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Experienced designer, very, very new to Vectorworks


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I am having a problem coming to grips with the very basic aspects of Spotlight. For instance, I am a long time user of Light Converse and CorelDraw and am used to being able to make my drawing area just a little bigger than my venue. How do I achieve this in Vectorworks?  Thank you for looking at what is probably a very simple question but baffling me. Iain

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Go to File > Page set up and change it to something more suitable such as A0 or whatever will fit your needs. 

 

The Page outline is more of an indication of how the work you are doing will look at a paricualar scale on a printed page and is not intended to be a constraint. It's just a guide. You can turn it off from the Page Set up dialog if you don't want to see it. You can also move it using the Move Page tool which is hidden under the Pan Tool in the Basic Tool palette.

Edited by markdd
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Yes, in a Sheet Layer Viewport you can rescale your work to any scale you like.

 

The Design Layer scale setting is just meant to be a guide as more of a heads-up as to what your work will look like when outputted to a particular scale. If you look at the Zoom factor at the top of the screen and change it to 100%, you will get an exact representation of what the viewer will see if you were to print the page out onto paper.

Edited by markdd
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I think of Design Layer scales as kind of a preset "zoom".  You are always drawing at real size as long as you trust the data display. If you want at line to be 10' long, it does not matter if you are at 1:1 or 1:96 scale, you use the data display and draw a 10' line.

 

The Layer Scale just make the display be closer to the final output.  If you were to draw on a layer of 1:1, you might have to use font sizes and line thicknesses that are huge so that when you scale down to the final output of 1/4" or 1/8" you get something that read right.

 

If you draw and output at the same scale, then you are working in a much more What You See Is What You Get environment. Your line weights and font sizes will be more reasonable and easier to control between sheets.

 

HTH

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lainy1961

 

Possible option: Workflow for past projects I have done:

 

In a new drawing, alter the Page Set Up to a grid like 3 pages x 3 pages.

This gives you a large drawing area. Option #1 would be to set the drawing scale to fit this large drawing area.

You are able to Zoom  - Fit To Page and see this entire 3x3 grid (KB=4)

 

In the middle make a rectangle around the center page - Go back to the Page Set Up and turn the Page Breaks off. (Now 3 pages x 3 pages looks like / zooms one large page)

Convert this center page rectangle to a Guide (Modify/Guides/Make Guide) Guides are Locked by default

 

The overall drawing area is the 3 pages x 3 pages, with the print area inside the middle page (ie: inside this Guide) Option #2 is to set the drawing scale to fit this middle page ie, scale to what you want to print on this one center page.

 

Hide or Show this Guide in the Modify/Guide menu - If it is the only Guide, then one is able to Select this Guide (From the Modify / Guides Menu) then Zoom - Fit to Objects (KB=6) from any location on the drawing … Alternate is to make a Saved View of this center page / print location, and select it to see the middle page.

 

(As we use Saved Views for rendered PDF output rather than Sheets / Viewports...) When you print, select Page 5 and only this middle page will print. (Or make a Sheet / Viewport to get the desired print.)

 

Peter

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