12/1/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• No user group meeting this month
• Giving Thanks
• More thoughts on VW 2008
• Possible bug when exporting DXF/DWG in V.2008
• Latest webcast link
• Viewports as Design Layers (DLVP)
•Stretching groups of lines in V.2008
•What is Resource Share?
•Creating Door and Window Schedules
Greetings VectorWorks users! The holidays are too busy to place any more demands on your time so let’s plan on getting together after the new year. Meanwhile, included in CTL #27 is a link to a new webcast (and a new downloadable tool) as well as the familiar tips, tricks and points of view for using VectorWorks effectively.
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There are a lot of people we could and should thank in making VW all it can be. I'd like to single out two.
I saw Katie demo'ing VW 2008 at the JLC Residential Construction Show in Seattle and I wish to acknowledge her efforts in teaching (and selling) VectorWorks, often under difficult, frequently exhausting conditions. If NNA would only film and post her demo on the website, it would help countless new users to find their way through VectorWorks and achieve success just a little bit sooner, or maybe a lot sooner, than would otherwise be the case. Katie also does yeoman work on the tech board helping any and all, day in and day out.
Here's a scary question. What if there was no Jonathan Pickup in NNA's world, or ours? Jonathan's books say more and do more in fewer pages than almost anything I've seen, as opposed to the Fundamentals and Designer Series manuals which, at over 1,300 pages, have been cobbled and patched for years, their engineer-speak context and order baffling to all but the most intrepid spelunkers. (Disclaimer--Jonathan has been kind to me and our Seattle VectorWorks Users Group with his generosity in the past).
Just the other day, Mike Enriquez posts this to the VW Listserv:
"I have VW 12.5 and I looked in the help files. I have VectorWorks Fundamentals Book. I have Vector Works Architect 1 & 2 CD, Core Concept CD,and Vectorworks Essentials CD Series TR104. No where can I find out how to set up individual working drawings, or drawings and how I can print or plot each sheet. I believe I looked everywhere and I cannot find this information. Help? I don't understand why this is not covered or maybe it is me and I can't find it. This information has to be somewhere because it is the very basis how Architects work. You know, draw multiple individual sheets and then take these sheets to the plotting service. Does anyone know of a good book or CD that explains how to set this up. I believe it is me and didn't see this information or how to look it up. But I am stuck. Help! Where can I find out this information?
Mike Enriquez 'VW Newbie' "
Of course, the items Mike asks about ARE covered, just not broken out where a new user can quickly pick up core concepts and be immediately, if incrementally, successful. I wish I could point Mike E. to a list of Sketchup-like tutorials that would teach a new user how to do just what he's asked in about an hours time. In lieu of that, I instead would point him to Jonathan and his mix of publications, user group, webcasts, etc. as being a most practical place to learn basic VW to date. By the way, Jon has just posted a link to a new book on using VW 2008, tutorial based, for new users and beginners. If you have VW and not had the time to dig in, this may be for you:
>http://www.archoncad.com/essential-tutorial-manual-for-vectorworks-2009.html
Thanks again, Katie and Jon.
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There may be a bug in the VW 2008 export of DWG/DXF. For some users the files seem to be humungous once exported. If this is happening to you, the best thing to do until a fix is issued is to export your file out as a VW 12 file and open it in VW 12.5--assuming you have that version on your computer. Your file will have a duplicate created with V.12 appended to its end. Open the file and export via DWG/DXF as you typically do. This version should be free of the problems caused by V.2008. It is also worth mentioning that creating a class in which to place memory- gobbling textures and other objects not needed for translation, might be helpful in keeping file size down once they’re set to be invisible.
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So what to make of this latest version of VectorWorks? I jumped in with a project already under way in V.12.5 and so far am very happy. I had designed an as-built of a two-story residence and taken it through 3D, intending to add an upper story. It took no time for me to forget about the icons in 12.5 that were stationed at the bottom of the screen. Most have now been moved to the top. I was pleased when I found that I could modify the top row to include a ruler icon that upon clicking, allows me to change the scale of the sheet or design layer I’m currently working on. It’s right next to a box that shows the current view scale. But I really like having the dimension box tied to the tool such that it only springs up as you begin to draw. There is no dimension string on the top of the page unless you set the preferences to display per V.12.5. Using this tool in the new way eliminates the positive/negative inputting that took extra work and was much less intuitive.
Let’s talk about differences in editing viewports. When you’re in a viewport and decide to edit it back to the main design layer by double clicking, you get the familiar--to most of us at least--box with the three choices of Crop, Annotations or Design Layer. You’ll be surprised to see that there is now a colored ring around your design layer. This is a factory setting that may not be appreciated and can be reset by going back to a viewport, dbl. clicking, and when the Edit Viewport palette comes up, unchecking Navigate Back to Viewport. This choice should stay sticky for all subsequent edits.
I’ve been noticing that I don’t always like having to go back to the Viewport to navigate in and out of the design layer. An alternative that seems a reasonable compromise to having Crop, Annotations and Design Layer as buttons on the top of the page is to use the right click mouse button to travel via the contextual menus. (Go to Help / VectorWorks Help and search for “Context Menus” to see a long list of context-based options.)
Along these same lines, here’s something to try. Double click a viewport and when the Edit Viewport palette comes up, go to the bottom of the palette to the pull down the menu labeled Double Click and select Edit the Design Layer. You’ll find that when dbl. clicking on a viewport, you’ll be taken directly to the design layer WITHOUT having the Edit Viewport dialog box come up. If you want this option back, just right click again on a selected vp and then click on Edit to put things back the way they were. Note that I’ve had instances where I can’t seem to get the correct right-clicked palette to come up. If this happens to you, zoom in or out a bit and try again.
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Do you have a wish item or two that you’d like to see included in the next rev. of VectorWorks? Theresa at NNA has sent me an email saying that they’d like us to send them a list of items needing improvement or perhaps new tools or processes. This list should be ready to be returned to her by February for the engineers to consider the requests. I’m working on my list and would like your input. Please email me your thoughts. Thanks!
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The NNA VW webcast for November is on Sign Location Planning. There is a new tool available, (link provided in the tutorial) designed for indicating sign locations within commercial/institutional architectural plans. The tool gives one quite a bit of notation and record keeping control of signage. Here is the link to download and view at your leisure.
>https://vectorworks.webex.com/vectorworks/k2/e.php?AT=RINF&recordingID=25935252&recordKey=B23E5FE2C349AC9E7706580E271E53EC69BCC872B362817A00C498650C1DB304&action=publishfile
The code word to get into the system is (sorry-for our members only).
NNA is likely going to a recorded status (versus a live feed) for webcasts on the West Coast since it simply makes life easier for all. In the future I’ll pass these links on to you as they become available.
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In the Sign Location tutorial, you’ll see that a viewport of a floor plan was brought in as a Design Layer Viewport and used as an underlay for subsequent drawings. This is a new feature of VW 2008. Thus the sign tool, or any other tool, can place information onto a floor plan--a floor plan that can be automatically updated when the original design layer is changed. This works well for me when I wish to show a story below a residential roof or floor joist framing plan. Prior to this, I had to duplicate and disassemble and ungroup until I had a bare-bones set of dead, dashed lines indicating walls.
After beginning the drawing for my Main Story Floor Plan, I created a class for windows and a class for doors into which I placed those respective units. With the viewport underlaying my framing drawing, I then turn off windows and doors leaving holes across which I place heavy dashed lines as indicators for headers or beams. The intent in making windows and doors invisible is to reduce clutter and aid in plan readability.
One can also, using the Advanced Properties button on the Object Info palette, hide wall components as well as strip out wall colors or fills by checking Black and White Only.
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In VW 2008, one has to click on a NEW button to stretch multiple lines, vs VW 12.5, when you needed to click on NO buttons to drag-stretch multiple lines (as long as the "Enable Interactive Scaling Mode" button--the diagonal arrowheaded line icon--was selected as the default choice). Is there a benefit to this additional step or did VW just get harder to use? Not really but you should reset the new third button to ON (it’s sticky). This new button is called "Unrestricted Interactive Scaling Mode" for short.
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Resource Share is a site on the NNA techboard that allows you to download user-provided textures, symbols, hatches, worksheets, wall styles etc.
>http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm&c=8
This page is new so it may take some time for the content to build out.
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Creating door and window schedules seems like a breeze. I set each door and window to show an ID number on the planset and then I go to Tools / Reports / VA Create Schedule. Choose schedule type and click somewhere on your drawing when you see the cross-hair cursor. A schedule appears. Woohoo! You can easily remove unneeded columns by first double-clicking on the schedule which takes you to the original spreadsheet of the schedule. Shift-select those columns you don’t want and delete via the triangle button on the left side of the spreadsheet. Alas, I found I had to number each door and window consecutively and this was slow going and prone to error. I posted a question to the NNA techboard on how I might get the units to number consecutively and received this post back from Pat Stanford:
“Take a look at the ID Label Tool. This will go through and let you do the numbering and turn on the On Schedule button at the same time. The other benefit is that it lets you specify exactly where you want the label to be, rather than having to move it afterward.
The only trick (for me) is that the tool makes you click where you want the label first, then on the door/window to label.”
Thanks Pat! Note that on the ID Palette, you’ll find a button called Auto-Increment ID Label. Check this, obviously, to get the numbers to post consecutively. Note also that you might choose the suggested class called Door-Spec (or Window-Spec) in which to place the ID labels which will allow you to make door or window numbering invisible as needed.
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That’s it!
Have a great holiday season and may all your dreams be designed by Pixar.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Convert To Lines #26
10/22/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Our next user-group meeting (THIS WEEK!!)
• What’s new in Version 2008--thoughts and opinions
• Viewing the improvements in version ‘08
• Classing objects--why & how
• What’s with the naming change?
• The competition
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is this Thursday, October 25th, from 6:00 to 8:00 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
We’ll start right off with the N.N.A. Webinar--live from Baltimore--covering the new CAD-manager features. Sam will bring her Clearwire modem to log us in. This will be our first attempt at using the Clearwire system--we’re not certain we’ll be successful so cross your fingers [We were successful but the system introduced about a 2-1/2 minute lag of voice (over telephone) to video (over internet)]. I’ll give you a look at Version 2008 and we’ll also talk about editing Classes, and other miscellaneous tools and techniques. We’ll attempt to answer your questions regardless of which platform or version you’re working from.
If you can’t get there at six, come whenever as there will be lots of content throughout the evening. I’ll have some goodies to hand out too.
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On Tuesday of last week, I attended VectorFest, the rollout event for VectorWorks 13.....er, 2008, at the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle. Nemetschek would, in years past, typically drop in on our user-group or round up architects from some of the bigger firms in town to show off their new release. This time, they believed that the upgrade contained so many new items and some very new processes that it would be worth everyone’s time to do a more in-depth review and so they charged for the service, stepping us through the improvements, over five hours time, with lunch thrown in.
I’d originally thought that hey, if you wanted to buy a new car, Mr. Ford wouldn’t charge you to test-drive his product. Maybe Nemetschek made a mistake in proceeding as they had. However, it turns out N.N.A. has a point; if you don’t know about the tools or new ways to put them together, you are much less likely to employ them, life being short as it is, and thus have much less impetus to spend your hard-earned cash on the new release. In fact, some of the fresh processes are so new, the engineers themselves don’t yet have a solid workflow to pass on, waiting for us to create the best way to use the tools (which we eventually do). For example, you now can route newly created Viewports onto Design Layers and so work in Top/Plan view while a 3D model updates alongside! (More about this later.)
Below, in no particular order, are some of my impression of VectorWorks 2008.
•Tool icons have a cartoony kind of style but in cool way. They’re supposed to look good on big LCD screens and that may be true. Still, several of them look a little spongy and so it will take a while for me to bond their look to their function.
•All of the commands and tools that were on the bottom of the screen are now up at the top, reconfigured, in an area now called the View Bar. There’s an arrow located at the end that allows you to custom-configure this bar to your particular needs. Getting into your Classes and Layers or finding Saved Views will be easier but best of all, you’ll SEE exactly where you are with the active Class and Layer showing as well as view orientation. Sometimes while moving back and forth in our model making, we enter a 2D design layer not knowing we’re still in a 3D plan orientation. This view indicator will help tip us off.
