aersloat

It would be nice to have a few more export/import options. Cinema 4d is a no-brainer-- aren't you guys one big happy family now? But also now that we are OSX'ing it would be great to have a Radiance exporter. This would be a big boon, especially to the Lighting Design folk. I would also like to see some better integration with a schematic design modeler like SketchUp (hopefully coming to the Mac) or DesignWorkshop. I know the Artifice guys are in bed with the PowerCADD folk, but we should have better options than just DXF for that stuff-- especially since those two Apps are just polygonal modelers.

I haven't had any trouble at all with creating PDF files from 9.5 in OSX. In fact I just created one to verify that there weren't any problems going to an Arch D size. There are two ways to create a PDF file directly. But first, let's talk about sheet size. We have an HP 1055cm large format printer. This printer has a PPD file which describes page sizes up to Arch E. If you don't have a large format postscript printer just follow this procedure. First, download the drivers for this printer from hp's site or versiontracker (search for "HP") Or here is the link for the lazy: http://www.versiontracker.com/redir.fcgi/kind=1&db=mac&id=11199/ install the software so you get the PPDs. (PPD stands for postscript printer definition, BTW, and describes things like available page sizes, etc. The actual files are just text can be opened with TextEdit and edited; however, this is generally not advised) Now, go to Print Center and create a new LPR printer ("Add Printer"). This will be a dummy printer. Put a bogus local ip address in -- like 192.168.0.5 and under the "printer model" pull it down and select the 1055cm PPD. If it isn't listed in the pulldown menu just select "other" and go an find it on your hard drive. You can also fake it out with the old OS 9 version. Anyway, create the printer. Go to page setup in VW9.5 and tell it to use this bogus printer. Under Format For... select your bogus printer and then all your available oversize sheets will be available. Voila. As far as actually creating the PDF file there are a few options. The option I have found most useful has been to click the "preview" button in the print dialog. This opens the Preview app with your sheet displayed. From there you can "Save as PDF" (or TIFF) from the file menu. There are two other ways. You can, of course, click on save as PDF in the "Output Options" tab of the print dialog. This isn't necessarily as reliable as the last method. The last option is to save the print job as raw postscript. This .ps file can then be ripped into a PDf file by MacGhostView or PStill (look on www.versiontracker.com) on OSX or brought in to Classic and ripped via the still-not-carbonized Acrobat Distiller. You can use Acrobat 5.0.5 Carbon (full version, not reader) to bind up multiple sheets. Your mileage will vary with MacGhostView and PStill. You should also watch your fonts as I have found that fonts do not always get properly embedded. We use Tekton (postscript) and that has worked okay. For maximum portability use a font that you know the person or service bureau on the receiving end has a copy of. As far as lines being wacky, etc. I don't know what to say except that we haven't had that kind of problem. Try to make the PDF file with a few of the various methods and see if your results vary. BTW, this is assuming you have all of your OSX system software up-to-date. Hope this helps

Ummm... buy a mac. No, I'm sorry I couldn't resist. But seriously, we had the same problem with Acrobat Distiller 5 on our macs, and not just with VW. We left 4 on the machine when we upgraded and were able to compare. v4 would zip right through and v5 would bog down horribly on the same .ps file. I think it is a problem with acrobat v5. We just gave up and went back to v4.

I have used VW 9 and it seems to basically work, although we haven't done anything rigorous. The real issue is that we are now well past 60 days after the release of OSX-- which is when a carbonized version of VW was promised Clearly something slipped. I talked to one of the Nemetschek guys at MacWorld and he was definitive about 60 days. Oh well. We wait in vain.

We do this all the time. We bind together drawings to have them plotted etc. I will assume that your are doing this on a mac. On windows the steps are similar, but I don't know the specifics. The first step is to output the postscript. you can do this using Apple's LaserWriter 8 print driver (stanard os 8 and above). When the print dialog comes up there is a pull-down option in the upper right hand corner. You can select printer or file. (You can also create a postscript translator desktop printer with Apple's Desktop Printer Utility that will only print to a file.) When you select "file" the output will be postscript and will, by default, save a file named *.ps. This postscript file can now be translated into a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file. A note on fonts: In the laserwriter 8 print dialog there is a pulldown with various settings (top is "General"). One of those options is "Save as File." In this option panel you will see an option for font inclusion. It defaults to "none." Change this to "all" or "all but standard 13" if you want to have your own postscipt fonts embedded. The translating.... with OSX on the horizon you will be able to skip most of these steps. Since OSX uses pdf as the grahics layer, you will be able to natively create pdf files of anything that you can render to the screen. But for now we have three choices. We do this quite a bit so we bought Adobe Acrobat. You use a companion program called Distiller to actually create pdf files from ps files. Acrobat is worth it if you will want to bind individual pdfs into a set or set security so that viewers can't print or change the file. If you don't want the drop the $ on Acrobat there is a unix postscript viewer called ghostview. Some guy ported some of it to the mac and not surprisingly it is called MacGhostView. In this package (look on www.versiontracker.com for the download link) there are two apps. One is called macps2pdf. Drag and drop your *.ps file on this to get a *.pdf file. It works pretty well. There is also a program called Print2PDF that you can find a link on versiontracker for . It is pretty popular but I haven't tried it. It is a printer driver that you can choose (via the chooser). It skips the postscript generation process. Abobe also has a printer driver option. I would stay away from that implementation. I have just touched on the basics. If you have any more questions or if there is anymore interest I could write more later. Windows is similar. To generate the postscript on windows 95/98 you can download adobe's ps printer driver and save to a file. I don't know the application options for windows but there must be some. Another note... how to get big page sizes... you can download a ppd file from vendors such as hp and use that file for your desktop printer. That will allow you to generate d or e size sheets that you wouldn't be able to do with the default printer profile. Hope this helps. Austin Sloat, AIA

"dwf" files are an internet file format created by AutoDesk to view drawing files. From ACAD you can export or save to "dwf." If you are on a windoze machine you can get a dwf viewer plugin (WHIP!) for you browser and then view the files. The plugin is not compatible with non-windoze machines. I don't know if there are any third party products for creating or converting dwf files. From my perspective it would be of dubious value to the VW crowd until the browser plugin is cross platform. For more info: http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/index/0,,159993-123112,00.html [This message has been edited by aersloat (edited 02-23-2001).]

The way to do it would be like the old Architrion method. If I recall correctly you enter a dialog, choose a scale and orientation and the cursor changes into a box which represents your current sheet-- you move it around over the drawing until you over what you want to print and then you click it down. That "sheet" then prints. To do it in VW would be slightly different but it could be done-- ie through a separate print dialog. This is going to be especially interesting as with OSX we will all be able to create PDF files quickly and easily from VW... It would be great to be able to pump out a bunch of 8.5 x 11 details in PDF format for email review by others without having to muck about with page setup and moving the sheets. I am not a fan of moving sheets because it messes up registration between versions and different files.