Benefits of viewports

[JETT]

My present employer is curious about the benefits of using viewports, he feels that it is a time consuming process. Previously he worked with saved views. I only have experience in working with the viewports so I am unable to comment on the use of the saved views as I have no point of reference.

Our drawings are only used for 2D as we don't use VW for presentations. We are trying to come up with a standard in the office and we each have our preferences. I learned to stack all of my drawings and have found this method beneficial however, there are some benefits to drawing everything on the same design layer as it allows you to quickly reference all of the drawings.

Any advice?

[MattG]

My opinion Viewports are the greatest feature in vectorworks.

I work in the entertainment industry and for any number of projects I am like an architect I am looking at the same area in 2d from a top plan but you are often going to want different layers or classes visible based on what your current drawing is emphasizing. Say for example you want to view your beam layout or whatever and then another view of your electrical and another of your HVAC and maybe a detail of a portion of it. You are making all sorts of saved views which aren?t really a problem but it is just a way to do it.

Our company has more or less adopted a standard title block and sheet layer layout so now we do that with our stuff and then I just hit duplicate on my layer manager give it a new name and go to the viewport and turn on whatever layers or classes you want on or off in that sheet and then change in our case the info in your title block.

My problem with saved views is in my sheet layers I have a new instance of a title block and all the stuff I want in there is there and I set it up so there are fields that are constant between all instances and some that are variable based on the sheet. Meaning my project on the drawing is always the same. The scale is variable because maybe I am doing a detail at a larger scale.

With saved views how do you do this? I am not sure. I like saved views for saving certain looks that I may want to pop back to, but for exporting I can batch print/export to PDF all my sheet layers no mater how many. You can do this with saved views as well but personally I don't like the set up to do that as much.

Personal opinion, but just wanted to share because I think it is awesome.

[IanH]

IMHO, saved views are a working state, sheet layer viewports are for presenting information.

You say that you don't do presentations, but even printing out a drawing is presenting it in paper form.

You may not need to use viewports when 'presenting' really basic drawings, but it does not take much before you get conflicts between having to draw for the design and drawing to present. Viewports really come into their own by providing pretty much all of the tools needed to *permanently* disassociate the presentation view from the underlying design. Saved views are really a temporary working snapshot of the design.

IMHO, if you decide not to use viewports, you are going against a fundamental workflow principle that NNA have designed into VW.

That said, I am curious about your employers comment that it is a time consuming process. It takes only seconds to create a sheet layer and viewport and it is normally a one off operation per drawing/view. I wonder whether they is not using viewports in the manner that they are intended if it has become a time consuming operation. In this case, a saved view may well be the correct tool at this stage of the drawing process and that by not feeling that he needs to use viewports when 'presenting' a drawing they are missing other tricks and benefits that VW's use of classes and layers provide.

[edit]However, use of sheet layer viewports (SLVP) may not perform as expected if sharing information (it has been pointed out to me that a dxf export of a sheet may not pick up some contents of some SLVP information such as annotations do not get saved in model space but as I do not regularly export in dxf format this is not an issue for me) and of course, the SLVP is only valid for the sheet it is on so cannot be referenced elsewhere - which includes the annotation layer (IMHO the annotation layer is for annotating the sheet not the design so I do not view this as a problem)[/edit]

What is important is that viewports and saved views are simply tools, and one will be better than the other in different situations.

Edited November 4, 2008 by IanH

[Ozzie]

I think Saved Views were used as a means of presenting different ?views? of a drawing prior to Viewports

When I first began to use Viewports it was scary ? now I cannot imagine drawing and presenting without them

Class overrides ? amazing

I use Saved Views to do what Ian suggests ? to return to a drawing state if you like and move on from there

As with lots of things; doing things differently provides a learning curve and Viewports offers that and in my view Viewports functionality can still be improved enormously

Where they are at now is really worth exploring

[gmm18]

Class overrides ? amazing

Agreed. I just recently started to use Viewport Class Overrides,

it is incredible how easy it is to create dozen's of different graphic outputs

without changing the attributes of the actual objects or class definition.

There has been a wish list item about being able to link saved view settings

to viewport settings, so they work together better. This would be nice as

for now to switch views I often navigate back to Viewports, where I have a

specific set of class and layer visibility settings, then double click to get to that

same view in design layer mode. It would be a little less clicking and more

efficient if I could just click a saved view to get there, but then I need to set

up duplicate saved views and viewports.

Anyway, Viewports are the way to go.

[Jonathan Pickup]

use viewports, they will improve your productivity

[Riddingtone]

Agreed. We use both viewports and saved views regularly. This is my first foray into such a discussion and I am a little dismayed as it looks as though the answer to my question might be part of an eventual response to a wish list item.

Saved views help us to set visibilities that we can return to in the course of working on a design file, while viewports allow us to organize visibilities on sheet files when we are ready to plot. With an extensive list of layers and classes, setting the proper visibilities on a particular viewport can be a time consuming endeavor; even more so with class/layer overrides. While I know how to match viewport properties from sheet to sheet within a file, I do not know if it is possible to match viewport properties from one file to another. Along the same lines I would like to be able to share saved views from one file to another. Do any of you have any knowledge that may help?

[Jonathan Pickup]

if you right mouse click on a viewport and choose the design layer option, VectorWorks can take you to the design layer with the same view attributes as the viewport. then use the save view to save this view for working.

[Ozzie]

Riddingtone

While I know how to match viewport properties from sheet to sheet within a file, I do not know if it is possible to match viewport properties from one file to another. Along the same lines I would like to be able to share saved views from one file to another. Do any of you have any knowledge that may help?

This is an area I believe could be and needs to be improved

When moving from a Sheet Layer Viewport with Class / Layer Overrides you return to the Design Layer in its original state rather than the Class / Layer Override state in the Sheet layer Viewport

If I am correct with this I think when moving from a Sheet Layer Viewport ? Edit Design Layer ? an improvement could be to have an option ? Maintain either Sheet Layer Class or Layer Overrides Visibilities back to the Design Layer as an option ?

I too think to be able to store like a Resource or whatever Viewport Class / Layer Overrides or Saved Views to easily be able to transfer them from one file to another would be a great improvement to VW

It can be done through Standard files and that works but is cumbersome and time consuming

Perhaps post this as a Wish List Item ? perhaps too NNA is working on a means of doing this better

[j.christ]

There's pros and cons to each...i.e. not using VP's slows you up a little (unsure whether a measurable amount) and when using VP's and a file becomes corrupt you cannot import annotations when recovering them with WG referencing.

Use what is comfortable. I personally use VP's.

Edited November 9, 2008 by j.christ