•Draw a line. Immediately, adjacent to its end, a blue box with X and Y input boxes appears, allowing tabbing-in of dimensions. End your line with a click. There is no dimension or angle input box in the usual place at the top of the page (although you can custom tailor this function to act just like the old days). I drew my one line and it was so cool that I don't believe I'll ever want to draw in the old way again. Really. Besides saving space, this new method allows you to keep your eyes on the task at hand and not lose concentration by having to look toward the top or your monitor when input dimensions or angles and it also offers you a simple input for length versus the old negative/positive game. If you pull it to the right, all you need to input is length--this simplification eliminates one of the input boxes required in V. 12.5 and below.
•Typically, when you edit a group or an extrusion, using the usual double click puts you into an editing mode. This time around, there is a heavy colored line surrounding the page and a big, colored Exit Extrude command box at the upper right hand corner. Seems the old way caused quite a few people to miss the ultra-subtle indicator that earlier versions employed and so they would inadvertently wander into this trap. Let’s take a moment to honor those who have suffered while being lost in Edit land.
•Now, if you place a dimension onto a Viewport while in Annotations, changing the object's location in the Design Layer also changes the (Annotated) dimension. It’s associative.
•You can draw walls while in an isometric view. Doors and windows slap up against the walls as though magnetized. You can drag them around corners too. Click and they are set into the wall. Use the 3D Reshape tool to drag them along, up or down the wall.
•Draw an item. You’ll see it is now highlighted along its length or perimeter to a much greater degree. You'll notice it's factory-set to a throbbing action, which seemed cool at first, but soon had me going green as though I were getting sea sick. Turn it off under Prefs. While there, change the highlight color and opacity to something that suits you. The point of this change was to aid you when zoomed in on an object where its ends were out of sight, leaving you unable to see whether or not the object was truly selected. I find I liked the nodes a little better in that there was simply less "stuff" going on around my lines. I'm likely to get used to it so check back in a few months.
•Stack Layers has replaced Layer Linking for users of all but Fundamentals The Stack Layers command can now be found on the View bar. There is a tool for those wishing to convert layer-linked models to Viewports and Viewports of Stacked Layers back to Layer Links. Those still wanting Layer Links can add them via choosing “Standard” as their workspace or by editing a workspace. The Model View tool, more advanced than layer linking, is still available in ‘08, though oddly, if look in the Legacy folder in Workspaces, you'll find it (or a copy) there.
•If you do interiors, VW 2008 is a must-have. The color options now, versus what we had in 12.5, are huge. You’ll have many more colors, color sets from mainstream manufacturers plus the ability to make and modify your own sets. See the movie:
>http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2008/UnlimitedColorChoices.mov
Expanding on the use of color, Renderworks has been improved with the addition of an advanced rendering option for Custom Render (my fav’ of all the choices) and is selectable via the Custom Render Options palette. Called “Final Gather”, this option takes a reasoned approach to Radiosity, giving us about 60% of the amount of rendering that a full-on radiosity call would generate but delivering most of the look of the “full-on” version with far less time spent in the rendering process. Best used for interiors or close-in views of buildings where there are enough shadows to benefit from reflected light. Bright, sunny views of exteriors is not where you’ll want to employ Final Gather. Check out this new rendering:
>http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/index.php
•You can now turn off, via automatically created Classes, the interior and exterior components of walls in (almost) any order, either in Viewports or on Design Layers. You still have the macro-choice of turning on or off all interior lines when in Viewports (under File/Document Preferences) .
•Opacity. You can now adjust objects for transparency on PC’s and Mac’s using the Attributes palette and a new slider bar found there. Opacity of Layers can be adjusted by Edit command of each layer too. Lastly, the gray level of underlying layers can be adjusted under Print by finding the VectorWorks radio button choice (this button also includes Print Settings, Paper Handling, etc.). Mac users should have Quartz enabled to use this feature.
•Viewports on Design Layers. Ok, this one twisted my mind for a little while but there really is great promise in this tool. (At the moment, NNA doesn’t really have a work flow to suggest for all the ways to use VPDL’s--it’s just too early.) What if we combine the VPDL with some part of the Opacity capability plus Classable Wall Components? This would allow one to make a Viewport of a Main Story floor plan, send it onto a fresh design layer, and overdraw with 2D framing elements. I could turn off my inner wall components to ease readability. I could also turn up the gray level of the underlaying layer prior to printing (previous grays would often disappear when photocopying output). Lastly, I'd be able to update my underlaying layers when the model changes since Viewports are live. Prior to this, if I wanted a reference, I’d have to copy and paste the whole floor onto another layer, thus losing the live link. But if I can edit all attributes of walls, perhaps I’ll skip management of gray via the printing command, even though it’s a brand new capability, and just print normally. Like I said, we'll figure it out eventually.
So far, Viewports on Design Layers is the most promising productivity improvement in VW2008, at least for me. Viewports first brought us the ability to keep our models live through our updating of Design Layers. All sheets bearing images containing 3D information, if done with a Viewport, would automatically rebuild to reflect any change. (For sake of brevity, I’m not even mentioning the great display and composition improvements that Viewports delivered.) Now, with VPDL, I can, in the same way, update reference drawings I'd placed below 2D data and thus dramatically cut time spent redrawing almost all pages of a planset.
VPDL will also blow the doors off the old way of using Workgroup Referencing. One can now organize workflow such that a large building can have Viewports of specialty rooms created by others and floated onto the base Design Layer of the main structure. Sheets can then be made of this composite for printing (via the usual way of first creating a VP of the area of interest). These files, other references, symbols and textures do not reside at the root level of the file any longer and so make management of shared resources easier while keeping file size down and eliminating naming conflicts.
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Do take advantage by reading through the thorough listing of changes in V.2008 posted on the NNA website.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/upgrade/index.php
Click on the various flavors of VectorWorks and then work the tabs at the top of the following page. Impressive, I’d say.
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Inevitably, advances rearrange our way of working. Change, within a well-oiled design process, is confusing and ultimately costly in time and money. New tools, once learned should give us a good return on the initial investment. An example of this is the growing emphasis--as Viewports gain traction--on the generation of and management of classes. You can place an object into a class to better manage its visibility. But if you wish to change an object’s visible attributes later on to better suite your preferences in assembling your sheets, it’s best to assign objects an editable status when first created. The process of learning this is not initially very user-friendly. In my own way of drawing, I like the freedom of working directly in the None class, placing miscellaneous elements there until a better idea comes along. I don’t like to auto-assign attributes to things drawn in None because I might want various line thickness' or colors to be immediately assigned, via the Attributes palette, to suit my whim. On the other hand, I might very much want cabinets or other sets of objects to always be automatically assigned attributes that can be changed on all members of the “Cabinets” class with one just a few clicks versus editing each cabinet, one by one. These changes to like-classed groups are done using the Edit button in Classes, either from the Navigation palette or the Class icon in the new View bar. (For those wanting to read the NNA manuals regarding this process, in Fundamentals, see p.98; Setting Class Properties and especially the explanation on p.101 (top of the page) of Use at Creation. See also, in the Design manual, p.469; Changing Class Properties of Design Layer Viewports.) Go through some quick and simple experiments where you create a new class BEFORE drawing anything. Click to Edit that class and check the Use at Creation box. Then draw a line or a circle. That circle now can be edited without needing to select it or its mates by using the Graphic Attributes palette called up via the Edit command. But this is not where the money is. Your ability to display information will soar once you are comfortable editing classes on VPDL's.
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So why 2008 instead of VectorWorks 13? Could NNA format VectorWorks’ upgrades to be issued annually? What would be the advantage/disadvantage of an annual upgrade path? As users, we’d see changes a little quicker, perhaps, although a .5 upgrade was typically laden with helpful changes. These yearly half-point upgrades were free, remember. Looking around, we see that other industry CAD leaders have gone/are going to a licensing arrangement whereby the user no longer owns the software but rather leases it for a fixed term. Currently, ArchiCad, owned by N.N.A., sells the complete package--which you then own, for approx. $4250. You can also opt to buy an annual subscription, thus licensing the software for a renewable fee, as I write this, of $695. You must employ the most current version once on this path.
Corporations have an interest in smoothing out their revenue stream so an annual fee makes sense to them. Understand that I do not have any inside information on how NNA may or may not structure their sales in 2009. I will say that if you are on the fence about upgrading, having some knowledge of industry trends may help you with your decision.
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This is mean. Check out the rather uninspiring renderings that Revit has put up in their galleries, especially Residential.
>http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8481133
No knock on the designers; it's just that a heavy hitter like Revit should have some amazing gallery content.
It you were wondering, Revit Plus Autocad comes as a “suite” and sells today for $5696 US.
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It’s a wrap. Thanks for reading and hope to see you Thursday or hear from you as time allows.
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Our next user-group meeting (THIS WEEK!!)
• What’s new in Version 2008--thoughts and opinions
• Viewing the improvements in version ‘08
• Classing objects--why & how
• What’s with the naming change?
• The competition
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is this Thursday, October 25th, from 6:00 to 8:00 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
We’ll start right off with the N.N.A. Webinar--live from Baltimore--covering the new CAD-manager features. Sam will bring her Clearwire modem to log us in. This will be our first attempt at using the Clearwire system--we’re not certain we’ll be successful so cross your fingers [We were successful but the system introduced about a 2-1/2 minute lag of voice (over telephone) to video (over internet)]. I’ll give you a look at Version 2008 and we’ll also talk about editing Classes, and other miscellaneous tools and techniques. We’ll attempt to answer your questions regardless of which platform or version you’re working from.
If you can’t get there at six, come whenever as there will be lots of content throughout the evening. I’ll have some goodies to hand out too.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On Tuesday of last week, I attended VectorFest, the rollout event for VectorWorks 13.....er, 2008, at the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle. Nemetschek would, in years past, typically drop in on our user-group or round up architects from some of the bigger firms in town to show off their new release. This time, they believed that the upgrade contained so many new items and some very new processes that it would be worth everyone’s time to do a more in-depth review and so they charged for the service, stepping us through the improvements, over five hours time, with lunch thrown in.
I’d originally thought that hey, if you wanted to buy a new car, Mr. Ford wouldn’t charge you to test-drive his product. Maybe Nemetschek made a mistake in proceeding as they had. However, it turns out N.N.A. has a point; if you don’t know about the tools or new ways to put them together, you are much less likely to employ them, life being short as it is, and thus have much less impetus to spend your hard-earned cash on the new release. In fact, some of the fresh processes are so new, the engineers themselves don’t yet have a solid workflow to pass on, waiting for us to create the best way to use the tools (which we eventually do). For example, you now can route newly created Viewports onto Design Layers and so work in Top/Plan view while a 3D model updates alongside! (More about this later.)
Below, in no particular order, are some of my impression of VectorWorks 2008.
•Tool icons have a cartoony kind of style but in cool way. They’re supposed to look good on big LCD screens and that may be true. Still, several of them look a little spongy and so it will take a while for me to bond their look to their function.
•All of the commands and tools that were on the bottom of the screen are now up at the top, reconfigured, in an area now called the View Bar. There’s an arrow located at the end that allows you to custom-configure this bar to your particular needs. Getting into your Classes and Layers or finding Saved Views will be easier but best of all, you’ll SEE exactly where you are with the active Class and Layer showing as well as view orientation. Sometimes while moving back and forth in our model making, we enter a 2D design layer not knowing we’re still in a 3D plan orientation. This view indicator will help tip us off.
•Draw a line. Immediately, adjacent to its end, a blue box with X and Y input boxes appears, allowing tabbing-in of dimensions. End your line with a click. There is no dimension or angle input box in the usual place at the top of the page (although you can custom tailor this function to act just like the old days). I drew my one line and it was so cool that I don't believe I'll ever want to draw in the old way again. Really. Besides saving space, this new method allows you to keep your eyes on the task at hand and not lose concentration by having to look toward the top or your monitor when input dimensions or angles and it also offers you a simple input for length versus the old negative/positive game. If you pull it to the right, all you need to input is length--this simplification eliminates one of the input boxes required in V. 12.5 and below.
•Typically, when you edit a group or an extrusion, using the usual double click puts you into an editing mode. This time around, there is a heavy colored line surrounding the page and a big, colored Exit Extrude command box at the upper right hand corner. Seems the old way caused quite a few people to miss the ultra-subtle indicator that earlier versions employed and so they would inadvertently wander into this trap. Let’s take a moment to honor those who have suffered while being lost in Edit land.
•Now, if you place a dimension onto a Viewport while in Annotations, changing the object's location in the Design Layer also changes the (Annotated) dimension. It’s associative.
•You can draw walls while in an isometric view. Doors and windows slap up against the walls as though magnetized. You can drag them around corners too. Click and they are set into the wall. Use the 3D Reshape tool to drag them along, up or down the wall.
