Markus Barrera-Kolb

Andrew, I'm not quite sure I follow: You're saying that the current strategy is to incorporate the bug-fixes in the yearly update, i.e. new release? That would mean that, as a customer and end-user, you'll be forced to buy the upgrade in order to get the bugs fixed in the application you bought less than 12 months ago. If I've purchased VW2008, why should I have to pay for VW2009 in order for issues with '08 to get fixed? Aren't upgrades supposed to introduce new or better functionality and bug-fixes to, well, fix bugs?

This may very well have been discussed before in the forum, but I couldn't find a specific answer: I've referenced an external file into a DLVP, and I wish to turn some of its classes off in a SLVP. However, even when I use "viewport-specific class definitions" for the referenced DLVP, so that the classes in question are imported into the document and thus show up in the file's class list, I cannot set their visibilities in the SLVP. Am I missing something, or is the usefulness of referenced layers really that limited?

Ditto! For that matter, options to bot both/either the leader or trailer on a separate line would be quite useful...

It does seem like it would be reasonable for someone at NNA to monitor the board for big and/or recurring software issues, and I assume that at times this does happen. On the other hand, the bug reporting process isn't that onerous. So how about a 'Bugs' Discussion area on the forum? It would combine the two functions, and it would provide a centralized location on the forum for reporting issues. After all, a lot of posts are really just requests for help in solving a particular problem that isn't necessarily related to the software misbehaving.

Spell-checking should work on general note bojects as well as keynote & callout objects. As it is, it seems that anything that's tied to a database has it's file-path or file-name spell-checked, rather than the actual text content. How useless is that?

As it stands, it seems that keynote positions are determined by the leader, between the actual arrow and the portion that forms the shoulder to the text. However, most of our keynotes are simple numbers surrounded by a box, and we'd like to be able to line them up vertically. When you add or reorder the keynotes, some single-digit references turn into double-digit references, and vice-versa. And when this happens, the positions of the boxes change -- they're no longer nicely stacked. So then you've got to go through and reposition them all... Therefore I'd like to be able to optionally set the center of the text or bubble as the keynote's positioning point. I'll attach an image to illustrate what I'm talking about.

Hi Frank -- I certainly wasn't aware of having changed any scale settings, and all of the design layer and SLVP scales still are exactly what they're supposed to be. Is it possible that an attempt to modify the VP scale of multiple viewports (selected in the Navigation Palette) would cause this behavior but then actually not change the scales of said vieports? Also, the contents of every single VP in the whole file had been shifted, not just ones that I'd modified via the Navigation Palette... I've saved a version of the file (after I'd corrected a few of the VPs) if you'd be interested in taking a look at it.

Is it possible that selecting a few of my viewports at once in the Navigation Palette and adjusting some class visibilities would somehow reposition the model in all viewports? I don't know if this is what caused it, but I can't think of anything else I did. I didn't set a new origin or move any part of the model, but all of a sudden, the contents (not annotations, though) of all viewports are a few million feet off in space somewere. When I check the design & sheet layers, the origin is where it's supposed to be. The only way I can figure out how to fix this now is to go in and move the annotations into the proper place relative to the viewport contents, and then move the viewport back to the proper location on the sheet. For each viewport. On each sheet. And I'm not sure whether the associative dimensions will still be associative once I've done this. What a royal pain in the ass...

Hmm, playing around with it some more, it seems that if I gray specific classes in the DLVP I cannot snap to objects in those classes. However, if I gray an entire layer within the viewport and leave its classes fully turned on, then the snaps work. Everything else is in order, i.e. everything is in Top/Plan view, the appropriate snaps are turned on, etc. Sure seems like odd behavior...

Is there any way you can snap to objects in a design layer viewport whose classes have been grayed in that viewport? Given that you can select Class and Layer Options for snapping to grayed classes and layers, why shouldn't I be able to snap to grayed objects in DLVPs?

