Convert To Lines

Convert to Lines #41

2010-01-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

1/21/10
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at
http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
Video tutorials can be found at
http://www.viddler.com/explore/Tguy/videos/
To contact me, please write tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• Next meeting time and place
• New video tutorials available from NNA
• Learning credits (CEU's) now available
• Various VectorWorks tips
• Misc links
• The Recipe within the Recipe
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Next Meeting

Hey everybody, welcome the new year! Things can only get better, right? Let's bring our positive energy together for a meeting February 3rd, a Wednesday, between 6:30 PM and 8:00 PM at 7001 31st Ave NE located just east of the Roosevelt District. If the technology gods smile on us, we will be watching one of the new NNA videos called Key Concepts. It is an hour long and so should deliver a lot of bang for the buck especially considering that we get to see for free what is otherwise a $25 debit on anyone else's charge card. We'll also cover any of your questions and have a few goodies to give away too.

Bring a beverage or snacks but only if you are so moved. If you come directly from work, we'll have enough goodies to tide you over. Here's the Google Maps URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=7001+31st+ave+ne+seattle&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=7001+31st+Ave+NE,+Seattle,+WA+98115&gl=us&ei=yVT4SrjrLY_ysQPy3OEd&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ8gEwAA

An RSVP appreciated but not required.

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Webinars from NNA

NNA has recently provided a variety of new tutorial Webinars at $25 each, repriced down from $75 as of a couple of days ago. As noted above, one of them will be made available to our user group. To view the complete list and showing times, go to this URL:
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/events.php#webinars

As time goes on, video webinars or tutorials of all kinds can only increase in number. I believe the way these are handled and presented will have a great impact on all providers of CAD. Further comments can be read below under The Recipe Within the Recipe.

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CEU's from NNA
For the first time, NNA is providing learning credit classes for those in need of continuing education units. Below are two classes from the NNA website:

Jan 28
Creating Sustainable Sites Using Computer Aided Design (CAD): 2 LA CES or 2 APLD CEU
CAD programs in general have the ability to extract data from simple geometry, such as lines and polygons. However, with the right software tools you are able to create, model and present within one application, as well as analyze, report, and select materials more appropriately. The intuitive processes mentioned in this session will address the ‘Areas of Focus’, such as soils, hydrology, vegetation, materials and human well being, as proposed in the latest Sustainable Sites Initiative Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks – Draft 2009, Copyright © 2009 by the Sustainable Sites Initiative. All Rights reserved.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understanding each the 5 Areas of Focus as proposed by the Sustainable Sites Initiative
2. Learn how purpose built site analysis tools such as Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM) and GIS file integration can make conceptual and preliminary site plans easier.
3. Learn how tools such as the multifaceted Landscape Area Object; Site Modifier Objects; 2D/3D Plant Data Objects; Plant Database, Solar Animation, Custom Reports, and many others can be essential tools in meeting the expectations of a sustainable site.

Time: 2:00pm EST to 4:00pm EST
Register Now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/393763547

Jan 29
BIM In Perspective: 1 AIA CEU
Join us for this “big-picture” presentation about Building Information Modeling (BIM) and its historical and technological precedents. Learn how BIM differs from CAD, how BIM affects the design and construction team, and the implications of BIM for the design and construction process.
[A certificate of attendance will be provided, if requested, for those not affilliated with AIA]

Learning Objectives of Program:
1. Describe some of the historical precedents for BIM
2. Motivations for why architects would want to use BIM in their practice
3. Compare and contrast between a "CAD workflow" and a "BIM workflow"
4. Describe the meanings of the acronyms IPD, IDM and MVD

Time: 3:00pm EST to 4:00pm EST
Register Now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/371052395

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Various Vwks Tips

• Checkout the Model to Floorplan command which converts a 3D solid model into a walls, etc. in one go. This might be helpful for those importing models from another program such as SketchUp. From Vwks 2010 Help:

If a solid model has been used to develop a massing study, Vectorworks Architect can extract information from the model to begin work on the floorplans. Specifically, gross area polylines can be created automatically for each building level directly from the solid model with the Model to Floorplan command. A stacking diagram can display the sum of the areas of these polylines, which makes it easy to determine the amount of floor area provided by a solid model before creating the floorplans. In addition, exterior walls can be created automatically. If the model changes after the polylines and walls are created, run the Model to Floorplan command again to update the polylines and walls.

Tip provided by Vincent C, NNA Community Board

• Use World Z for origin of textures to get bricks, siding, etc. to get them to align across walls, something that has frequently frustrated me when adjacent areas won't align. To find the appropriate checkbox for World Z, select your 3D object, apply a texture then go to the Object Info Box and click Textures at the top of the palette. Objects, selected and with textures applied should trigger the inclusion of a check box found toward the bottom of the OIP Textures palette. Check World Z and your various textures should align. See additional details under Vwks Help.

Contributed by Michael Sipes, Community Board

• This brief solids primer is a must-view for newer users. To see this, locate the first post of the thread and download his zaha shapes 03.vwx which is designed to work with Vwks 2010. If you use Vwks 2008 or 2009, a link to those files can be found further down in the sixth post.)

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=133418&Searchpage=1&Main=27418&Words=zaha&Search=true#Post133418

From Michael Young, Community Board

• Here is a suggested workflow for Vwks 3D models taken INTO Sketchup for textures and colors:
We use a combination of Vectorworks, Sketchup and Artlantis (for final rendering) What we have found is that in Vectorworks you can relatively quickly generate the geometry for building elements particularly doors and windows that you could model in Sketchup but would take far longer. So our workflow goes:

1. Create base model in Vectorworks

2. Export to Sketchup to apply colours and materials. We are not fans of Renderworks and find the images that we get from Sketchup are preferable. We also finish off some of the modeling in Sketchup as it can be quicker and easier to do this.

3. If the occasion and project demands we then export the Sketchup model into Artlantis and/or Piranesi for adding lights and high quality rendering.

4. Finally we export to Photoshop for formatting the finished images.

Sounds cumbersome but we find the above process is an quick and efficient workflow

By Eoin R, Architect, Dublin, from Community Board

• Move along path animation video tutorial
http://download2.nemetschek.net/TechTips/Move-along-path-animation.mov

• Creating a custom color palette, in this case a color from Kilz paints:
You can create your own custom color palette by using the magnifying glass of the Standard Color Picker and selecting any color sample off of your desktop.

To create your Kilz paint colors. Go to the Kilz color web page and set it so you can see it in the background while you have VW open.
To create a custom color click on the color box on the Attributes Palette.
This opens the Color Palette of what is active in your drawing.
Click on the Standard Color Picker (color wheel) at the top to open the Colors Palette.

Click on the magnifying glass icon (at the top near the color sample bar) and go to your desktop to pick a custom color sample. This color is now activated and in your document. You can save these samples in the row across the bottom for future use if needed.

If Kilz is a brand of paint that you tend to use for most of your set design you can create your own library of color samples by clicking on the Color Palette Manger (wrench and pencil) to create a new library of colors that can be named with the paint color number and then accessed in the Pick Color library by going through the steps above for each and every color... A lot of work but worth it once done.

From Brian Hores, Co-chair Boston Vectorworks Usergroup

• Animating a movement through a model has always confounded me. Here is a video that makes understanding the process astoundingly simple:
http://download2.nemetschek.net/TechTips/Move-along-path-animation.mov

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Miscellaneous Links

•Check out these baseball stadiums—in their original configurations—designed and displayed in 3D renderings by Thomas Woodman using VectorWorks as his only tool. Very impressive!
Http://www.legendaryballparks.com/index.html

• Watch Captain Sully Sullenberger land his jet on the Hudson river in this CAD modeled and rendered video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tE_5eiYn0D0#t=109

• VectorWorks 3D models can be imported into two lighting analysis programs for extended lighting analysis. From the Visual 3D website:

The Visual Professional Edition is a comprehensive lighting analysis tool designed for demanding interior and exterior applications. The Professional Edition combines an advanced 3-D interface with the latest advances in radiosity theory to provide efficient and highly accurate analysis of complex architectural spaces. A unique approach has been taken in the design of the 3-D modeling environment, resulting in an intuitive and powerful design experience.

http://www.Visual-3D.com/Software/Professional/Default.aspx
Watch Getting Started video under Fundamentals
http://www.3d-visual.com/Training/Video/InstructionalVideos.asp?SessionID=0
If this ingreges, see this alternative software called DIALux
http://www.dial.de/CMS/English/Articles/DIALux/Download/Download_d_e_fr_it_es_cn.html

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The Recipe Within the Recipe

Cookbooks can be irritating. Yes, you're given a list of ingredients—the essentials—but rarely the knowledge of which combination really puts a dish over the top. To get that info requires time and experimentation. It's not enough to simply read a book. One has to understand a finer level of finesse, of combination and maybe timing. This second level of insight I call the recipe within the recipe. In regard to using VectorWorks, the best way I know to get that kind of insight is via video tutorials; the best way yet invented to learn VectorWorks, as I see it.

NNA has video tutorials on their website which fulfill various functions. Below is a link to New in 2010 videos:
http://www.nemetschek.net/library/index.php
These are helpful but ultimately intended as a brief introduction to Vwks and therefore more of a sales tool. Still, they're worth watching if you haven't viewed them yet.

There is a new set of videos—webinars—available from NNA and these can be found here:
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/events.php#webinars
These are pay-to-view. I haven't seen any of them yet so can't comment on their quality except to say that they are more about process and this is important since the Help* file within VectorWorks tells you at the outset that the Help system is not designed to give you a process-based understanding. Individual cost as I've previously noted $25 each.

Jon Pickup has two video tutorials (for both V. 2010 & V.2009) called Movie-Based Manuals. Look at Guide to Productivity 2010 at $135. Playing time not listed.
http://www.archoncad.co.nz/training/vector-workout.php#productivity2010

Of course, by now you know about my own several videos. Their URL is posted at the top of page 1.

In my mind the best video tutorials are informal and loose. It's OK if they take forks or digress as needed to make a point. Rigidity in format is acceptable but tends to miss opportunities to relate context which is a key process of learning. Understanding context, especially in a big program like Vwks, is huge.

In a perfect world, these videos would cover the whole spectrum of VectorWorks, be easily updated as tools evolved, give newcomers, journeymen and advanced users each a different fork of understanding. And they would be free. (NNA took a big step in the right direction when they substantially revised the cost of their webinars.)

In my opinion, the goal of learning videos first and formost would be to give new users the confidence to know there would be learning content waiting for them, on hand when they might need it, and so give them the confidence to buy the program against all other CAD competitors. If there's no sale in the first place, there will, of course, be no upgrade sale down the road.

As regards free, I would argue that free has a function—sales—and if that function becomes a generator of income, as I contend, the outcome is more money into NNA's coffers and not less. Online tutorials are the greatest of sales tools. They bond the user to the future.

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That's it for now. Thanks for flying with Convert to Lines.

Convert to Lines #40

2009-11-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

11/9/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at
http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
Video tutorials can be found at
http://www.viddler.com/explore/Tguy/videos/
To contact me, please write tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• Our next meeting time and place
• More review of Vwks 2010: HDRI’s, Planar Graphics, Viewport creation
• Piranesi—what is it?
• TouchCAD author speaks out
• CAD video of local urban disaster

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Had a great demo of Vwks 2010 November 4th by Don of NNA with Kristine and Marcus providing support. Terrific food and drink was served with coffee cups in mid-century colors provided as take home gifts. I really hope they video Don presenting v2010 to a general audience and post it for others to view because his demo goes way further than what you've seen so far watching various vid's from the NNA website. The software has so much more depth than can be captured by the typical highlights fly-by.

Our next meeting will be on December 1st, a Tuesday, between 6:30 PM and 8:00 PM at 7001 31st Ave NE which is located east of the Roosevelt District. I'll be exploring beginning 3D so if you are struggling, please be sure and attend as we'll be looking at the easiest way to get the biggest return on your efforts. We'll also cover HDRI backgrounds and rendering. I'll have my computer hooked up to a big screen TV so the viewing should be good.

Feel free to bring a beverage or snacks. If you come from work, we'll have enough goodies to tide you over. Here's the Google Maps URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=7001+31st+ave+ne+seattle&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=7001+31st+Ave+NE,+Seattle,+WA+98115&gl=us&ei=yVT4SrjrLY_ysQPy3OEd&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ8gEwAA

Let me know if you plan to attend.

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Mini review of v2010

Planar graphics has been one of the highlighted features of the new release. I tried it out by taking an older plot plan, selecting all the 2D lines that described the driveway, walks and property lines and then used the Object Info palette's new pull-down button to transfer those lines from their default setting of Screen Plane to a new setting called Layer Plane. I then transferred the lines to one of my story layers, clicked on Unified View, then used the Flyover Tool to rotate the whole collection.

This worked quite well with some conditions. Most important is that line work, once only able to show in 2D, now imparts context to the scene. This can't be overstated. Being able to see boundaries of all kinds is a key advantage in communicating a sense of scale.

This will be a great tool in locations where building lots are less sloped versus those with steeper terrain. For the latter, the DTM module or a process of subtracting solids from a ground volume might be a better way to communicate changes in elevation via line work.

One oddity was to find that lines composed of unjoined segments did not stick together when rotated and appeared to have gone through my laundry, shrinking at their ends. It might be wise to convert those segments into one line. I'll need to go back and try this and see if it works. Use Modify > Compose to join line ends. Way cool was to see that text selected along with lines when converted to the Layer Plane showed in 3D too. At least that's how it worked in the NNA demo of v2010. Trying it myself I see a planar box but no text within.

In order to get our attention, NNA has placed a new button on the View Bar called the Active Planes List showing choices of Active Layer Plane or Screen Plane. This new button takes up a large amount of menu bar territory and I get the feeling they really want us to see this new command. I also get the sense that we should be drawing with this button bar set to a default of Layer Plane so all our lines (and eventually text and dimensions) can take on a Planer Graphics view if needed. Lines set to Screen Plane should be used only when constructing 2D symbols.

I'm guessing that the next improvements delivered in v2011 might include dimensions and text staying oriented with the model when rotated. Let's hope.

The process of creating Viewports has also changed. In the past Vwks didn't like you to use the same name for design layer, viewport or sheet but of course that would seem the best way to keep track of what you'd made. Instead we needed three different names for essentially the same information. In my case, I found a way to trick Vwks by adding a suffix to my viewport and also to my sheet, coming back later to add a number to each sheet corresponding to my planset needs.

VectorWorks now does something similar. I used “Design Layer-1” as the name for the design layer, the viewport and the sheet with the only difference being the sheet has an automatic number (prefix) created. This is a great improvement as we can now proceed without having to have three different names for the same information or trick Vwks with prefix/suffix additions. There is a new box called Drawing Title which ties into automatic naming of the title block created via the Sheet Border tool.

Let's talk about object libraries for a moment. Since many, many of us work in residential design, we live and die by what we can import into our drawings pre-made. This is to save time as well as aid us in doing what-if scenarios where an object, even if it is not perfect, is a stand-in for the one we would eventually like to install. We should have a ready source of modern fixtures and furnishings with a means to revise finishes simply and quickly.

In Vwks 2010 I opened the Residential Furniture library and reviewed the contents. Scrolling down through the furnishings I noted that the models looks rather out of date. The CRT TV in a console may have outlived its usefulness, for instance. I counted out the number of pieces, then set out to review the same folder going back to version 12.5 to see what has changed. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. We have the exact same pieces from content provided four major upgrades ago. What's going on? Yes, we can download scads of objects from 3D Warehouse, Google's wonderful collection of just about everything. Problem is Vwks can't as of yet handle the import of colors and textures so instead we get exquisite models the color of clay. If the model has very many facets filling these in can be a job and a half. If you work in landscape design and import these models, render in Hidden Line / Sketch then hand-color, you just might have a really cool drawing. Or if you simply want to import and place silhouettes, then no color is needed. For those wanting realism, you're out of luck unless you use a third party program to aid in translation.