•Draw an item. You’ll see it is now highlighted along its length or perimeter to a much greater degree. You'll notice it's factory-set to a throbbing action, which seemed cool at first, but soon had me going green as though I were getting sea sick. Turn it off under Prefs. While there, change the highlight color and opacity to something that suits you. The point of this change was to aid you when zoomed in on an object where its ends were out of sight, leaving you unable to see whether or not the object was truly selected. I find I liked the nodes a little better in that there was simply less "stuff" going on around my lines. I'm likely to get used to it so check back in a few months.
•Stack Layers has replaced Layer Linking for users of all but Fundamentals The Stack Layers command can now be found on the View bar. There is a tool for those wishing to convert layer-linked models to Viewports and Viewports of Stacked Layers back to Layer Links. Those still wanting Layer Links can add them via choosing “Standard” as their workspace or by editing a workspace. The Model View tool, more advanced than layer linking, is still available in ‘08, though oddly, if look in the Legacy folder in Workspaces, you'll find it (or a copy) there.
•If you do interiors, VW 2008 is a must-have. The color options now, versus what we had in 12.5, are huge. You’ll have many more colors, color sets from mainstream manufacturers plus the ability to make and modify your own sets. See the movie:
>http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2008/UnlimitedColorChoices.mov
Expanding on the use of color, Renderworks has been improved with the addition of an advanced rendering option for Custom Render (my fav’ of all the choices) and is selectable via the Custom Render Options palette. Called “Final Gather”, this option takes a reasoned approach to Radiosity, giving us about 60% of the amount of rendering that a full-on radiosity call would generate but delivering most of the look of the “full-on” version with far less time spent in the rendering process. Best used for interiors or close-in views of buildings where there are enough shadows to benefit from reflected light. Bright, sunny views of exteriors is not where you’ll want to employ Final Gather. Check out this new rendering:
>http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/index.php
•You can now turn off, via automatically created Classes, the interior and exterior components of walls in (almost) any order, either in Viewports or on Design Layers. You still have the macro-choice of turning on or off all interior lines when in Viewports (under File/Document Preferences) .
•Opacity. You can now adjust objects for transparency on PC’s and Mac’s using the Attributes palette and a new slider bar found there. Opacity of Layers can be adjusted by Edit command of each layer too. Lastly, the gray level of underlying layers can be adjusted under Print by finding the VectorWorks radio button choice (this button also includes Print Settings, Paper Handling, etc.). Mac users should have Quartz enabled to use this feature.
•Viewports on Design Layers. Ok, this one twisted my mind for a little while but there really is great promise in this tool. (At the moment, NNA doesn’t really have a work flow to suggest for all the ways to use VPDL’s--it’s just too early.) What if we combine the VPDL with some part of the Opacity capability plus Classable Wall Components? This would allow one to make a Viewport of a Main Story floor plan, send it onto a fresh design layer, and overdraw with 2D framing elements. I could turn off my inner wall components to ease readability. I could also turn up the gray level of the underlaying layer prior to printing (previous grays would often disappear when photocopying output). Lastly, I'd be able to update my underlaying layers when the model changes since Viewports are live. Prior to this, if I wanted a reference, I’d have to copy and paste the whole floor onto another layer, thus losing the live link. But if I can edit all attributes of walls, perhaps I’ll skip management of gray via the printing command, even though it’s a brand new capability, and just print normally. Like I said, we'll figure it out eventually.
So far, Viewports on Design Layers is the most promising productivity improvement in VW2008, at least for me. Viewports first brought us the ability to keep our models live through our updating of Design Layers. All sheets bearing images containing 3D information, if done with a Viewport, would automatically rebuild to reflect any change. (For sake of brevity, I’m not even mentioning the great display and composition improvements that Viewports delivered.) Now, with VPDL, I can, in the same way, update reference drawings I'd placed below 2D data and thus dramatically cut time spent redrawing almost all pages of a planset.
VPDL will also blow the doors off the old way of using Workgroup Referencing. One can now organize workflow such that a large building can have Viewports of specialty rooms created by others and floated onto the base Design Layer of the main structure. Sheets can then be made of this composite for printing (via the usual way of first creating a VP of the area of interest). These files, other references, symbols and textures do not reside at the root level of the file any longer and so make management of shared resources easier while keeping file size down and eliminating naming conflicts.
-------------------------------------------------------
Do take advantage by reading through the thorough listing of changes in V.2008 posted on the NNA website.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/upgrade/index.php
Click on the various flavors of VectorWorks and then work the tabs at the top of the following page. Impressive, I’d say.
----------------------------------------------------------
Inevitably, advances rearrange our way of working. Change, within a well-oiled design process, is confusing and ultimately costly in time and money. New tools, once learned should give us a good return on the initial investment. An example of this is the growing emphasis--as Viewports gain traction--on the generation of and management of classes. You can place an object into a class to better manage its visibility. But if you wish to change an object’s visible attributes later on to better suite your preferences in assembling your sheets, it’s best to assign objects an editable status when first created. The process of learning this is not initially very user-friendly. In my own way of drawing, I like the freedom of working directly in the None class, placing miscellaneous elements there until a better idea comes along. I don’t like to auto-assign attributes to things drawn in None because I might want various line thickness' or colors to be immediately assigned, via the Attributes palette, to suit my whim. On the other hand, I might very much want cabinets or other sets of objects to always be automatically assigned attributes that can be changed on all members of the “Cabinets” class with one just a few clicks versus editing each cabinet, one by one. These changes to like-classed groups are done using the Edit button in Classes, either from the Navigation palette or the Class icon in the new View bar. (For those wanting to read the NNA manuals regarding this process, in Fundamentals, see p.98; Setting Class Properties and especially the explanation on p.101 (top of the page) of Use at Creation. See also, in the Design manual, p.469; Changing Class Properties of Design Layer Viewports.) Go through some quick and simple experiments where you create a new class BEFORE drawing anything. Click to Edit that class and check the Use at Creation box. Then draw a line or a circle. That circle now can be edited without needing to select it or its mates by using the Graphic Attributes palette called up via the Edit command. But this is not where the money is. Your ability to display information will soar once you are comfortable editing classes on VPDL's.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So why 2008 instead of VectorWorks 13? Could NNA format VectorWorks’ upgrades to be issued annually? What would be the advantage/disadvantage of an annual upgrade path? As users, we’d see changes a little quicker, perhaps, although a .5 upgrade was typically laden with helpful changes. These yearly half-point upgrades were free, remember. Looking around, we see that other industry CAD leaders have gone/are going to a licensing arrangement whereby the user no longer owns the software but rather leases it for a fixed term. Currently, ArchiCad, owned by N.N.A., sells the complete package--which you then own, for approx. $4250. You can also opt to buy an annual subscription, thus licensing the software for a renewable fee, as I write this, of $695. You must employ the most current version once on this path.
Corporations have an interest in smoothing out their revenue stream so an annual fee makes sense to them. Understand that I do not have any inside information on how NNA may or may not structure their sales in 2009. I will say that if you are on the fence about upgrading, having some knowledge of industry trends may help you with your decision.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This is mean. Check out the rather uninspiring renderings that Revit has put up in their galleries, especially Residential.
>http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8481133
No knock on the designers; it's just that a heavy hitter like Revit should have some amazing gallery content.
It you were wondering, Revit Plus Autocad comes as a “suite” and sells today for $5696 US.
----------------------------------------------------------------
It’s a wrap. Thanks for reading and hope to see you Thursday or hear from you as time allows.
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Convert to Lines #25
6/18/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• The next Webinar will cover Digital Terrain Modeling
• How do we learn CAD?
• We built this city
•VectorTasks
•Resources for learning VW
• The Repetitive Tool tool
• Caution: data can be lost
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, June 28th, from 6:00 to 8:00 but THERE IS A CATCH. I’m unable to attend and can’t provide the meeting room. If you would like to see the June Webinar on Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM), we ask if you can provide a space that would also have a high speed internet connection plus a speaker phone. Sam Krause will bring her projector. The last item needed is a projection screen which can be rented (I suggest everyone chip in a couple of bucks) or perhaps one of you could bring one from home. Please let Sam know ASAP so she can email you the location. Sam can be reached at
samkrause@alphamodalities.com
I intend to give Sam a number of CD’s containing Sketchup-based objects which will be given out at the meeting. If you haven’t played much with 3D, with this CD you’ll have an opportunity to combine a few of the objects in a fun way. As a suggestion, perhaps the Porta Potty, Trampoline, and Falling Man could be rendered in one or more of the various styles that VectorWorks allows. Be sure to add a light, if going beyond Open GL, and extrude a ground plane to catch shadows.
....................................................................
How do we best set about learning something as complex as a modern CAD program? We certainly don’t learn well when we’re under deadline. Deadlines are a time for falling back on instincts and the habits honed by repetition. Good intention is also a less than ideal reason to learn any complex tool. Know anybody who has succeeded in teaching themselves French or how to play the piano? Not too many, I’d guess, at least without a mentor, tutor or solid class structure.
Practice-learning is slow-learning mostly, if done on your own, because the processes within CAD do not spring from your personal needs and so the logic of why one tool is used before another seems tenuous. This is compounded because our use of the VW tools varies by project. Unless you do the same design over and over, you’re bound to find new ways to order Layers and Classes, new ways to combine tools to best effect. Your learning is never, ever complete, in that sense, but always evolving toward the better.
If working with VectorWorks has taught me anything, it’s that a simple, direct benefit should be derived when you wrap your hand around any new tool. Pick up a hammer. Drive a nail, pull a nail. This is the payoff that keeps new users coming back. Find a few tools that can bring you immediate benefit. An example would be the polygon tool. If you are creating floors or hardscapes or countertops or any other element that contains an area, duplicate the finished shape and send it to a special layer--call it Outlines--so that you can return to that layer from time to time to tally totals such as lot coverage, for instance, or proof of total perimeters. Another simple but important task is the creation of title blocks. VectorWorks can serve as a terrific tool for designing company graphics. Use Viewports to help order your drawings on the page. Discover PDF creation and import/export. Make key 3D elements to test for fit. Find those tools that are impossible to live without and after you’ve made one of them your own, find another.
....................................................................
The last time I had checked in with the Google collection of Sketchup models, the City of Seattle folder contained a single model. Things have changed! Check out the following:
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=5ff91a4554eac7003710a2250e7f327f
..................................................................
Pat Stanford and Dan Jansenson create value for VectorWorks users via their PodCad podcasts. I’m on one of the latest, along with Jonathan Pickup, talking about user groups.
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
Their current podcast features an interview with Charles Chandler who develops add-on programs for VectorWorks. He was a senior VW programmer at Nemeteschek.
Dan and Pat also do training. Full details are available at >http://www.vectortasks.com
These two are very skilled VectorWorks teachers and the classes they offer are of their own design, not that of the NNA Professional Learning Series. Give them a call if you think you might be interested in traveling to California OR if you might like them to come to Seattle for tutoring, either individually or for a group.
..............................................................
Here is a Jonathan Pickup podcast worth watching, on how to place a superscript symbol over a letter or number.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/podcasts/podcasts.html
...............................................................................
The NNA Knowledge Base continues to grow. If you haven’t stopped in for a while, it might be worth your time to look over the list of topics and pick up a few new moves.
>http://kbase.nemetschek.net/
The 'How To' and the 'Tips and Tricks' folders have the most information by far, in comparison to the other categories ('Architect' has a measly two tips, for instance). In the How To group, you can learn to fillet all the corners of a rectangle in one move. Under Tips and Tricks, you can see how to do a global command to hide all loci in 2D or 3D. While you're rummaging around in the VW resources, visit the Online Video Library.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/library.php
Don’t miss the “Select Movie Type” tab at the top of the page which will give you sets of other QuickTime movies.
.............................................................................
When you get a few free moments, check out the Repetitive Unit tool on the tear-off palette called Details (Architect). Double click the icon and then, to see the libraries of pre-made items, click the far right box in the Mode Bar called Object Properties. Click Choose Symbol to view the various libraries, and again by double-clicking on the icon in the center square.
I wanted to use the sewer and fence symbols (text arrayed along a line) but was frustrated that the letters came out huge and overlaid each other. It turns out that one can better space the letters by entering a larger dimension in the “Pitch” input box. I used a dimension of 15’ for a plot plan at 1/8" per foot. Though now properly spaced, the letters were still too large and needed editing. To fix this, ungroup and double click on one of the letters. That takes you to an edit pane where you can then select the letter and set a smaller text size or select another letter altogether. If the image is other than a letter (such as a footprint along a beach), you must use Scale to reduce its size. When done with your edit, click Exit Symbol in the upper right hand corner of the editing pain--I mean pane--and you will have your sewer line, fence line or footprint as intended.
