[Hybrid Groups]

It's not taking up space in my resource browser and hopefully would have group-like editing with other objects visible.

[Hybrid Groups]

In our office we were thinking it would be handy to have hybrid groups similar to hybrid symbols.

Any time I want hybrid functionality I have to create a symbol, which for some things seems to be a waste.

Although it is possible to get this functionality from creative class use, in practice it is a huge PITA.

[VectorScript objects and IFC]

I believe that even a cursory study of the possible attributes and references will be enlightening to those, who believe that IFC-based BIM is pointless and that everything useful and relevant can be easily processed by engineers etc eyeballing "drawings".

It helps if they actually look at the drawings.

[Multi-Processor+64 Bit+Videocard Rendering]

There is a difference between multi-threading and 64 bit processing. In general, you will not see much of a speed gain from 64 bit processing. The main advantage that a 64 bit application affords is being able to address more than 4GB of memory.

Multi-threading is a different story. A well written multi-threaded application can really shine on the newer multi-cored workstations. However, threading adds significant overhead, is much more difficult to write, and can be a huge pain to debug.

VW is multi-threaded, but in what way I'm not sure.

["static linking" for user VS plug-in objects]

It would be nice if there were an option to "statically link" plug-in objects so that any library dependencies in the plug-in vectorscript (through a $INCLUDE directive) were resolved regardless of user environment.

I'm only asking for this because it would make it easier for me to share my plug-in objects with other people.

[Mac: Desktop vs. laptop]

Not necessarily. Laptops have other advantages.

Built-in UPS. Uses less power.

The main disadvantage is a lower RAM limit.

[IFDEF directive in VectorScript]

It is a compiler directive that is common in programming languages. It is actually part of a series of compiler directives- $DEFINE, $IFDEF, $IFNDEF, and $ENDIF.

$DEFINE [macro code] is used as either a boolean flag to the compiler or to define a macro.

You put blocks of code between $IFDEF and $ENDIF directives. If the identifier has been defined to the compiler with a $DEFINE directive, then that code is compiled. Otherwise it is ignored.

$IFNDEF is the same as $IFDEF except that the code is compiled if the identifier is not defined.

$IFNDEF is most commonly used for "warding"- which is the basically the practice of enclosing a code library in an $IFNDEF directive and having a $DEFINE directive inside the code library. This insures that each code library is defined and compiled only once.

$IFDEF is commonly used in "instrumentation"- which is a method of debugging without the use of an interactive debugger.

[ability to (un)fold procedures and function]

All the free editors I know of are for Mac. Macs have the benefit of having a large body of free old school UNIX apps available, like Xemacs (or vi if you prefer).

I personally try to use code libraries as much as I can and bring them into my scripts with the {$INCLUDE} compiler directive. I keep the code libraries open in a seperate textedit (yes, I am too lazy to install Xemacs) window so I can make quick edits to them if I need to.

-P

Oh... and while we are on the subject of vScript improvements... I wish we could chuck the pascal out the window in favor of perl.

And I want a pony.

[Please suggest a good graphic card]

This is purely subjective, but I think that solid additons/subtractions/etc make the rendering time go a lot longer.

[ability to (un)fold procedures and function]

Some dev tools have a multi-paned editor to solve this problem.

If you are going to the trouble of writing massive scripts like that, you might want to consider a 3rd party editor for your scripting.

-P

[Custom selection (How do I do this?)]

That's beside the point. What if I had a bunch of walls each with one window in them?

And now I'm pretty sure you CAN select more than one object in a wall with SelectObj (but the OIP will not reflect this). I was pleasantly surprised to notice this.

-P

[Custom selection (How do I do this?)]

I would like to select all of the window PIOs that have an overall width of 7'6".

I go to the custom selection command in the Tool menu, choose "select only" and "create script". Then in the criteria selection dialogue, I choose "field value" and enter a value of 7'6".

When I run the script, it barfs with an error of expecting right parentheses. Most likely it is the quotation marks in the dimension that is confusing the parser.

DSelectAll; SelectObj(INSYMBOL & ('Window'.'OverallWidth'=7'6"));

If I do 90" it still barfs, and if I stick Num2Str in like this:

DSelectAll; SelectObj(INSYMBOL & ('Window'.'OverallWidth'= Num2Str(7'6")));

It still barfs.

If I just do 90 without feet and inch marks, the script runs without selecting anything.

This there any way to do a quick custom selection like this?

-P

[Workgroup Reference Entire Symbol Folders]

It would be cool to be able to workgroup reference entire symbol folders. That way if I add a symbol in the base files' symbol folder the new symbol automatically appears in the referencing file.

-P

[Door/window plug-in objects]

Did you look in the Building Shell Toolset?

[Window schedule/adding parameter]

You can probably get around this by manually changing the formula in the schedule either by dividing NetGlazedArea by 12 (or 144 or whatever), or by getting the glazing height and width from other fields and doing the multiplication yourself.

[Using dynarray of char as a variable parameter]

Thanks Raymond.

I thought it might be something like that.

-P

[Using dynarray of char as a variable parameter]

CopyOver calls LibHasIDLabel and not the other way around. The dynarrays are declared in CopyOver, and are passed to LibHasIDLabel as variable parameters. Inside LibHasIDLabel, they work fine.

[Fix SelectObj()]

Looks like this actually works properly when used with ForEachObjectInList.

Thanks!

