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Donald Wardlaw

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Everything posted by Donald Wardlaw

  1. Hi Rob, I've been using a small 4"x5" tablet by wacom for must be about 15 years. I prefer it because, and this may seem hard to believe at first, I have much better control over cursor movement and the actual movement of the hand is easy but short. (And, I don't have surgeon type hands---they shake a bit and as a boy my model cars were terrible). But, I trained and worked for years with a pencil/pen and the tablet pen feels very natural in my hand. I don't even use the button on the pen, you can set the preferences to just tap once or twice to select or double click. Whole wrist motion with a mouse sometimes feels very unnatural, especially with things like curves. All in all the tablet seems like a more precise and efficient tool. I never use a mouse. Regards, Donald
  2. Um, IMHO, there's something terribly wrong with the whole idea that we need a hundred classes. TM is just a controlled way to put lipstick on a pig. Regards, Donald
  3. A limitation of the keynote tool seems to be that only one legend can inhabit a layer. If I have more than one drawing on a sheet, I can put them on separate design layers and I can have keynotes and keynotes legends for each layer and more than one on a sheet. If I am using viewports and sheet layers I seem to have a problem. In theory one of the nice things about viewports is that we can crop different parts of a large plan and put more than one on a sheet layer. But you would think that each drawing would want to have it's own legend. But it seems that sheet layers only want to allow one legend. This is so even if I put the call-outs in the annotation "layer." The legend still pops out on the sheet layer itself. I can slightly fool the system by putting the keynotes on the design layer. The problem there is if the scale of the drawing on the sheet layer is different. I can have the text scale but I can't get the callout to scale. So if I have two drawings on a sheet layer and they are at different scales, to get a second legend I have to put it on the design layer of one of the drawings, but when you look at the sheet layer the callouts are going to be different sizes when you look at both drawings at once. I suppose I could extend the ruse by having the callouts be a different size on the design layer. Am I missing an easy way to do what I want here? Regards, Donald
  4. A one size fits all drafting standard would have to be at least as useful as Esperanto. Regards, Donald
  5. I use the US version of VW, no dongle and formz, dongle. Putting a value to the anxiety of losing the dongle, I come up with a big number. I could easily agree to sign a pledge to be good and honest, with a fingerprint in blood, if I could be released from the need to use a dongle. Regards, Donald
  6. < The industry has come a long way and is MUCH better than even a few years ago. But it is still something to consider if you plan to switch. If you have a large format plotter, (and even an everyday printer or fax) you may want to ensure it's compatible with Macs now rather than finding out the hard wa>> Now my two cents, and with all due respect to Katie, Mac keyboards and mice are a non-issue. They're cheap and plentiful. Some like the new imac keyboard are functional and elegant. Just about every printer you might want will work on a mac. All the HP plotters do. Most Cannons do. Only issue will be if you try to use an old printer---pre OSX printer. Should not be a problem with anything recent from a major company like HP. Monitors are also a non-issue. Many mac users use PC monitors. In the old days Macs required different monitors. Now they do not. Same with scanners. If there is an issue it will be software. There may be some program you depend on that you have a lot invested in that doesn't run on a mac. The good news is that the intel macs can run windows when you need it. Oh, and permissions. They are one of the dumbest things about OSX. Its the Mac's dip switch. Apple should internalize this process because nobody normal understands it, and it's hard to see the positive effects. Still, before and after installing new software it's good to do. It's a real push the button and stick the ice cream in your forehead operation though. Hope this helps. Donald
  7. If you don't want a blank document you must want one you've been working on. Open that instead and you'll get no blank document. Regards, Donald
  8. I have always had trouble getting walls to butt into other walls and look right. Often, and unpredictably, there would be a line showing where there should be none. Then today I had an AHA! moment. What I'm often doing is joining walls with a fill, say a shade of gray. What I'm seeing is the wall lines of the "top of the 't' " continuing through. What I've found is that the tool is not really joining the walls. It is causing the fill of one wall to move across the wall line of the other. If the wall with the extended fill is behind the other, you see the wall line you should not see. Making it look right is a matter of sending the correct wall to the back. If you try changing the front to back relative position of any two walls joined with this tool, you'll see what I mean. Regards, Donald PS. Would be neat if the key that selects a tool were displayed in the mode bar to the right. Might be especially helpful for newbies.
