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Maximum Drawings Opened at one time


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Hi everyone, I am suffering dreadful problem of being able to have opened just 8drawings at one time. I am working on project which requires editing about 20 drawings and it's really annoying to open and close the drawings all day long. For some reason I am not able to open second Vectorworks and I am not able to find where I can change the maximum number of opened drawings...if possible.

I'd be very grateful if you could help me.

thanks

Frank

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Islandmon, I was working in autocad before..where unlimited number of opened drawings is possible. And if I have a big project, I really need to edit about 15drawings..different floors, different revisions, references,etc.

And it really annoys me because it's only matter of some system variable. There cannot be any physical barrier why to open only eight drawings. As long as you have enough RAM you are fine.

There are quite a few things I really miss in Vectorworks (compared to Acad)however I somehow got used to be without them, but this issue with maximum of opened drawings is really pain in the arse for me. ;(

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It would not really do any good to store them in one file.. they all are A1 sheets which are exactly in the same position to 0. so I can very easily copy and paste things from floor to floor. Second thing is that it would be terribly slow if I had all the drawings in one file...believe me it's not good to go that way.

When I was using Autocad I could have opened as many Autocad aplications as I needed (usually I had opened 2of them) and in each of that aplication I could have opened as many drawings as I needed). So I am seeking to reach at least one of these goals in VW to be a happy man.

The thing is I am shutting down my pc about once per week..so it's very convenient to have opened all the drawings and quickly move amongst them just using Alt+Tab and Ctrl+Tab ..

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Frank

If you had it all in one drawing you could select the element you want to move and just go to the OIP and change what layer it sits on, easy peasy!!

Others who have used Autocad (I have not) I'm sure will advise you to work the Autocad way in Vectorworks is missing the real advantages and beauty of VW over Autocad.

Far be it from me to tell you how to work but it sounds like you'd have a lot happier experience with VW if you stopped trying to use it as a substitute for Autocad, instead as a alternative, with an alternative way of working.

I'm sure there is no difference to having one big file open and several smaller ones in the working overhead of VW.

All the best

Alan

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Never having used ACad, the idea of having each floor in a separate file seems completely foreign. VW is designed to have each floor on a separate layer in the same file. You really should try it. I think you'll find it far more efficient to use this feature.

You can have any keyboard short-cut you want for moving thru the floors. Can't remember what the default is off-hand.

There are a number of features available to you with this approach that aren't available with separate files. Being able to see 1 or more floors superimposed on another is one. Going directly from the basement to the 8th floor without tabbing thru the intermediates might be another. Viewports with detail from more that one floor,saved views,database worksheets and on and on.

If you use symbols and PIO's this approach will have an over-all lower system usage. You'll have one symbol/PIO definition in the one file instead of 20. If you want to change every instance of a symbol throughout the building it takes about 2 clicks.

As was stated above, using the feature set of this program will be more efficient than trying to use it as a substitute for a different program. But there is the dreaded learning curve!

Regards

Charles

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Having a separate file for each drawing doesn't even make sense in Autocad any more, since the introduction of layout tabs.

VW has always made it easy to have many sheets in one file, and also to draw all plans in register (that, too, is possible in Autocad, using layer filters and layers frozen in viewports, but in Vectorworks it's not only possible but very convenient and the easiest way to work).

I can't understand why you have slowdown issues with all the drawings in one file, since it sounds like they're all 2D drawings. Unless maybe you're storing a lot of extra stuff in the file, such as all your symbols (blocks), the way a lot of Autocad users do.

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Jan15 - in my experience files that have lots of hatches and/or lots of arcs (as produced by the insulation tool) do slow down in 2D. Use a few stipples and the drawing will grind to a halt. I find it is best to keep the use of these drawing elements to a minimum to avoid these issues.

I keep my drawings as simple as possible and only draw what needs to be drawn for the scale that it is going to be printed out at. Some people don't get this though and insist on drawing every element as if it is all going to be printed out at a scle of 1:10.

I occassionally run up against the 8 drawing open limit, and would like this to be higher. 15-20 would be good.

[ 04-01-2006, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

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