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You're right: it's their competence, the absence of which, given the annual demonstration of NV's programming team's inability to out even minimally usable releases (0 for 14 years and counting), and incapable of releasing service packs that don't introduce multiple new bugs for every bug that the SPs supposedly fixed, has been amply demonstrated.

At which point Nemetschek promptly abandons them and expects us to fork over another wad of cash for the "privilege" of beta-testing their new bug-infested crash monster. After the disaster that was VW 2013, we decided not to send any more dollars to Nemetschek until they released a STABLE 64-bit version, which, at the rate they're going, will probably be 12-15 years after the rest of the world has moved to 128-bit computing.

Sorry, but that excuse doesn't fly any more. OS X added 64-bit support in 2003 and has been fully 64-bit-compliant since 2007, Windows XP added 64-bit support in 2001, and Windows has been 64-bit since Vista (2006), so Nemetschek has had over 10 years to rewrite the base components: more than ample time for even a moderately competent programming team to do the job. (Hell, I'll bet a team of a dozen Baltic, Russian, Indian, or Chinese programmers could pump out a STABLE 64-bit version of 2014 in under a year). It's time to piss or get off the pot, Nemetschek: either make it a priority and get it done, or admit you never intended to do it in the first place.

Or they may be highly organized and managed professionals, who work for a company that is forward-looking and doesn't see a huge financial upside to devote the required resources needed to re-code and support versions of their software that are three years old. Given NVM's track record of bungling the initial release of EVERY version going back to at least 2006, their record of SP 1 breaking functions that did work in the initial release, their inability to leverage multi-core processing for anything other than some Renderworks modes, and their on-going unwillingness (or inability) to lay out even a suggested timeline to transition to 64-bit architecture, there is FAR more evidence for IanH's disorganized hackers scenario than for a highly organized, forward-looking professional scenario.

Hmm ... Mountain Lion runs fine on my 17" Late '07 MB Pro (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo), and Mavericks is running fine on our 15" Mid '07 MB Pro (2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo). IIRC, quad core iMacs weren't introduced until 2009. Maybe your iMac is an Early '07?

You could try updating a few VPs at a time to determine whether any individual VP(s) is (are) causing VW to hang or crash, or if it's the sheer number of VPs causing a low memory/out-of-memory condition.

A number of earlier posts on VW2014 have been deleted from the thread, including one linking to a Knowledge Base article on 2014 system recommendations which revealed that 2014 will NOT be 64-bit. (Anyone want to guess how long before the censors remove this post?)

You can set the options so that Vectorworks always uses screen plane if this is what you want. Yes, you can. The thing is, you shouldn't HAVE to.

We never ever discuss unreleased products. I think this is pretty widely known. Oh really? What do you call the annual pre-release dog-and-pony show hyping all the half-baked new "features"? And how do you explain Biplab Sarkar's discussion of VW Cloud Services with Architosh, in March last year, well ahead of its release, particularly the closing paragraph:

I think it depends on how you use the tablet. I stream Keynotes (Apple's PowerPoint competitor) from my iPad to a pocket LCD projector connected to an AppleTV. That allows me to take notes or look things up on my laptop without having to switch away from the presentation. I also like to use Air Display to mirror my laptop screen to iPad when I meet with clients at their home or place of business and hand them iPad so we don't have to crowd around my laptop. It also allows them to watch me make changes to a model and see the results in something close-to-realtime. But I sure as hell wouldn't try that in Nomad. Although in Keynote or with Air Display, you can zoom in on any area of interest.

Obviously, you've never used Nomad outside the VW test lab, but keep on drinking the Koolade, Robert, keep on drinking the Koolade. You're right: it's 1/8th baked, if that.

Glad you got it sorted.

Exported pdf files from VW are vector based, thus you can snap to them. Hmm .... I just exported several files and imported them into a new doc. Some snap, some don't, and some have VPs that snap and other VPs that don't! Wonder what the difference is? Oh well, you can always convert the PDFs to raster-based in Photoshop or another raster-based image editor.

