Greg_at_ils

You can create 2D geometry on many planes in AC. That should not affect this import issue though. It sees them as 3D polygons. Converting after the import is not really a feasible solution when your dealing with a large drawing. These arcs were among other 2D geometry that was read as 3D by VW. Some of the geometry was buried in symbols/blocks too. After I imported about 6-7 seemingly simple 2D AC drawings I had thousands of 3D polygons and the file became very slow and large. As a 2D AC arc there is no way I know of to show the radius lines or fill it in AC. AC treats it like a simple line not an enclosed object.

I have a sample AutoCAD file below where there are 2 arcs drawn within a rectangle. If you try and import them into VW it will tell you that there are 3D objects in the file. If you try and convert to 2D the arcs move from within the rectangle and if you use the 2D and 3D setting they get converted to 3D polygons. I copied the arcs from a file a client sent to me so I do not know how they were created. AutoCAD sees these arcs as 2D objects so I'm not sure why VW sees them as 3D. Here is my sample file: files.me.com/doubledge1/453cab

It would be nice to have more robust documentation on worksheet formulas, syntax etc.

I think he means hidden database header rows show up when you export to AutoCAD. That's my guess.

Good tip. I'll add that to my list of things to try.

In a worksheet it would be nice if the limit of columns to which you can apply the "SUM" feature to was raised or a separate function to prevent the summary in selected columns on a summarized worksheet were to be created. Either way, there needs to be an easer way to have a summarized worksheet with multiple columns of numerical data that is not summarized.

Maybe someone with more worksheet experience can chime in here to confirm that this is either the only way it functions or let us know if there is a workaround.

Another bump for this feature!

Agreed I usually don't have an issue with 2D geometry. If your not careful, 3D geometry can make your file very large and slow. You just need to be careful to bring in just what you need. The nice thing about copying and pasting into your main drawing is that you can keep the original file your copying from intact and unchanged. After you paste the geometry into your main file, you can then make whatever changes you need to it. Unfortunately, I can not control how the file I receive is organized. I often find that there is geometry that I don't need in the same class as items I do need, there are items who have their attributes set individually and not by class and items that share the same class but need to be adjusted differently. It can sometimes be quite a mess for me to deal with. I never tried this. I'll look into it the next time I have a chance to.

That's unfortunate. Such as simple thing can cause so much extra time. It would be nice if they raised that limit or added a separate function to remove the summary from selected columns.

How many SUM columns can I have?

I have a worksheet that is summarizing it's contents by one text field, "Type Code". Is there a way to prevent other numeric fields from summarizing their data? Thanks!

When I try to access the help system on either of my computers I get a message that says: "An error occurred while opening the help system. The "VWHelp" folder may be missing or contain invalid data." The folder is there but I have no idea what should be in it. Is there a way to fix this without reinstalling the entire application? Thanks.

Good question Ozzie. I try to do as you say but more often than not it works better for me this way. First, I always have to modify the referenced drawing's class & object attributes extensively. It has worked out easer to manages this when everything is in the same file. Second, when exporting back to a DWG I find it much more reliable if all of the geometry is in one file.

I don't think this is what you are looking for. Spotlight has for some time been able to do basic direct light level calculations but it's a simple point calculation. It does not calculate indirect light or factor in reflectances, LLF or CU. It's basically useless for architectural lighting. Visual is a great program. I'm glad you found it. I have been using it for a few years now and it works well. I have also recently discovered Dialux. This is more or less like AGI32 but it's FREE. There is a larger learning curve than Visual but you can do a great deal more with it. I encourage you to check it out.

I have to agree. I've been one of those who has requested this feature more than once and even spoke with Lightworks about their rendering engine. I've had to use other software to do photometrics. This means a lot of redundant work in general. Basically I don't do any more 3D or rendering work in VW anymore since I have to do the 3D and lighting work in other software. I have therefore lengthened my upgrade cycle for VW and will be dumping Renderworks. I will also probably scale back from Designer to something else like Architect.

