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Art V

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Everything posted by Art V

  1. Well... yes and no. It is possible to print/export ESRI image but only if you have an ESRI account. If you don't then you probably won't have a right to use the images other than for display within VW. Which seems reasonable to me. Like you I prefer to get my own imagery either from opensource data or purchase if really necessary to avoid dependence on commercial outfits like ESRI who sometimes charge you and arm and a leg for imagery while there are opensource alternatives of adequate or almost equal quality available for most purposes. (Unless you need the most recent images in very high quality where purchase is often the only option for the short term, unless you can wait for that image to become available in open sources)
  2. Unfortunately VW lacks the option of setting the Elevation (Z-value) for shapefile polylines/polygons imports based on an attribute that holds the elevation (in this case ELEVATION). This is imho an omission within Vectorworks.
  3. Would it be possible to share the actual shapefile? When trying to set the coordinate system in blank file to the same EPSG code as in your VW file I get the error below in VW2022: CPLErr( 3 ), err_no( 1 ) PROJ: utm: Invalid latitude Despite that... the elevation is within an elevation field in the record Test1Rec but all lines have a Z value of 0 (zero). You may want to check your export settings to see if the elevation value is exported as a Z value as well, or assign the Z value to the polylines/polygons based on the Elevation attribute before exporting the shapefile. Then try importing again into VW and the lines should be at the proper elevation. Or a workaround could be to reimport the data into QGIS and make sure the Elevation (Z value) is set by the ELEVATION attribute so that the lines do get a Z value that equals the value of the ELEVATION attribute. When I import into BricsCAD using Spatial Manager and I can set the Z value bases on the ELEVATION attribute and it generates the lines at the Z value based on the ELEVATION attribute of the lines. Attached are the files as VW2020 with the shapefiles generated as described hereafter imported into VW, dwg after importing the SHP from exporting from your VWX files into BricsCAD using Spatial Manager to generate the Z values for the lines as well as the SHP files exported again from BricsCAD/Spatial Manager with Z value assigned to the lines so you can test the import of the shapefiles to see if there might be a glitch. 3D terrain.dwg 3D terrain SHP files.zip 3D terrain v2020.vwx
  4. Another option, depending on the exact shape you need, could be lofting a solid provided you have the proper number of curves etc. It may take a bit more time but overall it could be a bit less cumbersome as well than having to try to get it right with tapered extrudes etc.
  5. Because these are two separate things. E.g. the issue of the missing proper 4-way crossing has nothing to do with introducing major new features but everything with fixing some basic missing tool for which most of the code is already available (i.e. T-crossing) and for which I see no logic why it should be omitted for at least a decade by now. And this is just one example of things that people are (still) complaining/griping about for years. Not just the bigger things but also the relatively simple things that affect daily workflow. Saying that a mid-cycle release of a (somewhat) major new feature wouldn't make fixing any issues faster is.... errr.... well... fixing those long standing issues seems to be progressing at the speed of a paralyzed snail in a tar pit so it begs the question how much faster it could be by not having a mid cycle release of a major new feature. The other thing is introducing a major new feature halfway the yearly release cycle... let's suppose, for the sake of discussion, that a major new feature was not yet ready for release with the main year release but two months after that the feature's issues have been solved and at that stage it would have been suitable for inclusion in the main yearly release. Are you implying you would then rather wait another 10 months before releasing it instead of e.g. during a SP release? Which brings me to your other statement: Uhmmm.....that implies that if stability decreases then the feature was either not properly tested for stability and therefore should not have been released anyway (see comment above about e.g. issues for a major feature being solved 2 months after major release) or testing quality is not at the level it should be. Because proper testing should always be done and features shouldn't be released if they are causing stability issues... this applies as well to the yearly release which is often causing new issues as well. By the logic of your above statement there should be no major new feature in the yearly release as well because it very could decrease the stability of the software, that is ... apparently it is not that rare that stability issues do happen with the yearly main release ... given the comments about stability issues for the new 2022 version that have been brought up by several people. So I'll repeat... a major new feature should not be released if it causes problems... if testing is done properly then it shouldn't matter whether it is released during the main yearly release or e.g. a few months after that because the likelihood of stability issues should (theoretically) be low either way or at least not worse than with the main yearly release. In my opinion the argumentation about not having a larger feature mid-cycle release and fixing long standing issues not being faster is quite weak. I doubt there would be a lot of complaints if Vectorworks Inc. would dedicate one year of development to fix a lot of long standing issues of (sometimes relatively simple) things that affect our daily workflow, i.e. to make tools work properly and to fix some of the file exchange/roundtrip issues that have a negative impact. That should create a considerably cleaner and hopefully more stable and usable Vectorworks as well which is beneficial for almost everyone.
  6. If it quits that fast, are you really sure it is not actually crashing? 😁 But more serious now, it is not a good thing if the OS programmers manage to screw up basic things this way. Not just Apple, Microsoft has a history of bad updates causing issues with basic things or even wrecking PC's too. It seems quality control in software is now considered a cost instead as an investment. I used Apple computers long time ago, during the 1990's, until I switched to Windows in 1999. The one thing that bothers me about current Mac OS and prevents me from returning is its (seemingly) lack of backwards compatibility with older software i.e. the OS changes in such ways that it breaks software's compatibility with the OS more often than I like to deal with.
