eric.rktek

Thanks to everyone for thte insight and advice. I'll definitely look into the status of our local Epson dealer. We're in Atlanta, so I'm sure there has got to be someone close. Thanks again for the thoughts on the warrenties as well.

Travis, Thanks for the prompt reply. I really like the looks of the Epson am glad to hear that they work so well for you. Part of our debate will inevitably come down to the cost difference between the Epson and the HP 130. One other concern was the cost of the extended warrenty for the Epson vs HP. The 130 has a 3 year replacement warrenty for $250. The Epson was $725 for two years of parts and service. I've never had much trouble with any of my Epson printers, and wonder how worthwhile other people have found the extended warrenties for any ofthe plotters.

We are going through the decision making process of which plotter to buy. I have spent a lot of time reviewing past comments on the board, and seem to have narrowed it down to three potential candidates: the Epson 7800, the HP 130, and the HP 500. All seem to have positive feedback from users. Any opinioins to contrary are appreciated. I have a question regarding the internal print server card referenced by Jeffrey above. I saw that as an option for the 130, but I only saw jet direct boxes for the 500 on HP's website. Does this box "HP Jetdirect 300x OfficeConnect Print Server (J4101B)" do the same thing as the internal print server? We have a mac network, and I saw several people seem to have trouble with network cards for both epson and hp? We can use an older machine as a printer server. If we do that, do we even need a jet direct or print server card. As always, thanks for everyone's help with these matters.

Katie, Our problems with viewports in V11.5.1 had nothing to do with a scale command. We have a couple viewports on a sheet that come in fine when the file is opened. After working in the file for a few minutes, all the information from the design files in just a couple of the viewports in the sheet would disappear. All Annotations were still visable. Most of the time we could close and reopen the file, and the information would be visable again, and disappear again shortly thereafter.

Kevin, as an FYI, we haven't experienced any of the disappearing viewport issues in V12 yet.

Mike, Are you using the Mac or Windows version of the enhanced tape measure? G-Pang, Script works great. Thanks.

Thanks for the tips. I look again for the tape measure and follow up with the magic wand. Thanks also for the script. I'll give that a shot too. I also came up with a bit of a workaround in the meantime. I set my class selection settings to 'show/snap' and used the 'force select' and a select all. It was a couple extra steps, but got the job done.

Does anyone know of a magic wand/class selection tool out there for Version 12? I saw the magic wand on Vectorbits, and it looks great. I'm willing to pay for it, but I also want to see if anyone knows if it will work with V12. I tried to load the enhanced tape measure tool from the same site, and couldn't find it in the workspace editor. As another route, I'm looking for a script that will simply select all the available items with a matching class to an item I would click on. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Can Vectorworks use function keys for keyboard shortcuts? I tried to enter in a couple in the workspace editor. A few were listed as reserved, and others did some interesting things to the screen and my mouse.

Another small suggestion to help make VW even better: I miss the option to move a layer to the top or bottom in V12 (with one click). It would be nice if these options could be integrated into a right click, say if you right clicked over the layer stacking order number in the layer managment palette.

I have been experimenting with the layer opacity options, and find them to be a very interesting addition to V12. When using them, a warning pops up that the drawing will appear diferently on a Windows machine than my Mac. Can someone please tell me what the difference is? Do things just look a little darker on Windows?

Already running OS 10.4.3. I kinda follow the geometry lesson, but why do the actual lines need to be in the viewport, as opposed to lines from a referenced layer?

Just had the radial dimension crash VW12 twice in a row. I was trying to dimension the angle between two lines I had drawn in the viewport. Has anybody else experienced any problems with this tool? I also wanted to ask if NNA can look at modifying the measure radial tool so that it can measure referenced objects in viewports (instead of having to draw some guide lines to snap to in the viewports).

I had a class select tool I downloaded for V11 that was really handy. I think it was from Vectorbits. It allowed you to click on an item and it would select everything allowable with that class setting. It was much faster than using the custom selection item from the menu. I recommend it highly for anyone working on V11. I don't know if it works for 12 or not. It was really handy for organizing imported dwg files too.

Icons in the tool bar sound like a good idea to me. I usually have plenty of room for a couple buttons to fit next to where the 'Exit Group' etc, button is at the right side of te toolbar.

Katie, Is there any way to make this an option controlled through preferences? As another approach, is there a way to increase the number of drawings VW lets me have open at the same time? I really do need to have more than the 8 files that VW currently allows.

To try and clarify a little bit: it makes sense to have a blank doc open the initial time the program opens. (I guess I'm used to photoshop waiting for me to make the next move when it launches). However, I would like the option to have VW not make a new doc each time I bring VW back to the front when minimized with no drawing open. It's minor, but since there is a limit to the number of drawings that can be open, I always seem to have some 'Untitle 8' file open that I need to close when working on a project with multiple files. This is a minor, minor issue in the big scheme of things, but the thought came to me yesterday and I figured I'd throw it out there.

Is there any way that I can tell VW not to open an Untitled drawing every time I open the program or when I minimize/maximize it with no other drawing open? This is a minor annoyance, but it's just one more comment towards making VW the most user friendly cad program out there.

It would be nice to be able to swap viewport editing modes without having to exit the viewport and re-enter it. For instance, it would be handy to be able to go directly from the crop mode straight in to editing the annotations as an option.

We are hoping VW has a fix for this sometime very soon. We holding off adding rectangles manually in for the RCP for the time being. Any work around suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

We use the a couple detail callouts stacked on top of each other to replicate this. It would be a nice addition to the other array of plug in objects for Archtitect.

Peter, Thanks for the work around suggestion. It sounds like NNA has a little bit of tweaking to do to the new stair tool. Hopefully, they can get an option to have the stair show 'up' or 'down' in an update.

One more question about the new stair tool: Did it lose the option to be able to show a 'down' direction (not just choose to show up or not)? If it is gone, can we get it back? Thanks.

Peter, That took care of the door leafs and swings. Thanks. Does anyone know if there is a way to have the wall break fill itself back in on the RCP? V11 had the show wall break that you could designate with a class to control this.

Here's another Door and Window Question: I can't figure out how to turn my doors off in my RCP viewport in V12. I've figured out that deselecting the Plan Detail Option in the OIP Settings for the door appears to make the parts of the door respond to their selected class visibility settings, but there are no class settings options for the swing or the leaf that I can find. I have tried modifying my class visibility settings in the base file, as well as viewport class settings in the Sheet file with the viewport. I have all my parts set to Style-1 or Style-Glazing-1 (carry overs from V11). Any help would be greatly appreciated.