Art V

If intellectual property and/or privacy are a concern then the sending of information should be disabled or set to the absolute minimum possible. It is one reason why I don't like Microsoft Windows 10 still sending quite a bit of information despite setting it to the absolute minimum. Vectorworks minimum of collected information is something I can accept as they are upfront about this. I can see the IP address being collected as a way to trace potential piracy, i.e. if a license is used in Europe, then two hours later in Asia and an hour later in the US etc. then it is likely that something illegal may be going on. That being said, it could also be that VPN's have been used for securely transferring confidential files while Vectorworks is still open. Which begs the question if this is something that has been taken into account when monitoring IP addresses, as VPNs are increasingly used for secure communications between employee and company or between company office branches and/or clients.

This is probably not a problem if the coordinates of the drawings are plain Cartesian coordinates without projection. If a projected coordinate reference system , i.e. georeferencing, is used this can cause deviations. The georeferencing can cause objects to be slightly reshaped depending on the used projected coordinate reference system and the position of objects in the coordinate system. Vectorworks can reproject a drawing in some cases, e.g. if you are using UTM and import a drawing using mercator projection. UTM is a transverse mercator projection, which looks different from a mercator projection despite the mercator being in both (quite a few people think they're basically the same). Ditto when changing the coordinate reference system afterwards. Setting the origin differently may interfere with reprojections etc. so I prefer the origin to be at the internal origin of the file to avoid potential errors in transformations etc. If that means the geometry will be hundreds of kilometers away from the internal origin, so be it. On another user board there was someone who exported a georeferenced drawing into dwg and got a complaint from the customer that the coordinates didn't match. Based on the copied conversation parts it seemed neither side was aware of some of the issues and/or choices that had to be made before exchanging files/information.

People who are not dealing in-depth with surveys/GIS are often not likely to come across the existence of the US Survey Foot, and if the size of the project is not big enough to notice they may assume International Foot by default as that is used everywhere else. That being said, not all surveys in feet are using the US Survey Foot. A good surveyor will always provide the coordinate reference system used as well as the units (e.g US Survey Foot or International Foot if it is not defined by the coordinate reference system). If the file has a drawing border then it often has the info somewhere in there as well. When surveying the units used can vary depending on the party ordering the survey (assuming they bother to specify), so there is not always a "default" unit unless it is specified by the coordinate reference system and the ordering party. Well... it depends, I've come across projects where the source files were in 3 or 4 different (projected) coordinate systems and no common reference point was specified. Fortunately it was only for a draft concept so aligning things visually was ok in that case. Depending on when a survey was done and by whom there can be differences in the used (projected) coordinate reference systems and units. The only way to cover yourself is by (always) asking the people who provided you with the survey files which (projected) coordinate reference system and which units were used for each file if they have not already done this. There can be situations where it does not matter much, but when it gets to official boundary/location coordinates the legal consequences are often too big to ignore if the information is not correct. Another thing to keep in mind is whether you are dealing with a simple (local) cartesian coordinate system of with a so-called projected coordinate reference system.The latter accounts for distortions across a larger area, the closer you get to the edges of the projected coordinate reference system the greater the deviations can become. This is one reason why one should not change the origin of a drawing if a projected coordinate reference system is used. (It is also the reason why Vectorworks can reproject the drawing, as you can see in the georeferencing settings).

In addition to checking the units you may also want to check the scale setting when importing the dwg file if there are already layers in your drawing, i.e. if the scale does not match that of the existing layers the size will not match the rest of the drawing. The autoscale suggestion can occasionally be quite a bit off.

Yes, and it would also be useful for archiving drawings to make sure you have all referenced files. For that purpose I would like to have two additional options for Vectorworks for the package and send functionality: 1. to combine multiple drawings with common referenced resources to create a single package for the whole set of drawings 2. do as listed under 1 but afterwards on multiple packages, i.e. when multiple single drawing packages have been made for the same project and I would like to able to consolidate those packages by removing duplicates of referenced files and re-referencing the duplicate referenced files to a single folder containing those resources. This can reduce the size of an archive considerably.

