Art V

Hi _c_ my experience is more in the civil/GIS and mechanical area than architecture. I agree that if the elements are configurable enough you can adapt to the standards. But having the tool being standard compliant right away can save quite a bit of time depending on complexity of the standard.

I'm using intermediate software to create G-code files that get sent to the cutting machine instead of having the driver directly reading the dxf file. (though that software typically costs 2,000 USD just for the basics and then you need the machine specific translator on top of it for optimized G-code etc.) so it will end up costing more than just VW. There are DWG and 2D/3D file viewers that can generate generic G-code files (ABViewer is one of those). If the cutter driver can import G-code files then that could be an option as well to try but you would not have specific for the cutter optimized G-code.

@J. Wallaceas @jeff prince already mentioned, splitting the images in tiles is they way to go. If the Tiff image is georeferenced, which I assume it is, it best to use a GIS program (QGIS, GlobalMapper, ArcGIS etc). to keep the georeferencing intact. That way you can seamlessly import the tiles and they should align properly without having to manually align them. When creating the tiles it is best to save them as georefenced jpg files instead of georeferenced tiff files. Even when there is no size limit for TIFF, importing jpg files is quicker than importing TIFF files because VW does not have to compress them internally as jpg/png . At least that is my experience. Because JPG files usually compress tiff files by a factor of 10, I would aim for tiles of approx. 400 megabytes uncompressed maximum, which creates jpg files of approx. 40 megabytes that should import without issues. I've been able to import 20+ GB georeferenced TIFF files that way into VW without problems. (Though you do end up with a big pile of tiles 😁)

There used to be one for VW2007 by Jonathan Pickup, and perhaps a more recent version, Tamsin Slatter wrote some books several years ago (2013/2014) that you may be able to find somewhere secondhand on eBay etc., but other than that there is not much with regard to books for Landmark. Did you have a look at this? https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/48680-guide-site-design/ Maybe that is an option instead of a textbook.

Renaming the line for executable VW2020 in the original file above into Vectorworks 2021 solved the issue for me. Attached is the file I updated. Maybe you already did this yourself. No icons though, just text. Vectorworks2021.xml

I am assuming you need to use SVG for some reason. Do you have the option to use DXF? Most cutting software I know of does support DXF as well unless DXF is not a feasible option for some reason (e.g. circles not being perfect circles but strings of very short straight lines). But having SVG export would be welcome anyway.

Yes, that would be quite useful to have as I sometimes have to deal with this too.

At least that is an improvement, as it prevents the automatic creation of unwanted sub-subclasses 🙂 When will we be able to rename the parent part of a hierarchical class structure directly in the navigation palette instead of having to use the class and layer mapping find and replace? (Which by itself is a very welcome improvement over how it has been until recently) E.g. rename Test-part 1, -part2, -part3 by just changing the word Test into something else in the navigation palette? Or e.g. rename -Test-option1-part1 etc. into Test-Option2-part1 etc by just changing the middle part in the navigation palette and then the subclasses to that part would all be automatically renamed instantaneously. This would be a bit easier than having to use multiple find and replace sessions when renaming multiple parent or subparent classes.

@Tom W. It depends a bit on how you define material. Some materials have a directional component and would look different in horizontal and vertical cuts or when looking from top, front, side etc. A recognizable example could be cardboard. At the very basic level it is paper, so you could display it as paper regardless of how you look a it. Or you say that cardboard itself is a material including its structure (i.e. directional component). When you cut across the cardboard you will see a solid flat layer, the ribbed/sinus shaped structure and another solid flat layer. When you cut parallel to the flat layer/plane it will look differently. In that case, when it matters for materials that are directional, you may want to make clear what you are looking at in your cut views, the horizontal or vertical cut view and from which side. If the hatching would be the same for all you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Then there is the issue of view representation where the material itself may not have be directional (or it's not relevant in that case) as in the first posts of this thread where you want to specify whether you are looking at a top view or a (side) section view and have a different hatching for each of them.

Totally recognize this. Which is why I have resorted to running only the latest version and if necessary sometimes also the second latest version for stability purposes for a few months. Though in my case when the latest version is installed I tend to only use that one anyway.

My guess is that it may have to do with the internal (data?) structure of files. In the DWG world Autodesk used to update the file format for DWG files every 3 years, supposedly for technical reasons though it was probably as much about frustrating the DWG based competitors to be competitive. In VW's case there is perhaps also the issue that they are updating core components from version to version to eventually end up with a complete rewrite and modernization of VW without disrupting the use of VW too much. My DWG based CAD program (BricsCAD) did the same several years ago and it took them approx. 5 years to get it done. So hopefully by 2022 or 2023 VW will be running on fast, stable modern code and its tools being essentially bug free and working as they should. (One can still dream, right? Without hope there is no future 😁)

For me it is not walls as much as it more about materials in general. Walls are usually of little importance in the kind of work I do, they're mostly only there for visual purposes to indicate there is a wall and what its dimensions are and perhaps the kind of material (wood/concrete/brick) and that's it. Components are of little importance in my case. So my needs for this are more generic than those of an architect. Which is why materials controlling the cut level display would be quite useful as it saves me from having to create another class (or set of classes).

Hi Tobias I agree with that, though there should be a way to have access to those tools that use local standards, e.g. if I would have to create a building for e.g. an Italian client it would be nice if the door/window tool with local standards would be available for use (assuming I would have sufficient knowledge of the local standard to use it properly). Whether that would be a paid extra or part of VSS or otherwise is secondary. In the DWG world there are sufficient options to make this work but for VW it seems to be somewhat of a problem to get it right.

