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issue issue


ptarmigan

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Robert, Petri, whoever

Ask an architect if they'd like a drawing issue manager as part of their CAD package - or in fact a.o who uses CAD to do drawings - and they would say "Yes, certainly".

The drawing issue manager which we have been discussing does do some things well. I like NNA's drawing issue manager.

We have reached a point in the discussion where we agree there's something missing from this useful tool.

Personally, I've no interest in a pointed exchange between an NNA geek and a feisty Finnish chap. No doubt both parties have all the answers, but are just keeping their cards close to their chest.

But for all of us who would appreciate a nice straightforward method for printing a worksheet w an issue history, we are none the wiser.

So, once again, may I ask - ever so humble-like (I am muppet in the land where the geek is king!) - for the following capability to be added to 12.5.2 +:

Easy reporting of drawing issues with drawing or sheet no.s aligned correctly w revisions and issues.

Thanks in advance,

I've nought else to say on this topic. 'Nuf said.

Ptarmigan (flapping of wings)

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Personally, I've no interest in a pointed exchange between an NNA geek and a feisty Finnish chap. No doubt both parties have all the answers, but are just keeping their cards close to their chest.

We are? Robert has played his hand in VW 2008; I've offered to give him free and public professional advice on how to play to win.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I don't agree that there's something missing. The issue history and the drawing revision history are in their logical place, right on the drawing border that contains the issued sheet. The beauty of this system is that it's obvious -- there's no synchronization required.

Here, you're asking for something extra for your own particular workflow, which is that you want to maintain a global list of all changes in a project in a single place. This may or may not be generally useful -- I haven't seen an outpouring of sentiment on this.

But as Pat Stanford has said above (and as I confirm), this is a straight-forward project for VectorScript. In fact it is precisely the kind of project that VS is made for -- a "lightweight" task. I daresay that this kind of task could be handled (as an export script) in a page of code or so. Because it's a simple task, and I know Petri is a capable scripter, and he seemed to be involved in this, I encouraged him to write a script and share it.

I can assure you that a new capability will not be added to a version of the software that is not the currently shipping version. This makes no commercial sense.

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Robert,

Are you perhaps confusing ptarmigan's humble request of a list of revisions with my feisty wish to have a Professional Revision and Issue Management System Useful Worldwide for Even Non-McMansion projects?

but as Pat Stanford has said above (and as I confirm), this is a straight-forward project for VectorScript. In fact it is precisely the kind of project that VS is made for -- a "lightweight" task. I daresay that this kind of task could be handled (as an export script) in a page of code or so. Because it's a simple task, and I know Petri is a capable scripter, and he seemed to be involved in this, I encouraged him to write a script and share it.

I encourage Robert, who I know is a very capable scripter, to share his stuff. NNA's objects, tools and commands are encrypted. I can't improve them; for whatever I try to do with their stuff, I have to try to reverse-engineer them and guess what might be going on.

There is, unfortunately, no "Open NNA Plug-in Alliance" to help me in this. (See http://www.opendesign.com/membership/sustain.htm )

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So, what's your problem with sharing your "heavyweight" solutions?

When using a particular(ly ugly NNA) title block, the revision table grows upwards. When one that meets my graphic standards (well, not quite: you ruin my line weights), there is no revision table.

YOU are being paid by US, but once again you want someone like me to share my intellectual property, while keeping yours secret and encrypted.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

There are several problems with un-encrypting "heavyweight" solutions.

Firstly, and most critically, it creates an unmanageable technical support issue. You might be able to handle the complexity of a software project that comprises six or eight big library files and its attendant issues of, say, variable scope, but I would bet that (if that is indeed the case) you are the minuscule minority case here. We don't have the skilled-in-VectorScript tech support staff to handle this kind of undertaking.

Secondly, it creates an intellectual property problem. What if someone adopts wholesale some of our original code, modifies it slightly, and begins selling his result as a solution, but one that is largely based on our code? A GPL approach is one solution to this, but we've legitimately chosen encryption as another. Is is simply our right to do so.

Thirdly, it creates a business problem. We rely on our users to tell us how to improve our product, and we listen to them and (as in VectorWorks 2008) deliver those improvements. Our approach to feature delivery (which includes control of our "official delivered" plug-ins) encourages users to communicate wishes with us so we can improve the product for everyone.

This issue of our product delivery is not a debate, and is not relevant to the topic of this thread. Having briefly justified it out of respect for your question, I will not discuss it further.

If you have problems with our product, or if you discover bugs, we provide the means for you to communicate wishes or bugs for improvement of the product. This forum's wish list is one area; bugsubmit is another, our mailing lists yet another. We encourage you (and all) to use these avenues of communication.

