Donald Wardlaw

An added note: I'm not trying to print with distiller in the paper output sense, I am using it to create high quality acrobat files, something you cannot do with the print to pdf option in the print dialogue. Donald

An added note: I'm not trying to print with distiller in the paper output sense, I am using it to create high quality acrobat files, something you cannot do with the print to pdf option in the print dialogue. Donald

Peter, To the best of my knowledge, you can't create post script files in the manner you describe unless the printer you choose is a postcript printer. If it is not, the postscript option will be grayed. Which it so happens is the problem I am grappling with today. For reasons I find mysterious, the HP 800PS driver I was using simply disappeared from my computer. I used it with distiller as Suzanne recalls and the results were terrific. What perplexes further, is that now when I download the printer driver from the HP site, the Postscript function is not available even if I download the driver for a postscript printer. Donald

Which tablet size would you guys recomend for Cad work? is the intuos 4"x5" enough? Works great here. Best not to think of it as a tablet, something you would look at. You look only at the screen. I like the small one because it reduces hand motion a lot. And it does not take a surgeons hands. Mine are somewhere between a surgeon and a coffee adict. I even run two monitors with it. Left to right on pad is left of left monitor to right of right. Oh, and they're cheap. Best, Donald

I should add, however, that this preference does not work the way I would like it to. Some dialogues which I consider minor, still crop up. For example if I select the offset duplicate tool and click on the drawing without first clicking on an object, I get an alert telling me I'm not doing it right. Which I have to click ok to get rid of. I think the implementation should be more consistent. All dialogues which explain how the program works should be considered minor. Once you know how it works you want to be rid of them. But maybe the checkbox idea would work best since it would allow us to selectively banish dialogues rather than all or none. Best, Donald

Bowing with great humility, bubbling with gratitude, I sulute you oh raylibby. Best, Donald

The selected object has no editing behavior. To use the offset tool, click on one side of the selected object. They are something like that. there are others. Their main aim is to tell people how to use the tools/program. They are easily invoked by accidental clicks. I've known how these tools work for a long time but I still get interupted at least a dozen times a day and it is an annoying break in the work flow. These kinds of dialogues, the ones that would be no longer needed under any circumstances once one knows how to draw with VW, should have a "do not show again" checkbox. Best, Donald

If I draw something that contains arcs with long radii, a bathtub for instance, then the radius centers will often be a long ways from the tub. If I group things, the bounding box of the group includes all the arc centers. This is a problem because, aside from feeling strange (to move an object but not see its bounding corners), it makes it possible to unintentionally select the group using option marquee (mac). You can have the object out of view, but still select it if you cross through the bounding box. And of course if the bounding box is way larger than the object you can't see its extents when it is not selected. That means you can inadvertently, and without realizing it, move or delete the object. Arc centers should be ignored by group bounding boxes. Note that symbols behave differently. The bounding box always confines itself to the visible elements. Arc centers in noo-noo land are ignored. Groups should, in my opinion, behave like symbols with respect to bounding boxes. Regards, Donald OSX 10.2.6/VW 10.5.1

I'm in the same boat as Vector in Vic. Making them tear-offs so they can both be displayed would be handy. What I'd also like to see is the integration of shape, data and format text, all tear offable, into the object info pallette. This would allow the format text dialogue to remain open. There is also an anomoly in the design of things in that if you use the menu commands (font size etc.), you can format the text when text and other objects are selected (and when text is in a group with other objects). The format text dialogue does not allow this, though it is handy since you can broadly make a change with a simple swoop of a selection. On the other hand if you have a long list of fonts, the format text dialogue will often get you to the fonts quicker due to the window slider. Best, Donald