Having to go through an extensive edit is barely worth it unless you have a considerable number of lines or fences to array across the landscape or are likely to do this type of thing frequently. While the other symbols for wood or roof tiles scale just fine, the category of Miscellaneous could use some work in my opinion.
............................................................
Nemetschek issued a note to the Listserv recently that suggested data can be lost if a drawing is docked to a Mac dock bar and then saved. The fix is not to dock your drawings--unless you can keep your mitts off the save key. I’m assuming that the fix will be delivered in upcoming Version. 13.
..............................................................
July's webinar will cover DWG/DXF files.
RSVP to Sam for the June Webinar (plus any potential meeting places) and I’ll see you next month.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• The next Webinar will cover Digital Terrain Modeling
• How do we learn CAD?
• We built this city
•VectorTasks
•Resources for learning VW
• The Repetitive Tool tool
• Caution: data can be lost
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, June 28th, from 6:00 to 8:00 but THERE IS A CATCH. I’m unable to attend and can’t provide the meeting room. If you would like to see the June Webinar on Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM), we ask if you can provide a space that would also have a high speed internet connection plus a speaker phone. Sam Krause will bring her projector. The last item needed is a projection screen which can be rented (I suggest everyone chip in a couple of bucks) or perhaps one of you could bring one from home. Please let Sam know ASAP so she can email you the location. Sam can be reached at
samkrause@alphamodalities.com
I intend to give Sam a number of CD’s containing Sketchup-based objects which will be given out at the meeting. If you haven’t played much with 3D, with this CD you’ll have an opportunity to combine a few of the objects in a fun way. As a suggestion, perhaps the Porta Potty, Trampoline, and Falling Man could be rendered in one or more of the various styles that VectorWorks allows. Be sure to add a light, if going beyond Open GL, and extrude a ground plane to catch shadows.
....................................................................
How do we best set about learning something as complex as a modern CAD program? We certainly don’t learn well when we’re under deadline. Deadlines are a time for falling back on instincts and the habits honed by repetition. Good intention is also a less than ideal reason to learn any complex tool. Know anybody who has succeeded in teaching themselves French or how to play the piano? Not too many, I’d guess, at least without a mentor, tutor or solid class structure.
Practice-learning is slow-learning mostly, if done on your own, because the processes within CAD do not spring from your personal needs and so the logic of why one tool is used before another seems tenuous. This is compounded because our use of the VW tools varies by project. Unless you do the same design over and over, you’re bound to find new ways to order Layers and Classes, new ways to combine tools to best effect. Your learning is never, ever complete, in that sense, but always evolving toward the better.
If working with VectorWorks has taught me anything, it’s that a simple, direct benefit should be derived when you wrap your hand around any new tool. Pick up a hammer. Drive a nail, pull a nail. This is the payoff that keeps new users coming back. Find a few tools that can bring you immediate benefit. An example would be the polygon tool. If you are creating floors or hardscapes or countertops or any other element that contains an area, duplicate the finished shape and send it to a special layer--call it Outlines--so that you can return to that layer from time to time to tally totals such as lot coverage, for instance, or proof of total perimeters. Another simple but important task is the creation of title blocks. VectorWorks can serve as a terrific tool for designing company graphics. Use Viewports to help order your drawings on the page. Discover PDF creation and import/export. Make key 3D elements to test for fit. Find those tools that are impossible to live without and after you’ve made one of them your own, find another.
....................................................................
The last time I had checked in with the Google collection of Sketchup models, the City of Seattle folder contained a single model. Things have changed! Check out the following:
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=5ff91a4554eac7003710a2250e7f327f
..................................................................
Pat Stanford and Dan Jansenson create value for VectorWorks users via their PodCad podcasts. I’m on one of the latest, along with Jonathan Pickup, talking about user groups.
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
Their current podcast features an interview with Charles Chandler who develops add-on programs for VectorWorks. He was a senior VW programmer at Nemeteschek.
Dan and Pat also do training. Full details are available at >http://www.vectortasks.com
These two are very skilled VectorWorks teachers and the classes they offer are of their own design, not that of the NNA Professional Learning Series. Give them a call if you think you might be interested in traveling to California OR if you might like them to come to Seattle for tutoring, either individually or for a group.
..............................................................
Here is a Jonathan Pickup podcast worth watching, on how to place a superscript symbol over a letter or number.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/podcasts/podcasts.html
...............................................................................
The NNA Knowledge Base continues to grow. If you haven’t stopped in for a while, it might be worth your time to look over the list of topics and pick up a few new moves.
>http://kbase.nemetschek.net/
The 'How To' and the 'Tips and Tricks' folders have the most information by far, in comparison to the other categories ('Architect' has a measly two tips, for instance). In the How To group, you can learn to fillet all the corners of a rectangle in one move. Under Tips and Tricks, you can see how to do a global command to hide all loci in 2D or 3D. While you're rummaging around in the VW resources, visit the Online Video Library.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/library.php
Don’t miss the “Select Movie Type” tab at the top of the page which will give you sets of other QuickTime movies.
.............................................................................
When you get a few free moments, check out the Repetitive Unit tool on the tear-off palette called Details (Architect). Double click the icon and then, to see the libraries of pre-made items, click the far right box in the Mode Bar called Object Properties. Click Choose Symbol to view the various libraries, and again by double-clicking on the icon in the center square.
I wanted to use the sewer and fence symbols (text arrayed along a line) but was frustrated that the letters came out huge and overlaid each other. It turns out that one can better space the letters by entering a larger dimension in the “Pitch” input box. I used a dimension of 15’ for a plot plan at 1/8" per foot. Though now properly spaced, the letters were still too large and needed editing. To fix this, ungroup and double click on one of the letters. That takes you to an edit pane where you can then select the letter and set a smaller text size or select another letter altogether. If the image is other than a letter (such as a footprint along a beach), you must use Scale to reduce its size. When done with your edit, click Exit Symbol in the upper right hand corner of the editing pain--I mean pane--and you will have your sewer line, fence line or footprint as intended.
Having to go through an extensive edit is barely worth it unless you have a considerable number of lines or fences to array across the landscape or are likely to do this type of thing frequently. While the other symbols for wood or roof tiles scale just fine, the category of Miscellaneous could use some work in my opinion.
............................................................
Nemetschek issued a note to the Listserv recently that suggested data can be lost if a drawing is docked to a Mac dock bar and then saved. The fix is not to dock your drawings--unless you can keep your mitts off the save key. I’m assuming that the fix will be delivered in upcoming Version. 13.
..............................................................
July's webinar will cover DWG/DXF files.
RSVP to Sam for the June Webinar (plus any potential meeting places) and I’ll see you next month.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808
Thursday, April 12, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #24
4/12/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Webinars come to the User Group
• Treasure trove of 3D objects
• Hear the top 7 VW productivity tips
• Pickup’s latest tip. I had no idea you could do this.
•New plugins being offered
•Amazing 3D printer
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, April 26th, from 6:00 to 8:30 EITHER at the Seattle Central Community College OR at my office in the Roosevelt District of Seattle. I will follow up later on with confirmation of the location. My office may be preferable due to the difficulty of getting through the college’s firewall since we’ll need a high speed internet connection. If we meet at my office, I’ll need an overhead projector. CAN YOU BRING OR LEND ONE? It needn’t be particularly powerful. Please let me know asap. (Alternatively, if you have access to a projector that has to stay put, can we meet at your place?) Note that were we to meet at my office or that of another we will start at 6:00 PM sharp, instead of the usual 6:30 PM.
Nemetschek is doing something really nice for the user groups. They have developed a webcasting “webinar”
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/vlearning.php
which you can either take on your own time and pay for OR have it delivered to you free just by attending our user group meetings. Nemetschek hopes to provide ten of these webinars per year, just for us. The first few sessions are on the following topics:
April--Worksheets and spreadsheets using formulas, schedules, etc.
May--Viewports, basic and advanced and how to create plot files and send them to a commercial printer.
June--Survey input and and the DTM tools (terrain modeling) and processes.
I expect the session to last an hour. Afterward we would either follow on with additional discussion or more likely explore other topics and/or answer general questions. I can even see polling you beforehand to see if a homemade tutorial on textures and lighting might or might not be preferable to a webinar focusing on configuring doors and windows, for instance. The bottom line is webcasting brings in more experts. Each new webinar will be live so there will be a chance for direct questioning. If we miss one due to scheduling conflicts, we can still get the webinar beamed to us minus the interactive aspect.
Since we’ve not linked to a webcast before, there may be a few moments of chaos. Please bring a sense of humor. Any time not allotted to the webcast will be spent looking at applying textures and lighting to objects and scenes.
...........................................................................................
He who dies with the biggest collection of 3D objects wins. Of course, I don’t buy into those kinds of notions--that’s crazy talk. I only want a few thousand objects for my library folders. And now I know where to find them--for free.
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
This is a site where you can obtain objects meant to populate models created in Sketchup--Google’s recently acquired 3D app--yet can be imported with one command into VectorWorks files, no problem. These are free models created by Sketchup users, including a copy of Remmy the K’s Seattle Public Library or the Louvre (!) which you can download and import into your next backyard deck-with-trellis rendering. I’m more interested in playing with the cool trampoline I found in the Landscape Architecture section in the Recreation Folder along with a 3D man falling (or bouncing) through space located in the Other Libraries section under 3D People.
The models within are Spartan, much like the app itself, so you won’t find loads of textures, or any textures, really, which would otherwise allow for more realistic renderings. This is not a problem because you can apply your own textures if you have just a little more time to explore VectorWorks. Simply click (or double click for groups) on a polygon and give it a texture from either the VectorWorks textures collection via the Resource palette or apply another texture imported from the web or perhaps one you’ve created yourself. To get get some shadows going, add a big, flat extruded polygon (or use the Floor tool) and place it below your object, then add a single light source pitched to cast a preferred shadow. Use the Flyover tool to tip your creation to the right angle and then render. Since this was so simple, try multiple rendering options including, for those models with textures, Custom Renderworks.
There are other free sources of models such as those made in .3ds format. One site you might check out is Turbosquid.
>http://www.turbosquid.com/3d
Unfortunately, the FREE models, especially architectural types, seem to be few in number. If you want guns or outer space creatures, you’re in luck. The 3ds pay-per-model option is frustrating because of their typical high cost, even allowing for included textures and higher polygon counts. The fun goes out the virtual window when you find that a dozen run-of-the-mill residential objects can equal the cost of a new VectorWorks license.
Cadtoday offers bundled sets of VW formatted, DWG/DXF or 3ds models
>http://www.cadtoday.com/
>http://www.cadtoday.com/gallery.shtml
at what seems like reasonable prices. You can see portions of models from each set, rendered, via the gallery link. There is also a link at the topmost part of their home page that allows you to download the entire model catalog so you can see the full range of their offerings. I was surprised at the number and quality of their models. I saw lots of appliances--a ton of ranges--many lighting fixtures and high quality furnishings. The advantage of Cadtoday models, it seems to me, is in their variety. While one site would be content with one generic model, another, such as Cadtoday, might push to have their models represent a truer view of the product. If you visit the site, be sure to also note the 2D A/E/C details catalog.
While it will always be true that you get what you pay for, Sketchup 3D Warehouse is going to really put pressure on other model providers to lower prices on individual models and bundled sets or to improve content. Google has found a way to harness the excitement and the talents of their members for the benefit of the user base by providing easy-to-use tools and a platform for display and distribution. But it is the users who have made this site what it is. Power to the people. Right on.
PS. Before you leave the warehouse, be sure to check out the monotone or colored 2D people outlines. They’re a perfectly simple way to add scale to your next 3D rendering or 2D elevation view.
.........................................................................................
The following is a must-hear. Tune in to PodCAD Podcast 704 and listen to Top 7 VW Productivity Hints
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/podcast/podcast.html
As I’ve already stated in a previous post sent to the VW Listserv, please listen
to Stanford, Jansenson and Levy’s podcast, then pass the link onto other VW users.
...........................................................................................
Jon Pickup has a new podcast out that shows you a cool, quick way to
turn a group of overlapping lines into a single 2D polygon with one command.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
.............................................................................................
Several new plugins are available from former senior VW programmer Charles Chandler. They can be seen via the link below.
