Jump to content

unlurking

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    24

  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

 Content Type 

Posts posted by unlurking

    Viewer - how to?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    my original suggestion was:

    1. Set up the drawings to display all the objects you need and none of the information that you don?t want

    2. Export as DWG file

    3. Export as PDF file

    4. Send the consultant both files

    I do this exactly already - and using export batch pdf as well.

    One job has 60 seperate files and 7 consultants for a total of 135 sheets. 4 of the consultant wish to have certain views of plans. Using saved views and saved layers I can set up specifically for each of thier different requirements, batch .pdf a portion and open and process for each of the 4 At thirty seconds per process with 8-10 file open at a time = 4.5 hours of purely mundane unmitigated doom for the poor soul who thought interning at an architects office would be a great creative outlet- But no, thirty seconds is not realistic. Lets say one whole day of Fun.

    We might distribute 4 times during a typical project which gets expensive and not the best use of the clients money - I have an idea though, we could purchase VW programs and give them to the consultants to do their own exporting... yeah, then they could stubornly continue to use acad or, they could work on vectorworks directly depending on job size and number of stations they have. I could justify the cost - maybe we sub-lease the license even?

    Viewer - how to?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I am posting an interesting email I received:

    "The process involves:

    1.) Setting up the drawing with all the objects you need and none of the information you don't.

    2.) Then print as a PDF file.

    3.) Open PDF in Adobe Illustrator.

    4.) Export to DWG format.

    5.) Open file in autocad.

    All of the objects land on the same layer in the newly created DWG format, but that is fine for us because we gray everything out anyway. The text sometimes has issues, but is easily fixed by modifying the Textstyle. and changing Mtext to single line Text objects.

    As for swag(sh*t we always get) what I would really love is a copy of Vectorworks to play with export settings to try and make the process painless for consultants who use Autocad, or have them place the export to DWG in the free viewer so that clients can set thier own export settings. One size does not fit all. The are million ways to setup a VW drawing as well as a million ways to setup an Autocad file. Each client/consultant relationship may need different settings to make things happy.

    On a side note I believe they should also put an save as Vectorworks 11, 10, 9 ...etc. format options in the free viewer or other free conversion program. The burden of work should be on the person who refuses to upgrade not on the person running the latest and greatest. This is avalible for autocad and makes lives easier and happier."

    End of message'

    BTW, The consultant dude that wrote this is of the caliber that put others to shame...

    I MOVE THAT THE VIEWER BE UPGRADED TO EXPORT .DWG FILES !

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    I wish the future is now. Hey! This really doable - the last bastion of consultant lazyness will be buried forever -I MOVE THAT THE VIEWER BE UPGRADED TO EXPORT .DWG FILES ! Everybody that must distribute .dwg files to tons of human autocad bio-robots will do the happy dance (that must be worth something!) I invision somthing like Christmas in July! ITS THAT BIG!

    Make it free (with 2000 only even!) to users unless they must have 2003/2004/2005 then, $lam them for a lic.

    Or, limit the number of exports to 100 before they have to re-download and, re-install the viewer - I bet you will garner lot of hits though.

    Please?

    Viewer - how to?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Thank you everybody, you are all correct with the situation.

    I have reviewed the contracts that we have with the consultants. We could elect to send out HARD COPY in lieu of electronic data. I did not want to yank their chain but, this is getting silly and, expensive.

    Let us not forget - I am lazy too or, rather would like to spend most my time making a responsible contribution to the built environment - not translating CAD fles.

    I MOVE THAT THE VIEWER BE UPGRADED TO EXPORT .DWG FILES !

    Hey, The time I would save is money I could use to buy more VectorWorks Licenses. What is the downside to this?

    Viewer - how to?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by unlurking

    The idea was to flow architectural drawings and work to our assigned civil, stuctural, mechanical, electrical, lighting and plumbing consulting engineers the exact plans we are currently using, and allow them to pick and choose which parts of the drawing they need to - to export and show their respective equipment without asking our office to 'example: turn off the doors furniture or create special background information' and then translate vectorwork to .dwg file and send each separated file (their request..) to each different consultant. Each consultant has an IT dept. with different cad criteria. I am getting jerked around more than a dog with 5 leashes trying to meet everybody's file expectation.

