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Annotation highlighting in Viewports in 2014


David L

Question

In previous versions of Vectorworks, when a Viewport was selected the Annotations in the Viewport were highlighted. This has been removed in Vectorworks 2014. Now only the bounding box of the Viewport is highlited.

It is very useful to see what Annotations are in a Viewport by simply selecting it. Now you have to open the Viewport and Select all of the Annotations to see them. I look for a command or preference setting to control Annotation highlighting, but could not find anything.

Please bring back Annotation highlighting in Viewports to Vectorworks 2014.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

That is odd, I had thought something looked different with viewports since 2013 but hadn't noticed this specific change.

I don't know of any specific reason this would have been done, since it doesn't seem to affect the snapping to annotations or other geometry any differently. Submitting now.

If it turns out there was a reason for this change and it was intentional I'll post it as well.

Edited by JimW
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

It wasn't the text objects or callouts etc themselves, but having Vectorworks trace out the geometry/text with the interactive highlighting specifically.

The graphics card has to do the work when that orange highlighting is used, so when it goes and starts tracing very detailed objects it slows down general moving around and zooming.

The slowdown would have also been negated by a user disabling interactive highlighting altogether. This was seen as problematic enough to remove the highlighting entirely in the current version. I've put in a request to have it be a controllable interactive appearance option for users, since many with more powerful graphics hardware may never have encountered that problem.

Edited by JimW
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Thanks for the explanation but I still fail to see how text, callouts and some hatched objects (which is mainly what I use VP Annotations for) taxes the available graphic resources in VW that significantly for highlighting to be removed.

I don't have VW2014 but I would DEFINITELY miss annotation highlighting. It's the main way for me to tell what's in the VP and what's on the design layer.

Or is this related to VW not being 64bit and is a case of robbing Peter to give to Paul at a system resource level?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

From what I understand the Vectorworks Graphic Module (which is what controls OpenGL, interactive appearance highlighting, things the clip cube does, but NOT regular Wireframe) isnt hurting because of being 32bit, however it may very well be to mitigate a problem that won't be solved until later.

If I can find out for sure I will post!

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Apparently this highlighting could dramatically slow zooming/panning when viewports are highlighted and it was removed to speed things up.

OK, thanks, will follow this with interest.

It's just that the above explanation doesn't seem plausible. I've not noticed a performance hit in my viewports when entering VP annotations. Ever. (and I'll be vocal if I did ;) )

Does VW scan all objects in the viewport (including those on the design layer) or is it intelligent enough to only look for and highlight annotations in the viewport?

It'll be interesting to hear from those who may do more complex drawings if they've noticed a slowdown...

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

For highlighting I can confirm it doesn't check everything inside the viewport. We discovered that during testing for another separate issue where Intel graphics cards were showing a solid orange highlighting for things like groups/symbols/viewports that have a bounding-box style highlight.

I would guess that more than likely it would only have affected awful/old integrated cards that have difficulty with highlighting but otherwise work fine. Cards like the ones listed in your signature and mine would likely never have seen it, but Intel GMAs, HD 1000-3000 etc series definitely run like cold concrete if they come across anything not optimized for them yet in Vectorworks.

You'd be surprised how many users try to work with Vectorworks on very underpowered hardware.

I'll see if I can get more details for you, but engineering rarely give tech support direct answers that aren't true. (Mainly because we will descend upon them like an angry NERF-gun wind.)

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I would guess that more than likely it would only have affected awful/old integrated cards that have difficulty with highlighting but otherwise work fine. Cards like the ones listed in your signature and mine would likely never have seen it, but Intel GMAs, HD 1000-3000 etc series definitely run like cold concrete if they come across anything not optimized for them yet in Vectorworks.

In that case then the most appropriate way to deal with it would be via an option that can be toggled on/off. Those that have paid for the latest shouldn't have useful features stripped for the sake of those running older hardware.

Or is the Clip Cube due to be removed for the exact same reason?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I would guess that more than likely it would only have affected awful/old integrated cards that have difficulty with highlighting but otherwise work fine. Cards like the ones listed in your signature and mine would likely never have seen it, but Intel GMAs, HD 1000-3000 etc series definitely run like cold concrete if they come across anything not optimized for them yet in Vectorworks.

In that case then the most appropriate way to deal with it would be via an option that can be toggled on/off. Those that have paid for the latest shouldn't have useful features stripped for the sake of those running older hardware.

Or is the Clip Cube due to be removed for the exact same reason?

This is exactly my point of view. No need to hack off everyone's leg because some people can only find one shoe.

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