Sometimes we use Vectorworks to ‘present’ a design to someone, whether it be a colleague, boss, head designer, design team, a group on Zoom, etc. When presenting, we’re mainly just navigating our working file, pointing out things with the cursor, discussing elements, maybe selecting objects to see OIP properties, etc. But we’re not ‘working’ or doing any heavy editing. So the problem is that there’s potentially a lot of distracting gak on the screen that isn’t needed in a presentational context, and which sometimes pulls attention away from the focus of discussing the design. It’d be great to be able to quickly switch to a temporary “Presentation Mode” whenever you know you’re only going to be using Vectorworks in this simplified way while others are watching.
I suggest that under the Window menu there could be a new option to toggle “Presentation Mode” which would automatically turn on and off certain existing settings with one quick command. This would be customizable, so there would need to be a place to set up which settings you want to be affected. Under Presentation Mode Settings there would be checkboxes for the following:
☐ Suppress all auto save pop-ups.
☐ If using full-screen cursor, switch to simple pointer cursor.
☐ Hide Light glyphs, green constraints, red unlinked indicators, loci, and other various glyphs.
☐ Hide red viewport “out-of-date” borders.
☐ Turn off snap indicators, smart cursor cues, acquisition hints, red smart points, etc.
☐ Turn off pre-selection highlighting and other highlighting, keeping only selection highlighting. (This one is where the idea started for me. I want to point at something with the cursor and not see giant orange pre-selection boxes popping up all over the place.)
☐ Turn off "Use Sound."
☐ Suspend snapping
☐ Hide enabled palettes (that is, the setting that already exists in Window menu).
☐ Disable Smart Options Display’s idle trigger.
☐ Switch Floating Data Bar to be only show on Tab (if not already).
☐ Deselect all objects across all Layers (for example, when you’re flipping through Sheet Layers there wouldn’t be viewports already highlighted from previous work.)
Upon engaging Presentation mode, all of the checked items would be affected. Upon disengaging Presentation mode, settings would return to the same as they were before (I suppose with the exception of object selection state).
When in Presentation mode, perhaps there’s a colored border around the screen to be clear that you’re in a special context, or maybe a bit of text in the status bar at the bottom.
Maybe Presentation Mode is actually a Quick Pref button so you can quickly pop in and out of it (for example, perhaps in the middle of the presentation you need to do some real editing, so you toggle it off, make the change, then toggle it back on.)
Edited by Andy Broomell Added suggestions from below
You can post now and register later.
If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.
Question
Andy Broomell
Sometimes we use Vectorworks to ‘present’ a design to someone, whether it be a colleague, boss, head designer, design team, a group on Zoom, etc. When presenting, we’re mainly just navigating our working file, pointing out things with the cursor, discussing elements, maybe selecting objects to see OIP properties, etc. But we’re not ‘working’ or doing any heavy editing. So the problem is that there’s potentially a lot of distracting gak on the screen that isn’t needed in a presentational context, and which sometimes pulls attention away from the focus of discussing the design. It’d be great to be able to quickly switch to a temporary “Presentation Mode” whenever you know you’re only going to be using Vectorworks in this simplified way while others are watching.
I suggest that under the Window menu there could be a new option to toggle “Presentation Mode” which would automatically turn on and off certain existing settings with one quick command. This would be customizable, so there would need to be a place to set up which settings you want to be affected. Under Presentation Mode Settings there would be checkboxes for the following:
☐ Suppress all auto save pop-ups.
☐ If using full-screen cursor, switch to simple pointer cursor.
☐ Hide Light glyphs, green constraints, red unlinked indicators, loci, and other various glyphs.
☐ Hide red viewport “out-of-date” borders.
☐ Turn off snap indicators, smart cursor cues, acquisition hints, red smart points, etc.
☐ Turn off pre-selection highlighting and other highlighting, keeping only selection highlighting. (This one is where the idea started for me. I want to point at something with the cursor and not see giant orange pre-selection boxes popping up all over the place.)
☐ Turn off "Use Sound."
☐ Suspend snapping
☐ Hide enabled palettes (that is, the setting that already exists in Window menu).
☐ Disable Smart Options Display’s idle trigger.
☐ Switch Floating Data Bar to be only show on Tab (if not already).
☐ Deselect all objects across all Layers (for example, when you’re flipping through Sheet Layers there wouldn’t be viewports already highlighted from previous work.)
Upon engaging Presentation mode, all of the checked items would be affected. Upon disengaging Presentation mode, settings would return to the same as they were before (I suppose with the exception of object selection state).
When in Presentation mode, perhaps there’s a colored border around the screen to be clear that you’re in a special context, or maybe a bit of text in the status bar at the bottom.
Maybe Presentation Mode is actually a Quick Pref button so you can quickly pop in and out of it (for example, perhaps in the middle of the presentation you need to do some real editing, so you toggle it off, make the change, then toggle it back on.)
Edited by Andy BroomellAdded suggestions from below
Link to comment
9 answers to this question
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.