Keith Hadland

You mean like this? Yep, it would be really useful.

Sounds like you need to create a design layer viewport for the view you wish to trace over, put it on the layer where you're going to trace, then modify the properties of the viewport (Advanced Properties) to give a black & white view.

Any thoughts on enabling a text format to be specified as part of class attributes, along with the existing line, fill and texture? That would speed up things like using different text styles for dimensions, plant tags & drawing annotations. Yes, I know it's something that's relatively simple to change after the fact but so are class textures, fills & line styles...

The copy & paste route is a bit of a faff though - and for my application the annotations on a VP is a better route than specific layers/classes - especially with VPs at different scales to the design layers - hence the thought. Well, that and just having been through the tedious exercise of sorting annotations out for a project...

Just wondering what the collective opinion is on this idea - I'm working on a drawing where, during the design phase, a number of notes/callouts have been placed on design layers. I'm now converting this for issue and, for consistency, would like to place these notes onto the relevant viewport annotations, hence the 'wouldn't it be handy to have a convert to annotation command' thought. As a workflow I'd imagine the 'convert to annotation' command would be a context menu when right clicking a valid annotation object, this would then bring up a dialogue to select the appropriate viewport and possibly a new class for the annotation and a 'keep original on design layer' check box. Any thoughts?

Thanks Katie - CU contacted, disk shipped same day, arrived & installed no problem this morning. Keith

I'm installing 2008 on an XP machine that previously had the Eval copy installed on it. I've deleted the 2008 Eval folder from program files and have also got rid of the Vectorworks 13 (sic) keys from the registry, but I keep getting an error 'Error trying to open WinAppB.zip'. Watching the temp folder during the install the WinAppB.zip file is created but remains at 0 bytes. Any pointers? (the Eval apparently installed cleanly but now fails with the same error!) TIA Keith

Sounds interesting, but what's the difference between that & this Landmark subforum?

A workaround if you're running on a PC is to install PrimoPDF, CutePDF or PDF995 - all freely available PDF generators which install as an extra printer.

So does this mean the non early-adopters are now safe to move to 2008?

Just out of interest, is the installation media specific to a particular license key or is there just a software check that the dongle matches the license key? If it's the latter than there's no real difference between issuing a dongle & key for 12.5 or 2008, and for an extra seat you've already got the installation media so there's no need to re-issue an old version. Being a sole trader I've never had a chance to experiment with swapping CDs & dongles.

Yep, same problem - I just redefined the Eyedropper shortcut but it is disappointing that the official shortcut is unusable as shipped. 3 is the standard shortcut for the general arc tool, Alt+3 works for the 1/4 arc tool on my machine (win XP/VW 12.5.2 Landmark/Renderworks)

DHbrown's way will work, but it's kinda long winded. The default plant content is defined in a file in /Libraries/Default/Plants (well it is on a PC anyway, where is where your VW executable lives). If you keep this default plant definitions file open and create/delete your plants in there then they will be accessible (or not) from all drawings you open in VW. By default (after installation) the definitions file just contains generic plants supposedly representing annuals & stuff which can get in the way if you're using real plants, so I just delete those. Always make a copy of your default plant file before you change it though, as mistakes can leave you completely dead in the water. You can also save the drawing with your latest/most complete set of plants into the folder and those plant definitions will then be available to other files. I've found that VW will take plant definitions from any VW drawing in that folder, so if you have two files in there with overlapping data then you will get duplicate plants listed. Similarly you can edit the default 2D & 3D plant symbols in the relevant folders in the Libraries/Defaults path. The plant reference database is just a lookup tool for plant info - adding data in here does not create a new plant to match. Hope that makes sense! Keith

Danny - I've had the 'infinite zoom' too and the only way out was a hard restart of my PC. Doesn't happen often - usually only when you're working late and have a deadline...

Drawwhat? - when my Wacom plays up (most often for me it's that the touch strip stops zooming) I find that manually starting the 'Wacom tablet properties' app sorts it out. Might be worth a go. On the original topic I've found that sometimes my keyboard is reverting to US settings from UK in mid session (running 12.5.2 on XP SP2), so some of my defined keyboard shortcuts stop working - keys like ' # \ all move between US & UK keyboard settings. I haven't found any particular trigger yet so can't isolate exactly when it happens. Any clues? Keith

I had the same thing happen yesterday - Win XP, 12.5.1+Landmark/RW & continually got a 'VW has encountered an error and will close' message whereas the previous day it had been running fine. Restarted the PC, virus sweep etc. with no difference. Then rather than a total reinstall my first thought was to install 12.5.2 to see if that patched whatever was complaining, and fortunately it did.

Just reminded of this by having to re-define my workspace after moving to 12.5.2 - had a quick search and didn't spot this as an existing wishlist item. The default shortcuts for layer/class visibility Ctrl/Alt/(Shift)+3-7 no longer cover the full range of options. I'm sure I'm not alone in having defined Ctrl/Alt/(Shift)+8 as a shortcut for Show/Snap/Modify Others - should this be added as a default?

To just change the font size in plant tags use Tools/Custom Selection to "Select Only where Type is Plant", then change the text format settings.

Just musing on the mode bar shortcuts (UIO etc.) - for some of the tools there are quite a few options in each mode group (certainly the U key takes a hammering sometimes), so it might be useful to be able to define shortcut keys to step in the reverse direction, perhaps defaulting to Shift+U etc., though I'm not sure if any of the later Shift+Mode Bar key combinations are used

Just had a quick play with a simple model - one extrude placed above the camera, one below. With camera height at 0 I used 'fine tune camera settings' and started typing 9's into the 'look to height' field. 5 9's (units set to mm) gave a view pretty well straight up, then on entering the 6th '9' the view changed to the object below the camera. Looks like there may be a sweet spot where you can set the height to (hopefully) near enough vertical but then some bug/feature flips it round.

Thanks Dave - some lovely skies in there!

Yep, had a look at some HDRI's - as you say the rendering speed is way slower though and I haven't yet found one that gives the sort of scene I'm looking for, probably need to do a bit more investigation but for now that'll have to be on the back burner. Any pointers for good HDRI sources that might be worth a look? Cheers Keith

Thanks Dave Any chance of that changing in a future release - the photorealistic Xfrog models are useful to add realism but the harsh shadows then let the rendering down. Cheers Keith

I've noticed that when rendering a scene containing image props (xfrog trees) using custom renderworks with shadow mapping enabled, the shadows are generated from the crossed planes of the prop rather than acknowledging the transparent colour mask that's applied to it. Is there a workaround to this or are we stuck with using the sharper shadows? TIA Keith

Katie Just to clarify this - are you suggesting an automated method of creating actual plant definitions (with spread/spacing/symbols etc etc) from a spreadsheet/external data source rather than just the creation of plant reference data - that could be very useful! TIA Keith