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First Hour with 2019 SP3: Productivity: 0%


willofmaine

Question

Viewport Text Scale Resizes Annotations Text   VWIS156

 

I spent much of yesterday looking at this forum & testing VW 2019 SP3 to the end of escaping the misery that is VW 2018 - which has been especially bad with an increasingly large project and a looming deadline.  It's been like running in quicksand.

 

I couldn't find anything, really, to prevent making the leap.  So I leapt.  Splat. 

 

Immediately after converting and opening my project file, a problem: for whatever reason, Arial 37 point text associated with symbols in plan viewports is larger than it is in Vectorworks 2018.  Huh?

 

So I enter the viewport, enter the page-scale symbol, and struggle to draw a rectangle to measure the actual height of the text.  Which is hard because it's difficult to select and move the rectangle; there's no pre-selection highlighting and it has not grips. 

 

Finally, I scroll zoom and, voila, now the rectangle can be selected and moved as expected.  This inability of Vectorworks to immediately display changes, which was introduced with Vectorworks 2017, persists with 2019 SP3 (I also saw this with yesterday's random testing).  It's really annoying to undo an action or otherwise take evasive action, only to find that, oh no, wait, I did originally succeed with making that change!  Just didn't know it.  Call me a rebel, but, I think CAD softwares, being graphics programs, should always, consistently, persistently, reliably and immediately display the drafting or designing that one is doing.  VWIS093  

 

Back to the text size issue...  After sorting out the measuring process, turns out that in VW2019, 37 point Arial text is 0.49" tall, but in 2018, it's 0.375" tall!  To make a long troubleshooting story short:

 

It turns out that, in VW2019 SP3, the "Text Scale" option of a Viewport's "Advanced Properties..." now controls the scale of the text within a Viewport's annotations, as well as the text that's on the design layer (the Help description still says "texts referenced from design layer").

 

Not only that, but Window & Door ID tags (and who knows what else) are not scaled by the Advanced Text Properties > Text Scale as they should be (so, they and their text part company and end up all over the place).  VWIS156

 

Hopefully this scaling issue will be fixed very soon.

 

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Thanks Will for that heads up on the viewport text scaling.  That seems counterproductive.  Why take a feature that was supposed to deal with having a VP at a different scale from the layer, and make it solve a problem that didn't exist with text in the VP annotation space?  Is this what I am hearing?  Depressing.

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Looks like I was clear as mud with this.  The problem isn't with text objects per se; the problem is with text in page-scale symbols.  It seems that Advanced Viewport Properties > Scale Text controls the text size of page-scale symbols, regardless of whether or not the symbols are on a design layer or within the viewport's annotations.  Also, conversely, it seems that the Bubble Shape size of Door & Window ID tags is not controlled by Advanced Properties > Scale Text, even though it should be. 

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It turns out that this can be resolved by changing Navigation Graphics from "Best Performance" to "Good Performance and Compatibility."  Unfortunately, "Good Performance and Compatibility" seems to make moving around in the file (scroll zooming & panning) as bad as, if not worse, than it is in VW 2018.  So not really a solution...

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I don't have SP3 available for install yet over here (unless it became available in the past few hours) but this scaling issue would be a major annoyance to deal with.

 

The difference in font sizes you noticed is most likely a bug, that is... I hope it is not a "feature working as designed" because of whatever change was made.

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@P Retondo, I understand, and I'll be looking forward to receiving @willofmaine feedback. Having access to files and this type of information is the best way for me and the tech team to help and submit issues to our Engineering team. I'm making sure our R&D team is aware of this post to follow up on these issues.

 

Thank you for all your reports.

 

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We would love to gain access to these files and workflows so we can find and resolve these issues. As Juan said, we are looking forward to receiving the info that will help us. R+D will be very happy to dig in and work on this!

Thanks in advance.

Please post files here:

https://vectorworks.groupdropbox.com/upload/fa8538f52f8a236bb2a139a8eb4a8955

 

Steve Johnson

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@JuanP and @SteveJ... Okay!  I really wasn't going to pursue this any further, having already exchanged a series of e-mails with Tech Support on this issue back in March.  But, with cautious optimism, I'll try again.  Following is a synopsis of the issues, along with a file that exhibits the issues along with explanations.

 

Holy Mackerel.  I just realized that one of these issues appeared to be fixed... until I opened my project file, where it still persists.  So, okay, now, after a time-consuming detour, here's the synopsis, revised accordingly:

 

1.) Linked Text that is within page-scale symbols: The scale of linked text contained in both page-scale symbols on design layers and page-scale symbols in viewport annotations is controlled by the viewport's Advanced Properties > Text Scale, when it should not be.

 

2.) Door & Window ID Tag Bubble Size: Conversely, the size of Door & Window ID Tag Bubbles is not controlled by the viewport's Advanced Properties > Text Scale, as it should be (but the scale of their ID Text IS controlled as expected, which results in the Text and Bubble losing their relationship with each other).

 

3.) Navigation Graphics: Switching the Vectorworks Preferences > Display > Navigation Graphics from "Best Performance" to "Good Performance and Compatibility" resolves the above two issues (until switched back again...).  However, in a file of any size, the performance penalty using "Good Performance and Compatibility" is extreme.  The net benefits of the VGM continue to elude me...

 

4.) Seemingly Endless Graphics Issues: Following is a list of issues I've encountered while working on the issues above, most of which I don't think are a problem in VW 2018.  Unfortunately, they're mostly sporadic, and I can't always consistently replicate them.  In some cases changing the Navigation Graphics setting may help.

• It's often difficult or impossible to select and manipulate page-scale symbols in viewports (VWIS157)

• Can't snap to either the design layer or annotations page-scale symbols in viewports (VWIS158)

• Moved page-scale symbols (at least in my project file) are only partially visible before zooming in or out

• "Locate Symbol in Resource Manager" did not highlight selected symbol (very sporadic)

• When editing a 2D page-scale symbol from within a viewport, it was not possible to select the symbol's geometry/text until after using "Component Edit" to switch from "Top" to "3D" and back to "Top" again

• When adding or editing text in a 2D page-scale symbol, the text was not visible until after hitting the Enter key

 

@SteveJ I'm assuming you can grab the file here but, if not, let me know and I'll upload to the link in your post.

 

 

 

 

05-Viewport Text Scale-SP4-03.vwx

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1 hour ago, Andrew Davies said:

Any idea when SP5 is likely to be released?

Currently, it is scheduled to be released in October. We were hoping to release it sooner, but in this SP we will also be including any compatibility fixes with Catalina 10.15. Will keep you all posted on any changes.

 

 

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