We can also import 3DS (.3ds) models from various websites with textures intact but the worthwhile models average $40 per piece. A collection the size of the Residential Folder--86 models--times $40 and you've rung up a cool $3,440. Any other ideas?

While TurboSquid is a prime place to go to buy models, if you prefer free, try this site:
http://archive3d.net/
I downloaded a great looking free Volkswagen Touran, among other models.
Here's a site which lists other sites of .3ds interest:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/60-excellent-free-3d-model-websites/
Bundled .3ds objects for sale:
http://www.microspot.com/store/3ds.htm

Sketchup Pro can export .skp to .3ds. I tested this option and found the export/export/import process of .skp to .3ds to .vwx effective if somewhat time consuming.

A tool doesn't really go mainstream until it's easy to use. Thus, way back in v12.5 one could import HDRI backgrounds into drawings but only a few used this advance. In v. 2010, after assembling the model using Unified View and tipping it to best effect, you can go to View > Set Renderworks Background and choose from a number of interior and exterior HDRI backgrounds. The command has been relocated to the menu bar and therefore is more likely to be noticed and used.

I like Custom Renderworks for my general rendering method and found test-rendering from design layers much faster than doing the same from viewports on sheets. This is great as you can check the backgrounds without a time penalty. Once you have identified the preferred HDRI background, make a viewport of your model, send it to a new sheet, and use the Object Info palette to activate and/or modify the HDRI pattern under RW Background.

Take time to also explore the Lighting Options button to fine tune your lights. I expect you've added one or two. Doesn't matter which layer you place them on as long as they are on one of the visible layers you've selected to display your model. Note that there is another place to make HDRI adjustments and this is on the bottom half of the lighting palette. Now you are ready to hit Update on the OIP to render the model. It will take longer to render but the results will be worth it. Here is a recent rendering of mine using an HDRI background rendered in Custom Renderworks.

http://gallery.me.com/tomgreggs#100016/Crouch%20Project%20by%20Greggs&bgcolor=black

This was rendered on a 2.5 GHz MacBook Pro with 4 megs or RAM. The Mac OS was Snow Leopard. The rendering time was nine minutes.

While the model is not a major advance in architecture, the rendering does deliver a dramatic sense to the viewer. I found, in using various backgrounds while on my Design Layer, that I had quite varied reflection patterns develop on the window glazing. Also, faces of elements which would have been vague in renderings without the HDRI background now rendered with crisp detail. The set of stairs that face the viewer head on are an example of this. Previously, they would have rendered without clear demarkation between the treads.

Lastly, to change HDRI settings such as rotation, right-click on the HDRI in the Resource browser to activate the Edit Renderworks Background dialog box. Click the Options radio button and adjust settings in the Edit Image Environment (HDRI) Background dialog box.

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Unfolding TouchCAD

There was a discussion a while back on the Listserv over the new unfold tool in Vwks 2010. Here’s a description of this tool taken from the Help file in Vwks 2010:

“The Unfold Surfaces command creates flattened, 2D representations of developable surfaces. A developable surface is curved in one dimension only, so that it is able to be flattened into a plane with no distortion. For example, cones and cylinders can be unfolded, but spheres cannot.”

One user wanted a more robust solution since his model was not unfolding as expected. Someone said why can’t Vwks be more like TouchCAD, a software package from Sweden that is quite advanced in its way of unfolding Vwks models. The TouchCAD author responded below.

“Perhaps I should comment, since my name was mentioned.

The VW unfold features should perhaps try to catch up with the more simple unfolding features, such as found in Rhino or formZ, instead of aiming towards catching up with TouchCAD.

As for TouchCAD, many seem to look upon it as some sort of utility program, which its not. It is also a very fast and highly accurate free form 3D modeling tool. The unfolding is not something bolted on at the end of the process. Unfolding and production preparation is an integrated part of the design process from step one, which is what separates it from pretty much all other programs with similar features.

The tent below[*] can be seen as an example. 1,000 square meters of floor area. Just under 4,000 square meters of fabrics used, distributed over 987 unfolded panels. With a material width of 1.6 meters, the imaginary roll used would be something like 3.2 kilometers (two miles). The design took just under two days, modeling it from scratch to sending a fully optimized ready to machine cut file , in a combined design and training session (it was the very first project where the customer used TouchCAD). The picture to the right was taken less than six weeks later, where the tent was in full use.

Would I even dream of doing this design in Vectorworks? Of course not. Nor would I use any other program. As much as I love Vectorworks, I really do, it is simply a question of using the right program for any given job. When drawing a house, Vectorworks is my obvious choice. The same would apply for complex solid modeling. VW is also my preferred
tool for 2D drafting. That does not mean that I have to use VW for everything. Of course not. I for example use Photoshop to create Renderworks textures. I think most of us do. Some architects prefer using Sketchup to do sketching. Perhaps not my personal choice, but as long as it works for you, fine. And so on.”

Claes Lundstrom

[*Contact Mr Lundstrom to view these images]

See TouchCAD here and be sure to watch the Why TouchCAD movie.
http://www.touchcad.com/

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Piranesi

Inspired by some recent success in Renderworks, I set out to explore the world of rendering and modeling+rendering software and was blown away by the multitude of programs. I looked at (Mac supported) Maxwell Render, Kerkythea, Blender, Modo, Cheetah 3D, Lightwave, Maya, Form•Z, Cinema 4D, Artlantis, LuxRender and Strata 3D.

In my world I don’t get paid to primarily render so while advanced modeling is important, a photorealistic model is not essential to my clients. Still it’s empowering to approach realism, if not actually arrive. But after looking at the galleries of the providers above, after gazing upon the crystal air shimmering around those perfect creations, I stumbled over the opposite—a painterly style-and damned if it didn’t look good, maybe better. I had found Piranesi.

VectorWorks exports to the Piranesi EPX file format and has since Vwks v12.5. Assemble your model in Vwks and give it a perspective view. Export to Epix/Piranesi from a design layer, not a viewport. Next, download the free Piranesi 15 day demo. Use “Open” to find your EPX file. Since you’ve now watched the Piranesi videos you’ll be able to experiment with several painting effects.

What’s cool, as shown in the videos, is the ability to easily paste in scalable images, import 3D objects such as those from the SketchUp vault at 3D Warehouse. (Didn’t one tutorial show a menu bar button to link directly with the Warehouse?) and keep the live model and its elements segregated for fast application of paint and textures.

The nice part of this process is that the model need not be perfectly complete and correct. In fact the whole point is to keep a loose “in-progress” sense to the design. This way the client may not feel locked out of the design process as though each little detail has already been decided upon. The opposite of that scenario can also be avoided. An example is when the client fixates on one of those details which is subsequently changed later in the design. “Why doesn’t it look like the picture?”

Bottom line is these renderings exude a warm and organic feeling with a soft, kinetic sense of style.

To end this discussion, let’s go in a slightly different direction from the live model of Piranesi. You’ve no doubt tried using the Artistic options in Renderworks by now. They have their plusses and minuses. I’ve found another method that gives good result though it relies on Photoshop. Here the model should be more detailed, as opposed to my suggestion above regarding Piranesi. For my model I’ve included a sky which came via the addition of an HDRI background.

Tip: When doing a Vwks Help search for HDRI, use the term ‘background’ instead of HDRI.

Set up your lighting of the model, set perspective, create viewport, export image (jpg, tiff, etc.)

Second tip: Make sure you set the dpi of your model high, 150 to 300, depending on printer. If exporting from the viewport, edit the viewport to find the input field for dpi. Viewports with line work and text (vector info) print great at 72 dpi but any images (bitmap) need the dpi set much higher than the default 72 of monitor screen resolution.

Import your image file into Photoshop, then adjust using the filter called Poster Edges found in the Artistic group. The result is another way to soften a detailed rendering. One nice outcome using this method is the lack of hard cut lines where walls are joined. In Renderworks, the Artistic options show lines where walls are segmented or cut.

Piranesi
http://www.piranesi.co.uk/

Piranesi video tutorials
http://www.piranesi.co.uk/products/product_videos.asp

The real Piranesi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi

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Quake, Rattle and Roll

See a video of our waterfront freeway, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, depicting what would occur in the event of an earthquake. Graphic evidence of why you might want to reconsider buying a view waterfront condo. There is raging debate here about drilling an alternative tunnel but no video so far about what would happen to a tunnel built below sea level in the same area in the same quake scenario.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hos_uIKwC-c

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That's it! Thanks for reading

Convert to Lines #39

2009-10-15T12:50:00.001-07:00

10/15/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at
http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
Vectorworks for Left Handers videos can be found at
http://www.viddler.com/explore/Tguy/tags/TomGreggs/
To contact me, please write tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• What's up with our meeting schedule?
• NNA comes to Seattle to demo V. 2010
• Why Unified View in V. 2010 is or isn't important
• Get to know Steve S.
• Tag Ends
• Upgrading: What's in it for me?

What, where, when do we meet? In an effort to tailor the user group experience I sent out email notices about our last meeting (held October 14) asking that you indicate a preference when attending. If you did not receive one of these, or would like to be notified for future group meetings, please contact me and ask to be placed on the mailing list. If you know anyone who might also be interested, I'd appreciate it if you could pass this on. Thanks!

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Staff from NNA will be in Seattle to demo VectorWorks 2010 tenatively scheduled for November 4th. Mark your calendars.

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I don't envy the engineers at NNA. They have the painful job of updating Vectorworks by extending one foot into the future while trying to keep older users happy with the other foot planted in the past. Thus we currently have these diverse and confusing ways to assemble and display our 3D models: Layer Links, Model View Tool, linked layers displayed on Design Layer Viewports (oh ya!), Stacked Layers and now, Unified View.

Layer linking was poorly named and unintuitive. Model View Tool was an improvement in ease of use but too little too late and now resides in the Legacy folder. Neither of these methods could reliably regenerate after changes. Linked layers on DVLP's was and is a work-around unsupported by NNA (see my own Hidden Line Tutorial to see how these work). Stacked Layers gave us a model that was easy to assemble but the on/off toggle was awkward—you were never sure what setting you were in—important since most tools would not work when in that mode, and while it gave you a means to hide the clutter of 2D line work it did not give you a way to easily measure between elements on the various assembled layers. It seemed to work better as a display tool than a development tool; lots of show, not a whole lot of go.

Is Unified View a breakthrough or just a name change? I see that the stack-of-paper symbol on the menu bar remains as before. What's different? When using Stacked Layers of old, you were prohibited from modifying elements on layers other than the selected, working layer. This has changed in V. 2010. You can reach into ANY layer provided you select Show/Snap/Modify Others as the display setting for Layer Options. I recently was able to reach into a collection of Layers and, although the active layer was the main story, I could select and change basement layer wall and window heights by using the Object Info palette or move entire elements on other layers using the Nudge or Move tools. I was even able to ungroup and edit a roof while on a different layer than that holding my 3D roof. This makes the model much more immediate than in the past. I still was unable to pull a 2D dimension between elements while viewing my model from the front but I could limp along by dragging a line from point to point, reading the output before dropping the snap.

There is a perverse way to be able to dimension-check your Unified model, again assuming that you want interim info and are not doing final annotations. Go to File > Unified View Options. Check “Display Screen Objects” and also check “Only on Active Layer”. Make a new layer called Dimension Layer. Check that layer to be visible. With Unified View toggled on and your new Dimension layer set to visible, all 2D line work will be hidden except that which you apply to this unique layer. Dimension as needed to determine if the model as developed meets your criteria. Feel free to change settings of any 3D element via the OIP (Object Info palette) or Move/Nudge to revise your model.

What confuses is why I am required to set Layer Option visibility manually to Show/Snap/Modify Others? Why, when the Unified View icon is toggled, doesn't the program tip you into this setting automatically? This would seem more intuitive than the user having to make this change manually. Perhaps because you wish to set certain layers to Gray and so................no, tried it, doesn't work. There is only one setting to have all selected layers available for change and that requires them to be fully visible—no gray. So my point remains; until someone more informed offers a rebuttal, hitting the Unified View icon should toggle Show/Snap/Modify Others to an “on” position.

So far I'd say that Unified View is an important step in the right direction. I'm happy, if not ecstatic but check back after awhile. These changes can sometimes turn out to be indispensable.

One caveat to leaving Show/Snap/Modify Others on all the time. Unless you work by yourself or are experienced, it can be dangerous to leave Show/Snap/Modify Others on full time. This is because one can zero in on some element that seems like it shouldn't be on the layer you're working on. Did you forget to remove it from a while back? So you delete it only to discover later that you'd reached into a deeper layer beyond where you were working. This happens especially when you've come back to a file after some time and have not refreshed your memory. For this reason I work almost exclusively in Show/Snap Others.

URL linking to a NNA video describing Unified View
http://download2CF.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2010/2d3d-Integration.mov

Lastly I should say that Unified View has not yet obsoleted linked layers on DLVP's. Until we have better line control, I plan to continue using this technique.

…............................................

Steve Scaysbrook is an architectural technologist* from Great Britain. It was he who encouraged me to ship my videos to a more accessible site than my original Me.com public folder. Steve was also kind enough to watch several, create links to his site while saying positive things about their content.
http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=1963
http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=2000

As an architectural technologist, Steve has wide ranging exposure to all things relating to building construction and technology. Take a look at his home page and the links included therein
http://blog.konstrukshon.com/

Here is a link to an iPhone CAD program and a review video by Steve:
http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=2175

Great work, Steve! We'll look forward to visiting again in the near future.

*Architectural Technologist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_technologist

…............................................

TAG ENDS

Some other interesting Steve Scaysbrook links:
Dropbox. Great for sharing drag and drop files and folders between team members. Control over who has access to folders, automatic backup of files, 30 day undo history, free for Windows, Mac and Linux. Files backed up to Dropbox servers. Free 2 GB accounts with pay accounts up to 100 GB. Watch video here:
www.getdropbox.com
Take a tour:
https://www.getdropbox.com/tour/2
The blog:
http://blog.getdropbox.com/#
Glenn Fleishman's Practical Mac review of Dropbox in the Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/practicalmac/2009492113_ptmacc18.html

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Here is a link showing free hour-long online videos offered by Resolve.
http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=2094

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And finally, if you like iPhones, apps and art, here's one I came across on David Hockney drawing on his iPhone. Wonderful!
http://www.nybooks.com/features/slideshows/hockney/
Here's a painting application. Don't know what Hockney used.
http://current.com/items/90222767_painting-by-iphone.htm
Video of a painting in progress on an iPhone
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/05/jorge-colombo-iphone-cover.html
The Brushes application:
http://brushesapp.com/

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New movie from NNA on V.2010:
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2010/Sustainable.mov

This video shows various projects that have some connection to “green design” and how Vwks can aid in displaying information. This is a fast flying video giving a broad overview of the talents of Vwks, not really intended as a how-to, but worth watching all the same, especially as it spends some time showing the Digital Terrain Modeler.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Great old video of an early CAD program from 1962 called Sketchpad which included 3D capability.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKM3CmRqK2o&NR=1
Contributed by R.Poulin from the Vwks Listserv.
Here is a modern video which serves as an overview of the above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI&feature=related

…....................................................

Upgrading: What's in if for me?

With every upgrade of Vectorworks there comes, in reply from users, a whole list of reasons why upgrading is less than a great idea. Here are a few:
• I'm in a new line of work.
• No budget for upgrading--I'm almost in a new line of work.
• I work in 2D. Have you heard of this SketchUp?
• I'm still learning 12.5 or I know everything about 12.5 so what's the rush?
• What's a Viewport? Or "What's the point in getting a few stroked-out tools if I haven't updated/changed my whole workflow?"
• I'm waiting for the first bug fix.
• Can't upgrade computers AND software at the same time.
• I really plan on upgrading but I still like to complain online in hopes NNA squirms a little.

