Art V

Not here. Maybe we should start reading Great Expectations to speed it up a little?

Sorry for the delay in responding, got too busy in the past two weeks to spend time online. I'm running into the same issues, though one multileader imported fine but the others had small text. It seems like there is some bug in Vectorworks with the multileaders or its implementation of the ODA library. Vectorworks is using the ODA library for importing dwg files and another program also using the ODA library is displaying the multileaders properly while yet another program also using the ODA library does not display the multileaders at all upon import.

Jim, there is possibly a similar issue with the T-roads, the line thickness of bends/curves of the T-roads end up being thinner than the other road outlines. This happens in PDFs too unless you zoom in a lot. It seems to be a display issue but it ends up in prints as well. Could it be that this faceting bug somehow also affects the above mentioned issue with the T-roads?

The "Geen" class is Dutch for the "None" class. When opening it in a non-Dutch version of VW you should be able to delete it, and vice versa for the "None" class.

I do remember there having been an issue with opentype fonts in the past not being properly recognised/usable if they are of the PostScript flavour (.otf) instead of TrueType flavour (.ttf). If I understood correctly Mac originated opentype fonts tend to be of the PostScript flavour more often than Windows originating opentype fonts. Even then, if your Wingdings font is a relatively old one it may have some glitches with some software so you may want to try to find a more recent (legal) copy of the font to see if that makes a difference. Though it could be there is a (returned or new?) bug in Vectorworks 2015 handling of opentype fonts that only shows in some versions of some fonts. PS Wingdings seems to work fine on my Windows version of VW2015

May I suggest you do check your system (both hardware and software), Vectorworks install and settings, other installed software as well as your file(s). I'm not questioning your crashes but you may have a faulty Vectorworks installation or something else (software or settings) on your computer that interferes with Vectorworks. You also may want to check your security software settings to see if it is not locking or blocking access to folders that Vectorworks needs to access freely, either during install or using it. Why I am saying this?... When using Vectorworks 2013 I was working on a 2D/3D file with almost 2 million objects most of them polygons (no DTM/DEM in the file), 1500 something classes, 50+ design layers and 80+ sheet layers. At times it would slow down to a snail pace and seem unresponsive but after waiting for some time it would come back to life but it would rarely crash, have worked on that file for entire days without crashing. When opened in 2015 it behaves the same though a bit more responsive. Before Vectorworks 2013 it would probably have crashed on a regular basis. If your drawings are not as heavy loaded as in my example it could be worth to (re)check the things mentioned above or also be something else... the way you are using Vectorworks, either how you use the tools or the Vectorworks settings or a combination.. Years ago on a Mac I noticed something odd, we had two identically specced Macs with the same AutoCAD version installed. On one Mac (my colleague's) it would crash several times a day and even approx. every 10 to 15 minutes at times. On my Mac the software would crash maybe twice a month if at all even though we were doing quite similar work on the computer. However, when I used his Mac at some point I did not experience as much crashing as he did. So when I noticed him working it became clear he was doing several things quite differently than I did (e.g. using a lot of consecutive undo's where a simple delete of multiple objects would have been more efficient). There may have been a hardware factor as well as when I used his Mac it would still crash more frequently than my own Mac but still way less then when he was using it. If for example you have up to 200 undo's set and operations large objects then the undo memory can bog down Vectorworks and run out of memory at some point and then crash after trying multiple undo's. Give me time and I can make almost any program crash, whether it is AutoCAD, MS Office, Adobe software, something else... I've experienced crashes with all of them in the past, sometimes on things that seemed really simple and easy. Vectorworks, at least for me, is definitely not worse than the rest and probably even in the better half of the pack. You simply can't expect any software vendor to cover any possible use of its software on any possible system with any combination of other software being installed for every possible use scenario. I'm using Landmark for jobs for which it was not intended by a long shot but it still does a really nice job, though some bits and pieces have bugs that I can work around and more importantly, they are being fixed. For example, for AutoCAD Civil I am hearing complaints about bugs, some of them pretty serious for some users, that exist for years and never got fixed so not all is that rosy on the other side either. That being said, the amount of crashes you are experiencing would make even me consider using an alternative if it would be happening to me.