Say for instance you have a two storey building. You draw a simple plan for each on a separate layer. The plans are directly on top of each other, so that you can paste-in-place etc. You want your plans side by side on your title sheet - how do you achieve this without layer links? > Chris, My method may be atypical, but it is accurate and fast. I work with plans stacked on different layers when I'm doing the initial layout. This allows the paste in place relationship which is very handy. Whether or not I put more than one floor plan on a page depends on the specific plan, its size and shape. Sometimes more than one will not fit on the page at an appropriate scale. If a sheet will only accomodate one plan, then I will leave the plans stacked for the rest of the job. If I really want more than one plan on a sheet, I leave them on separate sheets until the basic layout of each plan is well developed. Maybe you have seen that at some point, your drawing package is no where near done, but the plans have settled down and the changes you make to them are local edits. So at this point I move the plans. (btw, this is most easily done if you have kept everything on one layer as I have talked about before---that is categorizing the plan information on different layers can get in the way, in particular if you use different scales for the information pertaining to one drawing). This does leave the problem that there will be some revisions and their consequences need to get checked on both plans. Each plan must have a common point of reference. Usually there are many---grid lines, exterior walls, building corners, etc. Now instead of past in place, you copy the things you want to overlay onto the other plan *along with* some common point of reference, then group it all, then drag it across the page or cut, pan, paste, and postion the common reference. This leaves the objects you want to overlay in proper position. And, since they are in a group, they won't get mixed up with the loose objects of the other plan, unless you want them too. It is not as instantaneosly gratifying as paste in place, but it is only a couple extra steps, and it is happening at a time when the plans are in good shape and mainly getting tweaked. However, should you need to do a big revision, the method works just the same. Just copy and drag across a bigger portion of the source plan. Sometimes for checking I give a color to the plan information I am overlaying, but changing the pen fore color in the attributes pallette. So this way I do not use layer links. Also, I often set the plan scale to give the most readable and functional plan size on the drawing. No need to limit them to 1/4 or 1/8. Whatever fits best. I sort of disregard the ease of scaling paper output. Don't want to encourage it really. Sorry for the long post. Hope it was clear. I believe you can do absolutely first rate working drawings with VW. But in my opinion while some of the tools and structures in the program are wonderful, others I think will make the process overly complicated without yielding better results so I avoid them. My drawings are very complex and detailed. But I make a point of keeping the process simple and flowing. Its hard to budget the time for very thorough drawings if you have to spend a lot of time working the program. Work the drawing instead, I say. Best, Donald

I am using 10.2 and VW not VWA. However I think there is no difference in the import capabilities. Anyhow, VW doesn't import pdfs properly. They come in at low resolution, I'd guess 72 dpi. What I do is open the pdf in photoshop first. There you can set the resolution or array size. Then save as a jpeg. Then import into vw. This will give good results. Best, Donald

Gosh, It is true that a different title block design is needed for different size paper. It is not true that title blocks cannot be 1:1 or that different title blocks are needed for different scales. I use one 1:1 title block for each file and these files may contain numerous sheets and 1-4 different scales per sheet, though there is no limit to the number. I did not say previously, in this thread, anything untruthful, though there was some opinion which might be moot. I now think that Chris D is mainly working in 3D or working a lot in 3D. I do not use VW for 3D, only for 2D. I think 2D was the need in the post that started the thread, or at least I assumed that. I do not use layer links at all. But to get the functionality I described, the use of saved sheets and an understanding of the options provided therein is needed. Best, Donald