>http://www.softwarecustomizationservices.com/default.php?page=products
If you do landscaping or site work design, check out the substantial Land Planning plugin. If you import 2D architectural files from others, there is one plugin that will convert all parallel lines to walls with one command.
.................................................................................................
You’ve got to see this to believe it-- a new “printer” can produce scaled, true 3D objects as prototypes, both architectural, geologic and machine, from 3D CAD files.
>http://www.ideal.com/contex/default.asp
Don’t miss the movie:
>ftp://ftp.ideal.com/dave/contex_2000k.wmv
......................................................................................................
That’s all for now!
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Webinars come to the User Group
• Treasure trove of 3D objects
• Hear the top 7 VW productivity tips
• Pickup’s latest tip. I had no idea you could do this.
•New plugins being offered
•Amazing 3D printer
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, April 26th, from 6:00 to 8:30 EITHER at the Seattle Central Community College OR at my office in the Roosevelt District of Seattle. I will follow up later on with confirmation of the location. My office may be preferable due to the difficulty of getting through the college’s firewall since we’ll need a high speed internet connection. If we meet at my office, I’ll need an overhead projector. CAN YOU BRING OR LEND ONE? It needn’t be particularly powerful. Please let me know asap. (Alternatively, if you have access to a projector that has to stay put, can we meet at your place?) Note that were we to meet at my office or that of another we will start at 6:00 PM sharp, instead of the usual 6:30 PM.
Nemetschek is doing something really nice for the user groups. They have developed a webcasting “webinar”
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/vlearning.php
which you can either take on your own time and pay for OR have it delivered to you free just by attending our user group meetings. Nemetschek hopes to provide ten of these webinars per year, just for us. The first few sessions are on the following topics:
April--Worksheets and spreadsheets using formulas, schedules, etc.
May--Viewports, basic and advanced and how to create plot files and send them to a commercial printer.
June--Survey input and and the DTM tools (terrain modeling) and processes.
I expect the session to last an hour. Afterward we would either follow on with additional discussion or more likely explore other topics and/or answer general questions. I can even see polling you beforehand to see if a homemade tutorial on textures and lighting might or might not be preferable to a webinar focusing on configuring doors and windows, for instance. The bottom line is webcasting brings in more experts. Each new webinar will be live so there will be a chance for direct questioning. If we miss one due to scheduling conflicts, we can still get the webinar beamed to us minus the interactive aspect.
Since we’ve not linked to a webcast before, there may be a few moments of chaos. Please bring a sense of humor. Any time not allotted to the webcast will be spent looking at applying textures and lighting to objects and scenes.
...........................................................................................
He who dies with the biggest collection of 3D objects wins. Of course, I don’t buy into those kinds of notions--that’s crazy talk. I only want a few thousand objects for my library folders. And now I know where to find them--for free.
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
This is a site where you can obtain objects meant to populate models created in Sketchup--Google’s recently acquired 3D app--yet can be imported with one command into VectorWorks files, no problem. These are free models created by Sketchup users, including a copy of Remmy the K’s Seattle Public Library or the Louvre (!) which you can download and import into your next backyard deck-with-trellis rendering. I’m more interested in playing with the cool trampoline I found in the Landscape Architecture section in the Recreation Folder along with a 3D man falling (or bouncing) through space located in the Other Libraries section under 3D People.
The models within are Spartan, much like the app itself, so you won’t find loads of textures, or any textures, really, which would otherwise allow for more realistic renderings. This is not a problem because you can apply your own textures if you have just a little more time to explore VectorWorks. Simply click (or double click for groups) on a polygon and give it a texture from either the VectorWorks textures collection via the Resource palette or apply another texture imported from the web or perhaps one you’ve created yourself. To get get some shadows going, add a big, flat extruded polygon (or use the Floor tool) and place it below your object, then add a single light source pitched to cast a preferred shadow. Use the Flyover tool to tip your creation to the right angle and then render. Since this was so simple, try multiple rendering options including, for those models with textures, Custom Renderworks.
There are other free sources of models such as those made in .3ds format. One site you might check out is Turbosquid.
>http://www.turbosquid.com/3d
Unfortunately, the FREE models, especially architectural types, seem to be few in number. If you want guns or outer space creatures, you’re in luck. The 3ds pay-per-model option is frustrating because of their typical high cost, even allowing for included textures and higher polygon counts. The fun goes out the virtual window when you find that a dozen run-of-the-mill residential objects can equal the cost of a new VectorWorks license.
Cadtoday offers bundled sets of VW formatted, DWG/DXF or 3ds models
>http://www.cadtoday.com/
>http://www.cadtoday.com/gallery.shtml
at what seems like reasonable prices. You can see portions of models from each set, rendered, via the gallery link. There is also a link at the topmost part of their home page that allows you to download the entire model catalog so you can see the full range of their offerings. I was surprised at the number and quality of their models. I saw lots of appliances--a ton of ranges--many lighting fixtures and high quality furnishings. The advantage of Cadtoday models, it seems to me, is in their variety. While one site would be content with one generic model, another, such as Cadtoday, might push to have their models represent a truer view of the product. If you visit the site, be sure to also note the 2D A/E/C details catalog.
While it will always be true that you get what you pay for, Sketchup 3D Warehouse is going to really put pressure on other model providers to lower prices on individual models and bundled sets or to improve content. Google has found a way to harness the excitement and the talents of their members for the benefit of the user base by providing easy-to-use tools and a platform for display and distribution. But it is the users who have made this site what it is. Power to the people. Right on.
PS. Before you leave the warehouse, be sure to check out the monotone or colored 2D people outlines. They’re a perfectly simple way to add scale to your next 3D rendering or 2D elevation view.
.........................................................................................
The following is a must-hear. Tune in to PodCAD Podcast 704 and listen to Top 7 VW Productivity Hints
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/podcast/podcast.html
As I’ve already stated in a previous post sent to the VW Listserv, please listen
to Stanford, Jansenson and Levy’s podcast, then pass the link onto other VW users.
...........................................................................................
Jon Pickup has a new podcast out that shows you a cool, quick way to
turn a group of overlapping lines into a single 2D polygon with one command.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
.............................................................................................
Several new plugins are available from former senior VW programmer Charles Chandler. They can be seen via the link below.
>http://www.softwarecustomizationservices.com/default.php?page=products
If you do landscaping or site work design, check out the substantial Land Planning plugin. If you import 2D architectural files from others, there is one plugin that will convert all parallel lines to walls with one command.
.................................................................................................
You’ve got to see this to believe it-- a new “printer” can produce scaled, true 3D objects as prototypes, both architectural, geologic and machine, from 3D CAD files.
>http://www.ideal.com/contex/default.asp
Don’t miss the movie:
>ftp://ftp.ideal.com/dave/contex_2000k.wmv
......................................................................................................
That’s all for now!
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Convert to Lines #23
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Why do you go to work?
• More degree signs and plus/minus signs (in Windows)
• Putting backgrounds into scenes
• Offsetting walls
•Other Industries gallery renderings
•Jon PIckup’s latest tutorial
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, March 29th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
One our members made a suggestion that we explore, in our next meeting, how to build a house. This topic could easily expand into two or more sessions, depending on the enthusiasm of those who attend. We’ll take it in any direction you want to go.
We’ll be looking at the most efficient, the simple and the practical methods of designing a house. We won’t actually have room to build a real house, given the size of the lecture hall, but we’ll be walking the walls, virtual style! I’ll have a box of fresh fir sawdust on hand that should help set the mood.
..........................................................................................
Why do you go to work each day? There has to be, hopefully, some joy in your decision. I sincerely hope that you are, in part, inspired and find a creative thread within your business activities that satisfies and replenishes. The other part, of course, is money. This is the half of the equation I wish to address. In short; time is money. Learning VectorWorks can lead to real creative satisfaction. But wisdom suggests that urges to explore your creative mind be tempered by good business practice and one of those is the general idea that you don’t run ahead of yourself with any new technology or technique until you have a way to make it pay. VectorWorks today, with 3D and viewports, delivers more content, more accurately, than if you were to draw in 2D. Yes, you do spend more time on the front end getting the model right but once the model is up and running, the time saved on all subsequent actions is huge. Sections: done. Elevations: already done. Change orders of any kind: change data on one page and it jumps across to revise multiple pages. If you are drawing in 2D today, you are not getting the full payoff; you are not getting your full paycheck.
I’ve said that I would never criticize another user in how they employ VectorWorks and I do mean that. So much work is still done in 2D (AutoCad is a huge example of that). People do the work, get paid, and move on. But if you want to leverage a tool for time gains, it is in your power to do that. Now.
.....................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about the easy way to print a degree symbol or a plus/minus symbol. But I left out Windows users, sorry to say. I went on the VW Listserv and asked for the Windows folks to fill me in and did they ever! My post generated many replies. Here is but one:
This comes from the HELP file for Character Map in Windows XP:
“If you know the Unicode equivalent of the character you want to insert, you can also insert a special character directly into a document without using Character Map. To do so, open the document and position the insertion point where you want the special character to appear. Then, with NUM LOCK on, hold down the ALT key while using the number pad keys to type the Unicode character value."
It should also be known that you MUST use the Number Pad and NOT the numbers above the letter keys. On a laptop, such as my Dell, I have to also hold down the "Fn" key and use the alternate numbers (ie M=0, J=1, K=2, L=3, U=4, I=5, O=6)
Alt + 0176 = °
Alt + 0177 = ±
To find the Character Map, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
..................................................................................
Want to put a colored background into your drawing? This should be more self evident than it is. To begin, have your 3D model assembled and its Layer displayed. On the Resource Browser, under Resources, click on the triangle at its right and scroll to the bottom of the presented list to New Resource in (name of your file). Scroll the next list to Renderworks Background. I chose One Color and then clicked on the Options button to customize the color. I wanted black and white--the color wheel wouldn’t do--instead I clicked on the vertical b&w bar on the right hand side and adjusted the depth of tone. (If you move the pinpoint marker side to side within the color wheel, you’ll see that you can now generate dark-toned colors) Click to accept your choice of tone. You should then see a swatch of this color displayed in the Resource Browser. Drag the swatch onto your model layer, dropping it anywhere, and render your model. If you want a fast solid black background, simply check the Black background box under VectorWorks Preferences>Display.
..........................................................................................................
Want to offset a wall from some line of reference? When the wall tool was rewritten such that we didn’t have to build the wall components from the middle out anymore, the offset tool was not vested with the same improvements. One must offset from the center of the wall as before. To begin this process, click on the wall tool; click on the Wall Prefs button in the Mode Bar; click on Insertion Options and finally; fill in the offset amount in the Control Offset box. If your wall’s outer ply is siding that is 7/8” thick and you want this amount offset outside the foundation line for instance, you’ll need to take the total wall thickness, divide by half, and subtract 7/8” from that amount which is 2-13/16”. Don’t forget to click on the offset mode bar button to complete the setup for offsetting.
................................................................................................................
I was mucking about in the NNA Galleries the other day and came across two 3D views of the interior of an art gallery done by our old SVUG leader, Jack McKean. They were placed in the Other Industries folder and so far I had missed seeing them. Take a look--they really are well done.
http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/gallery.php?category=other
Scroll about two thirds down to find Jack’s work.
................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup’s latest podcast--the short version--is out at
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
and involves showing how to use the Drape Surface function of the 3D Powerpack to soften the sharp triangulated look of groundwork created with the Terrain modeler. His fuller-featured newsletter is by $ subscription.
..................................................................................................................
That’s it for now. See you on the 29th!
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Why do you go to work?
• More degree signs and plus/minus signs (in Windows)
• Putting backgrounds into scenes
• Offsetting walls
•Other Industries gallery renderings
•Jon PIckup’s latest tutorial
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, March 29th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
One our members made a suggestion that we explore, in our next meeting, how to build a house. This topic could easily expand into two or more sessions, depending on the enthusiasm of those who attend. We’ll take it in any direction you want to go.
We’ll be looking at the most efficient, the simple and the practical methods of designing a house. We won’t actually have room to build a real house, given the size of the lecture hall, but we’ll be walking the walls, virtual style! I’ll have a box of fresh fir sawdust on hand that should help set the mood.
..........................................................................................