These are all legitimate reasons to hold onto your checkbook, except for maybe the last one.
Most relavent for this discussion is the fourth reason; “What's the point in getting a few stroked-out tools if I haven't updated/changed my whole workflow?" What about your workflow? Easy for me to say, I know, having just myself to satisfy. Those with groups of users face a glacial response to change not because they lack gumption but because of cost. Implementing change costs money and change can't be allowed to shut down production. This happens when new computers are purchased, operating systems are upgraded, conflicts between applications occur or key applications are refreshed. For these interruptions to be as small as possible, change needs to be implemented steadily and constantly in a sort of drip-drip-drip of progress.

Vectorworks, despite my most fevered dreams, advances in a kind of drip-drip too. There is never a world shattering breakthrough where NNA buys SketchUp from Google, joins the two together with a few deft lines of code, and emerges triumphant above all the lumbering giants of the CAD world. Yet if you've read the last Convert to Lines (“SketchUp on Steroids”) and watched the videos showing SpaceClaim and Solid Edge push-pull technology, you can begin to see where Vwks is headed, dragged as it is into this new century by technology provided by Seimen's Parasolid.

In Convert to Lines #38 I suggested that such a change could bring about “a massive improvement in the user experience.” If the drip-drip of change is directed toward a steady improvement in how you utilize Vectorworks and other tech apps, then you will be there to reap the rewards. Looking back, the cumulative change may indeed be termed “massive.” For others, this unclaimed progress may simply be productivity gone down the drain.

That's a wrap. Thanks for reading and watching.

Tom

Convert to Lines #38

2009-09-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

9/21/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• Refreshed video group: newest video added
• How Transom and Clerestory windows work
• SketchUp expert puts Cheney WA on map
• Official Guide “Getting Started with Vwks 2010” gets it right
• Digital Terrain Modeling advice
• SketchUp on steroids: the future of Vwks?
• More Resource Library points of view

.....................................

People:
Welcome to Fall. The leaves are turning, the days shortening, and production is rising, at least here in my basement where I compose the Convert to Lines newsletters. Since issuing CTL #37, I’ve been able to produce one more tutorial, this one called Viewports Tutorial and it has been placed with the others onto Viddler.com. (Google VectorWorks for Left Handers to see any one of them and view the list on the lower right hand side of the Viddler page.)

I rewrote the intro to CTL #37 to announce these new and revised videos. Do scroll down to read the expansion of that letter, done since it was last mailed to you.
http://converttolines.blogspot.com

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In Vwks Architect, what’s the difference between Transom and Clerestory selections on the Object Info palette (OIP)? Doors and windows, once inserted into a wall, have an option on the OIP to choose transom or clerestory. If you have a door and you click on the transom button on the OIP or you go into the Custom palette of the OIP for a finer array of choices, you’ll find, once you indicate the height of the transom window, that it shows as connected to the door or window. Windows work the same way. If you want to place a window or a series of windows above a door or another window and wish them to be spaced such that they don’t appear to be mullioned together at the manufacturer, then the clerestory button is the one to check. Sometimes a transom window’s OIP choices are limited so even if you want them connected you may decide to try the clerestory route.

To create a clerestory unit, put your door or window into the wall first. Then select the window tool and click over the window or door. Don’t insert it down the wall expecting to drag the window over the unit below. This causes a wall to appear across your original opening. Now, with the new window selected and sitting above the base unit, click on the clerestory button. The window will turn into a simplified line which looks a little funny over a door but blends in over a window such that it isn’t visible. If you don’t like the look of the clerestory in Top/Plan view over your base opening, make a class called Clerestory, move the clerestory unit there via the OIP, and then turn it to invisible. Turn it on once you make a 3D viewport so that it always shows up in that 3D view.

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Visit virtual downtown Cheney WA by way of SketchUp / Google Earth format!
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=a2719281744cd235a6b07619650f86c9&prevstart=0
Check out the alley view of the Odd Fellows Hall (3D rotate). Eeww. I joke, but only someone with a deep altruistic streak or a powerful love of their environment would spend this kind of time fleshing out their town and environs in such a unique way. That person is Ron Hall.

For those of you who aren’t Washingtonians, Cheney is a sleepy little college town in the wheat fields of Eastern Washington. The models shown are all created by Mr. Hall who has also made an impressive collection of E.W.U. buildings plus other Eastern Washington building collections.

Ron is an interesting guy. Golf course builder, advocate for cleaning up the Spokane River, urban planner+computer science combination Masters degree, GIS certified, MBA in finance/risk analysis from Wharton, not to mention his SketchUp skills which had Google flying him into Boulder Colorado in August for a two day conference where he was one of twenty “Super Modelers”. NNA would kill for that kind of passion--right?
Check this out:
http://cforjustice.org/2008/10/14/the-river-and-ron-hall/
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/txt/archive/?postID=4274
Nez Pierce Historic trail:
http://sites.google.com/site/nezpercehistorictrail/
Bill Gates’ high school building Bliss Hall
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=10b563904e5b7eb484bb00fee9a23237

Wow.

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NNA has produced several “Getting Started” PDF’s for Vwks 2010 which are available for download off their website. On the right hand side of the main page, click on Free Resources. Spotlight, Landmark, Fundamentals and Architect all have tutorial style How-to’s created. So far I’ve only read through the Architect guide but I’m impressed. In the past, NNA has tried to show too many whistles and bells. This one is worth your time, even if you are an experienced user, but especially if you are not. While the authors don’t take time to delve into the why’s of Z or Delta Z (See Vwks for Left Handers: 3D Tutorials), the guide none the less has plenty of info for new users working in 2D who might be interested in 3D.

Take a look at Page 16 on how Constrain Collinear works in keeping certain walls fixed in relation to each other, and, later a quick look at the Select Similar tool which looks like a magic wand providing a nice shortcut to having to use Custom Selection to select like-minded elements.

If you are interested in the authors, their blog can be found here:
http://klad.com/blog/
Worth checking out.

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DTM advice from the web:
Question:
I'm trying my first "real" DTM (doing it the real way and not just using the Loft Tool). I have a dwg of a site plan. The contour lines are in 3D, and each contour line is a symbol. Each symbol is made up of many, many 3D polys. It appears that each poly is a ca. 15" line - or a 3D poly w/ only 2 vertices.Do I have to get the 3D polys "out" of the symbols? Or trace over them?
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
michaelk

From Peter Cipes:
I personally find it easier to trace over, but others might have different opinions. Do the following: 1) On a new clean design layer, trace over each contour, using the POLYLINE tool, starting with the LOWEST and working to the HIGHEST elevation. 2) Select all of the 2d Polylines and run the menu command: MODIFY/CONVERT?CONVERT TO POLYGONS. 3) Select all the Polygons and run the menu command: AEC/SURVEY INPUT/ 2d POLY'S to 3d CONTOURS. During this process you will be given some choices, like the elevation interval between contours, etc. then, each of your 2d polygons will highlight, one at a time, starting with the first created, and then the next, etc, each time you click Next. When all of them have been converted you will be asked if you want to save the originals. If you do, put them on another layer (you may want them later...) 4) Select all the new 3d Contours (which are actually 3d Poly's) and change their fill to None (in the attributes palette). 5) With them still selected run the menu command:AEC/Terrain/Create Site Model. There are lots of choices here, all of which can be modified after creation, so don;t worry too much about every single one.

From Chad McNeely:
I'll say that I generally disagree with this method, since polyline to polygon conversion creates huge vertex counts, and I've never had any luck with the 2d polys to 3d polys (contours) saving me any time. I'd further avoid any conversion attempt of dwg imported geometry for the same "control my vertex count" reason, as well as the likelihood that there are overlaps and other faults that could be tough to troubleshoot.

Instead, I trace my survey info with 2d polygons so that I can control my vertex count. Only I know where I need tight spacing, or not. Vertex reduction has always been very important for DTM/Site Models. I generally throw in some 3d loci as well where I have point elevations that I need. Next, select all the 2d polygons and convert to 3d polygons, ungroup to get individuals, set fill to none, and then select and enter each z-height in the OIP. Check the look of the 3d poly and loci 'cloud' from an isometric view or two, rotate the view with the flyover tool to make sure nothing is missed or whacky (zero, or 100" high instead of 100', etc.), then run the create Site Model command.

Next, check the look of the Site Model in the format you need. It will likely look great in 2d (w/ 2009), but if you use any 3d format beside extruded contours, you'll likely have some dirt spilling over (or have some dirt washed out from under) your contours. After copying this into a fresh file and sending it to NNA as a bugsubmit, a few tricks to try to massage the result that sometimes work are to add additional (or trace existing) contours and convert them to site modifier "pads" (with a fence), adding some 3d loci, adding some 3d polygons, moving the existing 3d polygons just a smidge (check them in a iso view to make sure they didn't get moved to z=0), etc. Note site modifier "pads" do not need to be enclosed shapes- a line can be used even.

The DTM/Site Model tool has always been an almost great tool- they keep chipping away at the edges, but can't seem to get it to "just work".

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SketchUp on steroids?

Very cool video of a mechanical modeling program in action:
http://www2.spaceclaim.com/stream/video.aspx?v=transaxle.flv
Loved the narrator too.

If you enjoyed watching the above SpaceClaim vid’, take a look at this one produced by Siemens, makers of Solid Edge and authors of Parasolid; the 3D kernel VectorWorks is now almost entirely based on. Note that 3D animations occur about halfway in.
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/campaigns/breakthrough/

Can we see Vwks’ future? VectorWorks 2010 encompasses several features which seem to point the way. They are:
•Unified View
•3D snapping and working plane graphics
•Planar graphics (which might yield 3D text and dimensions eventually)
•Parametric constraints (locking relationships between various components)
•Wall sculpting

The decision by NNA to invest in Siemen’s Parasolid kernel could eventually extend the push-pull methods of Siemen’s Synchronous Technology into VectorWorks and thus bring forth a massive improvement to the user experience.

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More on Resource Libraries.
This from the NNA Listserve:

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post to the list and I was hoping to get some input from everyone.

I'm in a fairly new office of 8 people that is using VW2009 Architect. As such, there hasn't ever been a "symbol" or "resource" library (A "Favorite") established before, so the task is now mine. This library would have our custom hatches, custom symbols, our vectorscripts, etc. As it is a work in progress, it will be changing and growing for quite a while.

In VW2009's Preferences, I have found that one can specify "Workgroup and Project Folders" on a shared hard drive (our server), so I am planning on building a file there that has all of our custom resources, then pointing everyone's VW at it. The file that I am building would have all of our resources, available in the Resource Browser and divided up into folders wherever possible for easy sorting & locating. By having it as a shared file in a "Workgroup folder" any changes I make to it would be available to any user each time they restarted VW, so I wouldn't have to install the new additions/change on each machine individually.

Does this overall approach sound like a good way of setting such a shared resource? If not, what would you recommend?
If it does sound like a good way of doing such a thing, might you have any tips as I'm building this file?

Thanks!
-Neil

From Garrit Vanoppen:

Here's a few personal suggestions :

1. I would go for several Library files rather than one, so you can keep file size low enough to both work with and link to. Personally, I have a file for every type of Resources.
2. Find a good naming convention before you start adding all the resources. Symbol folders are a possible solution for symbols. Personally, as an overall solution, I have all of my Resource names to begin with numbers : this has proven to be a nice way to sort resources other than by alphabet, and the numeric codes refer to the Descriptive articles and the Bill of Materials.

From Julian Carr:

Here is what we tell our users:

1. Create a folder on the server (say "ACME Libraries") then within that folder, create some or all of the following directories:

+ACME Libraries
    +Templates <- store VW template files in here
    +Standards <- store VW standards files in here if any
    +Favorites <- store shortcuts to library files in here for the Resource Browser
    +Libraries
      +Defaults
        +Attributes - Gradients <- store VW gradient files in here
        +Attributes - Hatches <- store VW hatch files in here
        +Attributes - Image Fills <- store VW image fill files in here
        +....etc.

Not that files in the defaults folder populate the various menus and popups within Vectorworks such as the Attributes palette, texture tab in the Obj Info palette, etc. Utilise these in preference to adding the library as a Favorite file unless you prefer that workflow.

2. Remove only these folders from the user folder on each of the client machines:
    +Templates
    +Standards
    +Favorites
    +Libraries

Although most of these will get recreated, they will be empty. You can access the User Folder by going the Vectorworks Preferences/User Folders tab, then clicking the Explore button (Windows) or Reveal In Finder button (Mac) at top right.

3. Optionally, remove the files in these folders from the Vectorworks application folder on each of the client machines:
    +Templates
    +Standards

This will prevent the default USA Templates and Standards from appearing in the lists in Vectorworks. This suggestion is probably more appropriate for users outside the USA.

4. In Vectorworks Preferences/User Folders tab, click the Add button in the Workgroup and Project Folders section. Navigate to the ACME Libraries folder on the server and click Choose. Notice that once you add a workgroup folder, the Explore/Reveal In Finder button is available for that directory too. Quit and restart VW.

Now all these files will be read from the server instead of the local machine.

5. Note that if/when you create a new resource, you can locate it in the Resource Browser, right click on it, choose Export, then export the resource to the appropriate folder.

6. Note that with a system setup like this, if you disconnect a machine from the network (like a laptop), the it will obviously not have access to your library folder. In this case you can replicate the library folder in the user folder on those machines, though it will need discipline to keep them coordinated.

7. Do not be tempted to add the Workspace or Settings folders to the master library. These need to be unique on each computer and stay in the User Folder.

..............................................................

That’s it!

Thanks for reading and watching.

Tom

CONVERT TO LINES #37

2009-08-27T11:34:00.001-07:00

8/27/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• New free 3D videos
• Axio into Perspective
• Successful DTM’ing
• The history of VectorWorks
• New video from NNA
• CONfused about BIM?
• Vwks VS SketchUp
• Importing your own stuff
• Late breaking news on Snow Leopard (Mac OS) & Vwks 2009 compatability
• Healing oneself
.....................................

New free how-to videos have been uploaded to Viddler.com
http://www.viddler.com/search_detailed/?searchString=Video+for+left+handers

Last year, in response to writing these newsletters, I was asked if I couldn’t please illustrate my text-only explanations with pictures or videos of some kind. That winter, I began creating a series of videos designed for the newer user, the sole proprietor and those working in the residential, light construction market. Recently I’ve produced a couple of new videos plus rewritten others such that there is now a block of tutorials which gives the user an overview of 3D object creation and display via Viewports. Also explored is the creation of Design Layer Viewports and hybrid ways to control unwanted lines. The videos available are:

VectorWorks for Left Handers: 3D Tutorial Part 1
VectorWorks for Left Handers: 3D Tutorial Part 2
VectorWorks for Left Handers: 3D Tutorial Part 3
VectorWorks for Left Handers: Hidden Line Tutorial
VectorWorks for Left Handers: Viewports Tutorial
also
VectorWorks for Left Handers: Color and Texture
VectorWorks for Left Handers: Workspace Editing

I’ve called this group VectorWorks for Left Handers because I’ve felt for a long time that the process of creating layers and setting heights of the elements within those layers was easier than implied by the software itself as well as the online manual. I’d like to provide a left-of-center, right-brained approach to using this powerful software, a tool I find indispensable in my professional life.

There is no wrong way to use VectorWorks, in my opinion, only ways to be more effective and efficient in how you display your work. Conversely, there is no single right way to teach VectorWorks. I expect that others, having invested hard-won time in developing their own methods, will have important perspective to add to any discussion on technique or that advanced users may wish to look elsewhere for more focused help.

It has been my pleasure to create and provide these. I want to especially thank Steve Scaysbrook for his encouragement in my getting them uploaded to Viddler. Take a moment to view one of Steve’s videos here: http://www.viddler.com/explore/scays/videos/15/

........................................

The following was taken from the NNA Community Board ( I regret I did not record the author) and gives some methods for rotating a model from axiometric, which is the default Vwks projection, into perspective view.