-P

[Using dynarray of char as a variable parameter]

Has anyone else had a problem using a dynarray of char as a variable parameter in a user defined function?

What I am seeing in my script is the contents of the array disappear as soon as the procedure returns. If I change the type of the variable parameters to STRING, it works just fine. Scoping the function inside the calling function doesn't help, and I don't think it is an ALLOCATE problem because the dynarrays hold values just fine inside the function.

Here's the function followed by the function that is calling it FWIW... (Sorry about the lack of tabbing...)

{************************************************************}

FUNCTION LibHasIDLabel(theObj: HANDLE; VAR theRecordName, theIDLabel: DYNARRAY[] OF CHAR): BOOLEAN;

VAR

recHand: HANDLE;

recIndex, fieldIndex: INTEGER;

recName, fieldName: STRING;

labelFound: BOOLEAN;

BEGIN

LibHasIDLabel := FALSE;

labelFound := FALSE;

recIndex := 1;

WHILE ((recIndex <= NumRecords(theObj)) AND (NOT labelFound)) DO

BEGIN

recHand:= GetRecord(theObj, recIndex);

recName:= GetName(recHand);

fieldIndex := 1;

WHILE ((fieldIndex <= NumFields(recHand)) AND (NOT labelFound)) DO

BEGIN

fieldName := GetFldName(recHand, fieldIndex);

IF ((Pos('IDLabel', fieldName)) = 1) THEN

BEGIN

theRecordName := recName;

theIDLabel := GetRField(theObj, recName, fieldName);

LibHasIDLabel := TRUE;

labelFound := TRUE;

{DBGINFO}

Message('IDLabel ', theIDLabel, ' found in record ', theRecordName);

Wait(2);

{\DBGINFO}

END; {IF Pos}

fieldIndex := fieldIndex + 1;

END; {WHILE fieldIndex}

recIndex := recIndex + 1;

END; {WHILE recIndex}

END; {Lib_HasIDLabel}

{************************************************************}

FUNCTION CopyOver(theDestPIO: HANDLE): BOOLEAN;

VAR

parent, newObj, tempGroup: HANDLE;

destPIOType, srcPIORecName, destPIORecName, srcPIOIDLabel, destPIOIDLabel: DYNARRAY[] OF CHAR;

index: INTEGER;

BEGIN

IF (GetType(theDestPIO) = OBJ_PIO) THEN

BEGIN

{Make sure the two plug-ins are of the same type}

destPIOType := LibGetPIOType(theDestPIO);

{DBGINFO}

Message('Destination PIO of type ', destPIOType, ' picked');

Wait(1);

{\DBGINFO}

IF (Pos(srcPIOType, destPIOType) = 1) THEN

BEGIN

{Copy the IDLabel of theDestPIO to the srcPIO so that it is retained}

IF (LibHasIDLabel(theDestPIO, destPIORecName, destPIOIDLabel)) AND (LibHasIDLabel(srcPIO, srcPIORecName, srcPIOIDLabel)) THEN

BEGIN

SetRField(srcPIO, srcPIORecName, 'IDLabel', destPIOIDLabel);

{DBGINFO}

Message('IDLabel ', destPIOIDLabel, ' copied to source PIO Record ', srcPIORecName);

Wait(3);

{\DBGINFO}

END; {IF LibHasIDLabel}

{Strip the non PIO records from theDestPIO}

index := 1;

WHILE ( index < NumRecords(theDestPIO)) DO

BEGIN

{DBGINFO}

Message('Deleting record ', index, ' from destPIO');

Wait(1);

{\DBGINFO}

DelObject(GetRecord(theDestPIO, index));

index := index + 1;

END; {WHILE index}

{Add any extra records that the srcPIO has}

index := 1;

WHILE ( index < NumRecords(srcPIO)) DO

BEGIN

{DBGINFO}

Message('Copying record ', index, ' from sourcePIO');

Wait(1);

{\DBGINFO}

LibCopyNewRec(srcPIO, theDestPIO, GetName(GetRecord(srcPIO, index)));

index := index + 1;

END; {WHILE index}

{Copy the PIO Record}

{DBGINFO}

Message('Copying the PIO Record');

Wait(1);

{\DBGINFO}

LibCopyExistRec(srcPIO, theDestPIO, destPIOType);

{Reset the dest object so that the changes are reflected}

ResetObject(theDestPIO);

END; {IF Pos}

END; {IF GetType}

CopyOver := FALSE;

END; {CopyOver}

[IFDEF directive in VectorScript]

It would be very useful to have an $IFDEF compiler directive in Vectorscript.

-P

[Automatically adding 'User Name' to Worksheets]

You might be able to do this using the SDK, but I haven't looked at the SDK hard enough to say how easy or difficult this might be.

[3D Solid Model Rapid Prototype Service]

Drool... ;-)

[Integration with a version control system]

I'd like to see VW have the ability to integrate with a version control system like subversion.

I guess the main feature I'd like is check-in / check-out functionality from within VW, but revision tree manipulation would be awesome too.

I guess most offices aren't interested in this kind of thing right now, but eventually they will be.

[How do others deal with revision clouds?]

Eventually I'd like to put our drawings under a version control system like subversion. It would be awesome if Vectorworks had some integration with version control systems (like co/ci functionality from within VW, mergable files, and smart revision clouds).

Maybe I should just put this in the wish list.

[exiting groups]

Cmd-] on the Mac.

-P