James Milkey

Hi All, I am wondering if there is a way, in the find and modify command in Vectorworks, to select a range of channels. For example, I want to select all light fixtures in Channels 1 thru 8. Typing 1-8 in the enter text field does not work. Any thoughts? I am sure I am missing something obvious, I hope. Jim Vectorworks 2015/Windows

Hi Josh, Um. I think you blew my mind. That is a little crazy but it worked. And I must say, nothing I would have ever thought of myself. That seems like a bit of a bug that needs to be fixed. Do you know how long Vectorworks has been doing that? Just curious. Jim

Hi All, I am running Vectorworks 2015 SP3 on a Windows machine and have encountered a little difficulty. I am drafting a light plot and it had begun to exhibit some very strange behavior. The lighting devices seem to have (for the most part) started disappearing from the viewports on the sheet layers they are in. If I double click into that viewport and go to the design layer they are all still there as I would expect. And when I am looking at the viewport in my sheet layer, when I use my mouse to zoom, they appear for a moment, only to disappear when I stop scrolling. And there are times when some appear, and then if I zoom in, they disappear. None of my symbols are 3-D and they are all very basic, under 20 2-D lines or so per symbol. Also, when I print, the lighting devices don't appear. Any thoughts? Jim

I have installed Vectorworks 2014 on my PC running Windows 8 and am running into an issue with the undo command that I have never experienced before. Everytime I hit undo, it says their is no undo history regardless of how many things I have just done. I have my number of undos set at 30. Is their another setting I need to click? I don't ever remember one before. And as good as I may or may not be at drafting, not being able to undo even the most recent command is a bit daunting. Any thoughts? Jim

Worked perfectly, thanks so much. I just got panicked moving from one version to the next that something might have changed. Thanks again. Jim

I've just started working on a copy of VW 2012 in which I believe the previous user clicked "Always Do This" in a couple of dialog boxes, specifically the one where you assign a class to a group and VW asks if you want to apply that change to the sub-objects or just the group object itself. I have tried resetting the preferences but that did not restore the dialog box. Any idea what I might need to do to get it back? Thanks in advance. Jim

Did you ever find a solution to this? It's happening to me too. Jim

Is it me or can you still not convert a symbol to an instrument while you are in a group. This bug has been in there since V11. I just installed Spotlight 2008 only to rudely discover that it's still there. I know there are plenty of workarounds for it but am wondering why this has never been fixed. It seems strange to me... (And the reason I am in a group is so I don't need to look at (or mistakenly edit) everything else while I edit a position. Now insert instrument works while editing groups, I just need the convert button to work when I am stupid enough to make the mistake of inserting symbols instead of instruments) Thanks for helping me confirm that this is still true. Jim

87 Different Field Names in the Record Format.

I have a symbol with some text linked to a record format...In the record format edit pane it clearly states that there is a default value for that particular field name. However, when I link text to that field, it disappears instead of giving me the default value. And when I insert the symbol and go into the object info pane to edit the text, in that field name, there is no default. Is there a limit to the number of field names with default values you can have in a record format? I have 87 fields in this particular record format. I'm using VW 12.5.1 on an Intel Mac Mini. OS 10.4.8 Thanks. Jim

I'm beginning to use transparent layers on my drawings at the office I work in...Obviously it is a Mac office but at home I use a PC. Anybody know what's the timeframe for bringing layer transparency to windows? Thanks. Jim

I just noticed the same problem as I began working in 12.0.1 on my PC...I'm guessing it is some sort of upgrade problem for the label legends. I'm using Spotlight symbols I've created myself and have used a thousand times in 11.5. Jim

It does...So I'm not sure if the PC created the templates folder automatically or if I did that on my own too...

It seems as if the program did not install the templates folder...Will it work if I create one?

There are no options, it immediately opens a drawing using the default stationary I assume. Jim

Just a quick question...I'm running VW12.0.1 on a Mac and when I open a new drawing I no longer get the menu to create blank document or use a template...It seems to still exist on a PC so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong on the Mac. Thanks. Jim

I just started using 11.5 on the PC and have noticed that it crashes alot more than the previous version. I would normally have about 2 crashes a month using the program everyday for 5 hours a day. With 11.5 it's crashing about 4 times a day. And all I'm doing is scrolling, editing text blocks, etc. Nothing that I would say should crash the program. Has anyone else found this? I have a 850 Mhz with 384 Meg of RAM running Windows XP. Thanks. Jim

