MattG

I am sure this is rather simple, but I have a report that I wish to edit. In my database header I have it reporting all symbols with a given record attached to them. The curve ball is I want to exclude items that are on a given class. What would be the proper way to write the header for that? Thanks, Matt

Oh wow, I haven't looked at many new topics on here in a while. I am really glad I decided to click on this. It made me laugh quite a bit. :0) I am highly critical of Vectorworks and I believe it still needs to step it up in a lot of areas. While some people do make points on there that are valid and should be concerns, there are a lot of them that are just flat out wrong or inaccurate and that makes me laugh. I am also a AutoCAD users and I can tell you that I greatly prefer more things about Vectorworks than I do AutoCAD. Just note, nothing is perfect, but I do also feel vectorworks and the people at Nemetschek, in my opinion, are more receptive and/or understanding of VW's shortcomings than the AutoDesk folks. Just my $0.02, but that really is some great reading on that link.

Part of the problem with that is also that typically all the white becomes clear, I just want the area without geometry to become clear, not a fill on a white rectangle? Does this make sense? Matt

Not a bad idea. Two slight problems in my application. My end result is to export all the pages on my sheet layers as images to put into a power point presentation. I want each of these images separate. Doing this as a eps doesn't work like exporting a image file. I than have to go through and break every area I want as a separate image to be a separate image. This does not work for my application as I am constantly changing things for this project. Also I did drop a eps into the power point presentation to see how it would work. It will go int the presentation, but it looks very different than a standard image, it is very pixelated on text. That does not serve my purpose either. My problem is that I have a consistent page size on my sheet layer and often times the viewport or geometry does not fill the whole paper, so having that are in the presentation appear white on a dark background in the presentation looks silly.

Yes I understand it can be done in Photoshop, but I do not wish to take that extra step. I would have to believe there is some way of doing that in vectorworks.

That's what I would have thought as well, but no. I really don't want to take the time to open in photoshop and deal with it that way, it is a lot of files and that is quite time consuming.

I am trying to export a sheet layer as a image with a clear background and currently am without luck in being able to accomplish this. I am in the sheet layer I go to file - export - image file. For selected area I have the radio button for each page as a separate image checked and the proper dimensions are set. For format I have tired PNG and Tiff image, but no luck without going into the exported image and doing some editing. The bulk of my sheetlayer does not have any geometry on it and I want that area to remain clear. Does anyone have a way of doing this?

I believe you are correct, because I used xcenter, y center for something once and was very confused as my symbol was non symmetrical and not centered on the symbol insertion. I was getting all sorts of strange results. Matt

I also was a little confused about why you were pointing out what was going on in VW2011. Than I looked at my signature. It has been updated accordingly. It has been a while since I have looked on here and I forgot I bought a new machine. Thanks again, Matt

You are exactly correct with what I am trying to accomplish. Bryan G you were correct, but I did try to edit the criteria via the right click edit criteria, and there is no X or Y value stuff. I did not know how to manually enter that value in the header. Thanks Michael, you hit the nail on the head. What I am really shooting for is probably where the symbol insertion point is, so potentially the X & Y in the OIP. I just think in the document I need to strategically make my symbols to reflect that accordingly. Thanks, Matt

I am attempting to make a report that sorts symbols with a given record by their y center. I was able to do this fairly easily, but the trickier part is that I want to make one worksheet that has (2) separate databases in it. In those databases I want the first one to show all symbols with Y values that are between 0 & 30' and the second database to only show symbols that have a y center value between 30' & 60'. Is this something that is actually do able? Thanks, Matt

My issue is with the artistic render modes it doesn't seem that I can get a more true replication of hidden line. It seems like most of them have various flaws the main one being that the lines typically taper toward the end. See the example image attached. All the lines taper on individual objects. When I add in my truss as each individual piece all the pieces taper toward the ends.

