RickBern

Nina Try using 2 different title blocks on 2 seperate layers. Set up a saved sheet for each page size and there you go. Alternately, layer link the title block onto a different layer and change the layer scale on the target layer. Choose which one is visible and print away BTW This is a GREAT reason to upgrade to VW 11 because the viewports would handle this issue much more elegantly Rick

Travis WGR symbols definitely update. Jonathan We use LL for this often but in as many situations the symbol provides greater functionality and flexibility John I wholeheartedly agree with you. It's a pain to update/track WGR with the present system Rick

John Often it's helpful to create the entire plan of the "Core&Shell Plan" (the source drawing) as one symbol for each floor. That way, when you reference the drawing into the "target" drawing you place an instance of the symbol and you can locate it where you will in the drawing (including rotating it if need be). Because the symbol is ref'd in and placed in the target drawing it shouldn't shift around unless you move the symbol origin in the source drawing. Rick

Cerveza Don't know much about this but I found this at http://www.cadapult-software.com/newsletter/november2002.htm I think you may be in for a difficult time getting this info out of Landmark but Robert may know more. What Are Proxy Objects? When opening a drawing you created in Land Desktop, or more often when someone with out Land Desktop opens a drawing that you created using LDT, you may be confronted with the Proxy Information Dialog Box.? I?m sure we have all seen it at some point.? It will say, ?The last command created proxy objects and proxy entities to represent original objects and entities whose parent ARX application(s) are currently not loaded.?? Many people have got in the habit of just clicking OK to dismiss the dialog box and getting into their drawing as quickly as possible and going to work.? While others who have taken the time to test what happens when they select different options in this dialog box may have found, depending on their settings and the drawing being used, that the different options all seem to give them the same results.? So what is going on here and should I even care?? Well yes you should care and I will spend a few minutes trying to explain why. This all has to do with the custom ARX Objects; for example the Points, Contours, and Grading Objects that we use in Land Desktop.? The other vertical products from Autodesk like Architectural Desktop and Mechanical Desktop have their own custom objects as well but we will focus our discussion on Land Desktop for this article.? Anyway, if you have an AutoCAD based product that does not include the ARX application that created one of these custom objects then your version of AutoCAD does not know how to display that object.? For example:? Let?s say you are using Architectural Desktop and I give you a drawing that I created in Land Desktop that contains the LDT contour objects.? When you open this drawing Architectural Desktop does not know how to display the contour object so it will not display it at all.? So you can see we have a problem here. There are two solutions to the problem described above.? The first one is Proxy Objects.? Proxy Objects are graphical representations of custom ARX objects.? By setting the system variable PROXYGRAPHICS to 1 you can save proxy objects in your drawing.? This way, in the example above, when you opened my drawing with the contour objects your version of AutoCAD would still not know what the contour object was, but it would have a picture of it to display. Now, there is a downside to proxy objects.? First, the person that receives the drawing that contains proxy objects needs to have some system variables set correctly for the proxy objects to display.? Second, you have only very limited ability to edit proxy objects.? And third, saving proxy objects can drastically increase the size of your drawing.? There is no fixed ratio for this because the more custom objects that your drawing contains the larger your file is going to get. So, Autodesk has come up with solution number two for our original problem of displaying custom objects, the Object Enabler.? The Object Enabler is freeware, which means you can download it for free and you can distribute it to anyone you are working with for free as well.? The Object Enabler is a utility that you install one time, similar to a patch, which gives AutoCAD the ability to understand custom objects created in a specific program.? This means that we don?t need proxy objects any more.? In our example above if you had installed the Land Desktop Object Enabler then when you opened the drawing that I sent you your version of AutoCAD would have understood the contour objects and not only displayed them properly but you would also have the ability to edit those objects with basic AutoCAD commands like Trim or Move. I hope this clears up a little of the mystery of proxy objects and give you enough information to decide when you might want to use them and when you don?t.? My recommendation is to use them as little as possible.? Use the Object Enabler.? Install it on all the computers in your office that are using AutoCAD but not using Land Desktop.? There is even an Object Enabler for Volo View and Volo View Express.? Then turn off the PROXYGRAPHICS variable by setting it to 0 in your drawings so they are not saving proxy objects and your drawings are smaller.? PROXYGRAPHICS is a drawing variable so you will need to set it in each drawing.? An important place to check for it is in your drawing template file.? And finally, back to that annoying Proxy Information Dialog Box that we started with, if you want to get rid of it permanently at the command line type:? PROXYNOTICE and set it to 0.? Otherwise, when it comes up you can review its contents to see what program created the custom objects that are in your drawing.? Remember, Land Desktop is not the only program that creates custom ARX objects.

David Try to convert the pdf to a jpeg/png in Photoshop at the resolution you want to print at and then import the image file into VW HappyFace HappyFace HappyFace HappyFace HappyFace? (sorry, i don't know how to get the icon thingys to work) Rick

We always create a layer link in the file that we reference into. When creating the LL be sure to check "Project 2d Objects". The actual WGR layer is left invisible in the target file and the LL layer is set to visible, the LL is unlocked and located where it goes to. This prevents anything unexpectedly shifting (mostly). Try it out Rick

Thomas It's still the main switchboard number. Try to get the operator (an adventure in itself) and ask to be connected to any sales rep who's actually there. I've worked with Mark Hewitt before and I can guarantee you that he is enthusiastic Rick

Tom Thanks for the comment. It seems like .dwg handles this pretty consistently but I think .sat is a different breed of cat. FormZ writes a seperate .sat file for each layer (analagous to class) in the file being exported. You'd have to batch import them if you had a lot of layers. It sure would be nice to have a general purpose export format that would allow one to export 3d data out of VW and bring it into a rendering program with proper material assignments to sub entities of plug-in objects (ie-Style-Glazing 1 would be able to be quickly assigned a glass texture in a different renderer) One can only hope. Rick

Is there a way to export SAT format models while preserving class assignments?