This should be preferred if you want flexibility of how it is displayed, though how a material looks at cut plane is basically a property of the material and as such I agree with @Tom Klaberthat it should be controlled by the material. It simplifies management of materials to some extent.

One of the possible reasons could be that all these local tools are local, i.e. they adhere to local standards and may as such not be completely useful in other countries. This is something that should be relatively easy to fix because the vast majority of the underlying code should work almost everywhere and it is "merely" a matter of adjusting for local/regional specifications. Given that standardized doors and windows are most likely adhering to international standards (EU/ISO etc) it should not be that hard to make a window/door tool for the international version that actually works. As I have mentioned before in discussions about tools available in localized versions only, it is silly that those working internationally are running into such barriers when using VW and making it unnecessarily difficult to adhere to standards used in another country. At least make these tools available for users outside those countries/regions, even if it is as a reasonably priced extra cost option. Specialized/customized window/door items probably need to be modelled anyway because there are way to many permutations to be covered for coding. Edit: changed typo "could" into "code" for clarity

There is a freeware tool called Just Color Picker ( https://annystudio.com/software/colorpicker/ ) which is a colour picker that works independently of any program, kind of a system wide colour picker. It is available for Windows and Mac (10.6.6 or later), maybe useful to know for those who use both Windows and Mac and would like the same colour picker tool on both. It helps but it would be a lot easier if Vectorworks' colour picker could pick colours from images (aerial, satellite or other) so that you can match specific colours without having to go through hoops and loops. Just Color Picker has averaged colour sampling which helps in finding a middle colour if there is colour tint variation in an area (like in aerial/satellite images) and would like to see that implemented in a VW colour picker as well. A workaround is nice, but f you have to use quite a few of those then it starts to become tedious with regard to workflow.

I tried with an image and it doesn't pick up a colour from the image, even tried using modifier keys (ctr, alt etc.) when clicking in an image) but that made no difference. If it works on a Mac then hopefully it will be implemented on Windows in the next service pack.

The stake tool can show several kinds of values, one of them being the elevation. That way it should be possible to show level heights relative to the datum provided the level of the origin aligns with the datum point. The Elevation benchmark tool can also show the elevation relative to the ground level. Another option is to create a symbol with a record that shows the Z-value and place it at the appropriate elevation. The stake and benchmark tools are available in VW Landmark and probably at least one or maybe both also in VW Architect. The symbol option mentioned above is something that should work in every VW version. Please add your VW version (.e.g. Landmark 2020) into your signature line, that makes it a bit easier to answer your question.

Well... we have a chance to find out now what has been implemented or if we have to rinse and repeat this request for VW2022.

Just downloaded VW2021, so I'll have a look at this when it is running properly.

Absolutely true. I recently got an e-book version of a book about a certain program, within a few days I decided to get the paper version as well because jumping back and forth across hundreds of pages turned out to be much more of a hassle than flipping through them in the paper version. Though the e-book does save quite a bit of weight, especially with multiple books 🙂, but as mentioned above it is more suitable for linear reading from start to end of a section than flipping back and forth through an entire book. The same applies to help files and online only help files are even worse as these are useless when you don't have a reliable internet connection available at a location.

Finally! The batch rename was already there in previous versions but it was quite limited and or almost no need to use most of the time so I basically missed the announcement that it was expanded to do find/replace in class names etc. instead of just pre/suffix etc. things. Thanks for mentioning it.

Asus, MSI, EVGA en Zotac generally make good cards without having to worry about them being duds. Gigabyte's reputation on durability with graphic cards seems to be mixed between as good and not as good as the aforementioned ones, though this seems to heavily depend on the GPU card model and might be production batch dependent. PNY is over here basically the only brand that sells Quadro cards (apart from nVidia if you can get them) and I've not heard/read bad things on their quality in general. So I assume their "consumer level" (e.g. RTX 2080Ti) cards are not likely to be duds either. Palit seems to be doing fine as well, but I have no experience with them. One of the reasons for the pricing differences besides brand (quality) reputation (Asus generally costs more than e.g. MSI or Gigabyte) are the extent to which the GPU is overclocked, amount and type or RAM, connections (some cheaper models might e.g. omit the VR headset USB C connection). I suggest you look first at the specs of these GPU cards to see which ones are within your budget for a GPU and then see which brands are turning out to have those cards. Stick with the big names for peace of mind (lesser known names can also make really good cards, but if them being "unknown" makes you uncomfortable then don't get one in your budget situation) and then choose based on must have criteria (e.g. price, RAM, minimum of Display ports, or other connections that match your monitors etc.) if there are differences in that area e.g. I chose an MSI GPU card over a comparable Asus one because the Asus "only" had 2 Display ports (and 2 HDMI ports), the MSI has 3 Display ports and one HDMI port. For me the number of Display ports was the differentiating factor in favour of the MSI GPU card with everything else being virtually identical. For you the criteria might be different.

Can''t you adjust the text size through the plug-in manager (Tools>Plug-ins>Plug-in Manager)? For some plug-ins you can adjust the text size/scaling this way, though I don't know if that is possible for this particular plug-in as I don't have ConnectCad.

What happens if you put the render view into a viewport on a sheet layer? Do you then still have these issues? How much is a lot of geometry? 10,000+ objects, 100,000+, 1 million+? What kind of geometry? If the objects are quite complex and you have a lot of those I can imagine that this may cause issues in certain cases. If things get progressively worse with each render it might be a memory issue where memory is not properly released after a exiting render and just keeps filling up to the point you have to restart VW. The GPU shouldn't be the issue in your case (at least not in theory).