M5d

Christian, with the multitude of benefits you argue ArchiCAD has over Vectorworks for your firm, why haven't you been able to convince the ?purse holders??

From the 'Parasolids Advantage' pdf: Vectorworks 2009 Benchmark Scores What the integration of Parasolid means in your real-world application: ? Vectorworks 2009 is up to 12x faster for Boolean operations, including surface addition,subtraction, and intersection ? 3D modeling operations are 4-5x faster in Vectorworks 2009 ? Viewport renderings are 2-4x faster in Vectorworks 2009

Check that the elements within your groups have their attributes set to class in the attributes palette and that they are on the same class you are changing. It's a good idea to keep your attributes set to class as much as possible so that they respond to global settings & VP over-rides.

Yes & no. There was a thread discussing existing templates and workspaces carried over from 12 & 2008 into 2009 but I can't find it now.(?) The result of the thread was if your templates were created in 2008 they should work fine in 2009. Your workspace however, should be rebuilt from the stock workspace provided in the new edition so that any new plugins/commands are available. Setting changed in you plugin editor would also need to be redone because the plugins will be refreshed or new versions. Plugins/scripts you have create or added will need to be moved into your new 2009 user library & workspace. I hope this heIps & is correct. Templates created in editions prior to VW 2008 had a question hanging over them in the thread I mentioned above but the problem may have been specific to a users configuration. Ray Libby was looking further into this. Ray?

I don't know if every change is documented, but in the 'What's New in 2009' pages, under the Renderworks tab, there is a reference to the ability to "individually texture multiple parts of objects, such as wall tops, start caps, extrude edges, and more". I assume mike m oz doesn't live in oz to have got his hands on 2009 so quick. 2009 is still a couple weeks away over here.

Thanks Pat, that's good :grin: news. Can't wait to get my grubby mitts on it.

Are you sure? I understand multi-processor support is unimportant for most tasks in VW's. But the "Parasolids Advantages" article notes speed improvements to rendering. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid about the nature of marketing. But I would like to know if those benchmarks still include the mac after the caveat that appears earlier in the article. Even if the mac is at the bottom end of the benchmarks that would be fine. I just don't want to upgrade to 2009 and find rendering is slower because it's quarantined to a single processor again. Rendering already causes excessive tea drinking.

Convert to group under the modify drop down menu. Once you have converted a symbol to a group you can then ungroup it.

There are some benchmarks in here. Parasolid Advantages

I agree, looks like there are some useful additions and improvements on top of Parasolids but; I don't like this statement from the Parasolids Advantage: "Design efficiencies inherent in the Parasolid kernel, as well as its sophisticated multiprocessor techniques (currently for Windows only), makes Vectorworks 2009 the application of choice for any size project." I hope this doesn't mean performance on the mac is going to languish because of a third party that doesn?t view the mac platform as a priority. It would be nice if we could get some clarification on this statement. Will VW 2009 actually be slower on multiprocessor macs until this is corrected? How will render times be affected by this given that they are currently multiprocessor aware? Is there a timeline available for when multiprocessor support will come to the mac? I'm assuming that these speed improvements only apply to windows for now. Vectorworks 2009 Benchmark Scores What the integration of Parasolid means in your real-world application: ? Vectorworks 2009 is up to 12x faster for Boolean operations, including surface addition, subtraction, and intersection ? 3D modeling operations are 4-5x faster in Vectorworks 2009 ? Viewport renderings are 2-4x faster in Vectorworks 2009

I believe it means, given the environmental apocalypse just about upon us, that capitalism is neither backward nor forward compatible.

Hi All Jeff is right. Details that are commonly reused with little need for editing are the kind of details I was referring to above. Bill, these 2D symbols intended for dropping into empty SLVPs I draw with all the structural details grouped together and then lay the text and dims over and this is how they import as symbols into the VPs. They are reasonably flexibly for both editing and scale adjustment this way. Regardless of how frequently they are used however, I usually find the need to rearrange them easily on sheets around other major VPs makes this method quick and adaptable to changes on my sheet layers. I do find most details are unique to the projects they are created on. These details I generally create by duplicating my major sectional VPs and then cropping and changing the scale. After that it's kind of the same though. I 2D draft over the model being referenced by the SLVP in the the actual VP (if and where required) and then group / lock the addition 2D elements together before adding text and dims. This way I still have the flexibility to move, re-scale and edit them on my Sheet Layers as the Sheets fill up. Since switching to Vectorworks I have religiously tried to keep my Design Layers 3D only. I don't see any problem with adding 2D information into the annotation space of my detail VPs and my section VPs on sheet layers but I have wondered if this is standard practice. The alternative method of drawing details on design layers with different scales and then using SLVPs seems similar to the way you have to work in Autocad with similar problems albeit arrived at in a slightly different way.