Most dwg based applications (AutoCAD and alternatives) do have layer filtering and also layer states (similar to saved views, but for layers only) so that does help in dealing with such combined names. That being said, I agree that all those "multi-level" layers are no fun to deal with. It's always a bit of a gamble to decide whether the naming convention in AutoCAD should be option1-walls, option2-walls or walls-option1 and walls-option2 depending on what is the main focus. This is why I like Vectorworks' dual system of classes and layers so much for certain types of work, it beats AutoCAD and the likes hands down in usability/convenience for that particular area.

I might be missing something but holding shift when selecting objects does not only add objects to the current selections but also de-selects objects in a selection when you select them again. I.e. the shift key in combination with the selection tool functions as a selection/de-selection toggle key depending on whether the object is already selected or not. Holding the alt key when a tool is active will turn the tool in a selection tool for some tools and holding alt-shift will allow you do (de)select like mentioned above. Unless you have something different in mind?

In my case I often need everything to be in one file and would otherwise to have attach xrefs first and then bind them. The project specification often forbids the use of xrefs etc. for the final document and state that everything should be in one single dwg file. So having a one-step solution would be really nice. Plus the issue that having xrefs is a potential recipe for disaster if you are dealing with people who don't know/realise to watch for possible xrefs to a dwg file. If I would have got a dollar for every xref that was not included with a requested dwg file I could go on early retirement.

I ran into an issue with design layer renaming and viewports. For example, there are three design layers for three different options, Options A, B and C. There are also a few other design layers with common items, e.g. satellite image background. For each option there is a separate sheet layer (names Option A etc.) and viewport on that sheet layer. Sometimes the preferred options change and Option C should become Option A and the old Option A becomes the new Option C. For the Sheet layers I simply update the title block. The easiest way to match the design layers with the respective options on the sheet layers is to rename the design layers (e.g. rename Option A to Option A1 and then Option C to Option A and then Option A1 to Option C, because you cannot have two layers with the same name at any given time). After finishing this it turns out that the design layers option A and C are visible in none of the viewports on the sheet layers for those options even though the layers Option A and C are still defined in the viewports. It seems there is an internal layer number or something that is used to keep track of layers in viewports instead of just the layer names and that renaming them breaks the link to the viewport. Has anyone else run into this issue and if yes found an easy workaround? Or at least knows why this happens?

Most of the time I use the same class across multiple layers, but when exporting to dwg format the layer information gets lost. For example I have the class buildings and two options on different design layers named option 1 and option 2. The objects do partially overlap but I want them to be in one dwg file. I would have to export as two different dwg files and then attach one as an xref to get them into the same dwg file so that I can still tell which objects belong to option 1 and which to option 2. It would be nice if similar to the prefix for dwg imports there would be an option to have the design layer name to be added as a prefix to class names for dwg exports by attaching the layer name to a class if objects in that class are on that layer. As per example above it would then export building class objects on design both layers as the following classes depending on which design layer the objects are: "option 1-buildings" and "option 2-buildings" Combined with the earlier requested search/replace for class and layer names we would then be able to strip this prefix upon reimport of the dwg file in case of roundtripping.

I'll be filing a wish list item for layers/classes and dwg compatibility. It should be fairly easy to solve this issue.

Jim, Would it be possible to set the snap such that if you hover over an object (or two objects) to highlight it that it will snap only to the corner points, centre etc. etc. of the highlighted object(s) and ignoring every other object. Similar to how you can enable tracking to e.g. an object corner.