I have been using Artistic Renderworks Styles lately as my render output of choice. I find that more often then not I am using one with cloned lines. I hate the tapered look it applies to it though. I am usually doing arrays of lighting trusses with each piece being a symbol. So every 10' I get a tapered line then another tapered line. Not sure if anyone has a better way of doing this that won't do this that they would care to share. My main goal is to make it look very similar to a hidden line render, but if I use a renderworks style it renders using the C4D plug in and won't run out of memory. Matt

Actually I would say the number of display's matters more then battery life. More often then not I am in my office and I have a few external displays at the moment. I don't need super great battery life to sit at my desk probably 70% of the time. My current displays are dvi and one is rather expensive. I would prefer not to swap all my monitors at the same time as my computer.

That is my biggest concern about staying with the PC is the battery life. I believe I can find equal if not better in every other aspect of a pc then a mac, but the battery life is pretty crazy on mac's

The elite book lets me doing a little more future proofing. I can always swap out a drive to a bigger drive. It will support 4 monitors if I so desire. I still have fire wire and a optical drive. I also will be able to eventually max out the ram at 32GB when I so desire. I really like the portability, battery life and weight of the mbp, but not sure if that is the greatest selling point for me or not.

That's what I was looking at on the apple end, but my fear is that it lacks any potential for upgrading. I cannot add more RAM and it would probably be very difficult to swap out a harddrive if needed. I also really think having a RJ-45 would be useful. I know I can get adapters with it, but seems silly. I am leaning toward either a MBP 15" non retina display with a SSD and maxed out on ram for the additional ports, firewire, rj-45 and optical drive. The PC option is a HP Elitebook 8570w http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/MiddleFrame.asp?page=config&ProductLineId=539&FamilyId=3564&BaseId=39192&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID= I like the HP's for the docking features. Having all my ports replicated when I set it on the dock in the morning is pretty cool. Also the familiarity with windows is useful. It is just a really tough decision for me for some reason.

Cool I am checking that out now. Also as a fyi I really have no issue to switching to Mac.

I am going to get a mostly preconfigured laptop. I wish I could do a desktop, but I travel too much and that's not possible. Matt

The saved view was my thought, but it would involve often changing layer and class visabilities significantly.

I screwed up and am working on a drawing and did not recenter the building drawing to the area of the building I am working on. I am drawing a show in a area and it is getting really old constantly panning to the area I need to be in when coming from a sheet layer or 3D view. Is there anyway of having the view recenter on a given area without changing my origin? All my viewports are already configured with a crop on their respective area and I do not wish to reconfigure all that. Thoughts. Matt

I am going to be getting a new computer. Anyone have any input, suggestions or recommendations on their experiences using vectorworks on their machines or machines they wish they were using for vectorworks? Matt

I usually do a lot of hidden line renderings of large projects and often run out of memory. I have been doing a lot of things recently using Artistic Renderworks styles like the various pen styles to create as close to a hidden line look as possible. I am doing this because the cinema 4d side hasn't run out of memory on me yet. It takes a while but it will render out. My question is does anyone have a style recommendation that is very simple without the flaring of the pen or the overshooting effect on the lines and things like that? Does that make sense? Matt

We need a "like" button like facebook. That is dead on in my opinion. I get why we currently have screen plane/layer plane, but its workflow is cumbersome and not something that is transparent while working as it should be.

I've come across the same issue in the past year. It is incredibly frustrating. I work for a company that purchased a decent number of licenses over the past few years and when I get something that I cannot open it is difficult to explain to my boss that yes we spent all this money on software and no I cannot open the file someone else created. Yes I am 100% against software piracy and do not support it in any way. But from a Nemetschek/Vectorworks perspective instead of solving the problem by stopping the person using the illegal software you are stopping the person who has a legal copy from working on a project with your software. This seems highly counterproductive. There has to be some way of stopping the use of the pirated products without making it more difficult to work with a legal copy. I wish people wouldn't use illegal copies of the program or send me files created in it, but in the industry I work in we need to be able to work very quickly and contacting vectorworks is not a acceptable answer.