    Acad users can import and scale an image using 3DAign command. The engineers need to accurately scale off the vectors so a rastor image is not as usefull.

    As much as I would like to do all of their work as well as mine, I don't think it would be fair.

    And, switching consultants is not currently an option.

    Viewer - how to?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I am attempting to distribute to all our consultants vectorworks file data that they can view and, set up .dwg files for use as backgrounds for their work. Our lighting consultant has said, if I understand correctly, this is entirely possible and would save me from having to translate to .dwg files each sheet with the appropriate background info for each consultant. GREAT! If True.

    I shortly later recieved this missive from one of our hardworking consultants:

    'I played around with the VectorWorks Viewer and I cannot seem to save or export. I keep getting a pop-up window stating that I need the full application to be able to do run this command. I also found is that all walls, furniture, etc? are all on layer NONE. Is there something that I am missing or doing wrong as far as the VectorWorks Viewer? If you could please send me some info I would really appreciate the help.'

    Can anybody help with a 'step by step'?

    Thank you.

    John

    DWG Scaling Issues

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    if you learn the VP on sheets you will find it a lot easier

    not much to it.

    create a view of what you want on your sheet

    draw a rectangle around the area (none fill, none line)

    leaving the rectangle selected

    create a VP

    in the dialog

    when you go to sheet you are allowed to create a sheet here

    (if you have not created a sheet before

    the VP will then be on the sheet

    you can scale it to fit the page

    (pages are setup in edit in sheet properties)

    you then insert you title block on the sheet which is already 1:1

    you can get the scale of the view using drawing bubble tool

    in the annotation mode.

    worth the effort to learn

    we use it for every type of work

    from 1 sheet to 20 sheets

    So, You are basically using the same conventions as an autocad user. PS (paperspace)for anotations and sheet titleblocks etc. all the actual line work is drawn 1:1 in MS (modelspace) then its back to PS, viewport is created and objects within are scaled to whatever is needed..

    Is this the best way to draw? Mimicking Autocad?

    I don't know very much about this but with a larger projects the production speed sucks when layer linking is used - for us at least - very hard to make design development decisions when only a portion of the drawing source is viewable.. I need good workflow and simple proceedures.. many of our drafters have Acad experience.

    VectorWorks vs ArchiCad vs. AutoCad

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Have used all three. The learning curve is steep (and about two years long) with archicad - you must embrace the 3d aspect to use it effectively - your designers must know how a building is put together, the program does allow more than one person to work on a large project through various admin tools. The user interface and controls were lacking 'intuitiveness' a dialog window for example appears and the most important button/control in the window seems like it was placed/positioned as an afterthought..

    stepping down..

    Dehatching a locked layer link on a file - HELP!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Assuming you're not talking about Top/Plan drawings, perhaps Convert Copy to Lines on the LL first, then modifying the group? Manually you would have to select, then call the command, then operate on the group.

    In VS I believe you would use the DoMenuTextByName procedure to Convert Copy to Lines, then something like:

    VAR

    ObH, gObHd :HANDLE;

    BEGIN

    gObHd:=FSACTLAYER;

    WHILE gObHd<>NIL DO BEGIN

    IF GETTYPE(gObHd)=11 THEN BEGIN

    obH:=FINGROUP(gObHd);

    WHILE ObH<>NIL DO BEGIN

    SetFillBack(ObH,0,0,0);

    SetLS(ObH,2);

    SetPenFore(ObH,189);

    SetLW(ObH, 14);

    SetClass(ObH,'None');

    obH:=NEXTOBJ(obH);

    END;

    END;

    gObHd:=NEXTSOBJ(gObHd);

    ReDraw;

    SetPref(10,false);

    SetPref(11,false);

    END;

    END;

    To modify the group.