Once you've rotated your model into an axo view (non-perspective) that you like,

- Go to the "Visualization" tool set, then:
- Get into perspective mode quickly by choosing the Walkthrough tool [Shift + U]. (But don't move the cursor around.)
- Now choose the Translate View tool [Shift + V]. You can slide the model around in the perspective window with it.

- While you are in the Translate View tool (in perspective), hold down the Alt/Option key. Now click and drag left and right, up and down.

- Alt/Option Drag LEFT moves the model into the distance.
- Alt/Option Drag RIGHT move the model closer.

- Alt/Option Drag DOWN increases the perpective effect.
- Alt/Option Drag UP decreases the perspective effect

- Dragging UP and DOWN changes the angle of the lens, controlling how dramatic your perspective is. Drag DOWN to widen the lens, making the perspective more dramatic.

- Dragging DOWN to increase the perspective effect also makes the model appear closer. Drag LEFT to decrese its size.

- Dragging UP decreases the perspective effect, but makes the model seem smaller. Drag RIGHT to increase its size.

To get out of perspective, go to View > Perspective > Orthogonal. If you do a lot of perspective, you'll want to use a shortcut for that.

For a shortcut out of a perspective view when on a Mac try using Command + 5 or Option + 0 or use, if you have a numeric key pad, simply press 0. On a PC use Ctrl + 5 or 0 on the numeric key pad. Note that the Camera tool gives much the same fine control—and then some. Escape from the Camera Tool view the same way.

Unsure of what axio means?

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/driesbachj/instructional%20stuff/axiometric%20demo.pdf

................................................................

Peter Cipes of Cipes Design, Ashland OR, gives a short but useful description of using the DTM or Digital Terrain Modelor in the NNA Community Board.

Try this in a new blank file:

1) Using the POLYLINE tool draw four or five (fictitious) contour lines
2) Select all of them
3) Run the menu command MODIFY/CONVERT/CONVERT TO POLYGONS
4) Select all of them
5) Run the menu command AEC/SURVEY INPUT/2d POLY'S to 3d CONTOURS. You will be given some choices in the dialog. Set the contour interval at 24" (2ft) then click NEXT at each highlighted Polygon. When finished you will be asked if you want to keep the originals. In this case (for demonstration) choose NO.
6) If you select each of the newly created 3d polygons you can look in the object info palette and will notice that they each have a "Z" value (ie: an elevation).
7) Select all of them and make sure sure that their FILL is set to NONE (in the attributes palette)
8) With them all selected run the menu command AEC/TERRIAN/CREATE SITE MODEL. You can either accept all of the default settings or make choices as desired. You can always go back later and change all of these so don't worry.

If you follow all of the above steps you should have your first (albeit very basic) Site Model.

Thanks, Peter!
Here is the link to the original post:

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=126106&gonew=1#UNREAD

If you’d like to follow a subset of this thread (DWG contours):

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=126853#Post126853

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Ever wonder about the history of VectorWorks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorworks

Scroll to the bottom for a timeline.

........................................

New video from NNA called Understanding the Object Info Palette, 11:52 minutes

Description- In this video we discuss the versatility of the object info palette along with the various editing options that you have available to you through the Object Info Palette. We will also explain why the OIP is the most important palette in Vectorworks.
.
For QT movie in downloadable format:

http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/Object_Info_Palette_QT.zip

For QT Movie in streaming format:

http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/Object_Info_Palette_QT/Object_Info_Palette_QT.html

Be sure to watch the discussion of Data Tab options.
......................................

Confused about BIM and NNA? Robert Anderson has provided links to a video that was made of a slide show he delivered recently.

http://www.bimfusion.com/video.php?user=BIMFusion&video_id=20

BIMfusion hosts Robert’s video plus others. If you take time to listen to the end you will see a description of how InteriorCAD—a cabinet builders tool—works on top of VectorWorks. Robert also says the following:

“We let him [the user] develop workflows that might be outside what we are telling him that he has to do. As long as he can solve his problems, that makes us happy.”

And that makes me happy too.

...................................................

Back to the Community Board yet again with this reference to an opinion on using SketchUp versus—or maybe with—VectorWorks.
Check out gmm18’s thoughts.

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=127561&gonew=1#UNREAD

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Jeffrey Ouellette of NNA posted the following process, taken from the Vwks manual, on how to make a library of your details which can then be imported into new drawings. I usually don’t simply cut and paste from the manual but here I thought isolating the text might be helpful.

How to Make a Library

Resources in Favorites
For quick access, the Resource Browser can store links to VectorWorks files that contain resources that you use frequently. You can then import resources from a Favorites file into any VectorWorks file and not have to search for the file again. Remove the link when the file is of no further use. Favorite files are remembered for future sessions.
Use the Files menu in the Resource Browser to create, use, and manage your Favorites list. Alternatively, add files (or aliases or shortcuts to the files) to the appropriate Favorites folder manually.
Making the Current File a Favorite
To make the current file a favorite:
In the Resource Browser, select Add Current to Favorites from the Files menu.
The file is added to the File list under Favorites.
The file must be saved to be added as a favorite.
Making an Unopened File a Favorite
To make an unopened file a favorite:
1. In the Resource Browser, select Add New Favorite Files from the Files menu.
The standard Open dialog box opens.
2. Select the file to make a favorite, and then click Open.
The file is added to the File list under Favorites.
The file must be saved in the same version of VectorWorks as the current file to be added as a favorite.
Multiple files can be selected and added as favorites at the same time; alternatively, press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Macintosh) to select all files at once.
Opening the Current Favorite
To open the current favorite:
1. In the Resource Browser, select the favorite file to open from the File list.
2. Select Open Current Favorite from the Files menu.
The file opens.
Importing a Resource from a Favorite
To import a resource from a favorite file:
1. In the Resource Browser, select the favorite file to access from the File list.
The file name is displayed as the current file in the File list, and its resources display in the resource window.
2. Select the desired resource from the resource display window. To import the resource for future use, select Import from the Resources menu. To use the resource immediately, double-click it to activate it, or select Apply or Make Active, if applicable, from the Resources menu. (Alternatively, drag the resource onto an object or to a location in the current file.)
Once the resource is placed or applied in the drawing, it is added to the Resource Browser for the current file.
Multiple resources can be selected and imported at the same time.
Refreshing Favorites from Disk
To update the resources from all favorite files:
In the Resource Browser, select Refresh Favorites from Disk from the Files menu.
All current favorite files are reloaded into the Resource Browser, to reflect any changes that occurred since they were loaded when this VectorWorks session began.
Revealing the Location of the Current Favorite
To reveal the location of a favorite file:
1. In the Resource Browser, select the favorite file to reveal from the File list.
The file name is displayed as the current file in the File list, and its resources display in the resource window.
2. Select Reveal Current Favorite from the Files menu.
Either Windows Explorer or Macintosh Finder opens to the folder that contains the file.
Removing Favorites
To remove a single favorite file:
1. In the Resource Browser, select the favorite file to delete from the File list.
2. Select Remove Current Favorite from the Files menu.
The file is removed from the Favorites list.
To remove all favorite files:
1. In the Resource Browser, select Remove All Favorites from the Files menu.
A confirmation dialog box opens.
2. Click Yes to remove all favorites.
All favorite files are removed from the Favorites list.
Adding a Favorite Manually
To create a favorite manually (not through the Resource Browser):
1. Place the file that you want to appear on the Favorites list (or a shortcut or alias that points to the file) in one of the following folders.
Favorites Folder

[User]/Libraries/Favorites
[Workgroup]/Libraries/Favorites

The file appears in the Favorites list of any user who has the workgroup folder set up in VectorWorks preferences
The file is added to the File list under Favorites.
2. In the Resource Browser, select Refresh Favorites from Disk from the Files menu.
Only files that are in your user Favorites folder can be removed with the commands in the Resource Browser. (See User Folders Preferences for more information.) Files that were placed in a workgroup Favorites folder must be removed manually.

You can read the above on page 148, in the Vwks 2008 Fundamentals manual or find the same online here:

file:///Applications/Vectorworks%202009/VWHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

Scroll down to Resources in Favorites

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Technical Bulletin
Vectorworks 2009 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v.10.6) Stability Concerns

As many of you know, Apple will be releasing Snow Leopard on August 28,2009. And as many of our customers work on a Mac platform, the release of Snow Leopard naturally brings up questions of compatibility.

Understanding that for the majority of our customer base, our software is a key component of their work flow, our CTO, Dr. Biplab Sarkar, does not
recommend running Vectorworks 2009 (Service Pack 4 or earlier) on Snow Leopard at this point in time. Dr. Sarkar and his team are already in process, developing a version of Vectorworks 2009 that will be fully
compatible with Snow Leopard and free to all Vectorworks 2009 users. Expect
to hear notice of this version availability in early November, 2009. And, if
you?re not already subscribed to our monthly e-Dispatch newsletter, please
subscribe now so that you?ll get the announcement.
http://www.nemetschek.net/community/edisp_subscribe.php

For those customers with software versions earlier than Vectorworks 2009,
please note we do not have plans to update these older versions to support
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v.10.6).

Thank you for your understanding and patience. If you wish to read a more
detailed technical explanation of the current stability issues with Snow
Leopard, you?ll find that information on our ever-growing Vectorworks
Knowledge Base site: http://cli.gs/JrsNtD If you wish to be kept abreast of
all our latest updates on the Vectorworks Knowledge Base, you can subscribe
to the feed of new posts there.

Respectfully,

Juan Almansa
Product Support Manager
Nemetschek North America, Inc.
T 410-290-5114
D 443-542-0716
S jalmansamd
E jalmansa@vectorworks.net

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The ecomonic downturn globally and nationally has taken momentum out of most markets, CAD especially. I liken the effect on the user community to an injury of some kind, the type that takes a while to recover from both physically and mentally. We’ve lost our momentum too, and some of our joy, as we hunker down to get through this difficult period.

The one thing that we can do for ourselves, as our doctors have been prescribing, is to retrain, to get up and excercise, to strengthen and stretch and get back to where we were, fully engaged and invested in our work and our lives. If you’ve had an accident or an operation you know how hard it is to get out of bed or off the couch. I won’t discount your struggle. But having gone through such a recovery, I know that it will work out, and the sooner you heal yourself, as much as you can, the happier you will be.

The markets will come back, the work will come back, along with the joy and a willingness to invest time in making yourself better in all ways.

Thanks for reading.

Tom

Convert to Lines #36

2009-04-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

4/26/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest Vectorworks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• New video from VectorWorks for Left Handers
• Sort of new videos from NNA
• Bits and pieces
.....................................

Everyone:
I’ve been on a breakneck pace since December getting out newsletters and how-to videos and I’m going to go light on the writing this month and focus on making a how-to video on adding colors and textures to 3D objects. Called Color and Texture, it is 17 minutes long and 48 MB in size. Fundamentals users may lack the texture libraries shown in this tutorial.

I will place this video in my public folder which contains several others. It can be found at: http://public.me.com/tomgreggs
You will be presented with a dialog box into which you should type the following:
Account: public
Password: vector
Click on the little down-pointing arrow at the end of the file row to begin the transfer.

I’m really pleased with the transition from the all-text nature of my newsletters to text-plus-video. Video clearly communicates that Vwks can be useful right out of the box provided there is a little help from your friends.

I’m happy to add a small bit of learning material to what is available to you from other, more established sources. You get what you pay for and that’s no lie. But it is equally true that the best things in life are free. Enjoy!
.........................................

You’ve already had a chance to see the DWG tutorial video which was listed on the last NNA eDispatch newsletter. If you missed it, here is the URL:
http://download4.nemetschek.net/movies/usergroup/file_DWG_in_out.mov
Also available from NNA is a video on sustainable design:
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2009/SustainableVW-video.mov
Coming up from NNA:
Late April: Photorealistic Rendering
How and when to use HDRI, Final Gather and Radiosity to achieve superior rendering results.

Late May: Architectural Modeling
How 3D modeling tools like “Loft Surface” and “Create Contours” can help when designing organic 3D architectural shapes.

Late June: Key Elements with the Vectorworks Interface
How different palettes and menus like “OIP (Object Info Palette)”, “Resource Browser” and “The View Bar menu” can help on your day-to-day design process.

............................................

Here’s a new Vwks blog to bookmark:
www.vectorshpere.wordpress.com
The author, Brian J. Poole, or BJP, is a long time user of Vwks, is enthusiastic and has provided a solid place for community and for learning. Check it out.
See his very nice work on his website too
...............................................

Last time I talked a little about printers. Pam Lund wrote to tell me that she uses an HP 500 N photocopier. She draws at 1/16”=1’ and then enlarges 200% to get to 1/8” scale.

................................................

That’s it! Hope you enjoy the video.

Tom Greggs

Convert to Lines #35

2009-03-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

Scroll down to read past newsletters
To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• No User Group meeting in March
• New NNA video tutorial (it’s a good’un)
• ANOTHER (!!!) video tutorial available from VectorWorks for Left Handers
• Cheap printing
• Misc. tips

....................................

There will be no meeting for the month of March. The good news is that the Wood Construction Center will remain at its current location and, I assume, continue to be available for us for future user group meetings. I made mention of interest in having someone step into the role of user group leader. So far, no takers. Let me know if you have an inkling of interest.

[The Urban Dictionary defines “inkling”, in its second definition, as “A small angry man or dwarf that runs through public areas kicking people in the shin.”]

....................................

Here is a link to NNA’s latest video tutorial, made especially for the User Groups, on “Using Spotlight in Exhibit Design.”
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/Creating_an_Exhibit_Design.mov
This is a splendid tutorial that should be seen by anyone using or about to use VectorWorks because it shows a relatively simple project that delivers a lot of bang for the effort. The renderings created in a very short time look great. This is the kind of enabling from NNA I like to see.
Spotlight using Lighting designers may also be interested in this URL of a review of Spotlight:
http://livedesignonline.com/gear/lighting/0311-vectorworks-2009-program-review/

Lastly, the latest Dispatch has a great little tutorial on how to take a jpg or other image file and turn it into wall art, including the picture frame. This video builds on the core of the Exhibit Design tutorial:
http://download2.nemetschek.net/TechTips/3D_Painting_VTT/3D_Painting_VTT.html

.....................................

Not to be outdone, I’ve created my second beginners video, called Preferences Tutorial, which can be downloaded same as earlier ones by following the directions below. This tutorial is intended to give the new user a base for starting out and is not an exhaustive definition of all pref’s and their actions and consequences.

Not yet created will be a second basic tutorial covering use of the 2D tools. It is my hope that, together, these two, along with the 3D tutorial, will be a helpful introductory trio for any new user and/or the more experienced upgrader.

To lock these preferences in, be sure to make a template of your file for future projects. To make a template, go to File > Save As Template.

Download the Preferences Tutorial.mov.zip from here (107 MB, about 28 minutes):
http://public.me.com/tomgreggs
You will be presented with a dialog box into which you should type the following:
Account: public
Password: vector

Click on the little down-pointing arrow at the end of the file row to begin the transfer.

Also within the Public folder is an advanced tutorial called Hidden Line Editing plus a Read Me, another tutorial on Workspace Editing along with a Vwks 2009 version of keyboard shortcuts (VWKeyboardShortcuts.pdf), a shorthand version of frequently used commands (Tom’s Keyboard Shortcuts.pdf) and a copy of an edited workspace (Tom’s Architect Wkspace.zip).

The latest Quicktime player can be had at www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

....................................

There has been some discussion lately on the NNA Listserv concerning best laser type printers. Several posters suggested that you could save money both in the cost of the printer and in the cost of consumables by printing using a large format photocopier set to 50% the size of your sheet scale. This assumes you would eventually send full sized PDF’s out for final printing somewhere.

