Oyvind

I have some issues with the structural tools on the Details palette 1) Is there any documentation on the structural tools, Angle, I-beam, Wide Flange ...? I can't find it. 2) Why must one place the profile on the drawing then use the OIP to set the series and dimension? 3) Where are the profiles to european standards? 4) Wouldn't it be nice to set a preference so that each time I select the tool my preferred series is preselected? Now I must change from AISC (inch) always. The structural tools has been a part of VW for many versions now, and I still don't see how these tools are useful. It is easier and more reliable to draw the shapes from scratch.

j.christ, If you see my earlier post and the attached test file and you'll find that the lines are tangent. And I agree, there are alternative methods to the the Trim tool but none as efficient in this case. Maybe you can call that a beauty of VW, but still, this is a at least 2 year old bug in one one of the most basic and fundamental 2D tools.

Tomu, Pipe threads in 2009? Where/how??

I have the same experience with those three tools. Bugs like these and the lacking ability to fix them, keeps me wondering; is VW the CAD software for us in the future?

Ray, When I zoom in to about 200000% the tangent line is clearly intersecting and crossing to the inside of the arc. The gap is measurable to 0,000818331mm. I don't know, but maybe VW isn't capable of accurately drawing these zoom levels onscreen?

OK, I don't quite follow your use of the Trim Tool. Do you mean the Trim Command? Trim Tool is: select Trim Tool click on each arc to be trimmed? All eight arc ends in about eight seconds. The alternative route involves more mouse work and is more cumbersome.

Charlie and Ray, thanks for your reply. This is not a big issue for me, there are alternatives. But as the the trim tool is more efficient (1 click) to Split, Connect/Combine it is rather annoying when it is not reliable. Snap to grid is off. The posted file is made up of four arcs, duplicated and moved in to position. Then the connecting lines are are drawn with snap to tangent on. I can make four successful trim operations; both on top arc, lower on the right arc and left an the lower arc.

Just upgraded to VW2009 from 12.5, and that was a mixed experience. I really like the new improvements, but there is one thing I can't understand considering VW/MiniCad's roots in 2D drafting. The trim tool is as buggy and as useless as in VW12.5. Drawing a tangent line between two arcs and then trimming off the arc, results in the whole arc gets deleted. This is not consistent either, see the attached picture, one side is trimmed OK but the other is not and the split tool was used instead. Frustrating! Is this just me or are anyone else having the same experience?

Normal behavior should be automatic updating of wireframe and sketch rendering modes, manual updating of all other modes. What kind of rendering mode is applied to the viewport? Is this a problem with a single file or all VW files?

The units are then same. dxf version 2004/2005/2006 saved the day! Thanks! We didn't consider any later version than 14 since that has been the latest version that imported OK. Still, it is a bit strange that the mac/win dxf-file differs.

Benson Every idea is welcome at this point, thanks. Yes, that is correct. Both dxf and dwg explodes polygons into line segments, but circles and arcs exports as circles and arcs. Settled on using version 12 since that version imported fine from VW on Windows. I have tried every available version as text, and binary just to make sure. My test file is a circle only, and opens easily in eDrawings. As there don't seem to be any way to resolve the differences between the mac and win version, I will probably end up buying a add-on for the CNC-software.

I have done some more testing - two different cnc cutting software programs refuses to accept dxf files from the macintosh. - I have imported the dxf files to a spreadsheet as text to see if there are any differences. And there are! Lines in the mac version with 16 decimal places is rounded to 14-15 decimal places in the win version. Example: Win = -112.04164859785726 Mac = -112.0416485978572609. In my sample drawing file I have registered 11 lines witch are not identical. Is it possible to resolve this?

I second that! And, dimensioning in viewports must become easier/better. Having to add circles and arcs just to add dimensioning does not impress anyone!

It doesn't help moving the file to the local computer, and the text file opens fine. Have also tried using floppies and USB flash disk to no avail. So there is no indication that the NAS is affecting this problem.

The file has now been changed to be opened with Microstep software, with no effect. Win-files open and mac-files don't.

Type of Document says DXF file. The OS recognizes it as a dxf file but no program is set to open it. I'll assign a program and test if this has any effect but I am not to optimistic, as the windows version appears to have the same properties. The files are not being emailed. All files, both mcd and dxf, resides on a NAS with Windows file sharing and is picked up directly bythe CNC machine's software.

The file name is xxxxxxxx.dxf with a miscellaneous icon.

Thank you, Katie and exocubic, for your answers! Have tried both text and binary versions without success. The text version exported from VW windows works fine, but not the binary. We use several programs, LogoTag, MagicTool and MicroStep. None of them are able to open/import the mac's dxf-files. It's not a problem to locate the files, the problem is reading the them.

Not as simple, sorry. The files all have the dxf file extension. VW exports the dxf-file to a seperat folder named after the file, and VW adds the file extension automatically to the file.

We are currently using both mac and win versions of VW 12.5 and it seems the two versions are producing differt results when exporting dxf-files. The dxf-files, version 12 text, are imported to a CNC plasmacutting machine. When importing the dxf-file from the windows-version of VW everything is OK, but when importing from the macintosh-version the file is not readable. Does anyone know of this problem, and can it be fixed? -- Oyvind