Classes how to create subclasses?

[Guest Wes Gardner]

Of course, for handling DWGs, you can either reference the dwg into your active file OR use the shuttle file approach...either way you will NOT get all the classes in your active file...

[Pat Stanford]

Or use a Prefix (VW2019 Advanced button, Classes and Layer pane) when you import the DWGs so that they will already be subclasses to a class named as the prefix.

 

[Jonathan Pickup]

 

 

 

 

2

13 hours ago, Kerschbaumer said:

I been using VW for 20 years and now finally having a look at managing the seemingly endless string of classes that are part of every DWG file I import - (generally a Topographical survey).  Until now been always deleting all imported classes because it made a mess out of my files.

 

why dont you use Layer and Class mapping to convert all the classes into the order that you want. you can save the layer and class setting to reuse them

[Kerschbaumer]

Thanks Pat, that works!  admittedly I am not very good at figuring out such things out and stil drafting the same way I did when I started 20 eyars ago.  Now if only someone could wrap my brain around view ports....

[Pat Stanford]

Viewports are effectively an updatable, "customizable" view into your design layers.

 

You can set the visibility of which layer and classes you want to see, you can set the scale so you can view a thumbnail or an enlarged detail, and you can crop the view so that you can only see the portion of the drawing that you want to see. You can control the view (especially useful if you are drawing in 3D) and the rendering mode. You can do all of the above individually for each viewport.

 

The Advanced Properties button lets you adjust the scaling factor of line weights and text, so if you drew at 1/4" and are doing a 3" detail you can thicken up the line weights and enlarge the text so it looks good. Any a bunch of other stuff (like making it Black and White Only).

 

You can also set Layer and Class Overrides. So if you have objects with their attributes set By Class, you can change the attributes of how the objects look in just that viewport.

 

You can put multiple viewports on a single Sheet Layer so you can easily do a detail sheet based on the original design layers.

 

Definitely worth the time to figure out.

[Art V]

On 6/10/2019 at 7:13 PM, Kerschbaumer said:

... just create a 'new' sub class and drag em all in there...come on guys

That would also be quite nice to have (to put it very mildly)

If a rename tool is not going to be implemented in the next version this could be the next best thing, and it would be quite more convenient than e.g. having to reimport a DWG file to get its layers/classes into a subclass if one forgets to add/update the class prefix upon import.

[Travis.Designer]

Hi

What if I created a Class, can I add it as Sub of other Class?

[Art V]

16 minutes ago, Travis.Designer said:

Hi

What if I created a Class, can I add it as Sub of other Class?

Yes, rename the class by adding the class name of the other class in front of it with a hyphen as separator.

E.g. you created  the class "Trees" but you want to make it a subclass of the class "Garden"

Rename the class to "Garden-Trees" and then the Trees class it will become a subclass of the Garden class. The same applies to creating a sub-subclass.

 

If you want to change a bunch of class into a sub-class you can use the batch rename tool that allows you to add a prefix to multiple classes,

then you can e.g. rename classes Trees, Shrubs, Flowers,Pond by setting "Garden-" as the prefix in the batch rename tool and select these classes for renaming to make all these classes a subclass of Garden

Edited October 3, 2020 by Art V

[Travis.Designer]

7 minutes ago, Art V said:

Yes, rename the class by adding the class name of the other class in front of it with a hyphen as separator.

E.g. you created  the class "Trees" but you want to make it a subclass of the class "Garden"

Rename the class to "Garden-Trees" and then the Trees class it will become a subclass of the Garden class. The same applies to creating a sub-subclass.

 

If you want to change a bunch of class into a sub-class you can use the batch rename tool that allows you to add a prefix to multiple classes,

then you can e.g. rename classes Trees, Shrubs, Flowers,Pond by setting "Garden-" as the prefix in the batch rename tool and select these classes for renaming to make all these classes a subclass of Garden

Interesting! Thank for your advice

[VanessaSenna]

Hello, 

 

Do you have some clue to do that through Mac? It is not working with dashes. 

 

Thank you!

 

Vanessa

[michaelk]

@VanessaSenna what version of Vectorworks are you using?

[Pat Stanford]

Make sure you are using "N-dashes" entered from the keyboard by hitting the dash key with no modifiers. If you use an "M-dash" instead (Option and dash on Mac), then you will not get a sub-class.

 

M and N dashes are old time typographical conventions where an N-dash (used here) is the same width as a lower case letter n while the M–dash (used here) is the same width as a lower case letter m.

 

In conventional usage an n-dash is used to separate a range (2018-2020) while and m-dash is used to mark a break in a sentence–and don't forget there is a hyphen which is even shorter than the n-dash.  ;-)