monkey

i have had this happen to me with hatches, no opacity setting on anything in the file at all, yet it looks like its set with an opacity. It dissapears when i delete the hatch and make a new one........ then after about 10 mins it starts all over again. dont know if its connected to whats happening to you, but thought i would share. first of all it only happens in the SLVP...... but then it spread to my design layers..... cannot explain it i reported this to tech support with a file and they havent come up with an answer

i get this all the time, the file name seems to be fine, no illegal characters

you should have options in the OIP that allows you to change the format of the call out

you can change your shortcuts in the workspace editor to whatever you like.

check your settings under 'format text' option in the text menu, you may have it set extremely high.

we have had files that dont seem to save the latest version, or at least the latest changes we have made to plans, this only happens on one of our computers in the office which is a PC. it doesnt happen all the time, and there is no set pattern to it. we dont have files missing thought, that is very strange. the pc is running VW2008 with 2.5G RAM, 256 MB graphics card and a dual core 3Ghz processor, so plenty of grunt behind it.

yes it can, i have used a DTM of the site i am working on, then took an average height for any woodland and built up areas around the site and modeled this on, using send to surface to get them onto the DTM. you can then use the ZVI function in landmark to give you a theoretical ZVI, basically you put a light at the centre of your site or where you wish, and this then projects light out onto the model, everywhere which has shadows falls outside the ZVI. this works better if you have renderworks as the shadows look better, but it works anyway. Remember that this is only theoretical, and is only as good as your modeling of the surrounding landscape. I know that you can get 2 types of height data, i think one is called 'bald earth' which shows exactly that, just the contours of the land, and then i think you can get another type of height data which has the heights of trees and buildings on it, i havent experimented with the latter but might try it in the near future if a good project arises.

if people are drawing and polygons are not connected etc then it is purely down to them note using the tools available to them properly, you can see when your lines meet as it says 'point' or 'object'. I always draw at the scale i am going to have my viewport on my sheet layers, then i know exactly how it is going to look as i am drawing it, reducing the time needed afterwards changing line thicknesses etc. I find this the quickest way of working, but hey, everyone has their own method of doing things.

we should be so lucky!

it depends on whether you have used any other CAD software, if you have then you should be able to pick up the basics of VW pretty quickly. The help menu on VW is very useful, but as Thom said, jonathans manuals are the best place to start, they are step by step and include screen shots and videos, basically cover everything you need to know.

cheers ray, i found it by actually opening my eyes for once!!!

I AM BLIND....... i found the option to add a prefix to imported classes, cant believe its been staring me in the face for this long. Still it really makes me wonder why on earth VW allows an imported dwg to over-ride your class atributes, surely it should make the dwg's classes match your attributes if the have the same name...... anyway

can anyone please help, i work in conjunction with an architect and we share our files quite a lot, he uses autocad. now when he sends me his drawing as a dwg and it has the same class names as i am using in my current drawing ( due to the fact his drawing is one of my previous ones added to his) when i import the drawing, all his class properties over-ride mine, so basically everything turns black, and i have to go through each class one by one and put it right. i have been using VW for a few years now and have trying to solve this since day one,am i being blind.......... is there a box i havent checked that will sort this out?

you can locate trees to use in the vectorworks library, there are plenty of 3d symbols in there, you can access them by selecting add new favourites in your resource browser. i have tried to have a look at your DTM but for some reason its all fuzzy an doesnt behave properly when i open it.

why not just put a full stop at the end of each layer name that you are importing into? then VW thinks its a different layer name, and you can distinguish between the two.

right click the program icon and use 'run as administrator'

use the polyline tool (shortcut 5) and in the top left of your screen you will see a set of buttons that allow you to change the way the polyline behaves whilst drawing

there are 1 or 2 shrubs in the landmark series, but these just simply are not good enough to put into drawings. i agree that there are plenty of trees, and they are covered for both winter and spring, but producing a convincing garden design without any proper shrubs is just not possible with the resources provided with landmark. i have searched the web for some good 3d symbols but cannot find that many, you can find a few in the sketchup 3d warehouse, but again these are not great quality. for some reason there are quite a few cacti, but hardly any shrubs hmmmmm i do not understand!!!!

I have submitted several bug reports to tech support via email with copies of the files with bugs, does anyone know how long it generally takes for them to get back to you? or if they get back to you at all? whats the procedure?

Has anyone else out there had any problems with the lines in hatches turing transparent when they are not supposed to be? the outer line of the hatch is solid but the diagonal hatch lines keep turing transparent. not on all hatches, just on some. i have made sure that the class and layer are set to full opacity, i have made sure i am not on a class that uses transparency when i am creating the hatch. I delete the hatch and class that the problamatic hatch is on and start again, everything seems to be ok for a couple of minutes, then all of a sudden the hatch turns transparent again, without me even touching it or the class it is on, this is very very very annoying. has anyone else seen this?

Hi Jon i have been using your podcasts for tips for the past year or so which i must say are great , I would really like to join the user group, but one quick question, once joined can you download previous manuals, so if i joined next month, would i be able to download the april one (am really interested in the ZVI part. cheers

to finish a callout, you have to use the enter button by the keypad, the normal enter button only pulls down a new line.

i think there is an option which you can check which says 'fade stipple from edge' in the stipple settings box i think this causes the stipple to have an outline, give it a try

why dont you create a file with everything the way you want, classes, layers, symbols etc etc and save it as a template- file- save as template. this way everything will be the way you want when you start a new drawing.

i have had this problem several times before, i had a lot of resources saved in my template, about 50 hatches, probably 50-100 symbols and so on, i basically deleted all of the ones i rarely use or was able to create again quickly when i needed them, and this seemed to solve the problem. im not sure if there is an actual limit. what i have started to do is create different templates for the different drawings i do and limit the amount of symbols etc to the ones i would only use in those kinds of drawings.