  7. Vendor can be VW or an external vendor/provider from where they source their objects/data. I don't know where VW gets its data from, but most likely from an external source that has a collection of such data.
  8. How about doing a mid-release update/SP that does introduce new internal features? My other CAD program has bug fixes released when needed and a mid-release cyle update that often introduces new (sometimes major) features. VW will have time to test it and people don't have to wait a full year before something new is included. I do realize that Vectorworks doesn't have the resources of e.g. Autodesk but some things do seem to take forever to get solved/fixed (if at all). Not to hijack this topic but to show what I mean... VW Landmark still has not proper 4-way crossing in its road tools, have been asking for years, it should be simple because it's just another leg so the programming should be there already, and I simply gave up bringing it up again and now either overlap two T-crossings or create my own for each road size. Why hasn't this been solved by now, it is probably the most common road crossing in the world together with the T-crossing and it's still not included, WHY??? Rinse and repeat for other tools like the S...r tool that has been talked about to death in the past. Sometimes these seem very simple things to fix, the S...r tool is different because it is complex but still.
  9. I can't speak for @hollister design Studio but my experience, not just for VW, has been that vendor supplied databases/catalogs may change over time (read drop/remove "obsolete" items or change them in a way that makes them incompatible with previous versions) or not have the exact thing I need, so using my own catalog/database makes sure I have (and can keep) what I want/need and how/when I want it without being fully dependent on the vendor. That doesn't mean I would avoid using vendor supplied databases/catalogs but for essential items I'd prefer to use my own, which may include items from a vendor supplied database/catalog.
  10. Unless you manage to get hold of Harry Potter's magic wand then probably not. 🙂 You could try to create only the base volume without rounded edges, then put the side surface areas to each respective side and use push/pull to subtract/extrude to the desired depths first and then round all corners where necessary. That is how I would do it in my other CAD program which can recognize enclosed surface boundaries for push/pull but in VW it doesn't work as smoothly so that is one thing where I would like to see VW improve.
  11. If your display drivers are up to date it looks like you are running into a bug, as the only other thing I can think of right now is a display issue because of outdated display drivers or VRAM shortage which can also cause odd behaviour. So my suggestion is to contact tech support, maybe it helps to clean your user preferences but I doubt that user preferences would cause such behaviour but you never know.
  12. It seems the snaps are now locked into the lower right corner of the data bar without the option to use a floating snaps palette as we used to have in the past. It is possible to have them show up in the smart options display but that is a bit of a workaround. I'm really missing the option to have the snaps palette be in a position where it is within sight when looking at the screen area you are working at to easily see which snaps are active. Having to focus to the lower right screen corner and then back to your drawing corner every time is slowing down a bit too much to my liking, as is having to bring up the smart options display to see which snaps are active.
  13. Art V

    Locus Points

    For the circular array use Edit>Duplicate array (Ctrl-Shift-Alt-D in Windows, problably Cmd-Shift-Alt-D on Mac), select circular array in the dropdown and set the values you want in the dialog for the array you want to get (number of items, angle, rotate the items or not etc.) For your 2nd question I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve, the default for the side bars is a light grey background regardless of the drawing background being white or black. Unless you are referring to something else.
  14. In the second screen capture where the classes tab is visible you are not on the classes tab but the sheet layer tab hence it is not showing any classes, could you share a screen capture that shows the classes tab selected to show that the classes tab is showing up properly? Is this the flyout you are referring to that is showing the classes tab as being activated? If not you may want to check in the Window>Palettes menu if the classes tab is activated.
  15. Something you could try to check for is polylines with lots of vertices, especially with imported (dwg) files with (spline) curves this may happen. E.g. When importing contour lines, maps etc. But other things can contain such lines as well. I've had to deal with such polylines after imports and those can have a serious impact on performance if you have a bunch of them. Using the simplify polys (Modify>Drafting Aids>Simplify polys) to reduce the number of vertices without changing the shape of the lines too much may considerably improve performance if you have a lot of such polylines. Different polylines may require different settings so it may require some trial and error to get the best results with simplifying the polys. Another thing to try is to check for overlapping duplicates, use coincident objects in the purge tool to get rid of them. Do keep in mind that VW can create multiple overlapping views/viewports in some cases. I'd have to look up the topic but in the past someone had a drawing with issues after importing/exporting a DWG file and it turned out that VW had created overlapping duplicates, in most cases three copies of parts of the drawing which caused quite a bit of overhead in the file.
