installed are already on your disk, or are not needed for your hardware setup'. (iMac G5 OSX 10.4). I've been through every command offered in workspace editor to no avail - can anyone advise on this please?

First open a blank (new) document, then select the door tool. Open the door tool preferences, and select bi-parting door, and Parts. Now set the astragal sizes to 0 (zero). While you're at it set all the other parts to the sizes you prefer. Do the same exercise for the other door types, until you have the defaults set just as you prefer them to be. Now save the (still blank) drawing as a Template, and when you use it in future there will be no astragals in the bi-parting doors. If you already have templates made - say for different page sizes, or with title blocks - simply open the existing template, make your adjustments to the door preferences, and Save as Template use the same name (replacing the original). It's worth doing a similar exercise for windows also, particularly if you work in metric units, because most of the VW "standard" part sizes are based on imperial.

As a follow up, in looking in the manual to see what the purpose of Quartz Imaging is, I noticed the following info for Mac users: In the Print dialogue box select Vectorworks in the drag down menu and select "Enable special processing for transparent color bitmaps" - this allows transparent overlay layers to print on a Postscript printer.

Very good Christiaan - turning Quartz Imaging OFF results in printing fill patterns correctly. Interesting to see that with Quartz on and anti-aliasing off it is possible to achieve transparency (for "overlay" layers), but fill patterns are lost. Transparency also works with anti-aliasing on but not as well. In general we'll turn Quartz Imaging off, which gives us fill patterns and much quicker printing! Thanks for your help.

Clc3200 and Oce plotter not fully supported by Gimp printers, so we'd loose a lot of functions for these machines. I was hoping that a solution within VW was possible, as it looks to be due to some change introduced in version 12.

Thanks Christiaan, but no luck - I'd already experimented with the printing resolution with no luck. The same problem occurs printing to our Oc? large format B+W plotter - shades but no fill patterns. Your PDF approach reveals an interesting aspect however - the PDF appears to have only solid colours also, until one zooms in to say 500% and there the patterned fill are! But they are such a fine resolution that they print out like solid colours - even on a 1200dpi laser printer. I'd be sorry to loose the ability to use these fill patterns, particularly as they are in many drawings created before upgrading to VW12. Anyone got any further suggestions?

VW12.0.1 on iMac G5 OSX 10.4. When printing a drawing using fills the pattterns do not print correctly on a Canon CLC3200 colour lazer printer - i.e. fills print as shades of solid colours but diagonal patterns, cross hatches and dotted fills are not visible. Printing resolution in Doc Prefs is set to default 72dpi. Also, it is not possible to print transparent layers (print as solid), whereas this works fine on an inkjet printer. Any solutions?