kgroob

I made a symbol of a bronze post using a few sweeps. When I render it, only the sweeps that are rectangular prisms show up. They're all in the same class. Why do some sweeps show up and some not? I've checked to make sure the 2d polyline that creates the sweep is closed in each instance. Help!

Thanks. I'll make sure those arcs aren't filled

Thanks. I figured out a makeshift method...most of the lines are coming from one class, so I'm selecting all the polylines in that class, decomposing, then selecting the resulting arcs and grouping them. inside the group, I can see where the giant lines are stemming from, and you're right, it's usually arcs. So, I'm just deleting the stem arc, and the big line goes away. WOOHOO! now I just have to find all of those little annoying arcs. It's a restoration, and all of my posts on this message board have been about drawings related to this church...I should have made the drawings less detailed to begin with.

Working on a very detailed drawing. Eventually it needs to be converted to DWG, and every time I try, some of the polylines go berserk and turn into HUUUUUGE arcs and lines that make it look like the drawing threw up all over itself. I know autocad doesn't take kindly to Vectorworks polylines, so I'm trying to decompose the polylines before converting the drawing to DWG so that those giant lines don't show up. The problem is: when I decompose the polylines and the giant lines show up, vectorworks won't let me select them. I have tried clicking directly on them, holding "alt/option" and making a window that crosses them...nothing. I also tried making a window around the immediate area of the drawing to deselect the lines that are left after decomposing the polylines, which leaves "21 lines" in the object box. Even after pressing delete, and no objects showing up in the object box, the ghost lines are still there. Someone HELP!

Thanks, D Wood. I had been using several symbols, but I'm going back and converting groups to symbols that I hadn't thought to make into symbols in the first place. Do you happen to know if using symbols makes it easier/harder/neither to convert to DWG files?

I have 1 GB of ram and I don't think my employer wants to upgrade...I would be very happy if he did upgrade to 2008 though. I don't know how to download the latest drivers for the printer...it's old to begin with.

I just timed one of the drawings to print on our small size printer. 11x17 size print from a 16.8 MB vectorworks file took 10 minutes to print. I know there's a lot of detail, but come on! 10 minutes to print?!

I have Vectorworks 11.5.1, so I don't have the Export>Export PDF option. I guess someone realized somewhere after Vectorworks 11 that save as PDF is not a good method.

Radek, Try filling the objects with a solid fill. Sometimes if the object does not have a fill, the texture won't show.

I've been working on several files for a very ornate church. Unfortunately for me, I drew the initial files with just about all the detail there is in the church, and now my files are HUGE! It takes about 5-10 minutes to print each one. The largest vectorworks file is about 26 MB, and the corresponding PDF is 6.9 MB. Even after making PDFs, it takes a long time to print, if Adobe doesn't crash first. Does anyone know of a way to save my sanity and shrink the file size more easily than clicking into almost every group and deleting a few polylines? I don't want to eliminate all the detail, otherwise I would just delete all the gray lines (finest detail). I also tried reducing the PDF file size in acrobat, but sometimes it just makes the file larger for some reason.

thank you!!

I have all the renderworks textures, including the glass shader. When I apply it to a window plugin, the entire window becomes glass, including the trim & mullions. Has anyone discovered how to make the trim white, for instance, with the lites still glass?

When rendering a model in any of the three perspective views, they all come out in 3-point perspective (the vertical lines are not vertical---they slant out). Standard perspective drawings use 2-point perspective. Is there a way to do this in Vector Works? I can't find an option for 1-point or 2-point perspective. Mac OSX (10.4.11) Vectorworks 11.5.1

vectorworks 11.5.1 exporting as autocad 2000/2000i/2002 because it will ultimately be going to an engineer, and I don't know which version he has. opening on autocad 2008

When I export my VW files to DWG, the file size increases exponentially. I tried to open the file on my coworker's autocad, and it looked like the drawing exploded--lines and arcs everywhere. The original file is 20 MB, and when exported it becomes 115 MB. First I tried ungrouping everything, and the file size didn't change. I just tried lowering the 2D conversion resolution, and that brought the file down to 44 MB when set at Medium, but does that affect the drawing negatively? Is there any other way to reduce the file size? Also, the drawing still has circles, lines, and arcs exploding out from it. Is there any way to remedy that without decomposing all of my polylines?

it turns out that the line was stemming from a group within a symbol, but when I selected the group, the line never showed up and didn't affect the overall size of the group. I still don't know where the line came from, but I decided to delete the group altogether and mirror the same group from the other side of the symbol. For some reason, that fixed it. The other strange thing is that the line only came from one of the symbols, and did not appear in the other 5 identical symbols. I had tried deleting the symbol with the line and duplicating and moving one of the symbols without the line, and every time I did that, the line showed up again. I can't imagine why the position of the symbol would affect the drawing. any thoughts?

There is a gray line that just started showing up in my viewport that hadn't been there before, and I did not draw it. I can't click on it, and when I go back to the design layer, it isn't there. How do I get rid of it? Where might it have come from? Vectorworks 11.5.1 Mac OS X

Has anyone else come across the problem when creating a complex polyline with the compose tool that parts of the polyline stop being recognized? It has happened a few times in different drawings. I can select the polyline by clicking on it only at specific spots along the line. The rest of the line is still there, and when I select it and use the stretch tool, I can manipulate it, but I can only select it at certain parts of the line. Help!! I'm running Mac OSX, and I just updated to VectorWorks 11.5.1. It has happened with both 11.5.1 and 11.0.1.