The best bang for the buck seemed to recommend a used HP Laserjet 5000 N and 12 x 18 paper. The N designates the addition of a JetDirect print server which allows printing in a workgroup setting but also connects single machines, Macs in particular, through their ethernet ports or ports on a router. Here are two resellers:
http://www.printertechs.com/printer/refurbished-hp-laserjet-5000.php
http://www.dolphininc.net/
These are about $500 refurbished and will print 11 x 17 and 12 x 18 when hand-fed. If you draw typically in Arch D size on 24 x 36 paper at 1/4” per foot, you can switch to A1 (23.4”x33.1”) as your preferred sheet size and then print to the HP 5000 using a 50% reduction which should print an accurate sheet at 1/8” per foot onto 12 x 18 paper. Use this process to proof your drawings, then send out your PDF’s for final printing. Make sure the printer has A1 paper in stock.
HP 5000 N manuals here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&lang=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=101&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=25473
Dan Belfiori, posting to my questions about the HP 5000 on the NNA Listserv, said that he’d originally started scaling half sized sheets per the above process but found that staying with 11 x17 sheets meant that paper fed more easily and was more readily accessible even though the reduction process meant that to fit the image from 24 x 36 onto 11 x 17 sheets, the percentage dropped to about 46% and thus was no longer reliably scalable to 1/8” per foot. He said he finds that scaling in his work has not been much of a factor and when it has been important, he adds a scale bar. He also suggests looking at other 11 x17 printers such as the 5100, 8000 and 8500.

...........................

Miscellaneous bits:
• For those looking for a schematic showing how one might set up a filing structure for a multi-user environment:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=119565&gonew=1#UNREAD
From the Community Board. Scroll down until you see the post from highpass showing an attachment (PDF) labeled as Drawing Tools.

• Speaking of multi-users, the NNA Community Board has added a folder to serve the same and it has only been in service since November of ‘08. There is an interesting thread there on how to set up to serve several:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=113450&gonew=1#UNREAD

• Xfrog is a group that has provided 2D and 3D plants for Vwks Architect and Landmark. Take a look at this lushly rendered landscape from their Gallery:
http://www.xfrog.com/4images/details.php?image_id=436&mode=search
Click on Top Images to see more.

Here’s a link to their For Sale libraries:
http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/products/productStart.htm

• Are you finding that Section Viewports need more editing than the tool allows? If drawing over your section in Annotations is less than fulfilling, and you don’t need an updatable template as described in my Hidden Line Editing video tutorial, take a look at this nice description of a simple process that will break your Section Viewport into editable parts. By Pat Stanford.
http://aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2006/issue7-vectorworks.html

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That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
Seattle

Convert to Lines #34

2009-02-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

2/14/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest Vectorworks users.

To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• No User Group meeting in February. Thoughts on the future.
• Viewing drawings through an AutoCAD lens
• New 3D tutorial movie available from Vectorworks for Left Handers
• New plant tutorial movie available from NNA
• Misc. tips
• What is VectorWorks for Left Handers?
....................................

There will be no meeting for the month of February.
Our traditional meeting place at Seattle Central may be going away. Word has it that the Wood Construction Center will be moved south to Georgetown for Fall Quarter. I’d like some feedback from the group. Where should we meet? Should we continue to meet? Is there an individual that would like to head up the User Group or cooperate with me in some fashion? The net has provided a super convenient place for us to learn at our own time and place. None the less, face-to-face sharing/learning is the most powerful process yet invented.
Let me know your thoughts.

....................................

For those that exchange drawings with AutoCAD people, it would be great if you could preview your drawings IN AutoCAD prior to pushing the Send button. Here is a link to a discussion on where to go/how to go about this:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=116962#Post116962

The AutoCAD viewer DWG TrueView 2009 is available here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6703438%26siteID=123112

While this viewer only works on Windows, I loaded it onto the Windows XP partition on my Mac (Intel chipset, Boot Camp) and it worked great. I discovered that my Windows partition didn’t have the same fonts as my Mac side so a default font was subbed which changed the font spacing. Of course, this is exactly what happens to exchanged drawings much of the time so seeing it firsthand gave me motivation to work this out in advance with the party on the receiving end.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

One of the last posts on the Tech Board (now called the Community Board) was from me providing a link to my Hidden Lines video tutorial which may give some users a more predicable outcome in translating files from Vwks to AutoCAD via DWG, DXF, etc. If you trade files regularly and have had problems, the video provides a means to simplify the export.

.....................................

What’s the best way to set up layers to show your 3D model? Below is a Community Board thread worth reading. I chimed in with a half-baked reply to the thread, got slapped down, got up and revised my original post:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=116855#Post116855

After thinking about the process a bit more, I sat down and created a new video tutorial on how to assemble layers bearing 3D elements by presetting Z heights--or not--to show the model correctly. The tutorial is designed for the beginner or the user who hasn’t yet leapt into Vwks 3D. I've placed it in my Public folder which can be accessed and the video downloaded.

Download the 3D Tutorial.mov.zip from here (64 MB, about 23 minutes):
http://public.me.com/tomgreggs
You will be presented with a dialog box into which you should type the following:
Account: public
Password: vector

Click on the little down-pointing arrow at the end of the file row to begin the transfer.

Already existing in the Public folder is an advanced tutorial called Hidden Line Editing linked to a Read Me, another tutorial on Workspace Editing along with a Vwks 2009 version of keyboard shortcuts (VWKeyboardShortcuts.pdf), a shorthand version of frequently used commands (Tom’s Keyboard Shortcuts.pdf) and a copy of an edited workspace (Tom’s Architect Wkspace.zip).

The latest Quicktime player can be had at www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

....................................

NNA has produced a new tutorial for Landmark users called “Using the Plant Database”
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/VW_Plant_Database.mov
It’s about 17 minutes long. It should begin to play immediately assuming you have a video player that can handle .mov files.

....................................

• In the last few newsletters, I’ve talked a lot about creating Viewports which are then sent back to reside on a Design Layer (DLVP’s). Here is a link to a help file within Vwks 2009 that presents the official viewpoint and process: file:///Applications/Vectorworks%202009/VWHelp/Vectorworks%20Design%20Series/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#context=Vectorworks_Design_Series&file=01_Standards.3.7.html

The properties of DLVP’s are:
file:///Applications/Vectorworks%202009/VWHelp/Vectorworks%20Design%20Series/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#context=Vectorworks_Design_Series&file=01_Standards.3.7.html

• VectorWorks 2009 can import Sketchup 6 models but not their textures. You get the shape but not the colors. Booo.

• Cool way to bury product information within your drawing or model:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=116173#Post116173

• Reasons to upgrade from Vwks Fundamentals to Designer #744:
There is a centerline stamp tool available in Designer that gives you FOUR different styles of C over L to choose from. Whatever mood I’m in, I’ve got a centerline stamp to fit!

....................................

What is VectorWorks for Left Handers? And why, with a product as advanced as VectorWorks, now in its thirteenth or fourteenth version, would there be any room at all for another fool offering how-to help? The last paper manual, VectorWorks 2008 Fundamentals, is over seven hundred pages long. NNA contracts with the Canadian company Resolve, to write how-to books, create Learning CD’s, and tour the country teaching Vwks. There’s the Quick Start Guide, the Getting Started guides, the Video Library, the Building Overviews, and of course, the e-manuals, Fundamentals and Design Series which replaced the paper manuals, and are now found under Help/VectorWorks Help.

In their way, each contributes knowledge but does not equip you, in my opinion, with the understanding needed to get useful work produced as soon as possible. Let's call "soon as possible" learning Just In Time learning. The e-manuals, while mercifully rewritten from the paper version, can’t be grabbed from the shelf on a whim and taken to the kitchen table to scan for anything that might catch the eye and as a result, serendipity has been dealt a blow. By their nature, the manuals address the entire enchilada, as it were. There is no official path to Just In Time learning but there could be; witness the Sketchup tutorials, for instance.

So VectorWorks for Left Handers is intended to live in the gaps; to fit between the manuals written by others, not intending to compete with but rather offer a process intended to get you up and running as quickly as possible. Toward that end, I’ve taken the first steps by setting up a Public folder and creating 3D Tutorial. I hope to soon add another based on using the 2D tools. With this modest start, the groundwork will have been laid for offering a VectorWorks beginner a most basic understanding of tools and framework for assembly of his or her first 3D model, no charge.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
Seattle

Convert to Lines #33

2009-01-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

1/7/09
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest Vectorworks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• The January meeting time and place
• New movies available from Vectorworks for Left Handers
• Presentation topics for the quarter from NNA
•Jonathan Pickup offers limited free online access to his NZ User Group
• Simple explanation of Design Layers, Viewports, etc.
• Misc. thoughts, references
• How Vectorworks thinks you think

.....................................

Greetings VectorWorks users! Join us Thursday, January 22nd, 6:30 to 8:30 PM for the first User Group meeting of the new year. We’re going to be showing how to use DLVP’s in VW 2009 to bring in details of surveys or existing structures into our plans in a way that keeps things simple. We’ll also want to share your ideas with the group and help with any questions you might have. I’ll have free calendars from NNA if you missed the party in early December. Great space, great food, by the way. Thanks to all of you who came and added to the happy mood despite the weather and the concerns of the economy.

Our meeting will take place 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.

....................................

I’ve created a movie called Hidden Line Editing which describes how to derive easily edited lines from a model for the purpose of creating hidden line elevations. It is intended to be a more visual description of the process I’d originally laid out in text form in the last Convert to Lines #32. The original process of converting a model to lines is not new. What is new is the method described that sends a snapshot of an assembled model back to the Design Layers for the converting process which provides a LIVE MODEL as a template so that when changes are made, the model can be easily reconverted or edited. In other words, the Design Layer Viewport of your model automatically updates as your design changes and so the Convert Copy to Lines process, which was once static, becomes dynamic.

There is also a companion process for sending rendered images of the model (Bitmap Render) to layers holding linework such that composite images of renderings be combined with lines.

This process works for Version 2008 forward through Version 2009.

The movie has something to offer new users as well as advanced. It’s a long video of almost 24 minutes and a correspondingly large download. I apologize for that, however it is fully packed with comment and visual technique and is free.

In the coming months I intend to add more movies designed for the newer user. This group will be called Vectorworks for Left Handers and will take a more right-brained approach to learning Vectorworks and thus, hopefully, be a little less sequential, a little more intuitive, will focus on looking at the whole instead of a collection of parts.

Viewing the movie using Windows requires downloading Apple’s Quicktime plugin.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

To access the movie go to
http://public.me.com/tomgreggs
Account: public
Password: vector

Click on the little down-pointing arrow at the end of the file row to begin the transfer. The Read Me is largely a summation of the above. Feel free to ignore it.

Also within the Public folder is a second tutorial on Workspace Editing along with a Vwks 2009 version of keyboard shortcuts (VWKeyboardShortcuts.pdf), a shorthand version of frequently used commands (Tom’s Keyboard Shortcuts.pdf) and a copy of an edited workspace (Tom’s Architect Wkspace.zip). All is explained within the tutorial.

Lastly, I’ve written a bit of background at the end of this newsletter, if you have the time.

....................................

NNA continues to supply the user groups with videos. January’s will be on using Landmark in Vwks 2009. February brings a review of Spotlight. March focuses on Architect. I will forward these links to you as soon as they come in.

....................................

Jonathan Pickup is offering limited free seating to those that wish to sample his online user group training sessions.
http://ical.mac.com/WebObjects/iCal.woa/wa/default?d=7&u=jpickup1&v=1&y=2008&m=11&n=User%20Group.ics
Click on a class and email him to check on availability.
To read about his user group:
http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/join_nz.php
Also check out Pickup’s short but free movies on YouTube. Google Vectorworks to see his list of available videos.

He has also put the content of each months tutorial into a pdf downloadable for a fee. Want something explaining how to use the site modeling tools? For $16.50 you can drive it off the lot.
http://www.archoncad.com/electronic-manuals.html

...................................

From the Vectorworks Listserv, James Wiley asks:
“Here's a question from a beginning VW user: Can someone
offer a simple description of how Design Layers, Saved Views,
Viewports, and Sheet Layers are related and used to create a single
finished drawing?”

Dave @ cowcreekroad replies:
“Very, very simply:
Design layers are like (3 dimensional) tracing paper. They stack on
top of each other vertically. They contain the objects in your drawings.

A saved view is a script that allows you to specify a group of layers
and objects in specific classes, that can be seen and worked with.
When you call up a saved view, you are returning to a known state.
Look at it as sort of a bookmark.

A Viewport is a snapshot of your drawing, showing particular layers,
and objects in specific classes. It's only a picture. You can't work
directly with the objects shown in a Viewport.

A Sheet layer is the virtual piece of paper on which you arrange
Viewports.”

...................................

Vectorworks Misc.:

•The quality of the 2009 Learning Series CD’s by Resolve is quite high, in my opinion. Most important is their process of laying out and executing a task with a common goal in mind. Too often, tutorials were created in which every possible option was included which led to brain overload. Or, the language was Engineer-speak which is not native to a great many of us. Especially helpful was the Rendering Learning disk. Highly recommended.

•Custom Renderworks and Custom Radiosity has a Shadow Mapped rendering option as well as one for Ray Traced shadows. The latter offers sharp edged shadows while the former produces those that are softer edged. If you are generating HDRI views with the cloudy option on, use the Shadow Mapped style to better depict soft shadows from a shaded sun.
If you render an HDMI image, you can export it as a High Dynamic Image (HDMI) into Photoshop in order to protect against banding or other loss of fine detail.

• If you are using or tempted to experiment with HDRI backgrounds, here is a site with free sky views:
http://www.evermotion.org/index.php?unfold_exclusive=84&unfold=exclusive
Not sure what I’m talking about? Check this out this simple structure by Billtheia:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/Attachments//1730.jpg

• When rendering your large, fully textured models, test them first using low render settings. Set dpi from 40 to 72, Shadows set to Low. Then, once you are happy in general with the model, set the options high (not Highest) to create the best look for printing or exporting.

•3d solar collectors importable into Vwks can be found on the Google 3d Warehouse site under Velux>Velux Skylights>photovoltaic panel.

•The NNA website has been reorganized with the Tech Board renamed and moved to Community>Community Board. Also look at the new tutorials under Training>Free Resources. If you are unfamiliar with the Community Board, check it out. Lots of good
topics and a great way to learn from the generous contributions of expert users.

• In the movie Hidden Line Editing I describe the Boomerang tool which allows one to pan. You may find that simply holding down the scroll button of your mouse makes panning even easier since it eliminates use of the space bar. Be sure to check Mouse Wheel Zoom under Vectorworks Preferences. Other ways to move about include using the wheel for zooming in and out, using the option key plus wheel to scroll up or down and using the shift key plus wheel to scroll left or right.

• More DLVP ideas. You can drag a poly around an existing area slated for demolition and make a Design Layer Viewport of it. The opacity of the DLVP can be set be editing the layer via the Layers tab of the Navigation palette. Objects within the DLVP can register snaps so setting dimensions to walls and other objects is possible. This process also works when you want to display an existing, adjacent area. Create a new layer for the existing portion, then DLVP it (now its a verb) to the layer containing the adjacent new work. Previously this would have had to be controlled through class visibility settings. This tip comes from the NNA Community Board (I apologize for losing the name of the contributor).

• Pat Stanford, in his and Dan Jansenson’s December ‘08 PodCAD Podcast, mentions a small detail within Vwks 2009 that has to do with the accent colors that show up as light ghostly edging and backlighting on objects drawn and objects moused over. They may show the same colors in your stock settings but ideally, the object you’ve just drawn should have a different color than any adjacent object which your cursor happens to pass over. Go to Vwks Preferences, Interactive and click on the button marked Interactive Appearance Settings. Change the color of the choice marked Object Highlighting - Active Layer to be different from Object Highlighting - PreSelection - Active Layer. While you’re in there, make the borders (Size) wider so that you see a glow around the selected object. Change opacity as you see fit.

The (new) Vwks Help page for Object Highlighting brings a bit of clarity to an otherwise confusing maze of color options. Type ‘Configuring Interactive Display’ into the Vectorworks Help search box.

..................................................