I guess I would differ with Chris D on a couple points. "There are no PAPERSPACE or VIEWPORTS. You just plonk a drawing sheet on a layer in your model. Without viewports there is no way to have 2 different scales on the same sheet without great trickery" With respect to having more than one scale on a page, this is incorrect. It is in fact very easy to have as many scales as you want. It is very easy since the program allows the saving of sets of layers and easy access to them. Those sets are the drawing "sheets" that you see in the final product. My view is that the lack of paper space and viewpoints in an advantage. What you see is what you get. You always see what your drawing is going to look like. I think that only for the most elaborate projects would the lack of viewports be a problem. "there is no rotatable UCS" I have done many plans and details where there are multiple orientations. It is a snap to move things on an alternate grid once you have esablished the x' and y' directions with two lines. Using the offset duplicate tool is much like using the move tool, about the same number of steps, but new objects will move with the arbitrary orientation. There are typically multiple ways of doing things also so if you want to keep your head in x,y, you can group the object, rotate, work in xy, then rotate back. But the offset tool is fast and simple. A couple other thoughts. I think the object selection handles are fine. A highlight color instead, as an option, might be a nice improvement. VW is different from autocad and in my experience the people who have the most trouble learning vw are people who have become facile with autocad. New CAD users pick it up pretty fast. There are a couple conceptual difficulties that require some mental agility and reprograming. Here are the three biggest things in my opinion. 1. Layers have scale. We don't draw 1:1. Draw a door jamb at 1"=1' and then paste it onto a layer at 3" = 1' and it will get 3 times larger. You see the border of your drawing and how big the detail is in relation to it. Freely position it where you want anytime you want. Sheet A1 of your set may have 4 layers with 4 different scales, one of which may contain common title information to all sheets in the set. Sheets A1-An can all be in one file if you like. 2. We categorize less. Autocad has a category for everything and people who use the program well sometimes have a hard time categorizing less. A good and efficient vw user works with a simple file structure. Absolutely no need to have separate layers for solid lines, hatches, doors, text, you name it. In my opinion the really fast vw users distill the necessary layers down to the necessary scales. 3. (sorry) It is a graphical not a command line program. Autocad users often have a hard time letting go of the old way here. But there are so many operations that are so much faster to run, by directly manipulating the objects and their position on the screen. This is partly because vw has had a very good and smart cursor from the begining. You can visually bring points to points exactly and much more quickly than you could working with the actual coordinates. I guess that the last thing that makes the transition hard is that there can abe frustrating aspects to the program and some hurdles to overcome. Add this to the difficulty of learning something new and some will just up and run for cover. If you read through the comments on the bulletin board and talk to other users I think you will find that the balance of opinion is favorable. Bottom line: You can make money with this program. If you use it right. Best, Donald

This is a bit off the subject, except that once in a while somebody has a problem with a crash. I noticed the other day that OSX keeps a log of crashes. Many lines of info that a lay person would have no use for. You have to launch apple system profiler to see the logs (apple menu >about this mac >more info). But I have never heard a request that this info, which is stored, be sent in for analysis. Is it basically of no value? Regards, Donald

I too have noticed this since 9.5 and have reported it. I don't know whether nna or apple is the cause, but would be nice to see it go away. Notice that you can use a tool, like the zoom tool and the active (front) window does not seem to repond, but when you bring the back window up, you are zoomed to noo noo land. Regards, Donald

There may be more than one aspect to this. I find that in v10, exiting groups and symbols takes a long time. Even exiting a simple detail bubble can take 5 or 6 seconds. spinning ball. it didn't use to be that way. I also find, as others have noted many times, that vw performance can degrade over time and the way to restore performance is to quit and restart the computer. This happended yesterday and that one operation made a remarkable improvement. In particular, smart cursor behavior went from very tedious and sluggish to snappy. I should note also that operating system stability is greatly improved over a few years ago, so the house cleaning that occurs with restarting happens much less often. Regards, Donald

There is one other thing about dwf that is not so nice. Ever do a nice vw drawing, export dwg and reimport into vw? Last time I did that I was not happy because vw lets us do very handsome graphically sophisticated drawings but they come out on the other end looking like autocad drawings. That is what I love about pdfs, they preserve the look of things so well. Really, adobe is the one that should step up to the plate here and teach acrobat to understand vector information. Having created one of the original mac vector programs they should be able to do this. Best, Donald

I have noticed this sometimes too. I'm not sure it is new to 10.5. I notice also, that whether or not a crash occurs depends on what is being clipped/trimmed. I think it is particular objects in the drawing that do not like the operation. My wild guess is that it is usually some kind of a complex object like a polyline. You could experiment by trying to clip simple things and seeing if you still have the problem. You could also do a custom selection to identify and isolate more complex shapes from the operation. Donald

I'm a big fan of pdf's. But not scaleable on screen means that you are basically dealing with a picture. You can't hold a ruler over the space between a kitchen island and the cabinets and learn the distance that separates them. As I understand it, dwf's store vector information so viewers can do area take offs (hard to do with a pdf on screen), compute linear distances and so on. Long term it could be a problem for us because building departments will inevitably move to electronic document submittal and plan checking and some will be tempted to fight the application wars and adopt a particular format, particularly with all the "enticements" that may be offered to help them decide. Regards, Donald