The ad says 'Surface Operations', not that that means anything but it's on the speed dial. So, what are surface operations? Rendering?

10 to 12 times faster? Any chance you could post the whole email on here for all to read?

Bottom left corner, third button in from the left of the edit hatch window. Lets you apply a scale factor to all levels.

Hi Sky I'm reasonably new to Vectorworks myself (X Autocad User) and am wondering if the method I suggested above has some major drawbacks given the discussion happening in this thread. It seams relatively convenient but may have problems I'm not aware of yet. I didn't explain it fully above so I'll lay it out in more detail and see if it doesn't get pulled apart by some of the more experienced users in this forum. Most details get reused so I convert them into symbols & libraries that become groups when imported into a drawing so they can be easily edited. When I need to add a detail to a Sheet Layer that already has one or more major VPs referencing the model, I add a new empty VP with no Design Layers referenced at the scale of the detail to be imported. I open the VP and drop or draw the detail in it. After this the detail VP can have the scale adjusted retrospectively without causing Text, Dimensioning or Hatching problems. The Text, Dimensioning & Hatching all adjust to maintain the correct size on the sheet this way. That means if you have a 1:20 scale detail but decide it needs to be at 1:10 you can change the scale of the viewport from 1:20 to 1:10 and the Text, Dimensioning & Hatching don't end up double size. I think this is the problem that the others are discussing above regarding symbols. You can also move your Detail VPs around each other with great ease this way by placing each Detail in it's own VP. This 'seems' a decent way to handle details with some flexibility and is actually better than Autocad which has all text dimensioning and hatching fixed at the scale chosen for the detail. I actually think Vectorworks is better equipped in this way to handle details.

I just create empty viewports on my sheet layers and place the details in them. You can retrospectively adjust the scale of the detail viewports without creating text, dimensioning or hatching issues (usually). You can also rearrange your details around other viewport easily.

Thanks Dave, that fixed the problem. Thanks also Benson, I had just set up a drawing to illustrate what happens when I came back to find the answer.

Has anyone experienced a problem that occurs where increasing the ambient light in a viewport causes solid filled white surfaces or the white components of textured surfaces to become transparent? I often want to lighten a render but come across this threshold which lets object sent behind the render bleed through. It's not a big problem, masking, clipping or reducing the light setting all get around the issue but I wonder if this is a bug or if there is a valid reason for the behavior.

I've had the same problem. I'd say it is a bug!

It works!!! Thanks again Maarten

So you're back! You should try emailing Julian Carr direct at OzCad. He addresses WinDoor problems & inquires very quickly.

Hi I'm trying to write my first script & want to write a script that will take a -Z value from a Column PIO and write it to the 'OA Height' Field as a Positive Z Value. It's for sloping sites where the columns will be exposed on the underside of a house. I set the layer that the columns are on to the underside of the bearers and then use the send to surface command which leaves the Column sitting on the ground with their heights all over the place. What's needed is something like the SetRField Function that can use the REAL data type. I have a skeleton of the script which doesn't work but it should show what I'm trying to achieve: Thanks PROCEDURE Level_Columns; CONST PObj = 86; VAR h : HANDLE; Valx, Valy, Valz, Colz : REAL; BEGIN h := FSActLayer; WHILE h <> NIL DO BEGIN IF GetType(h) = PObj THEN BEGIN Move3DObj(h,0,0,-100); GetSymLoc3d(h, Valx, Valy, Valz); Colz := Valz*(-1); SetRField(h, 'Column', 'OA Height', Colz); ResetObject(h); END; BEGIN SetDSelect(h); h := NextSObj(h) END; END; END; RUN (Level_Columns);

This is a gem! Thanks

Thanks Maarten.