Why do you go to work each day? There has to be, hopefully, some joy in your decision. I sincerely hope that you are, in part, inspired and find a creative thread within your business activities that satisfies and replenishes. The other part, of course, is money. This is the half of the equation I wish to address. In short; time is money. Learning VectorWorks can lead to real creative satisfaction. But wisdom suggests that urges to explore your creative mind be tempered by good business practice and one of those is the general idea that you don’t run ahead of yourself with any new technology or technique until you have a way to make it pay. VectorWorks today, with 3D and viewports, delivers more content, more accurately, than if you were to draw in 2D. Yes, you do spend more time on the front end getting the model right but once the model is up and running, the time saved on all subsequent actions is huge. Sections: done. Elevations: already done. Change orders of any kind: change data on one page and it jumps across to revise multiple pages. If you are drawing in 2D today, you are not getting the full payoff; you are not getting your full paycheck.
I’ve said that I would never criticize another user in how they employ VectorWorks and I do mean that. So much work is still done in 2D (AutoCad is a huge example of that). People do the work, get paid, and move on. But if you want to leverage a tool for time gains, it is in your power to do that. Now.
.....................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about the easy way to print a degree symbol or a plus/minus symbol. But I left out Windows users, sorry to say. I went on the VW Listserv and asked for the Windows folks to fill me in and did they ever! My post generated many replies. Here is but one:
This comes from the HELP file for Character Map in Windows XP:
“If you know the Unicode equivalent of the character you want to insert, you can also insert a special character directly into a document without using Character Map. To do so, open the document and position the insertion point where you want the special character to appear. Then, with NUM LOCK on, hold down the ALT key while using the number pad keys to type the Unicode character value."
It should also be known that you MUST use the Number Pad and NOT the numbers above the letter keys. On a laptop, such as my Dell, I have to also hold down the "Fn" key and use the alternate numbers (ie M=0, J=1, K=2, L=3, U=4, I=5, O=6)
Alt + 0176 = °
Alt + 0177 = ±
To find the Character Map, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
..................................................................................
Want to put a colored background into your drawing? This should be more self evident than it is. To begin, have your 3D model assembled and its Layer displayed. On the Resource Browser, under Resources, click on the triangle at its right and scroll to the bottom of the presented list to New Resource in (name of your file). Scroll the next list to Renderworks Background. I chose One Color and then clicked on the Options button to customize the color. I wanted black and white--the color wheel wouldn’t do--instead I clicked on the vertical b&w bar on the right hand side and adjusted the depth of tone. (If you move the pinpoint marker side to side within the color wheel, you’ll see that you can now generate dark-toned colors) Click to accept your choice of tone. You should then see a swatch of this color displayed in the Resource Browser. Drag the swatch onto your model layer, dropping it anywhere, and render your model. If you want a fast solid black background, simply check the Black background box under VectorWorks Preferences>Display.
..........................................................................................................
Want to offset a wall from some line of reference? When the wall tool was rewritten such that we didn’t have to build the wall components from the middle out anymore, the offset tool was not vested with the same improvements. One must offset from the center of the wall as before. To begin this process, click on the wall tool; click on the Wall Prefs button in the Mode Bar; click on Insertion Options and finally; fill in the offset amount in the Control Offset box. If your wall’s outer ply is siding that is 7/8” thick and you want this amount offset outside the foundation line for instance, you’ll need to take the total wall thickness, divide by half, and subtract 7/8” from that amount which is 2-13/16”. Don’t forget to click on the offset mode bar button to complete the setup for offsetting.
................................................................................................................
I was mucking about in the NNA Galleries the other day and came across two 3D views of the interior of an art gallery done by our old SVUG leader, Jack McKean. They were placed in the Other Industries folder and so far I had missed seeing them. Take a look--they really are well done.
http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/gallery.php?category=other
Scroll about two thirds down to find Jack’s work.
................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup’s latest podcast--the short version--is out at
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
and involves showing how to use the Drape Surface function of the 3D Powerpack to soften the sharp triangulated look of groundwork created with the Terrain modeler. His fuller-featured newsletter is by $ subscription.
..................................................................................................................
That’s it for now. See you on the 29th!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #22
2/18/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•No User Group meeting for February
•Let’s get right to the tips
• PDF thoughts
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
Note that the site has been updated with improved text (now Google-owned) and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address. Also note the forward slash at the end of the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! There will be no User Group meeting for February due to personal obligations.
...............................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about how, when drawing a line, you could see its angle and length in the Object Info palette by clicking on the round Polar button rather than the square, default Cartesian button. If you draw a wall, you have the same ability to read (and set) wall angle and length as with a line by using a polar setting*. Draw a wall and leave it selected. Click onto the Polar button and put in your own angle or length and hit Enter or Return. The wall will pivot on its beginning end to the new angle or length.
One can create a survey line as well by typing in a property bearing of, say 35°15’44”. An easier way might be to use the Property Bounds tool on the Tools palette--it’s on the tear-off palette sporting a bulldozer and looks a bit like a necklace. I’ve not liked this tool in the past since it frequently causes my earlier inputs to disappear if I click the wrong button and also has crashed my computer. I was reading Jon Pickup’s VectorWorks Architect book and was surprised to see that there was a simple option to using the Property Bounds tool of which I was unaware. If you click on the tool, you should see a wrench icon in the upper left corner of your drawing window. Click on it and a dialog box comes up which offers a button called Simple Dialog. Select it and your next click brings up a new box with only line angle and length inputs but with a second button which can close the shape. If your property does not involve curves, this option might be the one to use. Note that you can also input bearing as 35d15m44s instead of ° ‘ “.
Also, in setting a line’s angle, don’t forget another option; the Angle Snaps button on the Constraints palette--it’s the button that looks a little like an asterisk. Double click it and set the angle prior to beginning your line.
*Tom Baer, in his VectorWorks 10 Visual Quickstart Guide (still a fine book to acquire--I found mine on Amazon) says “Like most CAD programs, VectorWorks uses the two coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar. Cartesian (aka x-y or rectangular) coordinates identify a point in the plane by its horizontal and vertical distances from a point of reference called the origin. Polar coordinates define a point by describing the line between the point and the origin by specifying its length (L) and its angle (A). Angles are measured counterclockwise from the 3 o’clock position. You can switch between systems at will, using whichever is the more convenient. Sometimes what’s important is the angle of a line (say, the slope of a roof): sometimes the distance above the floor (its Y value) is what needs to be defined.”
In my last newsletter I also talked about how to generate a plus/minus sign. Of course, right in the OI palette of any dimension resides a Tolerance button which gives you an opportunity to indicate the plus/minus amount. You get your sign, but you also have to indicate the amount of tolerance which might be intolerable.
..................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup has an interesting blog item that teaches one how to make transparent people for placing in front of your projects. Sign up for his online newsletter to see this movie and more using the link at the bottom of the page.
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/93BCF830-4B6C-4097-B96F-80DAD5285028.html
......................................................................................................................
A few weeks back yours truly was quoted in a Nemetschek announcement heralding the working relationship between NNA and Adobe in the continuing development of the Acrobat PDF format.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2007/012207.php
Last week, in a follow up post in eDispatch,
http://www.nemetschek.net/edispatch/Vol60/index.php
Sean Flaherty expanded on the theme. Yes, more and more capability will be created in the Acrobat software and this should increase your ability to share information. All good. The part I was responding to so enthusiastically was the simple fact that the Acrobat code was included in the various VW packages (except Fundamentals, I believe). To make great PDF’s, you don’t need to buy Acrobat. On the Mac, the PDF function is built-in to the OS, but from what I’ve seen and heard, the Acrobat code within VectorWorks produces quick, quality PDF’s. I’ve created several sets of drawings with the Batch PDF tool and it is truly amazing to see them created and then displayed (if you check the display button) on your screen with your first sheet showing and the following sheets listed in a right hand column in thumbnail form*. Importing engineering sized PDF’s from your engineers and dropping them onto a sheet is easy. Just import it in then use the IO palette to move it to a new sheet.
Simply stated, if you’ve got it, you’ll use it. PDF’s are like a fax machine on steroids with human growth hormone sprinkled on top but without the baseball commissioner (a quote that NNA will likely pass on, sorry to say). Yes, many of you, being the forward thinking individuals that you are, bought Acrobat years ago** and wonder what the big deal is. The deal is now that we’re all on board; this critical mass will seriously begin to work in our favor .
*I will say that larger files need RAM and if you don’t have the memory, you might find, as I did, that the text displays as a combination of Russian plus Egyptian hieroglyphs.
**I remember picking up a huge stack of free red floppies marked Adobe Acrobat Version 1.0 many, many years ago. I was a member of dBug, a Mac user group here in Seattle and the software was free for members. Although there was a flier describing the intent of the new program, I couldn’t really get my mind around the concept so I threw the bundle back into the bin.
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•No User Group meeting for February
•Let’s get right to the tips
• PDF thoughts
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
Note that the site has been updated with improved text (now Google-owned) and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address. Also note the forward slash at the end of the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! There will be no User Group meeting for February due to personal obligations.
...............................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about how, when drawing a line, you could see its angle and length in the Object Info palette by clicking on the round Polar button rather than the square, default Cartesian button. If you draw a wall, you have the same ability to read (and set) wall angle and length as with a line by using a polar setting*. Draw a wall and leave it selected. Click onto the Polar button and put in your own angle or length and hit Enter or Return. The wall will pivot on its beginning end to the new angle or length.
One can create a survey line as well by typing in a property bearing of, say 35°15’44”. An easier way might be to use the Property Bounds tool on the Tools palette--it’s on the tear-off palette sporting a bulldozer and looks a bit like a necklace. I’ve not liked this tool in the past since it frequently causes my earlier inputs to disappear if I click the wrong button and also has crashed my computer. I was reading Jon Pickup’s VectorWorks Architect book and was surprised to see that there was a simple option to using the Property Bounds tool of which I was unaware. If you click on the tool, you should see a wrench icon in the upper left corner of your drawing window. Click on it and a dialog box comes up which offers a button called Simple Dialog. Select it and your next click brings up a new box with only line angle and length inputs but with a second button which can close the shape. If your property does not involve curves, this option might be the one to use. Note that you can also input bearing as 35d15m44s instead of ° ‘ “.
Also, in setting a line’s angle, don’t forget another option; the Angle Snaps button on the Constraints palette--it’s the button that looks a little like an asterisk. Double click it and set the angle prior to beginning your line.
*Tom Baer, in his VectorWorks 10 Visual Quickstart Guide (still a fine book to acquire--I found mine on Amazon) says “Like most CAD programs, VectorWorks uses the two coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar. Cartesian (aka x-y or rectangular) coordinates identify a point in the plane by its horizontal and vertical distances from a point of reference called the origin. Polar coordinates define a point by describing the line between the point and the origin by specifying its length (L) and its angle (A). Angles are measured counterclockwise from the 3 o’clock position. You can switch between systems at will, using whichever is the more convenient. Sometimes what’s important is the angle of a line (say, the slope of a roof): sometimes the distance above the floor (its Y value) is what needs to be defined.”
In my last newsletter I also talked about how to generate a plus/minus sign. Of course, right in the OI palette of any dimension resides a Tolerance button which gives you an opportunity to indicate the plus/minus amount. You get your sign, but you also have to indicate the amount of tolerance which might be intolerable.
..................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup has an interesting blog item that teaches one how to make transparent people for placing in front of your projects. Sign up for his online newsletter to see this movie and more using the link at the bottom of the page.
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/93BCF830-4B6C-4097-B96F-80DAD5285028.html
......................................................................................................................
A few weeks back yours truly was quoted in a Nemetschek announcement heralding the working relationship between NNA and Adobe in the continuing development of the Acrobat PDF format.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2007/012207.php
Last week, in a follow up post in eDispatch,
http://www.nemetschek.net/edispatch/Vol60/index.php
Sean Flaherty expanded on the theme. Yes, more and more capability will be created in the Acrobat software and this should increase your ability to share information. All good. The part I was responding to so enthusiastically was the simple fact that the Acrobat code was included in the various VW packages (except Fundamentals, I believe). To make great PDF’s, you don’t need to buy Acrobat. On the Mac, the PDF function is built-in to the OS, but from what I’ve seen and heard, the Acrobat code within VectorWorks produces quick, quality PDF’s. I’ve created several sets of drawings with the Batch PDF tool and it is truly amazing to see them created and then displayed (if you check the display button) on your screen with your first sheet showing and the following sheets listed in a right hand column in thumbnail form*. Importing engineering sized PDF’s from your engineers and dropping them onto a sheet is easy. Just import it in then use the IO palette to move it to a new sheet.
Simply stated, if you’ve got it, you’ll use it. PDF’s are like a fax machine on steroids with human growth hormone sprinkled on top but without the baseball commissioner (a quote that NNA will likely pass on, sorry to say). Yes, many of you, being the forward thinking individuals that you are, bought Acrobat years ago** and wonder what the big deal is. The deal is now that we’re all on board; this critical mass will seriously begin to work in our favor .
