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I can’t stress enough the importance of annotations to a BIM program, especially the ability to use keynotes in a drawing. Drawing objects are only one-half of the architect’s design documents – notes and annotations are the other half. A drawn object is meaningless in any set of design documents without an annotation that identifies what the drawn object represents, in the form of a legend, note, keynote, or some other written description. Keynotes need to be – easy to access easy to extract information from for use downstream, to develop specifications easy to edit, especially global revisions to identical keynotes throughout the document set. Currently, Vectorworks fails in each of these key areas. The current notes database scheme is arcane and difficult to use. There is not an easy way for users to extract information from the notes database – while it is possible report the database to a worksheet, inexplicably, data for the actual note is not accessible in a report. But the most significant failure in my view is the inability to globally edit identical notes within the program. Through the life a design project, notes must be revised numerous times, including – refining notes as the design becomes more specific correcting errors coordinating the entire set of notes to a standard Under the current Vectorworks keynotes design, a task as simple as correcting a spelling error requires finding and changing every instance of that keynote in the documents, a process that is painful, does not take advantage of automation, and is likely to introduce errors. Revit is not any better at keynotes documentation – in my view this creates both an opportunity and a threat for Vectorworks. We can spend more resources to implement a functional keynotes system and move ahead of other programs in this regard, or wait for Autodesk to develop a better keynotes scheme and fall behind.

Hey all, Quick worksheet question for the veterans. Is it possible to get a SUM of areas generated from space objects. The SUM function adds together the number of database objects rather than of the information they are providing. I've attached a dropbox link to a jpeg that will explain it better than I can. https://www.dropbox.com/s/z62v30i61i5965i/Worksheet Screenshot.png?dl=0

Hi there, I wish, there was a way to stamp an object's database information to it. I know that some local versions like the German (called 'Multistempel' or multistamp) already have this feature, but it doesn't always work properly. So I was hoping that there will be a generic version of this tool. On top it would be nice to gain access to the internal databases also. For example: I stamp the x and y coordinates value of an rectangle right onto that rectangle with the ability to change the coordinates by clicking right into the text in the drawing and editing it. What do you think? Kind regards VvierA

Dear All, I came across an issue of changed behavior in VW. Since VW 8.5 I use external .txt files to alter database records in VW. Task is, to easily replace specific values in VW database by another. Lets say: update all items in 'database-name' with price record 'Field_1'='30,00' to 'Field_1'='40,00'. Or update all records with item no. '3.1.01' to 'C.1.01' . So far I used the database sync commad somewhat like a SQL statment would do UPDATE 'database-name' SET 'database-name.Field_1'='new value' WHERE 'database-name.Field_1'='old value'; The external .txt. file contains two values: The 'old value' and the 'new value', seperated by tab. In VW I assign a database sync matching set to find all items with 'old value' (key) and assign the 'new value' (sync from .txt to VW in the same field than the key field). Done, all old values in all database records of the specific database are updated - well, at least up to VW 2015 this is working like charm. VW2016 and VW2017 will not update the key field with the new data :-( I enclosed a zip file with two simple VW files (2015 an 2017) with database and some simple objects with database records and a txt file to sync with. Is anyone able to verify this change in behavioir also? Thanks for your help! Edward DB_Test_files.zip

Hi all, I can't find a proper subforum for my question, so I'm posting it here. As seen in the screenshot I'm doing the following: - Marionette Object will change its size and look according to user input via OIP (see 9 objects on shape pane) - The objects are "Rack Panel" used for 19" Rack assembly and have two parameters: "Rack Unit Height" (integer 1-4) & "Panel Type" (blank, vented, etc.) - The parameters are written into a database ("RackPanelRecord" (see exported .txt bottom right) However, when trying to generate a spreadsheet for that data, my approach doesn't seem to work (see bottom left). As seen on the drawing, there's three different versions of Panels with 1RU: "Blank", "Security" and "Vented" Instead of giving me three individual lines for each version, the spreadsheet will just "sum up" all 1 RU Panels and show "---" for the type field. What am I doing wrong? P.S.: I hope someone can make sense of what I wrote