Artlantis export: 32 character limit

[Christiaan]

According to Abvent the limit of 32 characters for class names when exporting to Artlantis has to do with Vectorworks technology rather than Artlantis technology:

http://www.artlantis.com/support/forum/read.php?fid=atl_import_us&mes=340

Does NNA agree with this, and, if so, is it also true that it will be increased to 64 characters in the next release of Vectorworks?

[alanmac]

Have you tried reducing your class names with logical abbrevations, and the fact you can have three sections per class must help in this.

Alan

Edited May 2, 2006 by alanmac

[Christiaan]

Yes that's how we currently overcome the problem, however we're looking forward to this problem being eliminated so we don't have to abbreviate.

What I'd like to know is who is responsible for the restriction so we don't get into a blame game situation.

P.S. you don't get an extra 32 characters per nested class. In fact each nested class takes up an extra character (i.e. -)

[Christiaan]

Does NNA agree with this, and, if so, is it also true that it will be increased to 64 characters in the next release of Vectorworks?

What's the word on this Katie? Can you confirm either way?

[Christiaan]

This is very urgent for us now. Unfortunately we implemented a new Template with longer class names on the basis of the thread I linked to above on the Artlantis forum.

Confirmation as to whether this is the responsibility of NNA or Abvent would be very much appreciated. If it is due to Vectorworks technology is it due to be fixed in the next release of Vectorworks?

[Robert Anderson]

As far as I know, no one at NNA has committed to fix this, and bug fixes that relate to products that compete with our own probably won't get absolute top priority. Moreover, I can't find anything about this in our bug tracking database. Has this ever been submitted as a bug?

[Christiaan]

This is disappointing Robert. I appreciate your honesty in pointing out that interoperability is not an absolute top priority but it doesn't bode well for third party software developers who want to work with Vectorworks, and it certainly doesn't bode well for the users who, for whatever reason, need to use third party software in their workflow.

I might add that Renderworks does not compete with Artlantis in practical terms. As much as we'd like to use it we can't, because it does not cope with the size of model we tend to work with.

I haven't submitted it as a bug as I had originally assumed it was a problem with Artlantis software. I'll submit one now, and I hope it can be fixed ASAP. In the mean time I now need to go back to my team and explain why we need to re-revise our new template to go back to short class names.

[Christiaan]

Well, it appears this has been resolved with the latest version of VW (v12.5) and the Artlantis export plugin (v12.5.0.3).

Dunno who sorted it out (Nemetschek or Abvent) but we're happy campers. Thanks!

[Christiaan]

Turns out, according to Alain Picard, that Abvent did it in cooperation with Cesyam, the company that distributes VectorWorks in France:

http://www.artlantis.com/support/forum/read.php?fid=atl_import_us&mes=340