Understanding concepts of how we learn and how we organize ourselves may help bring clarity in your ongoing effort to master Vectorworks. Standing back and looking out across some decades of experience, it seems to me that, perhaps obviously, from chaos comes order. We move from the dynamic toward the static, from the flexible toward the inflexible, from a world of fewer rules toward one of more rules. This evolution is present in each and every part of life, from how I get dressed in the morning to the way in which design projects are resolved into finished plansets. But neither order nor chaos is the end goal. More important is the movement of both; one into the other, then back again.

Just like the spectrum above, people learn in very different ways . Vectorworks, I would contend, supports those who enjoy learning in a strictly ordered environment as well as those who, like myself, thrive in a more chaotic place where rules are meant to be bent or broken, where tools and processes are mixed round and around until meaning emerges. Parts of Vectorworks are decidedly left brained. The Setup process comes to mind, for instance. But happily for me, Vectorworks provides a lot of elbow room, where, if one route seems blocked, another can usually be found, and this is the genius buried in its DNA.

The left brained and the right brained can cooperate and even thrive if we view the other as not being wrong in how we essentially view the world; in how we learn, and how we structure ourselves and ultimately our drawings. There is a precedence for this, one advanced by some in the business community. It’s a process called “both/and” thinking where each of the two parties can be right. They contend we’re not in an “either/or” world where black and white, yes and no, win or lose is the only outcome.

The point here is that we need to stick together, to work together, to accept each other and to cherish the energy and ideas each bring to the 3d table. That’s where the growth can be found, both in our personal lives, and in the bottom line at NNA.

If you are interested in reading more on “and/or” thinking:
http://www.hodu.com/either-or.shtml
Brain handedness:
http://www.funderstanding.com/content/right-brain-vs-left-brain

.................................................

That’s a wrap. Thanks for reading and for watching the movies (!) too.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
Seattle

Convert to Lines #32

2008-11-29T18:14:00.001-08:00

11/29/08
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
To contact me, please write to tomgreggs@comcast.net or call (206) 524-2808

In this issue:
• NNA (still) coming to demo Version ‘09
• New movie for User Group members
• Getting to converted line drawings while using Stack Layers
• Making promotional materials
• Misc. cautions, etc.

No meeting for December as usual but I had more than a few things to talk about so I’m getting this letter out hoping to have a running start when we return in late January. By then I hope to have a few hours under my belt using Version ‘09 which is due to arrive any day now.

............

Still time to register for the free demo of Vectorworks 2009, to be held December 11th, on Thursday evening, downtown Seattle. Please pass this on to anyone you know who uses Vectorworks. Thanks!
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/209798513

...........

We have a new movie provided by NNA for user group members.
Francois Levy, leader of the Austin Texas Vw User Group, has created a movie that shows how he uses the power of Vectorworks to design in 3d, then display model information throughout his plans. Levy has evolved a sophisticated approach to plan development. I think you’ll enjoy seeing him employ those processes.
http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/user_group/Levy_Bim_small_project.mov

............

The following describes how to use Stack Layers to rapidly get four exterior hidden line views of your model, placed on new layers, rendered and converted to lines for ease of editing.

Reconciling old and new technologies within your Vectorworks workflow is a normal part of learning and advancing but can sometimes be a challenge when a technique you’ve used in creating drawings disappears. The direction we’ve gotten from NNA is that we should be using Stack Layers, along with Viewport Sections, to display our models. This is a natural evolution as new ways are developed to show information but as a result of this transition, we find tools such as Create Layer Link and Model View tool left off the main menus and sent into the Legacy folder. And yet there isn’t an official method—no developed alternative—for getting to the benefits of a traditional model-on-design layer using Stack Layers. For me, a big benefit of the past has been ease of converting a model into editable lines.

Stack Layers has become a key part of my drawing process and there is real advantage to seeing your model all at once while being able to isolate layers to correct various issues, usually related to textures or fills; errors that typically show up during rendering. Many of you have embraced Stack Layers and not looked back. When you’ve needed to edit-over unfinished or unwanted lines, you do it in Annotations mode after making a viewport of a model view. I find in my own drawings I do quite a bit of reworking of viewports, both adding lines, revising weights, or adding details, frequently because pushing the 3d model toward total completion didn’t seem practical at the time. These days I use Stack Layers to make viewport-based elevations of my drawing, typically in Hidden Line style, and I stay with these as long as possible, taking advantage of automatic updating of layers since projects change over time. But ultimately I want to convert my model to lines so editing is easier, really, much easier than staying solely with Stack Layers based viewports.

To start, assemble your Stack Layers model in the regular way by turning to visible any design layers holding 3d info. (Tip: indent the name of each 3d-holding layer by three spaces to ease finding them on your Layers list, then bunch them together). Make a viewport and send it not to a Sheet, but to a Design Layer. This is called a DLVP. Note that from this single DLVP you can rotate the model contained within to any view. Set your model to a side view, render in Hidden Line, then Convert Copy to Lines. Send the converted lines, using the OIP (or Object Info palette) to a new design layer we’ll name “Elevations”. From there it can be ungrouped and edited.

BONUS TECHNIQUE: before you render a second view, but after having sent your lines to the Elevations layer, select the Render Bitmap tool from the floating palettes (look at the Visualization palette sporting the light bulb and select the teapot icon) and drag it over the elevation such that it creates a full color image, perhaps using Custom Renderworks, which can be chosen from the Render Bitmap Options palette. Send this image to your Elevations layer and it will fall exactly atop the rendered lines. Obviously, we’ll want to send the full color rendering to the back so that the lines sit up front, accenting and highlighting the colored image. Repeat this process for the other three elevations but do the bitmap render first and the hidden lines second which places them in the correct order.

Make a viewport of each elevation, either of the line work alone from Hidden Lines rendering, or a composite including the Bitmap renderings.

From here you can annotate each elevation viewport, organize them on sheets and eventually print. If your model changes later, you can redo the bitmap render and replace the old with the new rendering. Same with the Hidden Line rendering. Having made a viewport of the line work from each face of the model, if the model changes you can turn the DLVP to visible, set it to match the original orientation, and rework your lines, assuming that the changes are small. If the changes are big, re-render as Hidden Line and Convert Copy to Lines again.

I found, in editing lines placed over a fully rendered model, that the result looked really good but there were many lines I didn’t want, lines that cluttered, rather than aided clarity. Among these:
•Muntin bar lines
•cable railing lines
•lines from objects with a heavy polygon count (people)

These can all be hand-edited out. With a little advance planning, you could class your cables and turn that class off prior to beginning Hidden Line rendering. I removed the image of the person from my line drawing by doing just that, since, with its high poly count, it rendered out as nearly all black. I turned that class back ON when rendering with Custom Renderworks, going into the dead lines VP and removing background lines that now overlaid and obscured my figure. The muntin bars can’t be controlled by class so manual removal is the only option.

If you use the Render Bitmap tool, be sure to set your dpi high, perhaps to 300, via the Render Bitmap Options palette found in the upper left hand corner of the Mode bar once the tool has been activated. Also, make sure you Edit the final Sheet layers to also show a 300 dpi setting.

More tips:
•DLVP’s can be duplicated.
•In assembling my 3d-containing design layers, using Stack Layers, into something usable, I will often employ the Camera tool to place a 3d loci into one of my 3d layers which can then be activated via the OIP or by clicking on the camera angle icon to generate a perspective view. If you find that your DLVP of a perspective view has lost its position and is now in Top View, go to the layer holding the camera loci (don’t forget which one) and dbl. click it. Now click on your DLVP. The correct setting should return. If you forget which layer you’ve placed the camera loci on, you can easily find it by using the Visualization palette and clicking on the camera reference which will restore the orientation.
•When you do a Convert Copy to Lines and send those lines to a new layer, an odd condition can occur when the receiving layer inherits the same 3d orientation of the original layer but the converted lines no longer contain 3d information. Hit Command 5 or Control 5 (or Top/Plan View) and your converted lines will appear.
•You have quite a bit of control of lighting using Custom Renderworks. In Custom Renderworks Options, look under the Adjust Lighting tab as well as under the Rendering tab.
•When using the Render Bitmap tool on a Stack Layers model, the bitmap will be created BEHIND the model and you won’t be able to see it. Turn off Stack Layers after the rendering is finished. You’ll see it then and be able to route it to the appropriate layer. This behavior doesn’t happen on a DLVP. If you render a few times in this fashion and know that the image is still selected, then just send it on to the appropriate layer.
•Add “DLVP” as a prefix to the front of any design layer containing a DLVP to help you recognize its unique status.
•There are two palettes within Vw named Visualization. OOPS, in my opinion. There is the tear-off palette containing a host of tools. There is also the palette available via the main menu under Window > Palettes that holds instances of light objects and camera views.

In the future, I’d love to be able to edit my viewports by reaching into the model, shift-selecting to hide lines or otherwise modify, ideally by using a keyboard command. Workarounds, such as I’ve described above, are no fun. And feature-envey is no fun either when you find a competing CAD app has just added the very tool you want. From the Sketchup 7 web site: “Right-click on any placed SketchUp model and choose Explode. Depending on how it was rendered, you'll get vector lines, raster images, or a combination of both. It's the easiest way to get vector geometry to edit directly, hands-down.”

Ok, NNA, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Everything old is new again!

I’d like to thank Kevin Keys for input on this topic and for Matt Panzer for starting the thread on the NNA Listserv. Any mistakes or misrepresentations in the above discussion are entirely mine.

............

Use Vectorworks to make your promotional materials. I created a job sampler recently which consisted of six projects. Four featured fully rendered perspective drawings including photographs of the existing residence prior to construction. One included PDF’s of parts of the working drawings showing isometric views of a detail from a ellipse-shaped eyebrow dormer. Two were rendered in hidden line set to Sketch mode. All had some amount of text defining the project. The lead sheet included a viewport of a title block. The final output was in PDF format.

To make something like this, you could start with the method outlined in the Convert Copy to Lines description above. In my case, I wished to finesse the 3d output in Photoshop, where I could stamp out aberrations and drop a sky color into the background and onto corner windows. To do this I made sure my Sheet layer dpi was set high and then I exported the images to the desktop as JPEG’s. To export line detail such as details from your working drawings, don’t use a raster process like a JPEG, instead create a viewport of the detail, place it on a sheet, and then export as a PDF. This keeps the vector-based lines sharp and avoids the jaggies. Once all these elements are on the desktop, start a new file, letter sized, and import each set of images to a single layer in the new file. The layer scale should be set at 1:1. Once you have all the images assigned to unique sheet layers and arranged to your liking, export all as a PDF (Batch) file.

Some like to export using TIFF or PNG since they lose less data, gain fewer compression artifacts and therefor look better when printed. File sizes may be larger to much larger versus JPEG. In testing one rendering, size grew from 692 KB for the JPEG, to 3.5 MB for the PNG, and to 6.7 MB for the TIFF. Test print to see what looks best for your particular output.

See Convert to Lines #31 for info on setting printing resolution.

..............

If you are using Vectorworks 2009, the advice I’ve read on the NNA Tech Board is to NOT convert an existing drawing into V. 2009 but rather finish in V. 2008 (or earlier) and start any new project in ‘09.

.............

That’s it for now. See you in the new year!

Tom Greggs

Convert to Lines #31

2008-11-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

11/2/08
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
Please contact me at tomgreggs@comcast.net

In this issue:
•NNA coming to demo Version ‘09
• Early word on 2009
• Animation continued
•Misc. cautions, misc. resources
•Adjusting preferences for printing
•More free advice

Greetings VectorWorks users! Join us Thursday, November 13th, 6:30 to 8:30 PM for the first User Group meeting of the season. We’re going look at using Stack Layers in Vw 2008 to view and edit, light and set perspective views. We’ll also want to share your ideas with the group and help with any questions you might have. I’ll have several 3D renderings to share of the planned remodel of the Wood Construction Center facility.

Our meeting will take place 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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally back! Sorry for the long delay in writing but I’ve been waiting for a couple of things to happen. One was that the Vw’s update was about to arrive (Vw is the new shorthand) and I was expecting to bring it loaded on the laptop to our next meeting. That hasn’t happened--something about NNA not being able to ship my particular grade until quite late in the product cycle. I’m still waiting. The other reason, apart from outright entropy, was that NNA has been planning a Seattle tour to show off version 2009 and I was hoping to relay that date. I can say that Thursday, December 11th is currently being contemplated--tentatively contemplated--with the event site located in downtown Seattle. I WILL send out notice as soon as they determine their schedule.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, Tech Board and List Serv comments have been very positive about the new version. The change to a better modeling kernel--Parasolid by Siemens PLM--may be the biggest advance. We should have far better ability to create objects in Vw ‘09, that in ‘08 and below. For instance, creating a handrail which follows an offset stairwell downward was not possible prior to this upgrade.

Siemens is a huge company with 5.5 million seats and 51,000 customers using various brands of their software.
Here is a URL to Parasolid if you’d like more info:
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/parasolid/index.shtml

For Version ‘09, 60% of their kernel has been imported into Vw with the following 40% planned for inclusion in 2010. Walls will benefit as we’ll be able to create shapes that can then be subtracted giving us unique sills, for instance. Improved snapping has gotten raves. Another advancement that caught my eye was that we can now snap to points within imported PDF’s. Thus you can bring in a survey, place it on a reference layer and trust that the corner you’re snapping down to will provide an accurate reading. Having this option, versus problematic DXF files, could make using imported files much simpler.

Take a look at the NNA website tutorials for ‘09 if you haven’t already. There’s a lot to explore and ponder.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the last Convert to Lines #30, I talked about making flyaround animations. One of the important parts of the discussion left out was how to create a more circular orbit around your model. You may have found that your flyaround took a boomerang route instead of a round one. To fix this, follow my guide in #30 up to the beginning of the last paragraph. After creating a perspective view of your model as described (enclosed in picture frame), click-select the whole frame and ungroup. Then drag-select just the model and not the frame or any ground volume if you can avoid it. With this central mass selected, go to Model>Create Animation. Orbit Point should be on by default. Select Animation Options and click on Selection. (If Selection is grayed out, you have nothing selected within the picture frame.) The rotate amount should be 360 degrees. To test, run for 5 seconds and see if your flyaround is behaving. If so, render your model for the final orbit. Once rendered, set a fly time of 45 seconds which seems a reasonable viewing period. Note that your model will render based on its relative screen zoom. Zoomed out, you’ll get a small model and zoomed in, a bigger one. Larger images will cause rendering times to increase.

It’s a little more work to generate a perspective view versus the ease of creating a simple isometric style, but once you’ve gotten used to seeing your model in this more realistic state, you aren’t likely to settle for less.

If you’d prefer a more professional, foolproof approach, check out OzCad’s AnimationWorks. Look at all of the sample QT movies as each one is a unique example of what’s possible.
http://www.ozcad.com.au/otherproducts/vwaddonsAW.html
Jonathan Pickup, in his cadsupportonline.com issue 0809 covers walkthrough and flyaround animation. His description, while quite good, covers isometric model viewing, not perspective.

It should be said that having a module one step up from Fundamentals--Architect for instance, plus Renderworks--is the base setup for these modeling discussions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some misc. gotcha’s:
•If you set your model to Oblique view, OpenGL will not render with this particular representation selected.
•If you intend to import plants into your model, don’t name a Layer or Class “Plant” as this will cause any import of plant libraries to be blocked.
•When exporting an image of your model to a jpg format (File>Export>Export Image File), I find that I am prevented from increasing my dots per inch in the Resolution box which, on my Mac, typically reads as 72 px/in. If you look in the lower right corner of this dialog box, you’ll notice, at least in Vw 2008, that the default setting is for JPEG 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
Note that if you change this setting to JPEG Image or PNG or another, you ARE able to increase the dpi in the Resolution box. Set dpi somewhere between 150 and 300, depending on your printer’s abilities, you ability to wait for rendering to finish, and the expected quality of the final printout.