Sounds like the symbol was created with no fill. To add a fill: 1) select an instance of the symbol; 2) double-click on the symbol or right-click it and select "edit" in the pop-up menu and select "3D geometry"; 3) select the 3d object; 4) change the fill to solid color (I prefer red or blue for testing purposes) At this point, try rendering the symbol (a simple QT render will be sufficient). If it renders fine, change it to white or whatever you want the final, untextured color to be. 5) apply any texture(s), if applicable; 6) exit the symbol. All instances of the symbol should now have fill and texture.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "flattened 2D version," I don't understand why you would ever deliver VW files to a client if your concern is to protect your IP. It seems to me that even a 2D VW file would provide enough detail to be used as a base to redraw a useable approximation the original 3D model. It probably wouldn't be worth the effort if the event was a one-off, but it might be worth it they regularly run events in the same venue(s). (Of course, they could import a PDF or image file and trace over it, but it would be significantly more work to get everything aligned since they would lose the snaps.) I'm not sure watermarking a layered file is an effective way of protecting IP. Removing passwords, digital signatures, and restrictions from PDFs is a pretty trivial exercise: heck, there are free websites that will return an unlocked copy to you in a matter of seconds. (In my other life, I'm a semi-pro musician, and there's nothing more irritating than buying password-protected or locked PDF sheet music that I have to go through 4-5 steps just to open and print out, only to discover a big honking watermark in the middle of the page that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to read.) You can then open the unlocked copy in Acrobat Pro or a layered image editor like Photoshop or Illustrator and strip out the watermark. The only way I could see watermarking being effective is if the file is a flattened image file (and even then, someone sufficiently motivated edit out the watermark in an image editor.)

Oh, brilliant. So design students spend 3-4 years learning VW and developing a personal library of PIOS, symbols, scripts, templates, and other resources with an eye toward using after graduation, and then get out into the working world and discover that they're all unusable and they have to rebuild them all from scratch. Now THERE's a scheme that's guaranteed to build user satisfaction and loyalty. You really have to hand it to the VW marketing Einsteins, because when it comes to finding new ways of antagonizing customers, they're far and away the industry leader.

Because it's half-baked, like most VW features.

What version of OS X are you running? If you're running 10.7 or 10.8, the Library folder is hidden, so you'll have to unhide it to see the logs. Don't know whether turning off error reporting will create the logs, but, FWIW, I have error reporting set to "send nothing" (vw2012/OS X 10.6.8), and there are VW crash logs in my CrashReporter and DiagnosticReports folders.

It's an alpha channel mask. It's used for compositing. It defaults to transparency in most apps (PS included), but it can be used for any type of masking. See Using Video and Graphics Clips with Alpha Channels.

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=186678 Hate to bust your bubble, but given Nemetschek's "stellar" track record, Chris Martin will bag a test double century before VW is 64 bit.

Strange ... it imports into the iLighting class for me.

Do you have the layer the PDF is on turned on in the VP? I agree with Ray, though: import the PDF into the doc and skip the vp ref.

And yet, here you are today, working with VW. Don't get me wrong: there is A LOT to dislike, and even despise, about VW. Between the annual new bug releases, the unresponsiveness of tech support (don't get me started), and the unhelpfulness of customer service (motto: "Proudly putting the 'cuss' back in customer service since 1985"), we jumped off the upgrade bandwagon years ago: our last upgrade prior to 2012 was VW 12.5, and we'd have stuck with 12.5 if it ran in OS X 10.6+. If we were starting out today, there's no way in hell we'd be using VW but we've got 15 years of time, energy, and dollars invested in it. As a small firm paddling furiously to keep our heads above water, we can't afford to put our current projects on hold while we learn a new CAD program well enough to produce documents, or the pain of converting our existing project files to a new format, so we'll hold our noses and stick with it as long as it's minimally adequate for our needs, no matter how green things appear to be in other pastures.

Call me cynical, but just can't get hyped up over a slick demo video cooked up in a studio for marketing purposes, requiring dozens of takes using a trainer who practice the script for weeks, if not months, ahead of time, and hundreds of hours of post-production to bundle it into a neat, tidy 2 min package.

Is the "Draw Wall Lines" option for the door checked in the OIP?