Art V

For me the level 3 is a no go as it may reveal confidential client information (e.g. project info because of used filenames) and using alias names for everything is not always convenient from a day-to-day working perspective. So I am glad we have the option to limit sending of data to exact defined categeries in a simple and straighforward manner (though explanation/description could be improved a bit as mentioned in the replies above). At least it is much simpler to set than all the data sending options littered all over the place in Windows 10.

As of Windows 10 yes it is from an OS perspective, but it needs to have Windows 10 and not Windows RT though I don't think the latter is used anymore for Surface books. Windows RT is a cut-down/dumbed-down version of the regular Windows and does not run PC software. Yes it does, and reasonably well too according to some people. When it comes to really power-user kind of stuff such as complex 3D models or very large/compex files it may not work as well enough as a good desktop/laptop would. The biggest issue may be storage space on the Surface pro as all is in RAM though there might be models now with SSD's for storage, if not then you will have to rely on external SSD disks as harddisks use too much power and then connectivity options come into play as well.

This may be the case for Apple, but overall it is not as HP and DELL have been serving CAD users with dedicated workstations for quite a while and now others are bringing out workstation quality laptops (e.g. MSI and barebones custom built to order outfits) as well. For CAD users on the Mac the only option seems to be the highest end iMacs that may do for now. I used to have Macs but the price/performance difference has become too large to ignore. People used to say PC's are cheaper way back too, but they forgot that back then that Apple had to be compared to quality PC's like the IBM machines, the HP Vectra line (bomb proof quality) etc. and then the price difference was not that big anymore. Sadly for Apple this is no longer the case (with the exception of high end nVidia Quadro cards being used in the computer). Windows has become stable enough that if you need really high-end performance you're at the moment probably better of with a custom built Windows machine than with an Apple machine and not just from a price perspective.

I think Kevin's problem is that when you have multiple notification and select e.g. the top one instead of the bottom one you can no longer tell which notifications you have not read because they all turn into read. It would be nice if non-read notifications would remain highlighted in the compact window, as I don't always reply to notified posts in order of listing.

This is something I am doing too (large 2D cad import to be used as a basis for a 3D model), and for large 2D drawings of facilities it really helps to import those into a separate vectorworks file and then reference them into your working drawing for the 3D model. After import of the large 2D facility dwg file you may want to check if the lines are polylines/polygons and if possible reduce the number of nodes. Polygons/polylines with lots of nodes will severely impact performance (e.g. contour lines from survey drawings if present). Also do a purge and enable remove duplicates/overlapping objects as I have found that depending on the drawing there can be quite a few overlapping lines, getting rid of those will help too.

The render settings have changed from VW2015 to VW2016 and what had a small impact on rendering time in VW2015 can now have a huge impact on rendering times in VW2016, I have come across this problem myself. I suggest to revisit your render settings , experiment with them a bit if you can make that time available and see what works well. Especially material settings can have a big impact in VW 2016 with the new rendering options.

True, but they are probably the largest user base of VW users so most requests deal with architectural issues. Though I do hope it will not lead to "abandaning" architectural tools for something else when those tools are available and useful in the other VW designer versions, e.g. the floors as for me they are far more useful than slabs for some things.

@chaz It seems that the Mac version of VW 2016 is a bit more crash prone than the Windows version. One thing that could help is to move the non-changing items of your model to a new file and then reference to that file, if that would be possible for your model. I've found this may reduce memory requirements sufficiently to reduce the chance of crashes with complex files, ymmv.

^ This could help too depending on the end geometry.

I was more thinking along the lines of the "intelligent" ribbon in MS Office and some other programs where the ribbon changes depending on what you are working on but then applied to the OIP. Aside from the standard items shown in the OIP the lower part could change depending on the object selected (already the case for some tools) and in case of lights it would then contain the variables that could be adjusted as requested in this thread. A pop-out pane would work too, but the downside could be that it may further reduce drawing real estate when working in a single monitor configuration, e.g. a laptop while working on location. It already is a bit cramped on most laptop screens.

Jim, thanks for clarifying. It brings up a question as well, sorry, but could there be some "jump to autosave folder of last opened/current open file" thingy in the open dialog for when a file crashes, or as in my case I would quickly want to open a previous version without having to mess with recently opened folders? The reason I am asking this is because the automatic folder memory of last opened folders in Windows (and perhaps Apple too) does tend to mess up things from time to time when saving a copy and when I want to open the backup folder it may happen they were saved in a previous other folder and the hunt for the file begins. Having this quick access to the last used backup folder of a file would be nice. This might require saving some info in the drawing though so I don't know if it would be feasible to do.

+1 from me as well for all the suggestions above. A repeat last step/action/command would be quite useful to have for various things.