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Secondly, it creates an intellectual property problem. What if someone adopts wholesale some of our original code, modifies it slightly, and begins selling his result as a solution, but one that is largely based on our code? A GPL approach is one solution to this, but we've legitimately chosen encryption as another. Is is simply our right to do so.

Right. You claim to have the moral grounds to demand others to donate their intellectual property, but...

This issue of our product delivery is not a debate, and is not relevant to the topic of this thread. Having briefly justified it out of respect for your question, I will not discuss it further.

I'll keep this in mind when you next time say that unless I give the results of my research to NNA for free (to be sold as your product), I don't have the "moral authority" to criticise your products.

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I was going to start again. Set up a new titleblock and use issue manager - all the fantasic extras of VW we have not used todate and NNA promote. This thread has put me off. It seems I have paid for something that does not work for architects.

Briefly, I have been trying to customise the titleblock for our use but it lacks customisation. You can not revise the title headings like 'consultant' or 'firm' and there is no slot for 'client'. There is too much info. Ok there are other titleblocks but none suit what we want. No disrepect but the titleblocks are too amercian and there is no uk ones on our uk version.

We can go back to our own simple titleblock but then that means we can not use issue manager. But then again IM does not sound very adaptable either. One point that NNA need to recognise is that the drawing title info does NEED to be able to saved / printed on a seperate Drawing Issue Issue. This is common practice for uk architects and a must have for chartered practices that have to follow Quality Assured procedures.

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Check out Chapter 15 of the Design Series manual. It has information on creating a custom title block that will work with the drawing border. I think they will also work with the Issue Manager.

You can edit the symbols and text as much as you want in any of the Title Block symbols and still have them work with the automation. The only trick is that any fields that you want linked to the automation must have the Field Name match the names in the Record. This means that Project fields must start with P_ Sheet with S_

Pat

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The problem we have here in Finland is that the field names ("attributes") are standardised.

No, that is not horrible, that is good: I can process also files coming from AutoCAD with my drawing register system (in fact, if I want, I can have my own titleblock in them automatically).

Or let's say I could if it were possible to collate drawing data across multiple files. As sheet layers cannot be referenced, managing large jobs is now impossible in VW. Worked up to VW 10, but now VW is only for smart-sized projects.

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The prob is that no manuals come with VW anymore. The companion disc with 2008 does not work, had 2 discs and can not open them, but have found a way of entering them through the 'back door' but I do not think there is any info on TBSs on them. The last manual came with Architect V11 and this has very little on TBs.

Gone throgh all the tabs on the editing TB and you can not change the entry titles.

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MJW - Have you contacted CU about the companion disk problem? They should be able to send you a replacement disk, or at least troubleshoot as to why it's not working.

The user's guide is available in the online help system, where the online help system has few more organization features otherwise unavailable in the print guides. If you want a print guide, you can purchase these. Please contact CU about this.

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As Katie said above, check the on-line help. It has exactly the same information as the printed manuals. I just happend to have the manuals handy and VW was not running, so I looked it up that way.

The new Help fix for Safari on Macs has improved the help access speed tremendously. Probably a 2 to 3 X speedup on my machine.

Pat

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I was going to start again. Set up a new titleblock and use issue manager - all the fantasic extras of VW we have not used todate and NNA promote. This thread has put me off. It seems I have paid for something that does not work for architects.

Briefly, I have been trying to customise the titleblock for our use but it lacks customisation. You can not revise the title headings like 'consultant' or 'firm' and there is no slot for 'client'. There is too much info. Ok there are other titleblocks but none suit what we want. No disrepect but the titleblocks are too amercian and there is no uk ones on our uk version.

We can go back to our own simple titleblock but then that means we can not use issue manager. But then again IM does not sound very adaptable either. One point that NNA need to recognise is that the drawing title info does NEED to be able to saved / printed on a seperate Drawing Issue Issue. This is common practice for uk architects and a must have for chartered practices that have to follow Quality Assured procedures.

I recently created a title block that utilizes issue manager.

Lay it out the way you want with "dummy" text having the appropriate font, alignment, and size.

Then link each piece of text to the appropriate field fo the record using the pull down.

It took me about a day to get it to work.

I was attaching the record to the title block symbol.

Don't do that.

Just link the text to the record fields individually.

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Katie

We have contacted CU over this and, as we said, we had a second disk from them, both do not work on either pc! 'an error occured trying to access information. Try again'. We get the flashy music when the disc is put in but thats it - a bit of a let down. They said they could not fix it and live with going through the back door, ie right click on icon from c drive.

We will try it from the online help - but it looks complicated and I am not sure it works, especially with Issue Manager- but I will give it a go.

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The online help is a simple page layout, which you can read, just like the manual, or search using the search tab.

The links at the bottom will take you directly to articles related to the current browsed article.

If you have problems using this, please contact CU. They will walk you through how to use it.

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