[Steve Jobs presents new Apple campus building plans to Cupertino]

If you can call it wrong, the "after" picture has the right edge cropped narrower, compared to the "before" picture. Am I getting warmer?

[Steve Jobs presents new Apple campus building plans to Cupertino]

Looks like they got the before and after overlay wrong.

No, the iDonut is new. HP's box buildings and parking lots are existing.

[Mac OS Lion]

I depend on a bootable DVD with Disk Utility on it for occasional maintenance. So when I hear that Mac OS Lion will be download-only (multi-gig download?), I'm not that anxious to get it until all of the details are known.

[Slow Rendering on vw 2009]

I was recently given a great strategy idea to use for Renderworks models:

Work mostly in Wireframe or OpenGL mode, and only occasionally do a Render Bitmap of a selected area of your 3D view, instead of Final Rendering the entire view. This will give you a small area of the rendering to review for lighting and texture effects. Then, when you are satisfied with the results, you can let it do the complete final rendering unattended, either overnight or during a lunch break.

[Click drag drawing on?]

My impression of click-drag drawing is it emulates the pencil for drawing. It seems to work well with the pen tablet, for drawing lines and polys, in a more preliminary sketchpad-like function.

[boomerang mode]

Also, an old standby from the old MiniCad days, when Macs only had the one button mouse, still works today. Just hold down the spacebar, and there's the Pan hand! So a mouse button can perhaps be mapped to the spacebar.

[Urgent!! AutoCAD linked Images not importing]

If your colleague has the PNG images, he may have to go the extra step of importing them into the VWX file, using the boundary boxes as reference.

I've had the same situation with Sketchup files with mapped images that don't import into VWX. It seems the only imported file that does import images is 3DS.

[Comment Boxes]

That's generally how I add leaders to the callout. For me, it's usually a line at the leader's middle vertex.

[convert lines into polygon?]

Three other ways, too:

1- select connecting lines, and menu Modify>Combine Into Surface,

2- Polygon tool, and use paint bucket mode,

3- Polygon tool, and select lines with lasso.

These all retain the original lines.

[VW vs ADT vs ArchiCAD vs Revit]

Comments from a new VW user (and still a lot to learn)...

As an ex Revit user I'd be interested in your impressions of Revit over VW (from the point of view of improving VW or course )

How about the point of view of improving Revit? -- not that Autodesk would be interested, since it's selling well, so why bother? The new 2012 Revit lacks some long-demanded fixes ... lack of copy paste between project files, inability to save to a previous version, lack of site modeling tools, lack of import for dwg, 3ds and skp files. I use all of these Vw Architect functions, while at the same time, I would probably not get much use of the new point cloud reference in Revit 2012.

Although I had learned to use Revit in a volunteer project, I never had the experience of using it for a construction project. From my little experience, I found many of Revit's non-ignorable error messages had stopped my work cold (so I imagine that can really impact a work deadline).

At the same time, I completed 8 construction projects this year in Vectorworks, some of which needed architectural detail addenda on letter size paper (on very short notice). I could not imagine doing this in Revit, unless I print out a large sheet and cut it into a letter size detail, because Revit can't have multiple sheet sizes in a project.

[Moving a Space crashes VW SP3, didn't pre-SP3]

I agree. I use the Annotation of a VP for 2D dimensions and text notes only. All 3D model objects (spaces, walls, floors, roofs) go on design layers. And Vincent's right, spaces can interactively move walls.

I'm sure it is easier to make a room name 2D text group for use on the annotation layer.

[3d dimensioning]

Another thing worth checking is whether the document window shows the Screen Plane or Layer Plane (or Working Plane) for creating objects. It goes to say that Layer Plane and Working Plane modes should be used.

[2D Drafting tools and tricks]

I don't think VB Stretch works with Vw2011, unless there is an updated version.

[my experience of VW2011]

Actually, parasolids are used in 2D editing too. So 2D files made in Vw2008 would need some overhauling for Vw2011. I always finish projects in the same version I started with, to avoid the problems you're facing.

The MacOS version might be a factor, too. I noticed you listed MacOS 10.4.11 (tiger), instead of the most recent 10.6 (snow leopard).

[my experience of VW2011]

From your blog, it looks like you upgraded to Vw2011 from Vw2008. Not a good thing, because your legacy files were made before the switch to parasolids.

[Transition from AutoCAD to Vectorworks]

When I started using MiniCad 7 (an earlier Vectorworks), I used the workspace editor to assign key commands for lines, rectangles, offset, pan, as similar to what I was using in Autocad (I just used the acad.pgp file as a printed reference). So that switching between the two programs during the transition was much easier for me.

[creating 3d model from front and side pictures]

It is possible that the images in the video are Image Props with auto-rotate turned off.

[SP3 is out!]

It's got a boatload of crash fixes, including one for "just working on a file" - might be the same crash I got a couple days ago.

I just downloaded and installed it -- very simple and easy. Does not involve any additional internet downloads, thankfully.

[Vectorworks 2011 Service Pack SP3]

My Vw11 update function detected the US version of SP3 today - I'm going to install it when I'm not in the middle of a project.

No details of SP3 on the NVW website yet.

[Roof Trusses -- What PIO would you Like?]

Hello John,

I downloaded your truss plug-ins and tried them out in VW. Very nice effort on these plug-ins. I had to adjust all the defaults before the plug-in started to look like a truss. I wonder if others who have tried the plug-in maybe didn?t get all the defaults adjusted correctly in order to see how it worked.

I've also been using the Roof Truss plug-ins, and discovered the same problem. When placing a truss in a document using imperial units, the default values transfer directly from millimeters to inches, to make the truss look distorted by a factor of 25.4.

[Clip and Copy]

Not bad -- Peter beat me by only 10 seconds.

[Clip and Copy]

I think you're referring to the marquee mode of the selection tool. If so, I guess you know about the Option key, and how it selects objects that the marquee touches.

[Combined Poly(gon)(line) tool]

I always use Polylines as a set of lines for generating a Site Model or a Lofted Surface.

Closed Polygons can be used for generating Floors, Walls, Roofs, etc. with the Convert command.

[DTM in Architect or do I need Landscape?]

I've done some DTM work in Vw Architect - it handles site modeling very well, after a little practice. Landscape has a few more terrain tools, such as the "hardscape" masonry paver objects and vegetation.

[revit]

Please keep us posted!

It looks like the Autodesk Lawyers filed a response to the US Patent and Trademark Office. More legal wrangling before this is all over.

One thing the USPTO has recognized is that the "goods", or files with the "dwg" extension are not entirely created by Autodesk, suggesting more of a public domain position.