Yes sorry, Resource Browser, I changed it in the original post. It makes it very hard to work.

So I have some slow files that I'm dealing with and I'm trying to identify what is making them slow. This is not the first time this has happened to me. The use of design layer viewports and the import of 2D geometry from AutoCAD are the two consistent items in all the drawings. They are all 2D only drawing. I typically import the AutoCAD files to separate VW files. Then I open those files as required and copy and paste that geometry to a layer in my main VW drawing. I use these as my backgrounds. I use one layer as my background layer. I then create other layers as required and use DLVP to show that background geometry and then draw on it. I then create sheet layers for printing and they would of course have viewports to the layers that I have drawn on. Any ideas? Thanks!

I have a VW2010 file that has a lot of symbols and hatches (organized into folders) and it seems to make the RB non-responsive. If I start to scroll down in the RB is just goes blank, buttons and all. Even if I'm in a folder with just a few items. Sometimes I can see the drop down menus and get the RB to "view" the items as whatever the opposite of what it's set to and that refreshes the RB until I try and scroll through the list at which point it goes blank again. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Just when I thought it could not get worse it did. After playing some more with these ACAD files I realized that the person who made them used a feature in ACAD that allows you to crop an Xref like we crop a viewport. So in each file he duplicated Xrefs and cropped them in different places to create his details. These details are lined up next to each other in the file which means that all of the stuff that was cropped out is piled on top of each other. Well VW does not recognize this cropping and imports all of each duplicated Xref in the file resulting in tons of geometry overlapping which creates a big mess. Fortunately each Xref comes in as symbols so I can select each set and drag it away from the others. The caveat is that now you screw up the sheet layer. This just makes me crazy. I get a new set of files each week and will have to do this. I should have just used ACAD from the start and I think that now on I will for anything that requires a lot of backgrounds.

I did submit a bug report. I'll report back with what they say but I was hoping someone else had some ideas.

I think that VW would benefit greatly from having an official MEP/Structural package or at least integrating it into VWA. It is a market sector that is at least as big as Architects and you have to have both to design a building. I think that you would quickly add to the building design percentage with this addition. It's certainly a bigger market sector than Landscape and Theatre Design make up. 69% Building Design 5% Landscape 5% Theater Design 22% General Design All this being said, the true solution to our issues is a common file type that can carry all necessary information. IFC was supposed to be that to some degree but as we all know it will take forever to develop. There is not much incentive for the big software companies with the most market share to go this direction. I was at the NNA office not to long ago speaking with some people who said that Autodesk who started the IFC ball rolling has now gone silent and is not actively pushing it. It's sad and frustrating.

I continue to get frustrated with this process and I'm not sure that there is a good answer. I just received a folder of DWG files from my client. Each DWG file has about 3 Xrefs give or take. The files are simple and small 2D drawings. When I go to import the folder into VW it works for about 3/4s of the files. The remaining files don't import with their Xrefs and one file comes up as incompatible so it doesn't import at all. When I open these suspect files in ACAD 07, they all open just fine. I even purged and resaved them but the problem still exists. The only solution I can find is to bind the Xrefs in ACAD and then import them into VW. Unfortunately, I don't find this to be a sustainable solution. I certainly can not ask my client to spend their otherwise billable hours binding Xrefs just for me in each file of their drawing set every time they issue a set of files. In this case, there are over 30 files and I would not consider that a large number. This forces me to maintain a license of AutoCAD to deal with this as well as any issues exporting to DWG which I will not get into now. That makes my license of VW very expensive and I often wonder why I bother. For fast and complex projects I often find myself just working in ACAD to avoid these issues. I wish there was a better way and I'm not sure there is an answer for this but I guess misery loves company.

Is it not creating DWG xref files? I think it should create a master DWG file that references others just as you have done in VW.

Did this get resolved?