*I will say that larger files need RAM and if you don’t have the memory, you might find, as I did, that the text displays as a combination of Russian plus Egyptian hieroglyphs.
**I remember picking up a huge stack of free red floppies marked Adobe Acrobat Version 1.0 many, many years ago. I was a member of dBug, a Mac user group here in Seattle and the software was free for members. Although there was a flier describing the intent of the new program, I couldn’t really get my mind around the concept so I threw the bundle back into the bin.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #21
1/14/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•Giving thanks
•Knowledge is power
•A viewports trick
•Thoughts on Sketchup
•More tricks and misc.
•Nemetschek buys ArchiCAD
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com
Note that the site has been updated with improved text and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, January 25th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
Sam Krause of Alpha Modalities will be taking us through some of the 3D tools. If you are not a 3D pro, come out and see how to make the most of VectorWorks’ 3D tools and beyond. Take a new step in the new year and little by little, we’ll have you saving time and effort like never before.
.................................................................................
This is a good time of the year to look back and appreciate those who make life easier. In the case of the Seattle VW Users Group, I want to first thank the folks at Seattle Central Community College who extend the facilities there for our use. We’re provided--for free--a really nice lecture hall with overhead projector, secure parking, and staff that wants us to have a great learning environment during the time we are there. From Suan-vinh, the custodian, to teacher Dave Borgatti, from Construction Center administrator Michelle, to others like Ivan Hass who teaches introductory VectorWorks CADD. They all have been willing to go the extra distance to ensure that we have the best experience that can be had. Thank you all!
Two URL’s for the wood construction program:
http://seattlecentral.edu/wood/
http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/woodconstruction/
I also want to thank the larger VW community which, amazingly, wraps the globe. I met an excited landscape architect in October at the JLCLive show which took place at the Convention and Trade Center. She was leaving the VW demo booth having bought her first copy of VectorWorks and was she happy! But then the struggles set in which involved several frustrations that were not of her making. In response to these problems, I went on the NNA Listserv and posted a help note. Several folks from around the world wrote her offering aid. A thoughtful landscape architect out of Wenatchee, Thom Vetter, contacted her with an offer of additional help. Jonathan Pickup called her from New Zealand (she bought his Landmark book). I tutored her for an hour, gratis. She joined the Listserv and called NNA Tech help and did her part to get over the trouble spots. Getting great help is part of the VectorWorks experience. A helping hand is there if you need it. Thanks to all of you who ease the struggles of others, whether it’s teaching an alphabet to a youngster, a CAD program to anybody, or helping with any other challenging endeavor.
...................................................................................
The cool thing about the advent of blogs is that the power to teach no longer resides in the hands of a few entities. I don’t mean to suggest that those pre-blog sources were not quality repositories of knowledge or that there was/is some kind of benefit to the control of that information. Heretofore, dissemination of knowledge has been very costly and that mandril of costs, so to speak, has meant that the shape of the knowledge, as it leaves the form, is sometimes ill fitting. This “one size fits all” approach is currently being augmented with information from several independent sources. One of them is PodCAD, produced by two guys from Southern California: Pat Stanford, and Dan Jansenson. At PodCAD you can listen to audio podcast interviews of persons who are deeply involved in CAD and with VectorWorks. These two have also created a business called Vectortasks for teaching VectorWorks to others. Pat is the leader of the L.A. VW Users Group and Dan has authored the Renderworks Recipe Book. What I really like about PodCAD’s audio interviews is the fireside informality--they’re very relaxing while being informative at the same time. Check ‘em out at:
www.podcad.tv
www.vectortasks.com
www.danjansenson.com
..................................................................................
Some of us, having moved slowly into Viewports, are still nostalgic for Convert To Lines* since the 3D model that provides the basis for elevation views or sections may be complex and in showing these views, the masking process might be harder than the old way of converting to lines and ungrouping, then deleting what’s unneeded. This is a moving target; some projects are going to be easier to mask than others. I recently had a super-tight time constraint in producing some preliminary drawings, both floor plans and elevations. I made a viewport of the 3D model (in this case, created via the Model View tool found on the Visualization palette. Note that you have the ability to duplicate this vp on your sheet and, via the OIP, create new views of each side). I chose to Convert Copy to LInes from one of the elevation viewports. I copied and then deleted the line work atop the viewport, then went back to my working layer (properly called “design layer”) and pasted in the line work which came in quite small, needing scaling by 48 times which happens to match the scale of my drawing: 1/4” per foot or 1 to 48. The advantage here was that I had live vp’s as a backup to my converted lines. I had no time to ungroup roofs and rework them to fit correctly, something I would always do if time were not such an issue. But if I changed something on my floorplan in the last few minutes, I had a vp to aid me in correcting the lines. This workaround is not as elegant as keeping the vp as the primary element on the sheet, but hey, whatever works in love and war.
*In Convert to Lines #19 I wrote about the overall process of converting VP’s to lines.
................................................................................
Is learning and using Sketchup a good reason to not mess with implementing 3D within VectorWorks? I’ve been watching the Sketchup tutorials and I love how easy and breezy they are.
http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html
I can see the attraction of doing quick design development using this non-CAD CAD program (THEY’RE the ones that say it’s not CAD).
I’ve talked to some folks lately who have never utilized VW’s 3D capabilities and I wonder about that. I know that not everyone can haul their organization into the 3D world without some pain. Sketchup seems to be so quick and easy that it might help one develop the general form of a project while also giving the client an early peek at the design too. But then what? For me, 3D informs 2D. It isn’t the nice picture that is important, though if it helps sell the job, that’s great. Where 3D shines is in allowing you to adjust your model toward correctness. If it doesn’t go together in 3D, it will be obvious either in isometric view or via section and so can be adjusted until it is correct. This ability to adjust and fit has proven itself as it allows me to catch mistakes and also helps me to take the design a little further than I might have because I can clearly see where something doesn’t work, either structurally or aesthetically.
Since, as I said, 3D informs 2D. I build up my model in 3D volumes as soon as possible to establish floor levels, structural supports, wall-to-rafter fit and so on. This means that the client can see the project sooner--sometimes MUCH sooner, than later. Lastly, I get to proceed with the assurance of having established 3D markers that I won’t have to revisit to confirm correctness later on so this helps avoid the situation where one late change creates an unintended error someplace else. You CAN get quite a bit of Sketchup-like control using VectorWorks and in addition, be able to keep the key decision-making represented by these precise volumes and all within ONE program.
I have no doubt Sketchup will be used by more and more people but the job of getting your work right and then proceeding to finished drawings while still keeping elevations, sections and other views live throughout most of your sheets--this is where the real money is, in my opinion.
.............................................................................
.............................................................................
Misc.
How do you make a section of an object in any other view than in Top Plan View? Sometimes a horizontal cut is preferred. Easy. Make a viewport of the object and turn it to the desired view using the Object Info palette. Then cut your Section Viewport FROM your viewport.
http://kbase.nemetschek.net/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=117&catId=23
I ran into trouble making a Viewport of a building which had wall components turned on (Document Settings>Document Pref’s) and there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to turn them off via the OI palette. Stretch down the palette and click on Advanced Properties and you’ll see a button that will turn off wall components.
...............................................................................
From an NNA Listserv poster:
To put an image on a rug:
Choose Model->Create Image Prop. Import your image file. Uncheck Constant Reflectivity and Create Plug-In Object. You can choose to create a mask or not, depending. This will create a textured rectangular 3D polygon for you, without you having to mess with sizing the polygon for the image aspect ratio and trying to get the texture mapping lined up exactly. Since it is a 3D polygon you can rotate it in 3D, like to make a rug on the floor or something. For vertically-oriented images, if you choose the Create Plug-In Object option you can later resize the polygon using OI palette.
............................................................................................
When you wish to type a plus-over-minus symbol such as when a dimension is variable, on a Mac, hit Shift-plus-Option-plus the + key: ± (if this didn’t translate via e-mail, it looks like a plus neatly stacked over a minus). On a PC, you have to be using a font with a plus/minus symbol already built in. I found such a font on my Windows PC called Universal Math. If I’m incorrect here, PC users, let me know.
...................................................................................
Ok, draw a sloping line. In the OI palette, you see by default a dimension of total height of the line and total length, but not true length. If you click on the round icon below the cross-hair icon, you’ll see the line’s true length AND degree of slope.
..........................................................................................................
Download and try Ikea’s free 3D kitchen planner. I saw a client run this during our meeting at their home. Impressive, especially for free. Perhaps Google with buy it to go with their free junior version of Sketchup.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/complete_kitchen_guide/planner_tool/download/index.html
..............................................................................................
............................................................................................
“Nemetschek AG acquires a 54.3% stake in Graphisoft
Budapest, 2006 December 31. - Nemetschek AG has acquired 54.3% of the 10.6 million shares in Graphisoft SE (headquartered in Budapest) at a price of EUR 9 per share. The acquisition was implemented by exercising the call option with Graphisoft shareholders agreed on December 21, 2006.”
The above was taken from ArchiCAD’s website. Apparently Nemetschek intends to follow up later on to buy greater control of the company by making a public tender offer for all remaining shares. What does this portend for VectorWorks and ArchiCAD and for AllPlan, Nemetchek’s high end CAD program? I surfed the forums of the NNA VW website, Architosh and also the forum at ArchiCAD. There, I found an interesting comment from none other than a past Seattle VW User Group Leader Geoff Briggs. who jumped ship to ArchiCAD about five years ago. (His posts follows the next few thoughts.)
AllPlan is hard to learn and has share only in Europe, I understand. VectorWorks has many more times the seats of ArchiCAD and an upgrade of ArchiCAD costs about the same as a new copy of VectorWorks. VW is easier to learn. What will happen? For the time being, likely nothing, as VW and ArchiCAD continue to grow market share. What will happen is that we will have increased momentum against AutoCad + Revit.
Here is Geoff’s post:
“A very interesting development indeed. While there are some striking similarities to Autodesk's acquisition of Revit there are just as many differences. Autodesk started out as market leader, with their goal to keep it that way. Nemetschek is an underdog looking to make a move. And a bold move they are making. They are now without question the #3 AEC vendor on the planet. They have as much hope of knocking off the top dogs as Apple has of surpassing Microsoft. But hopefully, like Apple of late, they realize that there are more ways lead than in sales.
So where does that leave us? The ink is barely dry and already speculation runs wild. But hey, why not. It's tempting to conjure all the various application merges that could ensue. But remember Nemetschek AG acquired VectorWorks and runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary. Good move on their part as VectorWorks has more users than AllPlan and ArchiCAD combined. That's not by accident. They started with a good product, added a lot of marketing and really put the screws to the little company from Maryland. Now Nemetschek NA is a pretty tight ship. They own Maxon as well, another company with a great product that does very well in an entirely different niche market. C4D [Cinema 4D] is not the rendering engine for VectorWorks, nor is AllPlan the CAD engine. So far plug-ins and co-marketing are as close as these disparate branches have grown.
Does that mean no merging of technology? I sure hope not. Like Wes, I believe something has to happen for ArchiCAD to stay in the game against the Revit juggernaut. (Revit still has plenty of flaws but with all the resources, marketing and programming, that Autodesk is throwing their way they are beginning to push BIM forward in ways that ArchiCAD has failed to do despite having the field to themselves for so long.) But I disagree that all their holdings will (or should) be brought under one roof. Wendy is right about VectorWorks, despite it's not being a true BIM application it is much easier to learn and much much cheaper than any other professional CAD app. Nemetschek will have no problem positioning it as the value leader.
The wild card is AllPlan. Powerful but hard to master. No North American presence, small market share, miniscule mind share. Does it make sense to part-out AllPlan, sending programmers and technology to Hungary? I think it does. Programmers (and cash) are what Graphisoft needs most. They have like 60 to the American's thousands. And unlike VectorWorks, AllPlan competes directly with ArchiCAD, at least in Europe where migrating their existing high profile customers to ArchiCAD would be a huge coupe. I hope their own experience with AllPlan, combined with ArchiCAD's popularity worldwide makes it clear that doing the reverse (assimilating ArchiCAD into AllPlan) would be suicide.
Of course it's not that simple. Autodesk cannot kill ADT (at least not for a while) even if they want too. Likewise NemAG may not be able to kill AllPlan without key customers deserting. And corporate cultures may clash. For the time being if they do for ArchiCAD what they did for VectorWorks that will most definitely get the ball rolling in the right direction.