I am using VW Spotlight 11.0.1 on a Windows XP machine 850 mhz and 384M memory. I was working on a file I had edited 8 months ago but did not create. When I opened it VW converted it from a v10.5 file to a v11 file. The first thing I noticed when I started renumbering lights is that the unit number would disappear on the plot. They seemed to have a label legend that existed in the folder but when I went to the LL manager there were none setup...So I imported my standard label legend and assigned the fixtures I had edited to the new label legend and that worked so everything seemed fine. In the meantime, I had created a new symbol which I had linked to the Light Info Record. At some point during updating info the lights I had drawn with the new symbol disappeared replaced by a generic box as if I was updating info and the symbol didn't exist. Sure enough, when I looked in the folder I had stashed it in, the symbol renamed itself. And not generic symbol 1 or something normal...It had named itself as if it were a lighting object...I mean 1057.0.1.1 or whatever object ID's are. I couldn't figure out why, it was just a rectangle, so I renamed the symbol, updated the fixture and everything seemed alright...Then I closed the program and went to bed. When I woke up and opened the file, the label legend had disappeared. The symbol had disappeared. And several classes had disappeared. The container folder disappeared. What remained was a strange unnamed folder in the resource pallet that when double clicked on prompted me to create a new resource. And when I tried to go thru the process of reimporting the label legend etc...It made me rename a bunch of records and classes that it said already existed in the drawing but clearly didn't. So when I went to change the names back from label-color2 to label-color it said there was already a something with that name which there wasn't. When I tried to make a new label legend it told me it couldn't because a folder existed called container and that I needed to delete it before I continued...Unfortuntely there is no folder anymore called that so... Thanks for reading whoever has gotten this far. Help or suggestions would be appreciated...I know I could copy and paste layers into a new drawing but that could take hours and I rather not put in that sort of time to something that was seemingly done when I went to bed yesterday. Thanks.

I'm actually having the same problem on a PC with 9.5 but it started as a 10.5 file. Exact same error and everything.

Basically I draw a rectangle to serve as a lighting position(although I don't convert it to a lighting postion), then I draw lighting objects on top of it and group them all together. But when I edit the group and need to add a unit, it's then when I insert a new object I get a runtime error and the program quits. Jim [ 01-27-2004, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: James Milkey ]

I'm on an XP PC running Spotlight 10.5.1. When I insert a lighting object into a group the program crashes. It's done this since 10.0. Any ideas if there will be a 10.5.2 to fix this? [ 01-22-2004, 06:30 PM: Message edited by: James Milkey ]

I totally agree wit hyou in theory but as I said, I have had problems importing and exporting with LW such that I've sort of given up on the process. The other major problem is that 80% of the time LW is generated first, after the rough is drawn, so that to import/expert is a copy/paste headache.

My comment wasn't about the speed of my CPU which is fine, and I am running v10.5 on a PC. The speed I was refering to was the time it took me to insert information in the clunky object info panel or worse, one of the worksheets.

My current problem that I've run into is that when I assign a legend to a lighting fixture (containing only channel and purpose info) I have to assign it to the same fixture twice because the first time I assign it it only moves the purpose to the correct orientation, the channel remains in it's default position until I assign it to the exact same label legend again. It's a bit infuriating and time consuming. And speaking of time consuming I have to mention some things about VW Spotlight. I have been using VW since MiniCAD 6.0 as a tool for drafting light plots. And I have resisted using any form of Spotlight for a long, long time feeling that since I used LW there was no reason to type in information twice. However, since I have been working for designers who put channels on their plot I have tried to use the current version of Spotlight and I must say...it is a horrible add on. VW has been promising a tool that would help designers create great paperwork. And I must admit that I love the drafting side of VW having used both it and AutoCAD. In fact, for CAD there is no comparison. But all the Spotlight features slow down the drafting process to a trickle. It's actually faster to create text blocks that have no connection to the unit and use them for channels and purpose. It's simply faster between all the crashing and bugs with the program. The worksheet, while nice, is almost totally useless as an editing tool. If you want something that will take the place or even supplement LW, why don't you make it act like LW. That would help us all. And speaking of LW, after 3 versions of your software, data transfers between the programs are still almost incomprehensible, and for large projects, unusable. I don't mean to rant except I bought a product that has had many years to perfect it's features and it seems that it still is in it's Beta testing stage. Again, for the most part I love your product but there are many, many things that drive me nuts.

I removed all the standard favorites from the resource palette because I don't use any of them but when I closed and restarted VW they reappeared in the favorites. Do I actually have to go delete the files or is this a bug. I'm running 10.5 on a Windows XP machine. Thanks. Jim