Markus Barrera-Kolb

Who knew? Thanks, Pat! Definitely useful, though I still contend that it would be more user friendly to also let us specify to which side of the current cell we'd like to insert rows or columns, and possibly even how many (imagine that!). Cheers, Markus

It's often a pain in the rear not to be able to add a column to the right of the rightmost, or add a row below the bottommost. If the Add Row and Add Column functions were expanded so that you could choose to add above or below, or left or right of the current cell, that would make things much easier...

Yes, it does seem it is supported, but it turns out it's not as useful as it could be! The text only renders cleanly in Wireframe or, if it's the sole rendering mode in a viewport, Hidden Line. For our elevation viewports to be of use to us, we need Final Quality Renderworks, since the shadows are what actually make the drawing read well. However, under the Renderworks mode, the ID tags show up as a pixellated mess, even when you bump up the sheet layer & viewport resolution (not to mention that this makes for much slower output). So it seems the only option is to utilize two stacked viewports: a Final Quality Renderworks VP below, and a strictly Hidden Line VP above. Why the ID tags go to hell once you combine the two in one VP is beyond me, and is a pain in the rear... Does this square with other people's findings? Cheers, Markus

It would be great if the user could set the priority for the different active snap points (e.g. drag them into the desired order in the snap options). This would afford much more control over snapping when there's more than one snap point within the snap box... Oh yes, and loci should be added to the list of snap items!

Still running VW2010, and I've discovered a few project folders in which hidden temporary files have proliferated (eating up disk space and of course backup space as well). The filenames follow this pattern: .filename-VWTMP.vwx .filename-VWTM1.vwx .filename-VWT10.vwx ..etc. Accessing the files via an OS X LAN ? don't know whether that would be playing a role or not, and VW is set to autosave to the local machine. Has anyone else encountered this and is there a way to remedy it? For that matter, every once in a while there are also .lck files that seem to not get removed. Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to offer! Cheers, Markus

I think this is what I more or less suspected. If I understand correctly, I could potentially use Vectorscript to have the one PIO parameter value automatically calculated from the other two, and then this of course could be displayed in a database row in a worksheet. Sounds like I'll have more homework to do if I want to implement it... Thanks again! Cheers, Markus

Thanks Josh, I am indeed displaying the records as a database within the worksheet. What I've done is to create a symbol with text that is linked to the Fields within the Record Format. The idea is that I can enter values for some of the fields within the worksheet and then have VW calculate a value from these that will get plugged into another field in the Record Format. For instance: Record Format: "Format 1" Fields: "Field 1", "Field 2", & "Field 3" The database criteria are set to display all of the objects with the "Format 1" record attached, and I'd like to be able to manually enter "Field 1" and "Field 2", and then, for the sake of argument, have VW set the value of "Field 3" to Field 1 + Field 2. I'm not even sure if this is something that I can do within the worksheet. For that matter, I imagine that even if I can accomplish this in the the worksheet, when someone enters new values for "Field 1" or "Field 2" through the Data tab of the OIP for one of the symbols, "Field 3" wouldn't get updated until the worksheet is recalculated. However, this would be acceptable... I still haven't been able to figure out how to get SetRField to work for this ? is there a way to do it? Thanks again, Markus

Hello, does anyone know if there's a way to feed a calculated value into a Record Field within a Record Format from a value calculated in a worksheet? I've come across the SetRField function, but don't know whether it'll do this nor what the appropriate syntax would be. Thanks! Cheers, Markus

Thanks Benson, that approach worked perfectly! And you're right, Mitchell, newly created dims seem to work correctly, suppressing any digits to the right of the decimal point... Cheers, Markus

Still using VW 2010 (Architect w/ RW). Have a European client here in the USA, so I'd like to display dual units. I've modified my Dimensions standard to display the secondary units and set the Rounding Precision for the Dual Dimensions to "1" (rather than ".1"). However, most of the dimensions are still displayed with one decimal place. Sub-millimeter display is really overkill here and I'd like to be able to turn it off; moreover, it seems like I should be able to. Any ideas? Thanks! Cheers, Markus

Thanks Matt ? that certainly does improve the screen display! I imagine that the quality of printed output is determined by the DPI setting in the print dialog? In other words, if I want quicker VP regen times while I'm working I can keep the sheet layer resolution low but keep the print resolution high? Appreciate the help! Cheers, Markus

I'm using one of the default content horizontal siding textures (Siding 02 Gray) ? it's one of the very simple and clear (non-fuzzy) ones. When viewing the model in my design layer, whether in Open GL or Renderworks, it looks nice and clear. When rendered in the viewport it looks horrible. I've messed with all of the settings I could think of, including the ones in Custom Renderworks mode, as well as the print resolution, but to no avail. Is there something I'm missing? It's important that we can show our clients renderings that represent the cladding clearly and distinctly. In elevation viewports I could at least draw the siding lines manually in 2D, but that's not a viable option for perspectives...