  9. <> Hi Benson, that explains the behavior of some of my text. Thank you! I'm with Peter, this is nice, and fun to discover something new. Regards, Donald
  10. Maybe its just another brain infarction, but I can't see or remember how to do this. Normally, I want to have "adjust flipped text" checked (VW Prefs). But there are times when I do not want the text to adjust. An example would be signage painted on the ground which I want to maintain a particular orientation (Like, "No Parking"). First problem is this preference is a document wide preference, so if I make an exception for a particular file, it can mess up all the others. Second problem is that I may want it working both ways in the same file. How can I overide the preference in particular instances? Regards, Donald
  11. <> Chocolate fish seems too small a reward in recognition of someone actually figuring out how to use the create hatch dialog. I don't know how he did that but I have visions of him rooting through the dialogue parameters, wet nose to his screen, fogging it while snorting out loud. In my opinion his reward should be truffles. Regards, Donald
  12. I guess it all depends on how much work this involves and whether it is more work than managing the additional classes. In my case, I find it easier to keep the drawing structure simple and make the revisions as necessary. (I've been on computer for 18 years but I worked in pencil for more than a dozen years before that, so keeping track of coordination issues is pretty ingrained.) I think the simpler drawing structure works faster and the time saved is greater than the time lost. There are also fewer assignment errors. Most of the time I get autocad files, a good example of an overly complex drawing structure which for reasons I'll never understand the AIA adopted, when I go through and look at the file on a class by class basis I see stuff in the wrong place. Also, most of the notes on plans are unique to the particular plans. What else is there? Room names, targets. How often do they change and how hard is it to deal with? In my experience they don't change a great deal, but maybe it is just the buildings I work on. As to dimensions, remember they are already in a class apart from text. So there are options for custom selection and viewports. Everybody has different habits about dimensioning and maybe what works with one building type and one locale is not the best way in other situations. I wouldn't be opposed to adding a class when I think the drawings will benefit. So maybe I'll have one project with a special need in that regard. I'd rather be flexible on this. I guess the redimension question applies to a dimensioned building grid. I might put the grid in a group which can be copied and pasted from one annotation zone to another---that way if a revision or revisions are needed you do them once which seems like the minimum no matter how you structure things. But normally, I don't dimension the grid system on the structural drawings and I show the major structural elements on the architectural drawings. In fact I only add dimensions to the structural plans for very special situations, things that require a special alert to the builder or detailer. The architectural drawings will be dimensioned in such a way to locate structural elements which must be positioned by dimension. Interesting to hear your thoughts Jim. Regards, Donald
  13. Also, this version launches dramatically faster on my mac. Thanks for that too! Regards, Donald
  14. <> I've only started using viewports this year. So far this is not a problem. The reason is that I do not put text on the design layer, so text is a viewport annotation. So the text in a viewport is intentional and needed for that viewport, so I don't need to turn it off. So, for example, foundation, ceiling, electrical and framing plans are separate viewports with their own text. I see no need to have separate classes for the text in each viewport. Regards, Donald
  15. There is simple and there is simple. I hate the AIA standards. For text I use "none". Why does it need to be in a unique class? It remains very selectable via custom selection without that. Regards, Donald
  16. << I have been using the original MBP with VW from version 12.0.1 on>> I'm not an expert on this, but I think the current MBP's have a different intel processor than the original one. (core duo vs. core 2 duo). I just checked again and for me, the image in the sketch parameter dialogue does not update when I change the settings. I'm using architect but not renderworks. I wonder if that is the problem? On this machine my files display corrupted, with missing text, no text in record formats in symbols, random loss of lines, and strange white slashes hiding drawing information when QI is on. VW10 works fine, but VW10 files opened in VW12 are messed up. All these problems go away when QI is turned off. I am using the sketch settings in the viewport. The viewport shows the effect of the sketch render choices. It's just not possible to adjust the parameters and see the effect on the sample image in the dialogue. Regards, Donald
