DWG help !!!

[Richard]

Using V'works basic on OS 9.5.3, G3 500 mz Powerlogix 768 mb, have foolishly bought A'cad 2002 LT to evaluate my exports, continued waste of $$ bought V PC 6 to run the aforementioned. YEP, that's what I did. Even if I make all text ARIAL and export a .dwg, my text will not export in a form that's acceptable to the A'cad world for overlay co-ordination of even the smallest projects. It's like the text is not related to the line drawings.

Hey, SAMURAI, what am I doing wrong? The A/E's in A'cad world, say they cannot use my PDF's, are they pulling my leg or is there a better way.

Thanks a bunch for any guidance

[jan15]

For evaluation of exports, I use the free Autodesk Express Viewer. Can you return LT?

For printing or on-screen WYSIWYG viewing, the free VectorWorks Viewer works great and is easy to use, even includes Print Scaling and the Move Page tool in case they want to print at reduced size or print only part of a sheet. And it includes the Sheet selection menu, of course. The only thing is that all the fonts you used have to be present on the machine that reads the file (which I think is also true of Acrobat files), and that chauvinistic or habitually befuddled AutoCad users sometimes exhibit some resistance to downloading the Viewer.

For exporting DWG's with no glitch, you could Save As and set all layers to full size before exporting. That gives AutoCad what it likes, i.e. everything full size in "Model Space", no scale. Your correspondents can make whatever Viewports they need to create the illusion of scale and to locate individual drawings on a sheet, as they have to do with everything they draw. They would only need to create one Viewport for each scale you used in the file. It would only take them a few minutes to do it. You can send them the VectorWorks file and the Viewer along with it to show them how to arrange the sheet, if that's what they want. If they just want individual drawings for inclusion in their own sheets, then this method gives them a better starting point.

[jfmarch]

Since the use of our titleblock on their drawings is not a factor with our office, I suggest the following export method for your Acad consultants. We save a preset view in VW for DWG export. This is basically all classes on, all floor layers on. When we export, we export layers to layers, not classes to layers. We also check the "map line weights to colors" button. Since we use Helvetica as a main drawing font, we have not had any tex problems. We do check the DWG's by importing them into a new file in Vectorworks. Yes VW, it works fine, and it is just as the consultant will see. We never export details, only plans, so scale is not an issue. Acad people are smart enough to set up the DWG the way they need for their use. Hope this helps.

[Guest]

If you are exporting your files from Vw to AutoCad and the text is not lining up, it's because of the text alignment used.

If you go to Text>Alignment you will see several options to set the text.

For the text to remain in the same place when going between VW and AutoCad, use the Top, Center or Bottom setting. The top baseline and bottom baseline will cause the text to "move" when exporting. AutoCad handles the way it lines text up when using the baseline settings.

You'll notice the locus point in the text block when drawing is in a different place when switching between these modes. That locus point is used to line the text up. Using Top, Center or Bottom for the alignment options will allow the text to line up as it is in VW when the file is opened in AutoCad or an AutoCad viewer.

[Richard]

Thanks alot for these helpful responses, have tried all and find this A'cad box to be a good spacer for my many catalogues. Learning the hard way is always the most expensive lesson. Again, thanks for enlightenment!