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Honestly, the absence of a "real" date stamp is one of the things I find most frustrating about VW. A non-updating date stamp is minimally useful and certainly should only be offered with an updating one. Currently we hand write the dates on sheets. Fancypants brand new VW 2008 and we hand write dates--can't wait for the next release. I realize that the price of VW makes it a bargain but the practice of leaving out really basic tools is just so frustrating.

You used to be able to get the the plug-in for free from Vectordepot. Point-to-point copy and point-to-point move. Also, a handy technique in VW is to do a Duplicate (in place not offset) combined with a Move. I learned this before I had the point-to-point and I still find it useful in certain situations.

We reference our titleblocks as symbols from a project symbol file. If you take into account that VW centers things easily, structure you symbol to be placed at the center of the sheet. This lets us easily have all of our sheets line up.

I was under the impression that in 2008 the date stamp works (i.e. updates automaticaly). Is that not the case?

We use sheet layers (thank you thank you oh Nemetschek!). The applescript idea is worth pursuing. There are a few people in the office who can manage that kind of thing but I may send you a note later. thanks much.

I know this has come up in the forum before but I am wondering if anyone has a new solution? We are dealing with sets of 200 or more sheets (just the architectural) each in a separate file. Plotting a set is a huge time commitment. Is there (maybe in 2008) a way to do this quickly? Is it possible to write a vectorscript to do the plotting? One of our new employees recently come from the ACad world is reminding the rest of us that there are still a few advantages to the big behemoth program.

mmyoung WGR is Work Group Reference A dandy acronym.

You can also center the printing area in VW (12.5 at least) by double clicking on the move page tool in the basic tool bar. It will center the print area regardless of the information in the drawing and the print set up-- you have to make sure that your drawing border is centered at 0,0. This is a nice VW tool that we use all the time in our office.

That is how I use it--but one of my colleagues was trying to select the beam from the double clicked object box and that does not work. I suppose that if the object box did not come up when you double click on the wide flange icon this would not be an issue at all. The tool leads you to believe it will behave in a certain way that it in fact does not. Not a big deal but something we thought Nemetschek should be aware of--maybe I will submit as a bug.

Yes, I just made two blank documents and tried inserting a wide flange. Both times it inserted a default (for want of a better term) instead of the size I selected.

We have recently noticed that when placing a wide flange beam the create object box does not seem to work. So I double click on my little wide flange icon, the create object box pops up, I pick the flange I want and insert it. The flange inserted into the drawing is not the one I chose in the create object box but is the default flange that is set in the object properties box. Obviously, I can easily deal with this by changing the flange in the OIP but it would be better to be able to just insert the correct one. Any ideas?

I haven't gotten any files from you. Would you retry? Weird that the scaling problem isn't happening for you--it has happened here on projects changing scale in both directions--say drawing in 1/8" and printing at 1/4" or the other way around.

I did a test. The change shows up both on the screen in the sheet layer and looks the same when I print out. The number box is too small and it also looks like the text is changing size but staying in the same place--so the spacing is off.

Katie, Have you had a chance to look at that file I sent you? I am having to resort to turning off room number boxes. Don't know when 2008 is coming our way. thanks.

Is there a way to use the previous printing settings for another print? I frequently find myself making the same series of changes to many files and it feels like a poor use of time.

I will send you a file Katie--the problem with the space tool is not the text but the box around the room number.

This is an endless issue I suspect. I am printing plans at 1/8" and 1/4". I do not want to reduplicate information. Text scale and IPO scale is the big issue. The Advanced Properties in the viewports go a long way to to getting things to print correctly. But VW's handy tools like Space do not scale well. How to other firms deal with this? The best solution we have come up with is to draw at 1/8" and accept some weird graphics when printing at 1/4".

Another thing to keep in mind that has been an issue for us is that ACad does not have Layers like VW. So my drawings may have many things in different layers but the same classes all stacked on top of each other. When exported to ACad it all collapses into one very messy layer. Layers may be the best thing about VW (in my opinion). But the fact that ACad doesn't use them means that I occasionally have to break drawings apart before exporting for my consultants.

thanks Christiaan, do you know if anyone has submitted it as a bug yet?

When we place VW Reference Markers they take on the color of the class they are placed on. Dandy. So in our design layers they are a nice shade of green. Typically, we override all, or most of, the classes in a viewport to print black. When we do this, the fills on the Reference Markers stay the color of the class and do not respond to overriding. Obviously, we could make the class for Reference Markers black to avoid this problem. However, that is unsatisfying. Is there any other way to get class overrides to "take" on VW Reference Markers?

Petri, That is what I am thinking--if VW has been a leading cad program in Europe and Europe is more BIM oriented than the US then VW and BIM is not a problem. I am less concerned about VW's ability to do what BIM wants than I am about finding someone in the Boston area who knows how to do this. Moving to BIM is not something I think we can fumble our way through the way we have with general cad stuff. Thanks for the suggestion about the job board Katie, we will also look into that.

Is there an easy way to set up a wiggly linetype (for things like spray on fireproofing)? Or does one exist somewhere in the ether?

Hope it is okay to post this here. 30 person office in Massachusetts using VW for institutional work in the 200,000 s.f. range. We are looking for a consultant with several years of experience running BIM jobs in VectorWorks to help us set up BIM in the office and to get the firm up to speed on the software implications/implementation. Any recommendations/names will be welcomed.

I am feeling frustrated with my worksheets--the only way I can see the various lineweights of the columns is by doing a print preview or printing. Is there a way to see these in the worksheet?

Thanks vectorgeek. I have been thinking that this is the issue that will get me into vectorscript. 'bout time.