manipulating text

[Cadplan Architecture]

Vectorworks has never been too good with text, but at least you can 'word process' now (sort of).

The thing that often irritates me is that you can't manipulate text like you can say with Word. Maybe I'm missing something but if for example I type block of text I can't then change it from a ragged justified right hand side to

justified on both sides. You can only select RH, centre or LH justification.

Also if I have been very particular and typed carefully to give a more or less even RH side to the lines, and I then either try and stretch the whole block to say a more long low shape to fit a particular space in another document, the line ends become very uneven and it looks really bad. As I say this type of basic function is available in Word so why not so in VW?

(someone will probably post that you can now-- I hope!!)

AJ

[Ozzie]

(someone will probably post that you can now-- I hope!!)

doubt it

how does VW's text compare to other cad apps

Edited March 13, 2010 by Ozzie

[michaelk]

I've had good luck using word or excel (or pages or numbers) to create text. It's much easier to format. Then turn it into a pdf and reference it into the drawing.

I agree with you. Trying to large amounts of text w/ VW is not very productive.

[Cadplan Architecture]

Well that's a new idea! I often copy and paste from Word to VW. If you literally copy and paste it appears in VW as a bitmap though, so the way to do it is to enter even just one character of text in VW then highlight it and if you then hit V the copied text comes in to VW as formatted text with whatever font you had in Word.

However you are then limited as to what you can do with the text by the lack of options in VW. It's odd that the programme which is so flexible and free flowing in other ways just hasn't been developed to enable designers to be more creative with text.

[michaelk]

One fun trick is to make a custom page size in a word document (or excel, pages, numbers...) that is 22" high by whatever wide. Create a pdf. Then reference the pdf. It will be formatted top to bottom on a Arch D page. Select the pdf in the vwx document and set the pen to none - that will make the borders go away.