_________________
Regards,
Geoff Briggs
I & I Design
............................................................................................
That’s all for now. See you on the 25th! (Mark your calendar!!)
Tom Greggs
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
(206) 524-2808
PS I will follow up with a second reminder just before the 25th, if you don’t mind.
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•Giving thanks
•Knowledge is power
•A viewports trick
•Thoughts on Sketchup
•More tricks and misc.
•Nemetschek buys ArchiCAD
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com
Note that the site has been updated with improved text and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, January 25th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
Sam Krause of Alpha Modalities will be taking us through some of the 3D tools. If you are not a 3D pro, come out and see how to make the most of VectorWorks’ 3D tools and beyond. Take a new step in the new year and little by little, we’ll have you saving time and effort like never before.
.................................................................................
This is a good time of the year to look back and appreciate those who make life easier. In the case of the Seattle VW Users Group, I want to first thank the folks at Seattle Central Community College who extend the facilities there for our use. We’re provided--for free--a really nice lecture hall with overhead projector, secure parking, and staff that wants us to have a great learning environment during the time we are there. From Suan-vinh, the custodian, to teacher Dave Borgatti, from Construction Center administrator Michelle, to others like Ivan Hass who teaches introductory VectorWorks CADD. They all have been willing to go the extra distance to ensure that we have the best experience that can be had. Thank you all!
Two URL’s for the wood construction program:
http://seattlecentral.edu/wood/
http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/woodconstruction/
I also want to thank the larger VW community which, amazingly, wraps the globe. I met an excited landscape architect in October at the JLCLive show which took place at the Convention and Trade Center. She was leaving the VW demo booth having bought her first copy of VectorWorks and was she happy! But then the struggles set in which involved several frustrations that were not of her making. In response to these problems, I went on the NNA Listserv and posted a help note. Several folks from around the world wrote her offering aid. A thoughtful landscape architect out of Wenatchee, Thom Vetter, contacted her with an offer of additional help. Jonathan Pickup called her from New Zealand (she bought his Landmark book). I tutored her for an hour, gratis. She joined the Listserv and called NNA Tech help and did her part to get over the trouble spots. Getting great help is part of the VectorWorks experience. A helping hand is there if you need it. Thanks to all of you who ease the struggles of others, whether it’s teaching an alphabet to a youngster, a CAD program to anybody, or helping with any other challenging endeavor.
...................................................................................
The cool thing about the advent of blogs is that the power to teach no longer resides in the hands of a few entities. I don’t mean to suggest that those pre-blog sources were not quality repositories of knowledge or that there was/is some kind of benefit to the control of that information. Heretofore, dissemination of knowledge has been very costly and that mandril of costs, so to speak, has meant that the shape of the knowledge, as it leaves the form, is sometimes ill fitting. This “one size fits all” approach is currently being augmented with information from several independent sources. One of them is PodCAD, produced by two guys from Southern California: Pat Stanford, and Dan Jansenson. At PodCAD you can listen to audio podcast interviews of persons who are deeply involved in CAD and with VectorWorks. These two have also created a business called Vectortasks for teaching VectorWorks to others. Pat is the leader of the L.A. VW Users Group and Dan has authored the Renderworks Recipe Book. What I really like about PodCAD’s audio interviews is the fireside informality--they’re very relaxing while being informative at the same time. Check ‘em out at:
www.podcad.tv
www.vectortasks.com
www.danjansenson.com
..................................................................................
Some of us, having moved slowly into Viewports, are still nostalgic for Convert To Lines* since the 3D model that provides the basis for elevation views or sections may be complex and in showing these views, the masking process might be harder than the old way of converting to lines and ungrouping, then deleting what’s unneeded. This is a moving target; some projects are going to be easier to mask than others. I recently had a super-tight time constraint in producing some preliminary drawings, both floor plans and elevations. I made a viewport of the 3D model (in this case, created via the Model View tool found on the Visualization palette. Note that you have the ability to duplicate this vp on your sheet and, via the OIP, create new views of each side). I chose to Convert Copy to LInes from one of the elevation viewports. I copied and then deleted the line work atop the viewport, then went back to my working layer (properly called “design layer”) and pasted in the line work which came in quite small, needing scaling by 48 times which happens to match the scale of my drawing: 1/4” per foot or 1 to 48. The advantage here was that I had live vp’s as a backup to my converted lines. I had no time to ungroup roofs and rework them to fit correctly, something I would always do if time were not such an issue. But if I changed something on my floorplan in the last few minutes, I had a vp to aid me in correcting the lines. This workaround is not as elegant as keeping the vp as the primary element on the sheet, but hey, whatever works in love and war.
*In Convert to Lines #19 I wrote about the overall process of converting VP’s to lines.
................................................................................
Is learning and using Sketchup a good reason to not mess with implementing 3D within VectorWorks? I’ve been watching the Sketchup tutorials and I love how easy and breezy they are.
http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html
I can see the attraction of doing quick design development using this non-CAD CAD program (THEY’RE the ones that say it’s not CAD).
I’ve talked to some folks lately who have never utilized VW’s 3D capabilities and I wonder about that. I know that not everyone can haul their organization into the 3D world without some pain. Sketchup seems to be so quick and easy that it might help one develop the general form of a project while also giving the client an early peek at the design too. But then what? For me, 3D informs 2D. It isn’t the nice picture that is important, though if it helps sell the job, that’s great. Where 3D shines is in allowing you to adjust your model toward correctness. If it doesn’t go together in 3D, it will be obvious either in isometric view or via section and so can be adjusted until it is correct. This ability to adjust and fit has proven itself as it allows me to catch mistakes and also helps me to take the design a little further than I might have because I can clearly see where something doesn’t work, either structurally or aesthetically.
Since, as I said, 3D informs 2D. I build up my model in 3D volumes as soon as possible to establish floor levels, structural supports, wall-to-rafter fit and so on. This means that the client can see the project sooner--sometimes MUCH sooner, than later. Lastly, I get to proceed with the assurance of having established 3D markers that I won’t have to revisit to confirm correctness later on so this helps avoid the situation where one late change creates an unintended error someplace else. You CAN get quite a bit of Sketchup-like control using VectorWorks and in addition, be able to keep the key decision-making represented by these precise volumes and all within ONE program.
I have no doubt Sketchup will be used by more and more people but the job of getting your work right and then proceeding to finished drawings while still keeping elevations, sections and other views live throughout most of your sheets--this is where the real money is, in my opinion.
.............................................................................
.............................................................................
Misc.
How do you make a section of an object in any other view than in Top Plan View? Sometimes a horizontal cut is preferred. Easy. Make a viewport of the object and turn it to the desired view using the Object Info palette. Then cut your Section Viewport FROM your viewport.
http://kbase.nemetschek.net/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=117&catId=23
I ran into trouble making a Viewport of a building which had wall components turned on (Document Settings>Document Pref’s) and there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to turn them off via the OI palette. Stretch down the palette and click on Advanced Properties and you’ll see a button that will turn off wall components.
...............................................................................
From an NNA Listserv poster:
To put an image on a rug:
Choose Model->Create Image Prop. Import your image file. Uncheck Constant Reflectivity and Create Plug-In Object. You can choose to create a mask or not, depending. This will create a textured rectangular 3D polygon for you, without you having to mess with sizing the polygon for the image aspect ratio and trying to get the texture mapping lined up exactly. Since it is a 3D polygon you can rotate it in 3D, like to make a rug on the floor or something. For vertically-oriented images, if you choose the Create Plug-In Object option you can later resize the polygon using OI palette.
............................................................................................
When you wish to type a plus-over-minus symbol such as when a dimension is variable, on a Mac, hit Shift-plus-Option-plus the + key: ± (if this didn’t translate via e-mail, it looks like a plus neatly stacked over a minus). On a PC, you have to be using a font with a plus/minus symbol already built in. I found such a font on my Windows PC called Universal Math. If I’m incorrect here, PC users, let me know.
...................................................................................
Ok, draw a sloping line. In the OI palette, you see by default a dimension of total height of the line and total length, but not true length. If you click on the round icon below the cross-hair icon, you’ll see the line’s true length AND degree of slope.
..........................................................................................................
Download and try Ikea’s free 3D kitchen planner. I saw a client run this during our meeting at their home. Impressive, especially for free. Perhaps Google with buy it to go with their free junior version of Sketchup.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/complete_kitchen_guide/planner_tool/download/index.html
..............................................................................................
............................................................................................
“Nemetschek AG acquires a 54.3% stake in Graphisoft
Budapest, 2006 December 31. - Nemetschek AG has acquired 54.3% of the 10.6 million shares in Graphisoft SE (headquartered in Budapest) at a price of EUR 9 per share. The acquisition was implemented by exercising the call option with Graphisoft shareholders agreed on December 21, 2006.”
The above was taken from ArchiCAD’s website. Apparently Nemetschek intends to follow up later on to buy greater control of the company by making a public tender offer for all remaining shares. What does this portend for VectorWorks and ArchiCAD and for AllPlan, Nemetchek’s high end CAD program? I surfed the forums of the NNA VW website, Architosh and also the forum at ArchiCAD. There, I found an interesting comment from none other than a past Seattle VW User Group Leader Geoff Briggs. who jumped ship to ArchiCAD about five years ago. (His posts follows the next few thoughts.)
AllPlan is hard to learn and has share only in Europe, I understand. VectorWorks has many more times the seats of ArchiCAD and an upgrade of ArchiCAD costs about the same as a new copy of VectorWorks. VW is easier to learn. What will happen? For the time being, likely nothing, as VW and ArchiCAD continue to grow market share. What will happen is that we will have increased momentum against AutoCad + Revit.
Here is Geoff’s post:
“A very interesting development indeed. While there are some striking similarities to Autodesk's acquisition of Revit there are just as many differences. Autodesk started out as market leader, with their goal to keep it that way. Nemetschek is an underdog looking to make a move. And a bold move they are making. They are now without question the #3 AEC vendor on the planet. They have as much hope of knocking off the top dogs as Apple has of surpassing Microsoft. But hopefully, like Apple of late, they realize that there are more ways lead than in sales.
So where does that leave us? The ink is barely dry and already speculation runs wild. But hey, why not. It's tempting to conjure all the various application merges that could ensue. But remember Nemetschek AG acquired VectorWorks and runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary. Good move on their part as VectorWorks has more users than AllPlan and ArchiCAD combined. That's not by accident. They started with a good product, added a lot of marketing and really put the screws to the little company from Maryland. Now Nemetschek NA is a pretty tight ship. They own Maxon as well, another company with a great product that does very well in an entirely different niche market. C4D [Cinema 4D] is not the rendering engine for VectorWorks, nor is AllPlan the CAD engine. So far plug-ins and co-marketing are as close as these disparate branches have grown.
Does that mean no merging of technology? I sure hope not. Like Wes, I believe something has to happen for ArchiCAD to stay in the game against the Revit juggernaut. (Revit still has plenty of flaws but with all the resources, marketing and programming, that Autodesk is throwing their way they are beginning to push BIM forward in ways that ArchiCAD has failed to do despite having the field to themselves for so long.) But I disagree that all their holdings will (or should) be brought under one roof. Wendy is right about VectorWorks, despite it's not being a true BIM application it is much easier to learn and much much cheaper than any other professional CAD app. Nemetschek will have no problem positioning it as the value leader.
The wild card is AllPlan. Powerful but hard to master. No North American presence, small market share, miniscule mind share. Does it make sense to part-out AllPlan, sending programmers and technology to Hungary? I think it does. Programmers (and cash) are what Graphisoft needs most. They have like 60 to the American's thousands. And unlike VectorWorks, AllPlan competes directly with ArchiCAD, at least in Europe where migrating their existing high profile customers to ArchiCAD would be a huge coupe. I hope their own experience with AllPlan, combined with ArchiCAD's popularity worldwide makes it clear that doing the reverse (assimilating ArchiCAD into AllPlan) would be suicide.
Of course it's not that simple. Autodesk cannot kill ADT (at least not for a while) even if they want too. Likewise NemAG may not be able to kill AllPlan without key customers deserting. And corporate cultures may clash. For the time being if they do for ArchiCAD what they did for VectorWorks that will most definitely get the ball rolling in the right direction.
_________________
Regards,
Geoff Briggs
I & I Design
............................................................................................
That’s all for now. See you on the 25th! (Mark your calendar!!)
Tom Greggs
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
(206) 524-2808
PS I will follow up with a second reminder just before the 25th, if you don’t mind.
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