willofmaine

Ha ha. I thought I had a solution using Apple's "Character Viewer," which let me insert stacked (aka "vulgar"?) fractions right in Vectorworks. I printed a PDF, no problem. But, when I published the drawing, the stacked fractions were replaced with question marks. Good old VW: gets you 98% of the way there... Sigh. VWIS160

Four years and a few days later, and in VW 2019 SP3 surface hatches still get their line weight from a viewport's assigned "Objects Beyond Section Plane" class, and they're still snappable. Sigh.

Well... I only lasted about 28 hours with SP3. I spent over 25% of that time dealing with new issues, something like half of which were graphics related. Based on my experience, scroll zooming in VW2019 SP3 was super fast and responsive. Unfortunately, so much else seemed hesitant and jittery. Even just drawing a rectangle, there'd be a slight delay. And there was a lot of spinning beachball with the eyedropper tool. Even removing the cache for referenced files took a moment, whereas it's immediate in 2018. This is all based on a 400+/- MB file, but, the same file in both 2018 and 2019. Getting back to VW 2018, especially with a looming deadline, was a relief. Good to be back in the frying pan. I've read posts describing Vectorworks as "bloatware," and as a software burdened by lots of old legacy code. Bandaids upon bandaids upon bandaids, I guess. Vectorworks is (or could be...) so great, that I've been pretty successful in mostly ignoring such posts. But, now, really, I'm kinda starting to wonder... Hopefully, soon, the promise of the VGM will be realized and/or whatever else is necessary to make Vectorworks speedy, stable, and graphically reliable!!

I haven't read everything above... I just wanted to add some 2 x 4 fluorescent / LED light fixtures to my project. So I experimented with point lights and lamp materials and area lights in a test file. The area light seemed to work quite well (Screenshot 03). But then, not so much in my project file (Screenshot 04). I think the lights are on because of the shadows, but, for whatever reason, nobody's home, as the lights themselves don't even begin to look like they're on. So, after a good amount of time trying to figure it all out, I end up here: And, finally, using a glow texture, not only do things work, but, I'm impressed with just how well they work! (Screenshot 07). So... thanks for the video, Jim!

Ha ha! I may as well be a Vectorworks novice beginner if I don't have my keyboard shortcuts. I'm clueless as to where most of the underlying shortcut commands are!

Say what you will about AutoCAD but, yes, this ability of its Layer 0 sure would be appreciated in Vectorworks!

Yep, I'm having this issue too. And also, for me, in "Best Performance" mode, just the mere act of grouping the viewports in the first place makes them disappear. Moving the group makes them reappear. VWIS159

I guess I haven't done much today to prompt a redraw failure per se, but I'm pretty sure all of the following are related graphics issues, and they ALL occur ONLY in the "Best Performance" mode. In the "Good Performance and Compatibility" and "Best Compatibility" modes they all work as expected (VWIS159): 1.) After moving a page-scale symbol in a plan viewport, about 2/3 of the symbol is left behind. After zooming, the straggler catches up. 2.) On a design layer, top-plan view, after deleting and re-assigning a class to the None class, about half of everything on the screen disappears. Zooming resolves. 3.) After moving (by dragging) a group of viewports that has been cut from one sheet and pasted to another, the annotations in the viewport are left behind. Scroll zooming does not resolve it. It's necessary to enter the group and edit the viewport; only then do the annotation reunite with their viewport. 4.) As a workaround to No. 3, I tried ungrouping the viewports before cutting and pasting them to their destination sheet. When regrouped on their destination sheet, they disappeared (except for their red update borders). Scroll zooming did not resolve, however, dragging the group to move it did. 5.) It turns out that the erroneous control of page-scale symbol text in viewports by a viewport's Advanced Properties > Text Scale setting, and the lack of control of door and window ID bubble shape sizes by that setting, can be corrected by changing from "Best Performance" mode to "Good Performance and Compatibility." VWIS156. See post here: https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/62556-first-hour-with-2019-sp3-productivity-0/#comment-311869 Hope that's all helpful...

It turns out that this can be resolved by changing Navigation Graphics from "Best Performance" to "Good Performance and Compatibility." Unfortunately, "Good Performance and Compatibility" seems to make moving around in the file (scroll zooming & panning) as bad as, if not worse, than it is in VW 2018. So not really a solution...

But, for me at least, while it remains graphically challenged (what with that need for refreshing the screen, "disintegration" of graphics while zooming, and a generally jittery feel), it mostly seems far more responsive & faster than VW 2018. At least with a 300+ MB file, which seems to make 2018 grind to a halt.

Not at all.

By "recreated" do you mean simply updating the viewport, or, literally starting from scratch with a new section line, new crop, etc.? Other than staggered sections, so far (a couple of days into 2019), I haven't seen any rendering issues with section viewports created in VW 2018. @donlb55 & @BG A workaround that seems to work is to just have an additional viewport for each plane of the staggered section, with crops that start and stop at each jog in the section line. Less and less ideal the more staggered sections you have, of course, but, at least for me, so far, it's been worth the escape from VW 2018.

Looks like I was clear as mud with this. The problem isn't with text objects per se; the problem is with text in page-scale symbols. It seems that Advanced Viewport Properties > Scale Text controls the text size of page-scale symbols, regardless of whether or not the symbols are on a design layer or within the viewport's annotations. Also, conversely, it seems that the Bubble Shape size of Door & Window ID tags is not controlled by Advanced Properties > Scale Text, even though it should be.

Excellent, thanks Matt! (Odd that you couldn't find it in your bug list, as I was told in September that it was submitted... Maybe a misunderstanding between Tech Support and myself). Anyway, hopefully this time it'll stick! Thanks!

Viewport Text Scale Resizes Annotations Text VWIS156 I spent much of yesterday looking at this forum & testing VW 2019 SP3 to the end of escaping the misery that is VW 2018 - which has been especially bad with an increasingly large project and a looming deadline. It's been like running in quicksand. I couldn't find anything, really, to prevent making the leap. So I leapt. Splat. Immediately after converting and opening my project file, a problem: for whatever reason, Arial 37 point text associated with symbols in plan viewports is larger than it is in Vectorworks 2018. Huh? So I enter the viewport, enter the page-scale symbol, and struggle to draw a rectangle to measure the actual height of the text. Which is hard because it's difficult to select and move the rectangle; there's no pre-selection highlighting and it has not grips. Finally, I scroll zoom and, voila, now the rectangle can be selected and moved as expected. This inability of Vectorworks to immediately display changes, which was introduced with Vectorworks 2017, persists with 2019 SP3 (I also saw this with yesterday's random testing). It's really annoying to undo an action or otherwise take evasive action, only to find that, oh no, wait, I did originally succeed with making that change! Just didn't know it. Call me a rebel, but, I think CAD softwares, being graphics programs, should always, consistently, persistently, reliably and immediately display the drafting or designing that one is doing. VWIS093 Back to the text size issue... After sorting out the measuring process, turns out that in VW2019, 37 point Arial text is 0.49" tall, but in 2018, it's 0.375" tall! To make a long troubleshooting story short: It turns out that, in VW2019 SP3, the "Text Scale" option of a Viewport's "Advanced Properties..." now controls the scale of the text within a Viewport's annotations, as well as the text that's on the design layer (the Help description still says "texts referenced from design layer"). Not only that, but Window & Door ID tags (and who knows what else) are not scaled by the Advanced Text Properties > Text Scale as they should be (so, they and their text part company and end up all over the place). VWIS156 Hopefully this scaling issue will be fixed very soon.