Judah Warshaw

Perhaps try the following: Edit the *-WALLS MAIN class to show a texture for the Left, Center and Right for Walls. Select Tools | Organization to bring up the dialog. Choose the Classes tab if not selected and click Edit. Choose the Walls tab and turn on textures for all 3. OK your way out of the dialogs. (If all this is obvious, then I apologize in advance). By having a texture your doors should now be clear. Since there was no texture for either the doors or the wall, they seems to blend together depending on the flip state of the door. Let me know if this this helps out.

Try the following: In the Open File window, at the bottom there should be a Show label with a drop down next to it. One of the options is Excel files. Try selecting that and see what happens. If you select Tab-Separated or Comma-Separated that should enable the test files for selection. Let me know if this works out.

Just to help you out: In top/plan the doors will always be open. You are seeing the 2D representation. In all other views, which are 3D, the doors will be open or closed based on your selection. It you look at the Object Info palette, you will find a checkbox marked Show 3D Open. This option is also available in the Door settings dialog under the View tab. If you really want to see the door closed in Top/Plan, you can set the Angle value that is right underneath Show 3D Open to 0.

Whenever you want new plants in a plant list, you must create a new one. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism currently to update an existing list. I you have a specific set of plants that you wish to use for a project, you can create a plant list for use in Vectorworks in the following way. You can uniquely mark the plants you wish to use by using the favorite check, by adding a project id in the "Used in project" field, or co-op on of the fields you are not currently using. Once you have marked all the plants you wish to use, do a search on that criteria. If you are using a Project ID, the go to find mode, type the project id in the "Used in project" field and run the search. You should now have a subset of records containing only those you have marked. The same goes for using the favorite tag. Once you have done your search, you can then create a plant list like you always do using the Create Vectorworks Plant list menu command, and name the list as you please. The plant list created will always only have the plants in the current found set. This way, when you are back in Vectorworks, you can load this plant list and see only the plants that interest you for this project. Keep in mind that you can create any number of plant lists as a result of creative searching. You can limit your list to almost any criteria that you can think off. I hope this helps you out. If you need further assistance, or if this does not cover what you need, please drop a note. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America

I know this has been a long time coming, but I am happy to report that with Vectorworks 2009 this issue has been resolved. The ID Bubble class setting in now respected properly, as expected. Many other class related issues with the door have also been resolved. If you have any specific ones drop a line and I can try to verify it for you. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America

Hi Uli, Yes, you can change the dimensions used for the Height and Spread fields, but only to a degree. In the menu you can choose Edit -> Options -> Use Imperial Value Lists or Use Metric Value Lists. This will change the drop down lists given for both the Height and Spread fields. What won't happen though is updating the existing records. The only way to update the fields is for you to manually do so. There are some shortcuts you can use to not have to manually edit every record though. You can do a Find operation to limit the current set to selected records based on the height or spread field. Then you can choose the field you wish to edit, and from the menu choose Records -> Replace Field Contents. This will allow you to bulk update records. Another possibility is to use the menu option Edit -> Find/Replace. You may wish to consult the FileMaker user's guide available at FileMakers's website http://www.filemaker.com/support/product/documentation.html You should be able to find more detailed information on these operations there. Once you change the selected fields, you will need to create new plant lists to export the updated information. I hope this helps out Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America

By using the FileMaker based Plant Database, you should be able to import almost any external data into the database, and then generate plant lists for use in VectorWorks. The main thing you need to know is what format your data is in, where the various fields are and how they match up to the proper fields in the plant database. Check the File > Import Record > File menu command in the Plant Database to see the various formats supported. If you need specific help in doing this, just drop a line. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America

The current tool set used can be configured in the Options > VA Set Project Prefs menu item. This will being up a dialog showing the currently chosen preference set, and the match up to the folders found at \IP Source\Plug-ins\VW_Arch\Data\ So if you are manually editing the files, make sure the you are updated the one the system will actually use. Judah Warshaw NNA

Hi Rick, This only cam to my attention recently, so I hope it is not too late to help out. The file is easily edited using your favorite text editor. The file is located in your VectorWorks folder at the following location: \IP Source\Plug-ins\VW_Arch\Data\Prefs_Def (or whichever preference set you are using). The file is : Door Hardware Library.txt There is no real documentation on the format of this file, since it is typically maintained using the hardware set editor. It is a tab-delimited file, so that format, along with the number of fields must be maintained, otherwise the results are unpredictable. But you should be able to figure it out after spending a few minutes with the dialog itself and the text file that is being created. So if you are willing to put in some time, you can achieve the result you are looking for. I hope this covers what you need and helps out, Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America

Matt, I'm going to have to ask you to try a couple of things. If you do a clean install of VW 2008, and try to run the Plant Database, exactly what happens? If when you run it, there is a crash, there is something you can try. The plant database, as delivered in VW 2008, had a problem running on Leopard in locations outside the United States. If you go to your regional settings and set them the US and then trying the database again, what happens? You can make the change by going to System Preferences; International, choose the Formats tab, and change the Region to United States. The downloadable patch is specifically to fix this region problem. It is a known issue with FileMaker, and they made this update available to solve this issue. So we need to know what happens before applying the patch, and then what happens afterwards. Another question: Do you own a copy of FileMaker itself, and if so, have you made any changes there? If you don't own FileMaker, you can ignore this question. The main thing for now is to find out what happens when you start clean, and work from there. Let me know how this goes and then we can see how to move forward. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America.

Hi Matt, Let's see if we can get this solved. When you copied over the new files, where did you copy them to, your user folder or the application folder? This can make a difference. When trying to launch from VectorWorks (or finder), from which folder is the program being launched from? What problem were you having in the first place? Did the database not run at all before adding the update? Be in touch and we'll see what we can do. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek NA

Once you've added the new plant to the database, you need to generate a new plant list that includes it in order for it to show up in VectorWorks itself. Keep in mind that VectorWorks does not talk directly to the database for its information, but only to the various plant list files. These are not automatically recreated when plants are added or edited. Once you've added your plants, run a search on the criteria giving you the best selection of plants you would like for your current project, or based on any criteria you choose for general lists. The default lists were created based on category. Once you have the set of plants the you would like, create the plant lists using the File > Create Plant List menu item, and then go back to VectorWorks. Load the list with the name you just used and you should see you new plant there. About the Open VW Plants: That will run the plant database from the location chosen in the VW Plants Location dialog. If this is the first time running the database, you will be given this automatically. You will probably end up with at least 2 copies of the database on your system. One in the installed application directory, and one in your user folder (the default for where the database will be run from) or any workgroup folder defined. Once that location is esablished, both the VW Plants menu command and the button on the Get Plant Info dialog will run that copy of the database. Using the Explore button from the dialog will take you to the folder where the currently chosen plant list is located. This may not be the same location as that configured to run the database since plant lists will be gathered together from the user, workgroup, and application folders like other resources. So if you've never run the database before, the plant lists will load from the application folder, until they get moved to the user folder. As a quick aside: Do not try launching the VW Plants.usr file. The results are unpredictable. This is according to FileMaker's own documentation. To quote from FileMaker: "Important?:??Your users should start your solution by double-clicking the runtime application icon, not the primary file icon. Double-clicking the icons for the primary or auxiliary files might result in errors, depending on whether there are other copies of the runtime application on their hard disk. If your users have more than one solution on their computers with the same three-character extension and they double-click the icon for the primary file, the most recently installed runtime application is opened, which may not be the correct application for your solution?s primary file." I hope this covers what you need. If anything further is unclear, just drop a note and I'll try to help out. Judah Warshaw Nemetschek North America