  16. The reason for this is that AutoCAD cannot tell if layer A in drawing 1 is about the same thing as layer A in drawing 2, not to mention that layer colour could be different etc. for the same layer name. By default the existing layer overrules the imported layer, so in order to avoid things going hayware AutoCAD identifies the layers of xrefs with prefixes of the filename. This would also allow to turn a specific layer off in a single xref instead of all xrefs. However... when the layers are about the same thing then it is less desired to have this behaviour. This is why I suggested in the past to have VW's filenaming to be editable at the various levels where the hierarchical sublevels could all be renamed by just renaming the higher-up level. e.g. when I have class names ABC-1, ABC-2-2, ABC-2-3 then renaming ABC to XYZ would then rename the whole sequence for all the subclasses of ABC. Renaming the first occurence of 2 in ABC-2-... to 5 would then rename ABC-2-.... to ABC-5-...... without affecting ABC-1. If that would be implemented then it would be very easy to get rid of the AutoCAD xref naming prefixes of imported dwg xrefs by just removing/renaming the topmost prefix in hierarchical view.
  17. The probably better way to avoid lag is to have the working folder on your local machine within the dropbox folder. This will sync automatically to dropbox. On any other machine that you want to work on with the same files set up the local dropbox folder to sync with your dropbox account, or use the dropbox sharing function to share the working folder. That way each machine will have a synced local copy that you can use to work on and there should be much less lag. Of course syncing could cause some slowing down anyway but not as much as when you would be working on files located on the dropbox server folder. The only caveat with this is that you have to make sure the local folder on the machine you are using has been fully synced before you start working on the files. E.g. if you work on one machine and switch to another machine and start working on the files on that one while the sync has not fully completed you'll end up with a messy situation, which is why you should have Dropbox finish syncing first when you start on another machine, or manually force a sync if the time between switching is relatively short (e.g. a few minutes depending on the amount of data that has to be synced).
  18. As Jeff mentioned this is most likely a text scaling issue during import. Another possibility could be that the text has (almost) the same colour as the background and is therefore invisible. What are the the colours of the text objects? If they do show a colour that should be visible then it is most likely the scaling. Otherwise you may want to apply a different colour to the text objects to see if that makes a difference. AutoCAD uses the came colour white (colour nr. 7) for displaying text as white or black depending on the colour of the background, i.e. text will show as the reverse of the background. Sometimes the person making the dwg drawing uses a text colour that is almost black or white (colour 25x) to make the colour of the text to show up the same regardless of the background colour, e.g. if the text is above light(er) or dark(er) colours and doesn't want to be constrained by the background colour causing text to become less visible above certain colours when it changes from white to black or viceversa. Most of the time it should import properly into Vectorworks but occasionally it doesn't.
  19. A question, when printing the file are you printing to a printer with multiple trays for different paper sizes? If yes could it be that VW2021 somehow selects a tray that is holding A4 paper?
  20. If the settings are the same as in VW 2020 then it looks there might be a bug in Vectorworks 2021. I noticed that the viewport boundary of your test file is beyond the page boundary, does it still happen when the viewport boundary is aligned with the page boundary or smaller than the page boundary? I tend to avoid the viewport boundary being larger than the page boundary as it may cause some issues with other software when exchanging files and trying to set up pages in there. It is unlikely that it would cause the page to be printed at A4 instead of A3 though.
  21. Could it be that somehow the units changed when sending to Vision, e.g. instead of mm it became meters (so a distance of 500mm became 500m) or any other unit change with the same number value but different unit?
  22. In my opinion you should not look at today's minimum requirements but what could be expected for the next 3-5 years. 2GB VRAM may be sufficient for VW2021, but if you want to upgrade a to newer version of VW in 2 or 3 years it will most likely be below the minimum requirements. Something else to consider, if VW is the most demanding software you are using when it comes to hardware, then an i7 is not going to give significantly better performance than an i5 in your use scenario. My suggestion in that case would be to either stay with the current i5 and 12 GB of RAM and upgrade the video card to a 4GB VRAM if feasible, or if you want to get a new computer anyway (e.g. for being able to use Windows 11 which seems to require a more recent CPU like 8th or 9th gen Intel as minimum or for other software that requires a bit more processing power) then get an i5 and use the savings for getting a 4GB VRAM GPU card.
  23. Microsoft OneDrive and pCloud also support block level syncing like Dropbox and maybe Box is also doing this now but not sure about that.
  24. It is theoretically possible to exclude folders and the files in it from being put into the OneDrive cloud. The way to do this is to go to the OneDrive app Help and Settings menu, then Settings and then in the account tab select Choose folders in the box showing the OneDrive account (it is the lower of the two boxes) and then deselect the folders you don't want to show up in the OneDrive cloud. You would have to do that each and every time a backup subfolder is created by VW within your project folder to exclude that backup folder, and you would have to do that for each and every device syncing to the same OneDrive account as this setting is individual for each device. This is a bit cumbersome so for practical purposes, if it would be an option for you, Pat's workaround as described in his reply is probably the easier solution as it is a set once and forget operation.
  25. Actually, even though the text turns to unstyled it may still update after the style gets updated as I have found out. It depends on the kind of change that turns the text to unstyled. E.g. manually changing point size of the text will make it unstyled, but if you change the font of the style then the supposedly unstyled text may change its font accordingly anyway. Despite that, the text styles should definitely become more robust.
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