Donald Wardlaw

I notice this with 12.5.1. Not sure if it happened previously. If I have a group, on a design layer it happens, and outside of the group I run a dimension from two verticies of objects in the group, and then I ungroup the group, the dimension is deleted. In fact, if I have 20 dimensions, then all 20 are deleted. If dimensions are not associated, the group can be ungrouped. Bear in mind, that working and annotating on design layers should still be a good way to work in many instances. Sometimes viewports and sheet layers are not needed at all. This is repeatable. Make a rectangle. Group it. Dimension it with a dimension set to associate. Ungroup the rectangle. Dimension is gone. I can't think of a good reason why this should be this way, and I can see the harm that it can do. Maybe what is happening is that the dimension is associating with "a group." When the group is gone there is nothing to associate to. If that is the case then maybe the associating dimension needs a bit more intelligence. If you think about it, we really don't usually dimension to a group, we dimension to features of the group. That is, we dimension to verticies within the group. I think the associated dimension should see inside and maybe if an action that is not specifically intended to delete dimensions will delete them, then maybe an alert should be shown. Regards, Donald

Ok, I see how this works. There is at least a hint of VW's parentage in that if you noodle around, twist all the dials, push every button, eventually you'll find our how things work. They'd never let me take care of a nuclear power plant. Regards, Donald

First you can't use "ID" in the forum search. Second, I can't get the tool to work. "You have not clicked on a valid object to id." Seems like any door or window in a wall should be valid. I've tried working on the symbols in the design layer, in the annotations mode of a sheet layer. I've put door symbols in a folder in the design file. I've attached a record format to that folder. Nada. Shouldn't be this fussy. Regards, Donald

I've run into the same basic problem, a file being deleted. In my opinion there is a SERIOUS BUG somewhere in VW. Here are the circumstances. VWA12.5, build 61147. OSX 10.3.9. PowerPC. 512mb ram. A 4mb file of design layers was reduced to a 4k shell. All data lost. I have a backup but did lose some work. File data was lost in a VW crash. Version 12.5, even this long after 12 release, crashes here more than any other version in recent memory. Version 10 was stable for a few months at a time. 12 seems to go down every week or so. Still better than 3, which went south a couple times a day, but expectations have changed. Immediately prior to the crash I had double clicked on a view port. I'm new to this feature so I was exploring. There was no way to exit the viewport. No button in the upper right corner or anyplace. I was stuck for a moment in the viewport and then, goodbye. Could not reopen the design file that the viewport linked to. The file containing the viewport seems ok. The file construction I'm working with (someone else's) has the design layers in one file and sheet layers in a couple others. These started out at another office, which uses a server for their files. I found that I had to redirect the workgroup reference to the design file location on my computer. I seem to have been able to do this, and was able to get viewports to update. Now, interestingly, the sheets file shows the original design file info, not including the changes I made prior to losing the design file. Hope someone is looking into this. Regards, Donald

Robert, Autocad and Microsoft are industry standards too. I've never used a scroll wheel and never liked drawing with a mouse. I use a wacom tablet. Just a personal preference. Too many years with a pencil left my hand with a permanent pencil kink that is too tight for a good mouse grip. Maybe the scroll wheel would be fun. My complaint, and it is a pretty minor one, is that the scroll bars don't work like they used to. In fact, for all practical purposes, they don't seem to work at all. When you guys make the program more functional I applaud. When it gets made less functional I say, "hey, whatchall up to?" Regards, Donald

One of the things that set VW (then minicad) apart from AC and others was a very smart interface. The smart cursor itself was way ahead of the competition. The interface had an intuitively successful design, which was elegant and (as it was mac only at the time) very mac like. Upgrading from 10.5 to 12.5, I'm finding some interface changes that make working with VW more tedious and less elegant. The redesigned object handles are the worst example of this. Lines with common endpoints used to give a different look if one, two or both lines were selected. Now, it's impossible to tell just by looking at the selected handle. Is the left line or the right line selected? Or both? All reads the same. Did not used to. Another interface change that doesn't work well for me is the scroll bar. It used to scroll over a reasonably small range. You could actually use it to scroll across a drawing in a way that was faster than panning or using the scroll arrows. Now the range of the scroll bars is so large that if you use them, you slide so far off the drawing you have to go to fit to window to get your drawing back. Useless. But there are some neat things too. An example is the dwg import of multiple files. Now that is a piece of work! I just wish there were people tasked more to the interface details. If you want good design, you have to pay attention to the details. Regards, Donald

This had to come up. I've been wanting to remark about a loss of flashing. In particular when duplicating objects. My last version (10.5) and all before flashed the objects that were duplicated. It was good feedback that you hit the right keys. Now, no flashing, no feedback and if I don't hit the keys squarely I'm off doing something I shouldn't like moving what I thought was a duplicated object only to find that I'm moving the original. Do it all over.... Regards, Donald

Hi Katie, Don't know about the administrator issue. I am the administrator, but log in is automatic. I just turn the thing on and go to work. Regards, Donald

Hope this is pertinent. With fundamentals Export-PDF (Quartz only) works. Export PDF... does not. Is this a fundamentals vs. design series issue? FWIW, the pdf export is really good. Comparible to what I could do with distiller and better than using "Print pdf" in printer dialogue. Don't know why. MacOS 10.3.9. Regards, Donald