    Line #2: VAR

    |

    { Error: Variable declarations must be at the beginning. }

    Line #3: ObH, gObHd :HANDLE;

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #4: BEGIN

    |

    { Error: Did not expect this after end of statement - missing ;? }

    Line #5: gObHd:=FSACTLAYER;

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #6: WHILE gObHd<>NIL DO BEGIN

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a Boolean. }

    |

    { Error: Expected DO }

    Line #7: IF GETTYPE(gObHd)=11 THEN BEGIN

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #8: obH:=FINGROUP(gObHd);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #9: WHILE ObH<>NIL DO BEGIN

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a Boolean. }

    |

    { Error: Expected DO }

    Line #10: SetFillBack(ObH,0,0,0);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #11: SetLS(ObH,2);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a handle. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected ) }

    |

    { Error: Did not expect this after end of statement - missing ;? }

    Line #12: SetPenFore(ObH,189);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a handle. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Warning: Expected a longint or integer expression. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Warning: Expected a longint or integer expression. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Warning: Expected a longint or integer expression. }

    |

    { Error: Expected ) }

    |

    { Error: Did not expect this after end of statement - missing ;? }

    Line #13: SetLW(ObH, 14);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a handle. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected ) }

    |

    { Error: Did not expect this after end of statement - missing ;? }

    Line #14: SetClass(ObH,'None');

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a handle. }

    |

    { Error: Expected , }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected a string. }

    |

    { Error: Expected ) }

    |

    { Error: Did not expect this after end of statement - missing ;? }

    Line #15: obH:=NEXTOBJ(obH);

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    |

    { Error: Identifier not declared. }

    Line #16: END;

    |

    { Error: Compile stopped (too many errors). }

    Dehatching a locked layer link on a file - HELP!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    You cannot change the attributes of a Layer Link, even when unlocked. Have you tried this manually using the attributes palette? Vectorscript can not do anything that you can not do manually in VectorWorks.

    Of course, I meant you have to find the linked orginal then change its attribut to none, etc..

    But in the DWG export, you can choose not to export fills, if that will help you.

    The ACAD user has told be that the fills and hatches remain even though I choose not to export or rather, unchecked these boxs in the export dialog window.

    Dehatching a locked layer link on a file - HELP!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    A Layer Link just displays what is drawn on the on the "parent" layer, so you cannot turn off the fill on the link unless you turn it off on the parent layer. VectorScript will not help you in this.

    You could, however, toggle on "Use Layer Colors" while displaying the linked layer, and if the linked layer's foreground fill color was set to white, the hatch would "disappear". Unfortunately, "none" is not a color so you would have to settle for white.

    Removing the fill (none) is the general idea - it is a silly stunt to make an ACAD user happy with exported files...

    Dehatching a locked layer link on a file - HELP!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    My understanding is that you cannot do that because of the classes of the items on the referenced layer. Why not just change the classes attributes?

    Opening up, unlocking and, changing the object attributes is exactly what I wish to do - but really, really fast because there are many, many files and it will take a long, long time open each layer link in each file.

    A script is what I am seeking.

    Dehatching a locked layer link on a file - HELP!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I have been goofing around with scripts.

    Can someone send me a script I can add to my menu that will:

    Select all layer links, unlock then change all the objects fill attributes to 'none'?

    I got so far in a script as to be able to select all (duh.?) and unlock just one layer at a time.. can't seem to find the change attribute tool and the other vexing issue is how to select the next layer link in the file and unlock, change fill to none and so on...

    Suggestions and comments welcome.. I don't have a lot of experience to do this but, I am unwilling to delegate out a bunch of mundane work to someone with even less experience.

    TIA

    John

    BuG?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I think I found a real bug on VW 12.5. For the text I did on the area separation diagrams file, I used tabs to make things line up nicely. In 12.5, all those tabs turned into rectangles.Is it me? Is this a feature? Can I turn it off?

×
×
  • Create New...