Art V

Yes, this would be really useful if you have multiple viewports with same layer class settings and overrides and something needs to be updated.

Do you prefer all wishes to be listed separately even though they do affect the same overall issue. E.g. with dwg import/export I would like to have text styles maintained to text in both directions, but I also have another wish related to dwg compatibility. Do you prefer each item separately, or combined? (Of course reasons for why it is wished will be included anyway) There is probably still quite a bit to copy/paste from the multi-page wish list of earlier this year after taking out the ones that are now available in VW2017 So I don't want to put in too many single requests if that is not needed.

I guess you have the Dutch version of VW? The US version should be available around the same time as in the US allowing for 1 or 2 days delay due to time zone differences and putting serial numbers into the VSS account etc.

If you can afford to wait upgrading, you may want to do that as it seems that even a recent good video card may have display issues with the new display rendering in VW2017 when using the Best performance setting. Of course you could set the display from best performance to good performance but that sort of negates the advantage of the new display rendering if you have to do that with a recent video card. It may be a bug in the display rendering or it could be that the new Best performance setting is so demanding you may want to keep that in mind for picking your next video card. So my suggestion for now is to wait until more info becomes available before making a decision on a new video card (if possible).

I had to change the display setting from Best performance to good performance but compatible. Even drawing two lines that connect at the endpoint (and nothing else in the drawing) and then select both lines and move both joining endpoints gives an incorrect display. It seems as if nothing has changed but when selecting one of the lines you can see the new position in some transparent way. When setting the display to Good performance then it suddenly shows what it should be. Surely a GTX-960 video card with 4GB of RAM should be plenty for this, so it looks to me there is some display bug somewhere with the new graphics engine.

Yesterday it was showing the US Installer for 2017 for windows even though the banner was not updated, so in theory it should work. I just checked and it looks like the system is suffering from overload.

Jim, first and foremost lots of thanks and compliments to you and your colleagues for achieving what you did with VW2017, it is much appreciated. Having you picking up our wishes etc. and communicating them to your colleagues as well as explaining things certainly made a difference of which we are increasingly seeing the benefits. Already looking forward to VW2018 :-) And last but not least.... when skimming the new features link I noticed one of my biggest wishes for Landmark has been fulfilled (the EPSG catalog implementation). As well as some other GIS related improvements. (too bad there is no party icon) Hopefully you have some idea of how immense this improvement is for GIS use compared to VW2016 and earlier versions, as it most likely gets rid of quite a number of potentially nasty issues when working with less common coordinate reference systems (i.e. other than UTM, NAD and Lon/Lat). It makes VW so much more useful when working with georeferenced data.

Bentley initially participated in Open DGN, but a few years ago they got into a file format agreement with Autodesk so that they could better import each other's files and since then Bentley seems to have dropped support for Open DGN. That being said, the Teigha viewer can read DGN files pretty well, so it is "just" a matter of implementing the Teigha DGN libraries into Vectorworks as the functionality is already there. There is probably some licensing cost involved unless it is part of the same Teigha library/API as the dwg one. Maybe Jim can tell more about why it is not (yet) implemented.

In the Known Issues there was a comment about the Performance setting possibly causing display glitches on some systems, esp. some older systems. If that happens the advice is to set the display options to Good performance and compatibility. You could try this and see if that helps.

And this part did put me on the wrong foot as it somehow caused me to think it could write Revit data in some way Oh well, at least we know writing Revit files is on the horizon.

Still no DGN import Even though it is really nice that Landmark can also import Revit files, Microstation is still quite often used in civil engineering related fields (not just road design etc. but also landscape and GIS) so being able to import DGN files would be really useful. At the moment probable even more-so than Revit import. So please please add DGN import to at least Landmark, though VW Architect could probably use it as well as Microstation does have a BIM module as well.

Nice, thanks for the script

Thanks for clarifying, I only did a quick read so apparently missed that tidbit as there was talk about writing Revit files as well.

Unfortunately no export to Revit yet, maybe this will follow in a service pack once the ODA has further updated their Revit API/Libraries. Though being able to import Revit files is a very welcome improvement, so it''s still a glass half full.

Great, the first thing I'm going to check after installing VW2017 is if it has DGN import or not. Have a nice evening, take your rest as you'll need it for the next few days ahead I guess.

If the VSS fee does not change for anyone (with or without Renderworks) perhaps you could negotiate an "upgrade" to designer instead to compensate for the "freebie" that the rest may be getting, otoh it could also be likely that for those not yet having Renderworks the VSS rate might go up a bit. I guess, as Jim said, it will depend on the local distributor.

Unfortunately a different browser does not help, I tried Firefox, Chrome and Edge (all most recent versions) and no Mac/Windows selection button to see for downloads. Even disabled Ghostery in Chrome.

Yes, when page underlay is off then an infinite grid should be possible.

Glad to see you are happy. So this is why the VSS portal was a bit slow earlier today. Does this mean you can now start disclosing the new features? In the meantime while in VSS portal ...... F5, F5, F5

Just checked my VSS account after Tom's post, it is showing in the downloads but no Mac/Windows selection option so downloading is not yet possible.

Too late, it seems Jim has been using the Love Button given his reply to your comment on separating each feature in a post of its own. Your reputation won't ever get back to 17 I guess.

The VW2017 serial number is now in my VSS account as well. If the release date is the 14th..... it is now the 14th when using UT time (GMT without DST), so that might be good enough to start spilling the beans about all the new features??? After all Universal Time applies to the entire planet, otherwise it wouldn't be universal, right?

Thanks for the tip, didn't think of using the CTRL (Windows) with that. That being said, I often use the move by point/copy combination to sequentially copy objects using a certain point of that object across the drawing to be aligned with something else. Then having a modifier key for the move by point is quite a bit easier that having to press the CTRL key all the time. Saves me from getting a lame/RSI pink from pressing CTRL key all the time

@Eric BLike the others who tried I don't get the massive file size increase either, it stays at 1.4 to 1.5 MB and when changing some render options and the sheet layer viewport resolution to 300 dpi it would increase to 1.9 MB. That is far from the 61 MB you are getting. My guess is that JimW is right about the rendered viewport cache save might be a factor , this in combination with render settings as I have noticed in VW2016 that seemingly small changes in render settings and materials can have an enormous impact (i.e. increase) on render time and output file size compared to VW2015. Which may also affect your saved viewport render cache and subsequently the VW file size. So far for me the file size increase for any VW2015 file to VW2016 has been an increase by a factor of 1.5 to 2 at the most. If this happens with more files it looks like you ran into a bug or there could be some corruption of the VW installation that adds bloat to the files but Jim would know better if the latter could a possibility.

"Fortunately" I don't have this problem that often as 99% of the time I use crops when creating viewports to make sure the viewport will match the output paper size or the drawing border but this is an annoying bug that should be fixed.