Some misc. FREE models:
•Duravit does not have an online download option but you can order their free CD which has DXF models of their products. Scroll down the page to the Spec Manual to order:
http://www.duravit.com/service/catalogs/overview-useo6mangt.html
•Mr-Cad is worth checking out. Mostly a pay-per-model site, they have some free models plus textures. 3ds Format.
http://www.mr-cad.com/
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Adjusting printing resolution in Vw is confusing since settings seem to be all over the place. For instance, dpi settings can be set, under File>Document Settings, Document Preferences. But after creating a sheet layer, you’ll find dpi can be set there as well. Click on a sheet, then hit the Edit button found on either the Navigation palette or the Organization palette.

Which is more important? Do we need both? To find out, I took one of my fully textured models, rendered in Custom Renderworks, and tried setting dpi’s in both locations. I found that the best place to set dpi was on sheet layers, not in the Documents Pref’s. Printing on a Brother 5280DW laser printer, (capable of 1200 x 1200 dpi), I saw much crisper output when sheets were set to 300 dpi, with the Prefs panel set to 72, than I did when the Prefs panel was at 300 dpi and sheet layers were back at 72 dpi.

My advice, if you are using sheet layers, is to set your dpi there and ignore the Document Preference panel unless someone out there can give me a reasoned argument against this. One last observation: when the sheet dpi was set high, there was a marked improvement in the image on my Mac notebook screen (OS 10.5.4)

Play around with dpi to see what setting between 150 dpi and 300 works for you--assuming your printer can handle more that 150 dpi.

Note all of this assumes you are printing FROM within VectorWorks and not creating a JPEG or some other image file which would then be printed through another application. If you are more interested in exporting and manipulating rendered files in an image processor like Photoshop, then read my suggestion above under Gotcha’s.

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Some free advice. Well, everything here is free so what’s the deal? Only that you may be slowing down in your business, what with the economy and all, and that brings, along with less money, lots of stress. One of the ways to take control of a less than ideal environment is to train up to gain new skills. We always want to do this when we’re busy, so why not now when we’re slow? If I’ve described you, and you are working in 2D, I suggest blocking out some time to design something in 3D, something really, really simple, such that your investment is manageable and the reward-to-labor ratio high.

You have options for designing in 3D, outside of VectorWorks, as you no doubt know. I’d just like to say that the pay-back, in designing from the beginning in VectorWorks, in 3D, is that you’ll have all your work in one file. Thus small changes, such as property line setback adjustments or stud wall thickness changes, can be managed in a more holistic approach. It was Aristotle who said “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Yes, you can get good-looking 3D at the beginning of your modeling process using other software. But starting and ending the file in Vw means that you have a much shorter distance to travel to make adjustments, to check relationships within the model, and to provide accurate, finished drawings, than with a “sum of parts” approach.

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That’s a wrap. Hope to see you this coming Thursday.

Convert to Lines #30

2008-07-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

7/30/08
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:
• Animation made easy
• 3D fasteners
• What’s a slab object?
•3D collections growing like nonnative invasive species
•Changing your point of view

Greetings VectorWorks users! Here is a slimmed down summertime version of 'Lines' pruned to the essentials. I hope you’ve been able to take advantage of this amazing stretch of great weather and that all is well in your lives. I’ll check in with you again in late September. Meanwhile, on with the show.

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Let’s make a fly-around movie using VW 2008.
I recently upgraded my computer from an old Mac G4 to a new laptop and found that rendering times have dropped to the degree that fly-around modeling was finally practical for our typical projects. If you’ve improved your hardware and haven’t yet tried this essential tool, I suggest we do a simple test drawing to see the animation process in action.

To begin, start a new file and draw a large polygon to represent the ground. Extrude it some small amount like a sixteenth of an inch (Model>Extrude). Drag out another poly in the middle of our ground object and extrude it to a size similar to what you work with day to day, be it a room, a cabinet or something smaller. Don’t give any of these extruded objects a fill since unfilled objects will render faster and we don’t yet want to present you with a rendering time that causes you to leave your chair for some other activity.

Hit a corner key on your extended keyboard (1, 3, 7, or 9) to see your model in 3D. Hit 5 to return to a 3D Top view. We now will add a RenderWorks Camera to the view. Click on the Visualization palette--it’s the one showing the light bulb. With the palette open, click on the camera icon. Move the cursor, which has turned into a + sign, and place it somewhere outside of your model, click and drag toward your model, click to end and release. Accept the default settings of the 3D view shown on the Object Properties palette (unless you’d like to play with the settings to see how they vary the model’s position). Double click on the array of lines that represents the camera. This action should tilt and shape your model into a perspective view. We remain in the same wire-frame mode we started in but feel free to choose another rendering style, after giving your objects a fill, and let it render (suggestion: OpenGL). Only now, with the perspective view selected and the rendering method selected, do we issue the command to create an animation.

Go to Model>Create Animation. Select Orbit Point from the popup menu and accept the remaining settings. Click Save Movie to save the file to your desktop. This action starts the rendering process. If your computer has not bogged down with fills, try adding a light (sun) and then textures to each object. In our office, a typical whole-house exterior fly-around, containing a couple of light sources, 3D plants plus textures on all surfaces, will take between two to two and a half hours rendering time on the new laptop. A typical Quicktime file will be 35 MB and take 45 seconds for the model to rotate 360 degrees which is plenty of time to see details. Once the movie begins to play, note that you can easily start, stop and go in reverse to admire the details of your genius.

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Want a bolt to show as a 3D object and not just as a 2D side or end view?
You’ll need Designer or Machine Design* to get it but even then the method of discovery is less than straightforward. Assuming you are drawing in some other workspace, go to Tools>Workspaces and select Machine Design. Click on the Hardware Inch/Metric palette. Click on the bolt in the upper left hand corner of the palette. If you draw this bolt it will display as a 2D view UNLESS you click on the (blue) 3D icon on the mode bar. If you go back and look at the palette that houses the original bolt icon, you will note that all the other icons for wing nut, eyebolt, etc. have a little black triangle adjacent to them. Click on the triangle and you’ll see that there is a 2D and a 3D offering for each of these. It would be nice if the bolt icon had the same notation and behavior as the other hardware types or visa versa.
*See alternative bolt plug-in below.

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There has been grumbling for some time now over the fact that the Floor Object tool cannot accept a unique texture for the band portion of the floor. It is a helpful tool in that the palette that controls its settings has an input box for height (Z) but those of us that assemble our buildings with the outer edges of floors flush with the outer surfaces of walls find that our drawings won’t render correctly using this tool. One can simply Extrude a polygon to serve as a floor but these simple shapes lack Object Info palette options. Enter Slab Object, a free tool from VectorDepot.com. Once on the website, go to Old Links>Plug-ins>Slab Object and download. It’s free. Once on your desktop, unzip and add to your Workspace. I’ve added it to the Tool Sets palette, adjacent to Walls. (Scan the back issues of Convert to Lines to find a discussion on modifying Workspaces.)

Once placed into your Workspace, you’ll find a wealth of new options
including object extrusion depth, Z height options and automatically created classes for adding color or textures to the sides, bottom (ceiling) and top of the 3D shape. To add texture to a surface, select the object and click on the Organization palette for Classes (not via the Navigation palette) and dbl. click on one of the newly auto-created classes (Ceiling-Finish, Floor-Finish, Floor-Riser, Floor-Slab) and in the following palette called Edit Class(es), check the Use At Creation box, and at the bottom of the palette, choose Other and check the Textures box. Choose a texture to apply. So now you can show a floor that displays, when rendered, a carpet, a ceiling texture (popcorn asbestos) for the bottom, and a texture on the edges that matches the siding type.

Remember the VectorDepot site? If you don’t have Designer or Machine Design, you might also download the 3D bolt plug-in called Fastener. Find it in the main plug-ins folder on the the site, not in the Old Links folder. Once downloaded, manually move it to your VW Plug-ins folder, then import it into your Workspace. I’ve tried it in VW 2008 and it seems to work fine.

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Need more (free) 3D objects for your drawings than VW provides? Of course you do! Google’s 3D Warehouse has been mentioned before for importing via the
Sketchup plug-in. But you might also take a peek at
http://www.max4object.com/wp/?page_id=18
Look at the left side of the page and scroll down until you see “3Ds Max and Autocad object,” below which you’ll see folders containing Humans, Trees, Kitchen, etc. Look in the Human folder and be sure and download your free copy of the Fighting Skeleton. Also take a look at
http://www.archive3d.net/
This site also features 3ds models--and there are a ton of them. Once you’ve selected your model, click on it to get the download screen to appear.
Want to dig a little? Many more sites listed here:
http://www.architecturalcadd.com/bsa/symbollibraries.htm

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I want to add barge (fly) rafters, fascia or other trim objects to my roofs. One way to quickly orient your roof or any other object to a side-view position square to the drawing plane is to use the Set 3D View tool found under View. Looking at your model in Top view, click on the tool, then somewhere away from your model, click and drag toward it. If my roof face happened to be set at an odd angle, I would first draw in a guide to ensure my drag line would be square to the object’s face. Once this face was rotated square to me, I could then draw a polygon (might be a gable end barge rafter), extrude it, then going back to top view, drag the extrusion over and into place. This is a good one to note its keyboard shortcut and use it instead of hiking up to the menu bar each time an object needs rotating. This tip originated with Panthony from the VW Tech Board.

That all folks!

Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808

Convert to Lines #29

2008-04-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

4/19/08
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:
• April’s meeting date and time
• Applying custom paint colors to walls
• Strategies for creating and storing standard details
•BIM explained, simply
•Lots of Misc.

Greetings VectorWorks users! Join us Thursday, April 24, 6:30 to 8:30 PM for the last User Group meeting till fall. We’re going to cover two of the topics discussed within the newsletter but with the benefit of a much more thorough live walk-through. We’ll look at Workgroup Referencing for the individual, applying custom colors to walls as well as applying wood textures to doors. We’ll also want to share your ideas with the group and help with any questions you might have. If there is time left over, perhaps we’ll look at a backdoor method of using Section Viewports, as detailed later in the newsletter.

Our meeting will take place 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.

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I had a client tell me they wished to have the same color of their old home applied to the new one which I’ve been designing. The original had been done in Benjamin Moore Texas Leather. To begin the process of applying custom colors, draw a wall or walls. Give them a siding using the Object Info palette under the Render heading. (Make sure you Unstyle the wall via the Object Info palette which unlocks its original library siding or color type.)

First you’ll need to use the Resource Browser to import Textures_Exterior Finishes from your VectorWorks folder. Use the Add New Favorite Files command on the top of the Browser and look for Libraries folder, then Textures, then Textures_Exterior Finishes. Once imported, scroll down the panoply of images. (Make sure they display on the Browser as Thumbnails, not as List.) You will see among the garish tones available to you, various white siding types. Choose one of these. Drag the image onto your wall. Once imported into the file via this dragging action, you can then use the Render side of the Object Info palette to attach the new white siding type to your wall. At this point, we should apply the Texas Leather tone to our siding sample.

To do this use the Object Info palette. Just adjacent to the siding’s name is a triangle. Click it and choose Edit Siding 10 White Resource (or whatever siding type you’ve chosen). Click on the edit button on the next palette adjacent to the Filtered Image radio button. The following dialog box, called Filtered Image, shows a pull down menu bearing a white color swatch. Check the Use Chosen Color just above the swatch. Pull the swatch down and you’ll see a typical color chart but with a small grid of color up in the right hand corner. Click the grid and the next box up--the Pick Color palette--shows a variety of commercial paint family choices on the left. Choose one. On the right hand side, choose a color from your selected collection. Click OK. Your siding now has a lovely new color on one side or another. On the Object Info palette, select the various sides to apply your new siding type. You may want to apply None as the color texture to the interior wall or at least until you have a better plan. You can also save and apply a new name to this siding type if you wish by using the Duplicate Siding 10 And Edit command in the OIP. Render all using OpenGL which has the benefit of being fast.

My client picked up a fresh-off-the-printer rendering today showing his new home done up in Texas Leather. Very cool.

Remember my earlier mention of the “garish” other colors for siding types--colors no one outside of Greenland would ever use? Those should be considered base colors onto which you can add a tint and thus arrive at your intended mix. Gray colored siding would also work this way. Now, with the advent of so many premixed commercial colors, these older primary tones are not your only choice.

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What’s the best way to create and store plan details? In reading the NNA Tech board, Travis suggest that details be kept in a separate folder from the file you are working on. When you need a detail, you link to the folder>detail using Work Group Referencing. Once the detail has been brought in, you may then opt to break the WGR link which will allow you to tweak it to fit your specific situation. Breaking the link also ensures that you don’t apply new elements to your stock detail. After you have enough updated details, you may wish to place them into the Details folder for the next job.

You can do something similar when bringing in DXF/DWG files. Into a separate file, import the DXF detail. This keeps the AutoCAD classes from otherwise cluttering up your nice, carefully laid out set. Using WGR, link the DXF page back into your main file. The two hundred A’CAD classes remain in your referenced file, not your working file.

As far as creating details in the first place, create a Design Layer Section Viewport on a fresh design layer, then trace over. Ah, but you say that sending a Section Viewport to a Design Layer is not allowed in VectorWorks 2008 (If you knew this, go to the head of the class). I know a secret way of essentially using a Section Viewport as an updatable base for overdrawing and I’ll show you that method at this upcoming User Group meeting.

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What is BIM? I’ve looked at various places around the web and read the White Papers on the subject at NNA and remained generally confused. I finally found this straight forward, jargon free comment and thought it worth passing on.

http://modocrmadt.blogspot.com/2005/01/bim-what-is-it-why-do-i-care-and-how.html

The author, Matt Dillon San, is an AutoCad guy but he keeps his biases pretty well in neutral. Here is one quote from the article that I found interesting:

“With Building Information Modeling, anybody who is contributing to the model will need to have a good understanding of how that building really fits together. The need for 2D drafters will become more and more a thing of the past. At the same time, architects who in the past may have shunned CAD and similar technologies will have to become more comfortable working in a digital world. Additionally, you may find that your current CAD support staff is inadequate to handle the expanded needs of an office involved in model-based design. “

Hey, no pressure, right??

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Miscellaneous tips:

Watermarks can be easily placed onto drawings in VW 2008 by making an object--your watermark text or grouped line work--and giving it a reduced opacity. Type some text and enlarge it. On the Attributes palette you’ll see a radio button showing “100%”. Click the button and, on the next palette presented, simply move the slider down to a shade that works for you. You can also place your faded object into a class such that it can be turned off when appropriate. Another option is to set opacity values on any layer. Use the opacity slider to lighten all objects placed within. You’ll find the slider for Layers on the Edit palette of the Navigation palette.

Google posted a new “advanced” search engine that allows you to find Sketchup-made models in Google 3D Warehouse. This may be handy for importing specific appliances into your VectorWorks layers.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/advsearch

I’ve mentioned BIM. Google may be defining BIM on a macro, environmental level with their program called Google Cities in 3D which allows anyone to create Sketchup buildings matching existing city buildings around the world. Imagine visiting virtual Hamburg Germany using Google Earth, to view neighborhoods and, perhaps in 3D, the very building you’re considering for your lodging. Take the 3D tour yourself!
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/citiesin3d/index.html

Vectortasks is a site that offers seminars and private tutoring by L.A. based Pat Stanford and Dan Jansenson--two celebrities in the world of VW. The site has a few free movies on how to use VectorWorks. Short but sweet.
http://vectortasks.com/Movies/Movies.html

Our next Webinar should be available for download next week. “The topic will be 2D to 3D. In this demonstration you will learn the secrets of converting your 2D drawings into 3D models.” If you have not yet gotten the player for either Mac or PC, please contact me.

Polylines can’t be combined into a solid. Polygons can. If you draw two polylines with the second touching the end points of the first polyline, Modify>Compose and extrude, the object you end up with will accept no fill and will look instead like a fence. Do the same with two polygon lines and you will wind up with a solid object.

Try to use Saved Views more often in your work flow with the intent that you be returned quickly to key layers or 3D elevations. If you add or change classes, these won’t update to your existing Saved Views so get in the habit of updating (resaving) Saved Views when changes do occur.