Thanks Pat ??I appreciate it! I wasn't sure how to get it to work using the pipes, but I took a wild stab at nesting the IFs and it seems to have worked: =IF(L='Mod-Floor 0','Lower floor',(if(L='Mod-Floor 1','Main floor',(if(L='Mod-Floor 2','Upper Floor','--'))))) Thanks again! Cheers, Markus

I've got a worksheet I'm using to report and tally interior floor areas. I'd like to have one column show the floor that each area object (polygon) is on, but I don't want the actual layer name (e.g. "Mod-Floor 1") to be displayed, but rather "Main Floor" or the like. This particular model has three floors. Is there a way I can use an IF statement to display the appropriate floor name, or is there a better way to accomplish this? Thanks! Cheers, Markus

Still running VW 2010 on my Mac Pro 2x2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, with a NVIDIA Geoforce 7300 GT (256MB) - probably will upgrade to VW Architect 2012 w/ RW soon. Either way, looking to speed up the system a bit. Any recommendations for the most bang for the buck? More RAM, and if so how much? Upgrade the video card? Looking at the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB as a possibility (currently about $223 at B&H). For those of you who have upgraded to 2012, does the new version place noticeably greater demands on the hardware? Thanks for your feedback! Cheers, Markus

It's my assumption that if I want to get a report of objects from multiple design layers but NOT their instances that might appear in viewports containing these layers, I should be able to simply specify the desired layers within the Set or Edit Criteria dialog box for the database row. However, this results in no hits being returned, presumably because no object can be on more than one layer at a time. I was able to get the result I wanted by changing the "&" to "OR" within the criteria statement and adding an extra set of parentheses around the layer statements, but that seems like a pretty clunky way to achieve a very common, simple objective. Is there really no more straightforward way to do this? I did see a post requesting a criterion that would exclude hits from viewports, which seems like a great idea...

Thanks Peter, that's exactly what I've been doing to-date, and it's certainly better than having to do the math yourself and enter new values manually. I think you're right about the potential for accomplishing the multiple layer Z adjustment via a script... now we just need a skilled volunteer!

For my architectural models, I tend to reference my DTM to sea level, so that the individual layer Z values reflect their appropriate elevations. However, part of the design process is siting the building properly, which often involves adjusting the building's height relative to the site until the desired cut/fill balance and other design parameters are achieved. Currently the only way to do this is to adjust each layer's Z individually ? attempting to adjust several at once will set them all to the same Z value. It would be very useful if I could select several design layers and add or subtract a specific value from their respective Z values all at once. This would save work and reduce the chance of entry errors...

I've found that the only way to make the section lines show up in plan viewports is to select the section viewport, click "Section Line Instances" in the OIP, and then go to "Viewports" under "Find instances in" at the top of the dialog box; then you need to check the viewports in which you want the section line to appear. Simply turning on the class containing a section line instance on a floor plan design layer will not make that design layer instance show up in your viewport. At least that's what I've found. The one issue I've been having is that most of my section line instances have their text revert back to Geneva, overriding my choice of a different font ? rather aggravating. Has anyone else been encountering this? Cheers, Markus

It would be great to be able to set the rounding precision for PIOs that display dimensions, whether linear or otherwise. Currently the only way to do this seems to be to change the document's units preferences, which then affect all of these objects. I want to be able to use some stake objects to display spot elevations on my site model, where I don't want eights of an inch displayed, but in other places I may want them that precise.

I'd like to put in another vote for this functionality -- especially for sheet layer viewports (since it's already available for design layer viewports), but also for things like the DTM. It's just way too easy to move things by accident that you don't want to move, but there are objects -- like VPs and the DTM -- that I don't want to lock completely, because I need to edit them in other ways while I'm working....

Please, allow us to use spell check in text PIO objects! Most of the text in our drawings resides in database objects, such as general notes and callouts, and if I can't spell check these, then the spell checker is virtually useless to me. This is very basic functionality! OS X even provides a system-wide spell checker, yet VW doesn't allow me to use it either...

One feature that would be of immense help to us in being able to utilize VW in a true BIM workflow is the automatic display of window & door IDs in elevation. Without this capability, we still have to add them by hand in the elevation viewports, and whenever a change is made to the window layout, ID numbering, or whatever, this then needs to be coordinated or updated manually -- a great place for errors to creep in. Obviously VW knows the identity of the doors and windows it's rendering, so it would make all the sense in the world for it to be able to display the appropriate IDs in something other than plan view! It's a significant gap in the BIM process if you have to manually draw information that's already present in the database.

Per the 2010 documentation, mutli-line sheet titles are supposed to be supported with Automatic Drawing Coordination using the "_SD#" suffix, but they're not! It would be great if they were supported. I spoke with someone at tech support, and they said that this was an error in the documentation, and that the function works this way because there's no way to enter a multi-line title in the sheet layer navigation palette. However, I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. For the past couple of years I've been using a worksheet to keep my drawing set organized, with database columns for the sheet numbers & titles, as well as items like "sheet __ of __" and "drawn by". It works bi-directionally and thus saves me time, and when I have a multi-line title I simply enter it in the title block dialog and it then shows up in my worksheet (simply without the carriage returns). Easy, effective, and should work just fine as an approach with ADC as well! We shouldn't have to change the orientation of our title block just to make use of a CAD feature -- that would mean that the software was driving the design, rather than the other way around (even if it is just a title block)...

I'd second this suggestion -- once the project fields are filled in, I don't often go back and change them nearly as often as the sheet fields. Thanks, Christiaan.