Ahhh! It's a beautiful thing. Thank you Jonathan. Regards, Donald

In my opinion, the new handles are prettier but less functional. I'm ok with the color, though why not make that a user preference... (and why not make marker size a preference? the new markers are bigger and that's not always better in my opinion). What is less functional is that less information is conveyed about the selection. Two changes make this so. First, the handle is now occuring centered on the point of intersection and second, you get the same reading whether there is an even or odd number of objects in the selection. The old handle used to give a clue about the location of objects not fully visible because the line of the object extended through and reversed color in the marker. Why does that matter? If you are zoomed in and see two lines with a common end point, you can't tell by looking at the selection if one or two lines are selected. Before, the marker position clearly indicated the status. Now it is ambiguous. Also, sometimes we get objects stacked on top of one another. This may be do to clumsiness, but you may find two rectangles in exactly the same place. Before, with a marquee selection, if there were two there would be no handles. ---Really even number of objects no handles, odd number handles. Benefits of the change are hard for me to see. Regards, Donald

I don't use the call out tool because: I prefer to type notes on the drawing where I can see how much space they are taking up; I prefer to type notes first and leaders afterward; and, because I like to be able to easily reposition a note and change the location of the note in relation to the leader, which I find difficult with this tool. I see it as a stubborn tool, not one that conforms to the way I want to work. So I continue to use the old leader line tool. But in 12.5 it doesn't quite work the way it used to. It seems to want to use the marker that is first in the list and it won't remember custom marker settings. I use a black dot that is smaller than the default. Instead of giving me a dot it gives me arrow heads. I can manually change those, but it did not formerly require extra steps. So I created a custom tool attribute script which will give me a leader line as I wish it. Only problem is it is only good for one shot. I would like to be able to use it multiple times without selecting the tool each time. That is how tools normally work. So maybe I have something wrong in the script. Is that so? Here it is. Thanks, Donald Procedure CustTool; VAR Name:STRING; Result:BOOLEAN; BEGIN PushAttrs; PenFore(255); PenBack(0); PenPat(2); FillFore(255); FillBack(0); FillPat(0); PenSize(6); PenPat(2); Marker(12, 0.07000, 15); CallTool(-223); PushAttrs; END; Run(CustTool);

I appreciate the suggestion. That feature (validation) is not available in 10.3. Checked the font on another computer running 10.4 and it is fine. Again, this issue only seems to crop up in VW 12.5. Font works fine in 10.5 and other applications. I wonder if this is a smart quote issue. Regards, Donald

Since upgrading from 10.5 to 12.5 I have a font issue unique to vectorworks. Mac OS 10.3.9 Post Script Type I font (Tiepolo) Kerning before and after quotes is incorrect. No space before quote (it jams up to preceding character), first space after quote is missing except when text block is in edit mode. Have to add second space to get things looking more right. No problem with this font in other applications (MS Word, for example). Quotes used all the time, dimensions for example, so this hampers document communication. I'm collecting a list of issues with 12.5, but this one is getting in the way the most. Appreciate any assistance. Regards, Donald Wardlaw

In my opinion if this behavior is by design, it could be better. Why require the mouse to move? Does that serve some important purpose? It can be faster not to move the mouse---to hold the mouse far enough away from the source object so that all duplicates will end up between a fixed mouse position and the source object. So if you want 11 new objects, you count off 11. Best, Donald

In my experience, after import you need to set the font size to that desired, and also set the width of the text box (via OIP) to the width in inches desired. Best, Donald

Is the leader line tool still available? Very much preferred over the callout tool here. Thanks, Donald

Peter, HP230! Gawd, I thought I had the oldest printer (250C). Also using xrip. Not wild about macroenter and the way they charge a hundred bucks or so everytime an OS upgrade breaks their driver. But it does give the old dog one more hunt. Interesting discussion on the diagonal lines. It's been around as long as I can remember, but you'd think there would be a technical solution. The reason I don't use macos pdf generation is because the diagonal lines look awful at any zoom level. With distiller they look awful zoomed out, but correct zoomed in. This suggest that it is at least partly an apple issue. Like Raymond, I promise not to go on about this more than once per year, but if history will be the guide.... ...see you next year. Best, Donald

Same as Kevin here. Note in first post: "pdf writer." In my experience pdf writer is meant for quick pdfs, not high quality pdf's. Distiller is where the quality and control is. Haven't used v.6 though so I don't know if there is a peculiar problem with it. Best, Donald

I have a couple questions. 1. what does "encapsulated" postcript mean? 2. what is the difference between that and a postscript file? 3. wouldn't it be simpler to just export post script files since that is what printers and other applications like illustrator read naturally anyway?

I adamantly contend, to the objections of all my friends who do it their own way, that the fast way to work in 2D in VW is to, with only a couple of exceptions, use layers only for scale, use only as many as you need to account for the scales you need on each drawing, keep your class list simple, and resist the temptation to think that when you categorize the world around you it is somehow more intelligible or easier to deal with. Oh, and let the force be with you. Best, Donald

I've found that in my experience a "corrupt file" is usually a corrupt object. It is possible to sit by the fire and find it. Start by finding which half of the drawing it lies in by deleting one half. Then try printing or whatever is not working. You should have either deleted the object or kept it. Then go for half of the side you know it lives in and so on until you find it. When you find the object, delete it and away you go. Naturally, undo as you do so as not to lose the good things. Best, Donald

Just to follow up, I thought the eps export was fine, except for the fonts. Peter I agree, I have never understood why eps export was so funky, though I find it more useful now than in the past except for the fact that I depend for style on particular fonts. And they are post script fonts! Best, Donald

Kevin, I appreciate you posting that. I now can create high quality pdf's again. Neat trick! I deviated a bit, however, in that I could not find the AD ppd. (I'm using Distiller 5.05, not the latest version, maybe the ppd doesn't exist for that version). But it looks like the ppd for any PS printer will work. I used the ppd for the HP 800PS, which I found with the printer descriptions. thanks again, Donald

Does not seem to embed font information. Is this correct? Thanks, Donald