Yes, 3D low poly would be fine as long as it looks human and not like C3PO after a botched cosmetic surgery. The single most use for the Human Figure Tool to me is to provide a sense of scale to the buildings/structures and/or factory/plant equipment. For some instructional documentation it can be useful to have a (3D) human figure as well to conceptually show what we're trying to make clear.

You are right, there is no index. I like the idea of having a submit keywords feature in the online help, however it will be moot if the subject is not even there in the help file like I had with the layers and class manager in the Dutch help file. (Unless it is hidden very well for the average user). It would be nice if there would be a fullblown manual/help describing all tools, menus and (tool) options as well as some basic tutorials on how to use them (or what the intended use is, as even that is not always clear at first sight). Preferably available for offline use as well in case you are using a laptop on location and don't have internet access.

+10 When trying to find layer and class manager in the Dutch help file I got nowhere and even when I figured out what the Dutch equivalent name was it still couldn't be found in the online help. There is still too much information not showing up if you have to rely on the search feature. (though the index is also not always listing everything it seems)

I agree on the ctb file, it would be nice if Vectorworks could use that. That being said, the ctb file only affects the line colours and linetypes if they are defined in the ctb file. It is (or should be) common practice for AutoCAD users to define colour and linetype in the layer settings and set colour and linetype to "bylayer" ("by class" in VW). In that case Vectorworks should also be able to read the linetype.shx file to get the proper linetype definitions and then re-export those linetype definitions again. This would require some discipline from the AutoCAD users to always use an e-transmittal for sending the dwg file to you. Not to mention that it would be really nice to be able to import/export text styles (font translation is not a major issue as that can be solved fairly easily if shx fonts are required). Not being able to keep the text styles in a dwg-vwx-dwg roundtrip is really limiting.

Yes, you can change the transparency of a PDF in the attributes palette. Even putting the PDF on a layer and setting that to grey gives a box with an X through it so that is not a workaround either. It would be nice if it would be possible to set PDFs/images to grey.

Jim, somewhat related to this, if I have a very large (georeferenced) image to be inserted it is sometimes only workable after splitting it into multiple tiles (e.g. 16 tiles) and then import those. I've never "dared" to drag and drop all those tiles at once as these tiles were still having a substantial size. (e.g. I've had to deal with a 10+ GB uncompressed tiff in a particular case in which I had to split the image into tiles) Apart from a number limit, is there also a file size limit for the drag and drop method? (For each file individually as well as for all files together in a single drag and drop import.)

+1 I've run into the dimensions snapped to other dimensions issue too at times, it's annoying and it cannot always be avoided.

You can use drag and drop to insert multiple images, i.e. select multiple images in the finder and drag them into the Vectorworks document. You will still get an import dialog for each image to set compression as jpeg or png etc. The images will be stacked on the drop position in this case so you will have to redistribute them on the drawing page after finishing the import. At least it works this way on Windows.

It works fine with the test file I just tried. What I did notice is that it sets the font size to the text height in units, e.g. if units is mm or m and the text height is e.g. 8 in both cases (8mm or 8m) it imports in both cases as 8 pt text size into Vectorworks. It could be that the multileader is annotative and perhaps this might mess with the Vectorworks import in some way depending on the settings. Do you have a test file that has this problem for us to try out?

It's clear now what you were referring to, I used the custom stair tool for multiple flights, but when the levels vary from floor to floor it just doesn't work and I have to revert to creating stairs per level. The Architecture module version for (custom) stairs does seem to work properly for this kind of purpose.

Perhaps your version is different (read: more pleasant looking) than the one in my Vectorworks version, as it looks more like C3PO after a botched cosmetic job than a hominid. It would be nice to have a decent nondescript human figure to add a sense of proportion for when that is useful. Not everyone needs a full library of human figures of all shapes and sizes. I would love the multiple stairs tool to be in Landmark as well because the current stairs tool in Landmark is a bit too limited for structures etc. and I need to use stacked single stairs to make it work.

+1 I don't need it that often (lucky me) but it can use improvement as already mentioned