Using select you can add additional items to your selection set. However, if your selection marquee includes something that's already selected it will be de-selected. While at times this may be the desired effect, I wish there was also an option for exclusively adding to the selection set. Sketchup provides this option by using the key -- obviously this won't work in VW, since is already used in lieu of left-to-right crossing selection, so another modifier key would have to be used...

Thanks maarten -- that did it. Not particularly intuitive, but that wouldn't be the first time in VW. In any event, at least I can get the hatch preview to be recognizable now...

I've modified hatches only to find that their resource browser icons/previous are suddenly zoomed way out or in, so that you can no longer recognize the hatch from its icon, and I haven't been able to figure out how to adjust the display of this preview. Is there any way to do this?

Am I missing something or is there really no way to specify a text margin for worksheet cells? It's rather frustrating, because text that's either left or right justified is right up against the cell border, which neither looks good nor is particularly legible. I suppose you could add extra columns just to act as spacers, but that would make the worksheet much more cumbersome than it needs to be... Unless someone can enlighten me to the contrary, it might be another one to add to the wishlist, especially since, as a recent convert from AutoCAD, I'm finding worksheets to be a really great asset in VW.

Didn't want to say it, but it is rather... butt-ugly.

Christiaan, if you'll be getting to harangue the NNA folks in London, another one that we've ardently wished for is stackable fractions, particularly for dimensions. A few others would be: Allow feet & inches format in worksheets to use a dash separator (i.e. 10'-6"), even though I wish we'd get to use metric in the U.S.; The ability to lock the position of sheet layer viewports; Improvement to multiple object modification (should be able to select multiple PIOs of the same type and modify in the OIP!) - Custom Modification function is awful; ...and ditto on OLE!

It would be nice to be able to set an application-wide default font. Even though I have a font selected under Text > Font, there are still plenty of times when VW wants to revert to the default Geneva (for instance when imorting DWG files). Not a huge deal, but it would be a nice touch...

It seems that most VW files, when compressed in a ZIP file, get significantly smaller, often by as much as a factor of 5. Is this an indication that VW does a poor job of storing the information efficiently? It sure seems that we're using a lot more disc space than we used to with AutoCAD, for very similar projects, and there aren't many other file types that seem to be as compressible as VW files...

Does anyone know why, when I try to import a worksheet, all of the filetypes that VW is supposed to be able to import (CSV, SLK, DIF, etc.) are grayed out and cannot be selected? I've created a new worksheet in the resource browser and made it active, but to no avail. When I change the filename extension to TXT it'll allow me to select it, but then it says it's an unrecognized file type...

It would be great to be able to apply some text formatting within General Notes objects, such as underline or bold. Tabs would be another great feature, since our notes often have to include lists of, say, structural design criteria within a single note. If text objects allowed you to do hanging indents or numbered lists, then I might use those for my notes, but then you still wouldn't have the database functionality...

In the OIP for your door and window objects, make sure that you selec "Full break with caps" under "Breaks". This way, when you turn off the door and/or window classes, the wall breaks will have end caps. The one drawback of this, I think, is that these breaks will show up when you want to do a reflected ceiling plan, where of course you don't want to show them. Would be nice if this was something you could override in a viewport. I also don't quite know whether WinDoor objects give you greater flexibility in this regard -- worth checking into. The disadvantage of Pat's approach, if I understand it correctly, is that the jambs will still show up (thus capping the wall breaks), and that's information which is not really wanted on a structural plan.

Ditto, and it should also be possible to place keynote tags within a viewport while having the keynote legend or text reside on the sheet layer outside of the viewport!

It would be really useful to be able to create linetypes that incorporate numbers, letters, or symbols, rather than being limited to just different combinations of dashes.

...will do.

islandmon - exactly what I was thinking. Kind of like when you erase a worksheet in the drawing: it doesn't actually get purged from the file until you delete in the resource browser...