That would be useful, it's a bit like annotative scaling in AutoCAD and the likes, though I would like to have the option of not using this in an automated way as I do at times have hatches that need to scale with the viewport because they are based on real world dimensions and at times hatches that are page unit based where the scale difference should not be taken into account. Yes, this is very useful for 3D. Also for this I would like to have an option added, i.e. to use the "old style" way of assigning class properties for 2D only drawings to reduce the " clutter" caused by having multiple settings that are useful for 3D but not used in 2D only.

As per September 14 you cannot upgrade to a new version of Vectorworks if it is more than 4 versions back from the then current version, so it is not unlikely that the VW2017 will be released on or shortly after September 14.

If you are using the UK local version you may want to contact the UK distributor. I know there are/were plans to get rid of the dongles for the localized versions in the next few years and switch to internet serial numbers but I don't know at which rate this will happen. It could be happening for the UK version with VW2017 but it could also be VW2018 or VW2019 before that happens. Your local distributor may be able to answer that. In case you do want to get rid of the dongle in the very soon then you could consider switching to the US/International version which no longer uses dongles outside the US since a few releases. (In the past the locally distributed US version used dongles over here, but in the past 3 or 4 releases this is no longer the case and it uses an internet serial number like the US distributed version).

You could also use saved views of the part(s) you are working on where you only save the page location and zoom/pan if you want. (and if needed other things like page orientation, active layer/class etc). You can even set multiple locations that way if you are working on different parts of a large area. Whenever you end up far away from the part you are editing you can then select the saved view and you'll be back in that part of your drawing quickly. This works better than having to approximate where you need to pan to. The center on objects works well if the total drawing content area is not too large relative to the part you are working on, but I prefer saved views as that is saved in the document and works for other people as well if you share the file with someone else.

Something I have noticed at times when trying to save/copy/delete files is that if Windows is indexing files or generating a preview it may not (auto)save etc. depending on the autosave settings. (e.g. if there is only one backup copy used), until Windows releases/unlocks the file. It is similar as if the file would be in use by another application/Vectorworks instance or be read only. Autosave will fail but not always provide a notification. Maybe Vectorworks should get an option to notify the user if an autosave could not be performed/completed?

If you set Vectorworks to use screen plane only, it should not switch to layer plane in that case so it seems to be a bug, unless you are using non-planar tools then it could switch to layer/working plane if I understand the descriptions correctly. (it's a bit ambiguously explained imho in the dialog)

No Vectorworks cannot open .RCP files up in 2016. For 2017 we can't tell until it is released. You could ask if he can send the point cloud file in a different format. If the surveyor can only send a RCP file then you may want to use a text editor to open the RCP file to see if it is basically a text format and remove the RCP file headers and then save as a .txt or .csv file depending on the delimiter used. There are some utilities out there that can convert point cloud files from one format to another so you may want to do a search for that and see if it can convert an RCP file into something you can use. 3D point cloud files can be imported as point cloud object in VW2016 but not in earlier versions, unless it is a collection of XYZ points, and then you could do with a delimited text file to generate a DTM.

One example where layer plane is more convenient than screen plane is when you want to combine 2D plans with a 3D model. In the past there was only screen plane and all 2D objects had to be converted to 3D polylines and polygons to be able to combine them with a 3D model. With layer plane this is no longer necessary. So if you want to import a 2D plan as a starting point for 3D make sure it is in layer plane before you start, otherwise it will look a bit odd when you switch to a 3D view. If you know the drawing will always remain 2D then using screen plane could be an option. Also when you import older Vectorworks drawings they may be in screen plane (I'm not 100% sure but layer plane got introduced in VW 2008 or 2009 or so, so earlier Vectorworks versions will be in screen plane)

File versioning would be nice, especially if updated versions of an example file are used within a discussion thread. Will there also be a way to mark files as an update to the original made by someone else? E.g. I have a problem getting something done and post an example file, someone else manages to get it done/fix it and posts the update. Will there be a way to link the updated version as a new version of the original or will they be two separate files with independent versioning? Probably overthinking here, but it might be useful to indicate what file is an update or new version of which original file.