Oops You assign layer colors in the layer dialog box. Highlight the layer and there's a "color" button on the left side of the box Rick

Seena You may get the result you're looking for by assigning a pen color to the layers and then click "use layer colors" in document preferences The color that you'll usually want to edit is "Pen Foreground Color" If you're using patterned fills also edit the "Fill Foreground Color" This way you get pretty complete control of the density of the color of the layer behind. Good luck Rick

Graham Are you using 11? Seems an ideal thing to do with viewports. I think that if you imported a 3d model and the objects are 3d polys (or some other 3d thing) in VW then the linestyle will not show up. If you convert all to lines on the layer then the linestyle shows up in 2d. The other technique you may try is to use the layer transfer mode to change the line color where the walls overlap. Look in the online help and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you do it print with the "rasterize" option set or it won't print correctly. Good Luck Rick

While we're on this topic I would find it greatly useful to have a "chair" PIO. This would place a chair of various sorts appropriate for office, event, theatrical and residential. The chairs that ship with the program are a little dated (I think some were introduced in MC 3). Maybe they could be updated in the context of this tool. A logical extension of this concept would be a "lounge/sofa" PIO. Between these additions and the existing desk, table and cabinets all sorts of residential furniture and most office furniture would be available. To really clean my clock a "file cabinet" PIO that allowed me to set width, depth, height and # of drawers would be like a dream come true. Thanks for the ones we already have-keep them coming.

Tom I feel your pain. It doesn't seem right to post a question and not get an answer for 2 weeks. I think the instructions in the manual assume you use "click-click" drawing (the first item in the VW prefs dialog box is checked off). If you have this clicked on to enable "click-drag" drawing try to drag from the conectee to the boundary and then it should work. It will also work with multiple selections but it won't feel right until you fool around with it a little. The tool does work the way it's supposed to-maybe the manual doesn't. G'luck Rick

Trey Sounds like a server side problem. Not being able to open a second copy of an open file is expected and correct behavior. However, on either Mac OS X server or XP/2000 a user will be able to open subsequent files without rebooting Hope this is helpful Rick

The list of available bumps is a little light in Rworks. The addition of a grid shader to the bump maps would make specifying tiles a lot easier. While we're on the subject the fact that one can only scale the texture proportionally when mapping makes it much more difficult than need be to correctly specify the size of a tile or other texture. The implementation of lightworks in formZ allows textures to be scaled assymetrically and is invaluable for tiles and for applying wood veneers to items so that one gets the look of full veneer leaves on table tops etc. Thanks for the attention Rick

Katie/Andrew I think what Chris is trying to ask about is the Text behavior in the Object Info box on Mac OS 10.3.4 with VW 10.5.1 When you choose an object in the graphic window and try to assign a new, hierarchial class via the OI palette the first level class list displays text at an appropriate size but when you pick a class that has a heirarchy (ie-created with a dash character) the second level text displays at a much larger text size making it difficult to figure out which class you're looking for. This has happened on 2 of my clients machines in 2 different offices but it doesn't seem to be universal behavior. Any ideas why this is happening? TIA Rick Bernstein

Katie By this point in my life I know i'm unforgettable! Rick

I think it would be great if "Black & White Only" could be a property of a viewport. That way you could work on a design layer using class colors and switch to a presentation layer to print in B&W Thanks Rick

There are a couple of approaches you could take to this. This looks like it may be handled pretty easily in a rough sort of way by creating loft surfaces with two rails (aka a birail sweep). The other possibility is to turn your thinking 90 degrees and instead of trying to loft between two curves put in 15 (or so) curves along the legnth of the wing and loft those. Do it in a couple of sections and use the extend surface tool to extend one surface to meet the others. BaRa may be right that there are other tools that may handle this sort of work a little more easily but the core functionality to make this shate does exist in VW. good luck Rick

A hearty 2nd the motion. If you have an office working on a file server and the server needs to be replaced you're probably talking about an extra 2-3 hours per project to re-establish the referenced links. If you have someone that wants to take the project folder with them and work for the weekend you're also talking huge time wasted. Please push this issue up the ladder. Rick

Dave I don't know if I'm doing something wrong here but if I render a model and then go to save the image file the model has to re-render when I save the file. Other programs that use the lightworks renderer don't seem to do it. Any tips to help save a little time would be a great help. Thanks Rick

Fred The drawings weren't heavily annotated as they are early dd drawings but the text and dimensions that were there looked ok to me. Rick

Even though I'm still raving about it and overcome with happiness... My viewports on the imported drawings list these scales: 688.10166702 instead of 1/64" to 1' 192.00000036 instead of 1/16" to 1' I don't know if you can trap for these sort of rounding errors. Thanks again Rick

This is phenomanal. I got a revised cd with 4 dwg files for a project that I had imported previously in v10.5. In 11 I choose 1 menu command to import the four files and they all came in to 1 VW file laid out on sheet layers properly formatted. No longer have to try to figure out what the architect was thinking his sheets look like and piece them together from model space. Somebody (Katie?) please tell that engineer that works on the dwg compatibility that he earned my thanks, respect and admiration today. Rick Bernstein