Even though I understand where you are coming from and what you are trying to achieve, this could make things very complex for others to use if they are not familiar with your system. Plus the "issue" of backward compatibility with older versions of Vectorworks. I can see the use for this, but am also a bit hesitant to see it implemented because you have to keep track of all of it as Bas mentioned. Before you know someone is controlling a secondary class with another class so that you would have a 3rd class in the mix. Oh the joy that would give

Ah, now I get what you mean. yes that would be useful to have as I often have multiple classes with subclasses that are tied to a certain functionality in the drawing. E.g. road, river and railroad classes could then be indicated as infrastucture items with a colour so that they are easier to find. +1 for that request (I'll also upvote it)

I might be missing something. The autosaved backup has a date/time appended to the filename. If the Autorecovery would open the latest backup would any autosave to backup not be x minutes later than the latest autosave that was used for recovery? Plus that, at least in my case, any autosave backup that got opened and then autosaved would have a double date/time append showing. Even if you would open the "original" from the most recent files there would still be that time gap for autosave with a new date/time appended and not overwrite the existing one. So how could things get overwritten? Would the autosave time not prevent this? The only way I can see this happen is if the number is kept autosaves is limited to only a few (e.g. 2, 3 or 4 and a relatively short time between saves). This is why I usually set the number of backups to be kept to the number of backups per hour times the minimum hours for a day plus some reserve. E.g. if the interval is 10 minutes, this is 6 copies per hour, times 10 hours to account for a longer working day would be at least 60 backup copies to be kept, I usually set it to 80 or 100 (for a 10 minute interval). Yes this can eat disk space very fast if the files are a bit large, but disk space is cheap compared to having to redo lost work on big files and doing lots of edits. It also allows me to go back to a previous version from earlier that day with minimal updating required if it is decided to quite the current design and start over from a certain point.

Thanks for doing that as I was going to request for it to be added in Landmark as well. That being said, could it be an option to have these adjustable settings in the OIP so that when you select a light source in the visualization palette all relevant info will show in the OIP and you can adjust from there? I guess most people have the OIP already open anyway and it this way the Visualization palette could be kept relatively compact as most of us, with exception of spotlight users, deal with lights for a relatively limited amount of time compared to the overall drawing.

Yes I misread that too, assuming that even with "Send nothing" basic information always gets sent from time to time, and not just only at activation and checking for updates. Maybe it could be worded/formatted slightly different so that it is more clear that if you want absolutely nothing to sent then after activation one needs to disable checking for updates even when "send nothing" is selected? Now it gets a bit lost in the blurb of text and can be misread/overlooked when quickly reading through the text. People tend to look at the captions and the items listed underneath to see what info gets sent and may miss this part. (I did obviously)

Why not go for "Master of the Universe"?

Yes, we discussed a bit about this some time ago. Before I got into the GIS stuff I would at times do as you subscribed, but I no longer do this if the file is georeferenced. With regard to using georeferencing, if you are using that it is best to have the coordinate reference system and the origin of the drawing to align with the internal origin of the drawing. This will eliminate some potential coordinate issues/errors also when exporting to shapefiles.

Converting drawings from VW2015 to VW2016 can increase the file size with a factor 1.5 to 2 depending on content. Did you perhaps have referenced files that got imported as well? Did you use purge to clean the drawing, if yes did you also enable the remove duplicates option in case somehow the objects got duplicated? In the past I've ran into an odd big file size increase when converting from VW2015 to VW2016 and could solve that by export to VW2014 from VW2015 and then import that file it into VW2016. But that file was a conversion from 2013>2014>2015 to start with, but for some reason it worked.

Would it be an option to generate the base honeycomb from a flat 2D surface with the holes as honeycomb/circle/whatever shape you want subtracted from the overall flat 2D surface shape, then extrude this to the required thickness and then morph it into shape? I've done something like that with at least 200 holes to create a honeycomb style plate though the overall shape was not that complex and the resulting file was just over 15 MB. As Kevin mentioned using a sweep can create an overly heavy geometry. Could you perhaps show a screenshot or two of what you are trying to create? This might be helpful for us to provide an alternative way of getting the result you want.

In VWX 2016 the batch export can be found under File>Publish Select the sheets you want to publish, click on the right arrow so they get moved to the right and then underneath the list of sheets to be published you have a dropdown "Publish to" where you can select PDF and other formats for sheets selected in the right-hand list of sheets to be published. Because you mentioned you had this batch PDF export in VWX 2013 I assume you know you have to be in a designer workspace (architect, landmark or spotlight or designer) to be able to use the Publish to PDF.

Assigning a colour to the text background can be done in text styles, but it could be nice to be able do this in the class properties, e.g. when you have a text class for generic texts that do not use a style. If that would be implemented then I think it should have tick box to select whether this should override text style backgrounds or not. Regarding grouping of classes/layers in subfolders, that would be nice too, as that would allow us to move classes/layers to a different subfolder at a later stage instead of having to rename hierarchies in the class names. Proper locking of individual classes/layers is something that would be really useful. Setting the view to only Show others or Gray others is not always a convenient workaround.

Well, I have so far not experienced those issues. Occasionally some display issues but those had more to do with the objects themselves than with them being far away from the origin and the complexity of the 3D model, as those issues did happen near origin as well. In the end it is a trade-off between convenience on one side and coordinate accuracy and preventing projection errors on the other side. For my work the latter is fare more important if georeferencing is being used. Especially when there were errors in e.g. the handling of the UTM coordinate system changing origin location was a no-go, though these issues have gradually been solved in VW2015 and VW2016.

It has trouble with curved surfaces as well. It would be nice to have a modifier key to pin/unpin the plane to a point on a curved surface so that you don't have to leave automatic placement.