Rendered viewports always export as bitmaps as far as I know with the exception of 3D PDF files exported (i.e. not printed) directly from Vectorworks from the design layers. The render settings in Vectorworks most likely cannot be translated to AutoCAD/other dwg based software as its rendering engine is different. You can export the sheet layer and the model in 3D but the display of various viewport renders will have to be reconstructed in AutoCAD or whatever dwg based software is going to be used.

To avoid the paragraph spacing between lines you could use <shift><return> to avoid starting a new paragraph as using just <return> would do.

If a defined coordinate reference system was used for the survey then the origin is fixed. That does not stop some drafting offices to move the origin near the site/objects in order to get rid of the sometimes large numbers of the coordinates. This is something that should never be done from a technical point of view as it brings some other issues with it, but that is a whole different discussion. One thing you may want to check, in case you are not aware of this, is that when feet are being used whether they used the US Survey Foot or the International Foot (i.e. the common foot that everyone not in geodesy/GIS thinks of). The difference is tiny so for short distances it may not be crucial but over longer distances it does matter. Some info and example of why this may matter can be found at this link: http://www.pobonline.com/articles/98788-u-s-survey-feet-versus-international-feet

+1 And while they are working on it (if they are going to) maybe the navigation palette could be used as well to turn layers off/on for a selected viewport? That way you'd also have that tabs for layers and classes with the benefit that the navigation palette can be vertically resized for easier navigation is you have lots of layers and classes. A drop-down menu in the OIP would be a bit cumbersome in such a situation.

Was the line type created with page based units or world based units? I've ran into that issue in the past and changing/setting the line type units from one to the other sometimes solved the display problem.

The new board/forum looks nice, it's an improvement over the old one though I have not fully explored it yet. One request though if it has not been mentioned yet.... could you please consider to subdivide the troubleshooting section to some extent like the old techboard as it looks like some areas/disciplines will get drowned a bit e.g. the old dwg/dxf section is a relatively small and specific area amongst the bulk of problem questions so it would be nice to find topics on that fairly easily. Or as an alternative perhaps have an option to tag a post with general/landmark/architect/spotlight/dwg import/export etc. and a function to select all topics with that tag for those who are looking for specific discipline info?

Update: it is probably a bug with the parametric tool I was using, it happens when the shape is updated in 2D plan view and for some reason the Z-value changes to 0. When updating the shape in 3D top view this does not happen.

Given the offset to the origin these files are probably (geo)referenced to a coordinate system, which could be a local coordinate system. With survey files this is common practice. Because most coordinate systems set the origin in a way that you will always get positive coordinates they often start at quite a distance from the origin. E.g. UTM coordinates have a 500km offset in the easting to ensure positive coordinates in that direction. It can cause the origin to end up in some seemingly illogical places such as the Pacific. :-) The origin of the Dutch national grid is near Paris, France to give another example.

For now it really depends on whether you need surfaces or solids for the specific object(s). Regarding NURBS vs subdivision, NURBS has its uses and subdvision may be way more cumbersome in some areas than NURBS depending on how many subdivisions there are in a surface. Subdivision implementation is just too coarse right now for some applications. I agree with Jim that it would be really helpful to have better educational materials on how these tools can be used and what the differences between these tools are in some areas. Especially if you are not familiar with other dedicated 3D software like FormZ, Cinema4D etc.

Today I was exporting a 3D model to a SAT file and noticed that some items had rotated after the export, e.g. a horizontal pipe was sloping up or down (depending on the item) instead of staying horizontal. This rotation was not only in the SAT file but also in the Vectorworks file itself after the export. I would think this has to be a bug but it could also be related to the objects/geometry causing things to happen as a result of translation to SAT. When converting the objects to NURBS the problem was solved but in the long run this is not a sustainable solution when the number of these objects increases. Has anyone else noticed similar behaviour? Would like to find out before filing a bug report.

It works for me on my Logitech mouse (G502) but I'm on Windows and the G-series devices might be using somewhat slightly different drivers. I recently got the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator and in my opinion that is a much more useful combination than the ctr-middle mouse button as you have finer/smoother control especially in those situations where you may want to use the ctr-middle mouse button so that might be something to consider.