  17. My MacbookPro (which is current) has quartz imaging turned off because VW doesn't work with it on. Yesterday I learned how to use viewports to render drawings with the sketch rendering option. When I enter the dialogue to edit the sketch render parameters there is a partial elevation of a house and some sliders to control different settings. The image of the house does not respond in any way to changes in the sliders. It doesn't look sketchy either. Is this feature dependent on quartz imaging? Thanks Donald
  18. Here is a followup to the problem I originally had. With tech support help and a lot of dead ends, we found the problem to be this: (I have the same set up as jrd). In VW preferences, Display tab, checking "quartz imaging" can (and in my case does) corrupt files. Unchecking it and everything works fine except that in the export pdf modes, "export pdf (quartz only)" is no longer available. The other pdf export option works fine. I should say, the files are not actually corrupted, they just do not behave and display properly. This is clearly a bug, though whether NNA or Apple owns it I do not know. Regards, Donald
  19. More info. I now find that I cannot convert any v10 file to v12.5 and have it work right. I'm guessing this is related to migrating to a new computer. OS has changed from 10.3.9 to 10.4.9. Processor from G4 to core duo. This is kind of a problem. A consistent bug is loss of data in record formats embedded in symbols. Regards, Donald
  20. I wrote to tech support and sent a file, but have not heard anything so I'm trying here to see if someone has experience that bears on what I find not so right. I have a file that is in v10. I think it may have started in v9. Everytime I open the file with v12.5, it gets corrupted. Data fields in symbols missing. slivers of white obscuring drawing information (may be long radius arcs gone wild and not selectable. If I open in v10 all is groovy. Regards, Donald Have plenty of ram now.
  21. Katie and Ray, Thanks for your comments. I think I understand better the mechanics of viewport cropping. regards, Donald
  22. Pete, Maybe I should have been more clear. A sheet layer was not referenced. A sheet layer had a viewport into a design layer in another file. The viewport showed a portion of the design layer. I wanted to make the viewport show a smaller portion of the design layer. REgards, Donald
  23. Here is a situation where I was unable to adjust the cropping of a viewport. Viewport is referenced in from another file (which I did not create). Editing the other file had things creeping into the crop, so I needed to make the crop smaller. I went to the sheet layer where the viewport was. Double clicked and selected the crop option in the edit viewport dialogue. That gave a view of the contents of the viewport. But, I could not see anything that defined the boundary of the crop, such as the original cropping object. So there was nothing to resize to change the shape of the crop. I did a select all to see if it was a zero line weight object and did not see anything. Then I thought to add an object to be the cropping object. It said only one cropping object was allowed so my move was disallowed. Why couldn't I crop the viewport? My only guess at this point, aside from a bug, is that the cropping object was in an invisible class. The class structure of this file is a complicated mess, but I suppose I could slog through it. Regards, Donald
  24. Hi Robert, Thanks for the additional info. I was just learning about these features the other day. I still pretty much think that the situation with the door frames and wall breaks could work better. Regards, Donald
  25. Oh, one more thing. It doesn't seem to make any difference whether the door is in a "door" class or the "none" class. Turning on the ceilling main class and turning off the "sills" class (why this nomenclature?) Hides the door and swing, lets the wall read continuously but does not hide the jambs or frame. One setting which seems to get in the way is the wall break. If you have a full wall break with the doors, simply turning the door class to invisible hides the door but leaves the break in the wall. Seems to me the break ought to be conditional on the door (or window) being visible. REgards, Donald
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