After 15 years using sketchup, finally trying out a proper tool - vectorworks. 3 days in to the trial and its kinda good. Landscape, drainage, layout, scaled really happy. And then I tried to build the building. Absolutely fail by me. I committed two hours to watching the BIM tutorial, the second module of which showed a 2 second 'sure if you use the rectangle wall tool just drag it out, tab, put your dims in and hey presto'. In so many words.
Tried it, and sure I could draw the exact rectangle. But I need to change the dims on it now. I can see I can drag the rectangle, but that's nowhere near precise enough and can't be the right approach. I've spent 3 hours on internet, on the vectorworks videos, trying to work out how to resize a wall rectangle! There's nothing in OIB saying about length of object. Vectorworks help says 'grab a handle (which I don't have whatever i try) and drag'. I don't want to drag.
Second but also major problem for me is the components. I went to all the time and trouble of creating an accurate custom components build up for the rectangle walls, in the OIB for that '4 walls'. Vectorworks help is really super unhelpful. It says 'To make a style for a wall 'click on the tool and click preferences'. After an age of hunting turns out the spanner image is 'preferences'. So now I have reconstruct the components again. I can't see a way to copy it.
As you can tell, getting frustrated that after 2 great days on vectorworks I am stymied significantly by it being half a day wasted trying to draw an actual room to the right size and then change it, which as a workflow I would have assumed was the starting point. I am sure you will rightly say that I can't get this because I've been used to using a mickey mouse tool like Sketchup Pro - and you are probably right. But I do think a reasonable help questions is 'how to change the size of a room'. Dragging an edge and tabbing just allows me to enter an offset. I can't find anything that describes the slab workflow (I'd have assumed you start with the slab, but the BIM tutorial says to start by scanning in a floorplan! I need to make a floorplan somewhere else and scan it in - I thought that was what Vectorworks did.
So please - if you can help, please do! Either I or the Vectorworks are going out of the window today if I can't work out how to adapt roomsizes. I fully accept it's user error, and me using the incorrect workflow but this building stuff is crazy hard. Site plans all done, drainage plans 90% all done.
Apart from this, and disappearing Title Blocks (*!*!*) it seems great. Using 2020 version. Thank you so much if you can help.
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richard2020
Hi there,
After 15 years using sketchup, finally trying out a proper tool - vectorworks. 3 days in to the trial and its kinda good. Landscape, drainage, layout, scaled really happy. And then I tried to build the building. Absolutely fail by me. I committed two hours to watching the BIM tutorial, the second module of which showed a 2 second 'sure if you use the rectangle wall tool just drag it out, tab, put your dims in and hey presto'. In so many words.
Tried it, and sure I could draw the exact rectangle. But I need to change the dims on it now. I can see I can drag the rectangle, but that's nowhere near precise enough and can't be the right approach. I've spent 3 hours on internet, on the vectorworks videos, trying to work out how to resize a wall rectangle! There's nothing in OIB saying about length of object. Vectorworks help says 'grab a handle (which I don't have whatever i try) and drag'. I don't want to drag.
Second but also major problem for me is the components. I went to all the time and trouble of creating an accurate custom components build up for the rectangle walls, in the OIB for that '4 walls'. Vectorworks help is really super unhelpful. It says 'To make a style for a wall 'click on the tool and click preferences'. After an age of hunting turns out the spanner image is 'preferences'. So now I have reconstruct the components again. I can't see a way to copy it.
As you can tell, getting frustrated that after 2 great days on vectorworks I am stymied significantly by it being half a day wasted trying to draw an actual room to the right size and then change it, which as a workflow I would have assumed was the starting point. I am sure you will rightly say that I can't get this because I've been used to using a mickey mouse tool like Sketchup Pro - and you are probably right. But I do think a reasonable help questions is 'how to change the size of a room'. Dragging an edge and tabbing just allows me to enter an offset. I can't find anything that describes the slab workflow (I'd have assumed you start with the slab, but the BIM tutorial says to start by scanning in a floorplan! I need to make a floorplan somewhere else and scan it in - I thought that was what Vectorworks did.
So please - if you can help, please do! Either I or the Vectorworks are going out of the window today if I can't work out how to adapt roomsizes. I fully accept it's user error, and me using the incorrect workflow but this building stuff is crazy hard. Site plans all done, drainage plans 90% all done.
Apart from this, and disappearing Title Blocks (*!*!*) it seems great. Using 2020 version. Thank you so much if you can help.
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