mike mcneil

In my conversation with tech support, they suggested to try the "Rasterize Text" setting the export PDF dialog. Since I am still running VW2009, I do not have that option so you may want to see if it is available to you. I can't justify the upgrade presently so I am not sure if I will ever get my font issues worked out.

If it is open type, it may not be supported. Really disappointing, after a spent a few hours working on a drawing using open type fonts and nothing printed correctly if I exported the pdf. Only if I use the print dialog did it output correctly.

Anyone have a clue why a window's 2d line work would turn 90 degrees to wall it is inserted into? I realize a custom symbol with the same name as the standard PIO can create havoc with the standard PIOs, but I have not attempted to do so in this file. The window is correct when looking at it in 3D. This was a wall style created in VW2008 and I am attempting work on this in VW2009. Since Vectorworks 2008 will not be supported under 10.6, I wanted to start moving my drawings to Vectorworks 2009. I thought the wall style might be corrupt, but if i insert the a window in other walls of the same wall style in the drawing it works correctly. Thanks in advance for any insight.

I agree with mike_m_oz and brudgers on this. Although you can easily import and easily export, at least when the capabilities of export are fully understood, it would be easiest if you were to stick with one program rather than switching back and forth. I come from a background of using Acad for about 10 years and recently switched to a Mac and Vectorworks about a year and half ago. While using VW can be a bit frustrating at first, it becomes easier and much more enjoyable than Acad, IMHO. I have been using Acad through VM Ware Fusion and it runs rather well. Although I do have to say there are some regeneration/screen refresh issues while doing so. This may due to the fact that I only run it on a MacBook Pro and the graphics cards just aren't as powerful as in a Mac Pro. And, I don't use Boot Camp. It is just not as snappy as running it natively in Windows. I really only use Acad in Fusion for checking drawings prior to sending them to consultants. My biggest complaint with using VW though are the regeneration in 2D and the 3D openGL refresh times. Using say rhino or Sketchup openGL screen refreshes are quite fast, even for quite large amounts geometry. I like to see similar speeds with in VW. With the incorporation of Parasolids hopefully that will happen. Secondly, I find it annoying to visually search for classes (layers in Acad) in class management dialogs. Something similar to Acad's layer filtering would be great but, that is my personal preference.

The reason the jambs still show is because of the way the standard door PIO is defined. From the quick test I did, the jambs are actually placed on the '0' class and the door leaf and swing are in the 'A-WALL-JAMB' class, even though the actual PIO is auto-classed to the 'A-DOOR' class.

In AutoCAD, you have a way to filter out the files layers in the layer dialog box which is similar to the organization palette. For example, if I want to search for a layer/class in AutoCAD, you can use a regular expression in the layer dialog box the to show only the layers being searched for thereby limiting the layers that show up in the dialog box. This simplifies the long list of layers that are sometimes present. Plus, this set of filtered layers can be save so that they will only show the filtered layers in the drop down list available in the drawing. As an aside, it does not change the drawing's visibility settings. I realize this is a bit similar saving class and layer views in VW, but all the classes and layers are still visible in the nav. palette, drop down class and layer list, and org. dialog. I know this can also be partially achieved with class nesting as well, but sometimes I don't need to see all the classes that pertain to the ceiling, the site, structure, etc. I would like this type of functionality in VW since the class list can get a bit long to search through. Also it would be nice to limit what available layers are showing in the layer drop down as this can get long as well if sheet layers are present the drawing as well. Quite honestly, I am a bit lazy and I hate scrolling through long lists if it's not required. Plus, I think it speeds up productivity as searching for some thing in a list of things, regardless if it is well organized or not, is time consuming. That is why I tap the letter of the class I am looking for in the nav. palette to highlight the layer I am searching for. It would be just be easier to limit what is showing up in the list in the first place.

Check out www.cgtextures.com for additional wood textures and for tutorials about evening colors of the texture map as your wood texture is a bit uneven in color. It should help in the tiling of the texture. Hope that helps,

I wish there was a way we could filter the layer and class drop down lists. In particular it would be helpful the filter out the sheet layer lists. Also it would be extremely useful to have search function the navigation palette or in the organization window. The filter function would also be useful in the org. window and nav. palette.

I second mike m oz on the WYSWIG for sheet layers to DWG. I am well aware you can do this with section viewports, but for some reason it isn't working for my drawing information in plan for a plain old vanilla SLVPs. The 'convert to lines' command only converts the cropping frame of the SLVP to lines, thus only giving me a rectangle and and none of the information contained within the SLVP. If I try the 'convert to polyline' command. It gives me the lines as polygons but I loose all hatches, text, etc. Not to mention that you get duplicates from the conversion of the 3D information into flat 2D polygons from the walls.

No that only deletes the cropping frame, thus revealing the rest of the drawing. It looks like best thing to do is copy everything and delete and trim out what is not needed. Thanks for the input.

I have situation where I need to clip out a section of a drawing to be sent to a consultant. The file must be in AutoCAD DWG format. I need to send them only a portion of the drawing. Ideally I would like to use a DLVP to essentially trim out the rest of the drawing, but that the results in all the drawing information being included in the DWG file when exported with only the area that is in the DVLP showing up as a clipped/cropped portion of the drawing, meaning if you delete the clipping/cropping frame in AutoCAD you can get the whole drawing. As a last resort, I could copy the drawing and then trim and erase the unneeded portions, but I would think there is some other way to do this. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I would like to format cell colors or patterns base on certain conditions being met. For example, if I were to query the floor area of a space or window/wall area ratio, I would like for the worksheet to change the color of the cell if it is over or under a limit that I would set. This is rather easy to set up in excel and it would be a great tool to have in the Worksheets. It would be able to provide quick graphic feed back of certain information. Thanks

Not knowing what your drawings look like, but the increased regeneration times may be due to fills and hatches. Older versions of Autocad don't really like fills that much, and the file sizes can explode if they are used extensively - especially if gradients are used. Obviously, it will complicate your visibility settings if you turn off the export fill option and you depend on fills to mask a lot of things. With regard to 3d information, I am not sure how you export, but I have had the most success exporting each individual sheet as a separate .dwg file rather than the whole file at once. As VW seems to only export out the 2D information of all the hybrid objects. Any extrudes or 3D objects showing up on sheet layers through SLVP's will still be exported as a 3D object and show up as such in the DWG file. It can be rather time consuming though, but this has been the only way I have been able to get the closest representation between my VW sheet layers and AutoCAD's sheet layers. Come to think about it I have never checked the "Z" attributes in the AutoCAD .dwg to see if it correlated with VW's layer "Z" height. Presently the most frustrating thing for me are the section views. Since these are only created in the sheet layers they are always scaled down to what ever scale you set them up to be and export as such. I would prefer them to be created in the design layers. I switched over to a Mac and VW a little over a year ago, and I am still trying to get my drawings to export to AutoCAD the way I would like for them to. I am still having issues text not showing up correctly even though I am using Arial (which is present on a Windows and Mac) as the default text font.

Thanks John and Pat. That works great!

Thanks Maarten. That was what I was looking for.