To be honest, at this point if I had to do it over again I would not have gone to 10.5. It's not horrible or anything, but previous versions were, in my opinion, really solid. With 10.5.0 there are a few bothersome issues as others have noted. For me, I just crash more. It's once a day versus once a month. I think there may be some issues with groups on the crashing. Both groups and symbols now take a long time to exit. A lot of my crashes are on exiting groups. It's touchy. Regards, Donald

Well! I think with 10.5, nna has closed a nifty little door that was closed in vw8 but open in vw9. Since 9 and until 10.5, I could have two copies of vw open at the same time with one serial number while on a network. No need to report every single bug. I am the only one using the program here, but it was nice to be able to print from one computer while working on the other. Would viewer let me keep this functionality, that is have two open files, one for editing and the other for printing? I do understand nna's need to protect its property. And it does benefit me since product development, at least in theory, moves in proportion to revenue available for improvments. It does sound like some changes have had unintended consequences. Maybe there could be a 10.5.1 to clean this up and the other issues that have been noted here on the discussion board. Regards, Donald PS Maybe a useful compromise would be to have a single license work on two computers. Next tier 6, etc.

Here are a few: 1. Nuts created in versions prior to 10.5, give obviously erroneous readings in the object info pallete when selected here. It makes about 20 attempts to show the size and just creates a big long list in the pallete, even overflowing. 2. Similar problem with structural shapes. 3. Double clicking on the nut tool or a structural shape, say a structural tube or channel, brings up a dialogue with the parameters. I can change them, expecting I will get the shape I have chosen. But, I get the original default shape no matter what. I can change them once they are created, but I don't think it is supposed to work this way. Could this be one of those situations where the overlay has to be rebuilt for the new/old tools? Regards, Donald

How do you use the driver in MACOSX without being hooked up to the actual printer to create the postscript files? Marietta, In the Mac OSX print dialogue, there is a drop down menu with sets of printing parameters. One of them is called "ouput options". One of those options is "Save as File". If you have chosen the 800PS driver, or any postscript printer, then Save as Postscript will be an option. (The old save as pdf, the macos version) will be the other). I usually just save the .ps file to the desktop where it can be conveniently dragged onto the distiller window. The pdf quality is superior to the Save as PDF provided by OSX. You may also have to explore some of the distiller settings, but they are pretty straightforward. The pdf files I get are always rotated 90?, but the can be turned right in acrobat (full version). Regards, Donald

It would not take too long to list all the good things I have heard about acrobat 6. I have stayed with 5. Maybe my observations and experiences will assist. 1. pdf generation via "save as pdf" in Mac OSX does not give the best results, fine with text not so nice with drawing information. I am fussy about cad output quality so I do not use that. 2. I use an approach similar to M. David Hammer, which I picked up from someone else on this board a while back. The difference is that once I make the post script file (I too downloaded the HP 800PS driver from HP for no charge and use it to generate post script files) I use Acrobat Distiller to create the pdf file. 3. The output quality using the post script to distiller method is excelent. 4. The downside is that in v.5 distiller is a classic app. I typically launch distiller from within acrobat (osx so far). This launches classic and distiller and leaves the distiller window visible on the desktop. If you click on it you will be in classic. But you can be in osx and drag the post script file onto the window, it will recognize the file and then do its thing. Most files take less than 10 seconds to process. I quit classic as soon as I am finished. 5. I have heard that distiller works fine in v.6 and it is ofcourse native in that. It may be that printing this way in acrobat would get the job done the way people want in a reasonable amount of time. I learned long ago not to bother using pdf writer. 6. The hp 800ps driver is osx native. Regards, Donald

I am seeing this on OS 10.2.6 in VW 10.1 and I would expect it to happen in every release of VW 10 judging from what the code has been doing. Can you double check this and let me know what you find? Robert, You may well be right. It happens that I upgraded to 10, just as 10.1 went to 10.5. I also have an architect friend who mentioned a similar problem with 10.1. In his case the light version of his font was not installed, so it switched to an entirely different font, helvetica (!). They've been chasing font changes around their drawings for months. I can only say that if I had switched to 10.1 sooner, and the problem had existed then, I would have reported it sooner. Donald