Greg_at_ils

Is there a way to change the visibility of a class by clicking on an object in that class rather than clicking the object to identify its class and then having to go over to the class palette, find it and then turn it off or grey it? What about isolating a class? Being able to click on an object and having all other classes turn off or grey and then being able to restore back?

As far as why I would want to isolate individual snaps, it just comes down to speed and convenience. It's much faster when you know you will snap only to Centers or End Points etc. For example, you can use a Center snap for inserting several instances of a symbol that needs to placed at the Center of a specific shape without having to be careful of snapping to an endpoint of those or other objects that my be nearby or even overlapping. In complex and dense drawings this is a huge asset. It can also free you from having to constantly sort through a large number of classes and change them, turn them on/off and adjust their visibility and options to isolate your geometry enough to quickly find your snap points. This even assumes you can achieve that kind of isolation that way. Anytime you have to do something repetitive with the same snap it's a life saver. If you have ever taken advantage of this in other CAD software, like AutoCAD, that has this ability I think you would like it. It will also help some of the issues you bring up as far as difficulty locating some snap points and issues when zoomed out. -My description of Midpoint and Center Point snaps was just to illustrate the difference in regard to the separation of them and not to say they didn't exist. (Except for center of an arc.) -Thanks for pointing out that the Loci snap is there. I never saw it being that it is located in the preferences and not with the rest of the snaps. It should be moved so it can be toggled on and off more easily. -See above. I don't think this is as efficient in a large and complex drawing assuming that the items you would need to turn off are even in different classes than what you need active. For example, if I have 30 instances of a symbol that I need to insert using only a Center snap, I don't want to have to go through the entire drawing and find any interfering geometry that could give me a Midpoint or End Point snap, see what classes they are all on and turn them all off or change the class options before I can place all the symbols. Assuming you even get everything sorted out the first time through, there may still be other snaps close enough to the Center snap on the same class you need that forces you to move through placing the symbols more slowly than if you could just have isolated the Center snap. It certainly could not hurt to have the option of isolating them. -I agree with your noted snap issues too and again I think some of your difficulty could be eased if you separate Center, Midpoint and End Point snaps. But I agree that they all could be easier to locate and grab which would help all around.

Here is my Wish List post: http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=101608#Post101608 As far as why I would want to isolate individual snaps, it just comes down to speed and convenience. It's much faster when you know you will snap only to Centers or End Points etc. For example, you can use a Center snap for inserting several instances of a symbol that needs to placed at the Center of a specific shape without having to be careful of snapping to an endpoint of those or other objects that my be nearby or even overlapping. In complex and dense drawings this is a huge asset. It can also free you from having to constantly change classes, turn on/off classes and adjust their visibility and options to isolate your geometry enough to quickly find your snap points. This even assumes you can achieve that kind of isolation that way. Anytime you have to do something repetitive with the same snap it's a life saver.

Exactly and these are only a few options I use a lot. AC has several more snap options that I'm sure others would find useful.

Thanks!!!! I knew it had to in there somewhere.

1) Separate Midpoint and Center snaps. Midpoint: Snaps to the midpoint along a line or segment of an arc, line, polyline segment, solid, etc. Center: Snaps to the center of an arc, circle, ellipse, elliptical arc or any closed symmetrical shape such as the center of a square, rectangle, octagon, etc. 2) Add a Locus snap. 3) The ability to isolate and turn on/off any specific snap. For example, only Center or only End Point being active. I find this is very valuable and a time saver on complex drawings.

I'm surprised I even have to ask for this one. A format painter with continuous pasting ability that copies all of an objects physical properties including its class and layer to another object. A novel option may be to separate the ability to copy the physical properties from its organizational ones. This way you could choose what you wanted to copy and apply.

Thanks so much Pat for such a detailed response! I appreciate the time you put into it and it did clear up a few things for me. Overall the flexibility I'm looking for is obviously just not here. Being a previous AutoCad user I got accustomed to the many snap options and have found that they are one of my most used features. It saves me a lot of time on complex drawings especially if I don't have to constantly manipulate the class/layer options, what is active, visible, etc. in conjunction with whatever it is I'm doing. Being able to isolate specific snaps such as Endpoint, Midpoint (different from center), Center, and Locus is very valuable. I guess I will post this over in the Wish List section. Thanks again!

Right, but that still doesn't give me what I am asking for unless I am missing something. I don't see anything that lets me just snap to an endpoint or to a center point or to an implied intersection.

I'm going to make another push for this as I just last night attended my local VW user group meeting and when this came up it sparked a great deal of interest. With the push toward green building via LEED, local and state ordinances, etc. there is a necessity to produce documentation that shows both interior and exterior light levels. This on top of it being a part of the normal lighting design process, general code compliance documentation, daylight studies and many other reasons makes this type of data a required element in one format or another for every project. I'm really tired of having to redraw my 3D geometry in a different software package. Not to mention that there are none for the Mac. I have to load windows every time. Thanks,

I vote strongly for this one. The power of VW and BIM is in the symbols/objects. Making it easer to create parametrics by eliminating the need to deal with scripting would be incredible.

Is there a way to isolate a type of snap such as center, end point, object etc? Greg

Agreed!

People actually like the lag? That's one of my biggest gripes and one of the reasons I switched to AutoCad at one point back during version 7.

I just figured it out. Thanks again.

Thanks Mar. I have set the Tread to class style 1 in the settings and have already selected the material in the Class with the "Use At Creation" ticked but I still can not get the tread and apparently the first riser to take a material. I know I am missing something here. What do the 15 Class Styles in the stair settings refer to? Is there some place to set each one of those to a material?

I can not seem to get the tread of stairs that are created with the stair tool to take a material. What's the scoop with this?

What's the deal with the position summery? When you add Inst, Color and/or Cir info the text is a disaster. The position name does not resize to fit into the box and the rest of the text is inconsistent as far as its position and alignment. I must be missing something.

As far as I know you need to either use a symbol that has the 3D portion in the proper position. So you would copy the symbol, rename it and then edit the 3D part rotating it to the correct orientation or you can also use the OBJ Info palette to change the x and y rotation.

Thanks for the reply. This is what I am forced to do now but I would love to find an easer way to do this since there are so many symbols I need to import.

I recently imported a dwg file containing Autocad blocks that I want to use as standard VW black symbols. The blocks imported as blue symbols and I can't find an easy way to either convert them to black symbols or import them as black symbols. Any ideas?

Anyone have an idea about this?

I would like to know the answer to this too. What is the difference between the Light Info Record" in v12 and 2008? Can we just add some new fields and make the symbols compliant?

Does anyone else have this issue?

Every time I insert a custom title block via either the drawing border tool or by going through the Document Setup menu, I get the two following problems. 1) All of my text in the title block is changed to Helvetica. 2) I have a few callouts in the title block symbol and they all get duplicated and appear on top of each other at the lower right hand corner of the TB. This happens in any file and on any class. If I insert the TB as you would a typical symbol, I do not get this problem at all.