Under Modify>Tile or Modify>Hatch, you can fill a closed polygon with one of the textures that you might apply to a patio or other surface such as a countertop. These are intended to be 2D fills but you can convert them easily into 3D. Just select the hatch, ungroup and, under Modify>Convert> Convert to Polygons and then extrude. The Hardscape tool in Landmark will give you many more editable, textural options and will also provide an extruded slab if asked. Julian Carr provided this tip via the VWks Listserv.

OK, I’m done. See you Thursday!

Tom Greggs
Office (206) 524-2808

Convert to Lines #28

2008-02-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

2/16/08
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:
• When are we finally meeting???
• Webex info
• New Service Pack for V. 2008 available
• Thoughts on viewports and design layer viewports
• Stack Layers thoughts
• Scaling freak-out
• Converting a steel beam symbol into 3D
• Misc. Misc. Misc.
• Repetitive stress answers from our readers

Greetings VectorWorks users! Join us Thursday, February 21, 6:30 to 8:30 PM as we explore designing in 3D while using the rejuvenative powers of viewports. We’ll take you through some basics that should provide a means toward advancing your VW skills. Whether your designs fall between avian domiciles or skyscrapers, turn out and empower yourselves.

Our meeting will take place 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.

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The next Webex presentation is on NURBS surfaces. If you are new to using NURBS, in preparation for this session, Nemetschek recommends you visit
http://www.nemetschek.net/3dpowerpack/
and maybe
http://www.nemetschek.net/3DPowerpack/tutorials.php
and if you have time
http://www.nemetschek.net/3DPowerpack/qtexamples.php

In march, the movie will cover Design Layer Viewports and in April, 2D to 3D.

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NNA has announced the release of a new Service Pack which fixes several bugs and introduces a few new items. VW 2008 users should first start VW and, assuming you have a live web connection, click on About VectorWorks and click again on “Check for Updates......”. VW will check to see if you need this Service Pack. If a web connection is not available, you can download the updater from the Downloads department on the NNA website. Be sure to read the PDF describing the changes. Of particular interest is a new context/right click command that makes getting in and out of edited viewports easier.

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NNA added, within the last couple of years, a game-changing feature to VectorWorks called viewports. I’ve not been happy about the name since it seems to imply motion, as though you were embarking on a journey to a portal or through a black hole. If I could change VW, I’d wish up another name, perhaps a term less new-agey but more descriptive of something solid, like “snapshot”. I make a snapshot of my design layer and send it to a sheet. I can understand this immediately because it is something like my wife does when she puts pictures of the kids into our family album.

The problem many users of VW have is that the viewport process puts a big fat hurdle of dialog boxes in the way of their work flow. Not only that, but one is now supposed to put dimensions and text on a special sub-snapshot. Going back and forth gets confusing. (Imagine that to look at the Family Holiday Album, you have to constantly go into the next room.) The reason to stick with it, however, is that you’ll be paid back in spades once you change anything on the original design layers. Pages and pages will update and not only that, updating reduces error substantially since the change you would normally do manually, with all the potential for trouble, is guaranteed to show up in the revised view exactly as drawn. But to get the benefit you must incorporate this tool into your workflow and then wax on, wax off, again and again, until travel between the annotations pane and the crop pane and the design layer pane becomes second nature, becomes painless.

Another other big change in VectorWorks Version 2008 has been the invention of viewports-on-design layers or VPDL’s. This is where a viewport is sent not to a sheet but to another design layer where it is then used as an underlay representing some other part of your or another’s project. But I don’t like this name either. Who’s going to remember what a VPDL is? Change the name to Reference Layer* and I’m waymore happy. These references/VPDL’s are weird in their way. For instance, you can’t copy and paste viewports from a design layer to another design layer. They have to be created anew and sent using the Create Viewport dialog box. But once you get an underlying VPDL, you can reset its attributes--line type for instance--and change its look substantially.

In my own usage, I create a VPDL of a Main Story and send it to an Upper Story Floor Framing layer where I then can lay in my 2D work. To simplify the underlay, I reset the VPDL using the Object Info palette to show the walls as dashed lines, with windows and doors hidden. You DO have to create classes to help you with this process so I make a class for windows and one for doors called Hide Windows, Hide Doors. Once I make the class invisible, I have a much simpler template over which to embellish. Change the location of a window on the primary design layer and it slips to the correct location on the reference layer giving you an opportunity to move your header symbol and any notes and dimensions. I’m looking for NNA to make this process simpler over time. For instance, walls take a fair amount of massaging to get them into a stripped-down form. And file size can zoom if you use many of these. While I have described a fairly simple use of VPDL’s, there is a world of opportunity in how you or how you and your design team might use them.

*The term "Reference layer" was suggested first by a writer on the VW Tech Forum.

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Messing with the Stack Layers command in V. 2008 can be confusing because it is fundamentally different from the earlier, pre-viewport system of making a model. For instance, when you wanted an old-school, layer linked model, you first had to designate a design layer onto which your 3D model would appear. When you create a model comprised of the newfangled stacked layers, it sits out in space somewhere with no design layer to call its own. Only after you make a viewport of the model is a tangible entity created. But half the fun of using stacked layers is the easy assembly of parts (more on that below) and the quick and easy generation of isometric views. In short order you can model assemblies and adjust and correct in 3D on the fly. This process is the future of VectorWorks. Using the old system would be much, much slower.

But the coin gets flipped when it comes to creating sections. The old school Cut 2D and Cut 3D Section is much quicker as the cutting action automatically creates a new layer to accept the cut. You can measure immediately, not having to go to an annotations layer to regain an accurate scale (versus 1:1). You won’t have the bells and whistles of the graphically rich Cut Section Viewport, but sometimes dirty beats pretty. If you don’t know where to find Cut 2D and Cut 3D Section, they can be located in the Legacy folder within the Workspace folder within the VectorWorks folder and imported back into your workspace by using the Workspace Editor. Yes, a hassle, but worth it in my opinion. Note, to make things easier after your cut, select it and go to Modify>Convert to lines>render in Hidden Line, then ungroup.

Note that when you first begin using the Stack Layers command, be patient when you click to assemble. VectorWorks needs time to bring up the layers and it will seem as though something should have happened by now but hasn’t. If something STILL hasn’t happened, it is likely that your view of the layers is set to Active Only. Visit the pull down menu on the Navigation palette, just atop the list of layers, and reset to Show/Snap Others or Gray/Snap Others.

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I had imported some engineering PDF’s into a large VectorWorks file--a wonderful process that eliminates many irritants that used to attend the only other real option, that of Import DXF/DWG. I imported one PDF knowing it was slightly out of scale. At the end of the design process I tried to rescale the PDF to its correct size. Sometime later, it was discovered that in scaling the PDF, the ENTIRE FILE was rescaled with it. Not only that, but any associative dimensions--most of them--reset their numbers to match the now slightly shorter walls, since that’s what associative dimensions do. My whole plan, walls, dimensions, locks, stocks and smoking barrels, had shrunk. The good news was that this error was caught in time. The bad news could have been a finished file sent out for bid. The lesson? For me, I’ll only adjust a PDF BEFORE I import it into a drawing file. That, or ask my source to correct and resend. (Note that the scaling error was entirely my doing and not because of some issue with VectorWorks.)
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If you want to include a 3D I-beam or other steel shape into your drawing, go to the Detailing tear-off palette and select your member. Stamp it onto your drawing and adjust its size via the Object Info palette. Flip your drawing into a Front view or any other assuming you want the member to have a horizontal orientation. Locate the I-beam and Modify>Ungroup. Then Modify>Convert>Convert to Polygon. Then go to Model>Extrude and enter a length. The beam extrudes toward you so duck if necessary. Give it a solid fill and move it into position within your model. Basic idea contributed by Gytis on the Tech Forum.

islandmon of the NNA Tech Forum recommended making the converted polygon into a NURBS using Convert to NURBS. The reasoning is that they demand less space in the file although they render the same. If you have a lot of these shapes in your project, say you design structural steel frames for a living, NURBS may be the way to go.
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Clicking on X will drop you out of any tool you may have been working with and back to the 2D Selection Tool (indicated by an arrow with a little cross next to it). To get out of the Text tool, clicking on X gets you an X. To click of of Text, for Windows or Mac users, left handed or right, use either the Escape key in the upper left hand corner of your keyboard, or the Enter key on the far right side of your keyboard.

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Borrowed from the NNA Tech Forum: If you use Apple’s Mail program, you can send PDF’s of VW to others lightning quick. While in your drawing, click Command P, on the next dialog box, lower left, click PDF. On the next box click Mail PDF (or FAX PDF). Mail comes up showing the VW image scaled correctly. Hit send. Time elapsed; couple seconds max. Note that you can create PDF’s through the print process from any application.

In Windows + Outlook, select Alt-Print Screen and copy to your clipboard which you can then paste into an email window. But it’s not a PDF. Faststone Capture is a $20 screen capture tool that will make your image into a PDF.
http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm
Office 2007 has a downloadable add-in, Save as PDF or XPS.

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VectorWiki is a new site you should visit for anything having to do with VectorWorks. This is a community that wants to be helpful. Take advantage of it.
www.vectorwiki.org/

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You’ve likely seen this one by now but if you haven’t, here’s a link to a very positive review of VectorWorks.
http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=482165
Cadalyst says VW “highly recommended”.

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How-to movies are proliferating at the location listed below. As seems typical, they are designed to show off the talents of VW2008 but but in this case, teach at the same time.
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/library.php?movie=2008movies

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For a discussion on roof creation, follow these Tech Board links:
http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=9&Number=93005&Searchpage=1&Main=19894&Words=+panthony&topic=0&Search=true#Post93005

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I’d mentioned in my last post that I was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. My issue seems small, being confined to overuse of a thumb. Still, with a heavy workload, I could see problems on the horizon if I didn’t take some kind of action. I was delighted to receive several suggestions from readers.

Forrest German wrote to tell me about a great mouse he’s used now for years. You hold it vertically and not in the typical palm-down position. Try this: hold a CD or a paperback book between your thumb and fingers with palm down. Now rotate the object to vertical. Quite a little change in stress through the elbow. The Vertical Mouse 3 includes a Windows driver--not a Mac--but there is a link to several third party Mac drivers. The Evoluent Corp. also offers a palm rest and an interesting keyboard which, for right handers (or lefties like me who keep the mouse on their right), places the numeric keypad on the left side of the keyboard thus allowing one to keep their mouse-hand more directly to the front rather than angled out.

Check out their URL and accompanying testimonials.
http:/www.evoluent.com/
For Mac users, see Steermouse:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/steermouse.html

Anna Nissen likes vitamin B-6 or the more expensive coenzyme (predigested) variety as a means to buttress connective tissue. I’m finding that adjusting my diet these days is having a big impact on how I feel day to day. This sounds worth trying.
Here’s a link on B-6 that is short but informative:
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/2355.html

Lack of general conditioning plays a role. Dalton Gittens said he’d regained strength in his hands by simply doing a kind of reverse-pullup, snugging his briefcase handle into his palm as he walked from home to office, office to home. I visited Zenith Supply and bought a handball made from a rubber that feels like a big gummy bear candy. It is impossible to have it in your hand and not squeeze it repeatedly. It’s no coincidence that I barely kayaked at all last year, a favorite pastime of mine that is really good for the hands and shoulders.

Mark Pickerell said poor posture caused big problems. According to Mark, people roll their heads toward the computer and this stress will lead to the upper back and neck tightening and thus pinch nerves running down the arms. Simply put; keep your ears over your shoulders and shoulders back. After reading Mark’s suggestions, I found that I did have my head slung forward while viewing the monitor.

Also good; use different types of mice and use them in both hands to halve the stresses in any one hand. Even if you are not having a problem yet, use both hands. Lastly, he recommends this book; Pain Free by Peter Egoscue.

I have a tip too. If you wear glasses, get a fixed focal length for computer use only. This keeps you, from having to hold your head/neck in one position to read the screen; a rigidity that graduated lenses or bifocals encourage. A fixed-focus lens allows one to shift their head to any position and still read text and see line work in focus. I can look down and read text on the desktop perfectly well with my fixed-focus glasses but you may have a different result. As for an eyeglass provider, I had good luck with eyeglassesdirect.com. Frames and prescription lenses can be had for about $75 provided you don’t pile on the options. Base your lens design on a relatively recent prescription and ask your optometrist to give you his notation, then transfer it to the online form.

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That’s all for now! See you this coming Thursday.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808

Convert to Lines #27

2007-12-05T21:49:00.000-08:00

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.

......................................................................

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.
........................................................................

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

Convert To Lines #26

2007-10-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

Convert to Lines #25

2007-07-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

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.

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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.

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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
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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.

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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
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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.
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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.

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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

CONVERT TO LINES #24

2007-04-12T19:01:00.000-07:00

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.
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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.
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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.
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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

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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.

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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

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That’s all for now!

Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808

Convert to Lines #23

2007-03-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

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.

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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.

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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
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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That’s it for now. See you on the 29th!

CONVERT TO LINES #22

2007-02-18T11:54:00.000-08:00

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.
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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.

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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

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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.

CONVERT TO LINES #21

2007-01-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

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.

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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.
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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
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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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“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
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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.

CONVERT TO LINES #19

2006-11-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

11/8/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

In this issue:
•3D spoken here.
•JLC Conference, Seattle, and VectorWorks
•Tips and tricks:
Moving doors and windows within walls
Converting Viewports to lines
Keeping Classes simple
Quick editing of Viewports

Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, November 16th, 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. You’ll find the topic of the evening is in the following paragraph.
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VectorWorks allows several different ways of manipulating 3D elements into a model with the most advanced method being the assembly of layers using the Stack Layers tool. We will use this tool to create simple 3D models, then take you through the process of display by using Viewports. Along with this I’d like to touch on the method of assembly used prior to the development of Viewports, just to give you another way to put things together when circumstances require and this may also be of interest to those owners of VW Fundamentals. We’ll look at Extrude Along Path, chamfering edges of solids, and subtracting solids (both from 3D Power Pack). If you have struggled with 3D, I hope to help you move beyond simply assembling the parametric model elements already existing in the Resource folders. This evening is free so come along and bring whatever other VW question you have and we’ll see if we can find an answer.

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JLC Live, the Residential Construction Show, associated with the Journal of Light Construction magazine, will be coming to Seattle November 9th through the 10th at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle. You can read about the long list of businesses showing product as well as classes being offered during the show at www.JLCLIVE.com. VectorWorks and Softplan will be demo’d during each day. Sketchup will be shown Friday morning in a class called Better Bid Presentations with 3D Shop Drawings Using Sketchup. Thursday or Friday will cost $35 to view the exhibits and computer labs. The Sketchup class is a Conference Seminar. Go to JLCLIVE to confirm costs.
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When a door or window is inserted into a wall, there are a couple of different ways to move it to a revised location. If you look at the Object Info palette once the door or window is installed, you will see a button named Position and if you click there, a palette comes up which shows three parallel lines. The best way to understand this tool is to do a little drill: draw a wall that takes a turn such that you have two walls. Insert a door into one of the walls. Dimension from the inside wall’s ends back to the center of the door as well as from the outer end of the wall to center of door. Pull at least four dimensions back to the door’s center. Now double click on the door; when the Object Info palette comes up, click on Position. The parallel lines should be successively shorter on one end reflecting the fact that there is a corner from which dimensions can be placed. Click on the little round ends of each line and they should show a dimension which matches the one you’ve already placed about the door. This should help you see the relationships. Clicking through the options for moving within an existing wall will give you the insight needed to use this tool effectively while moving in precise amounts.
You can drag the window or door back and forth manually but you should look to the Mode bar (second from the top of your drawing) and click on the icon that looks like a piece of insulated wire with the insulation stripped off in the middle. This button keeps the window or door from slipping out of the wall when you drag it. It won’t prohibit you from inserting more windows and doors later if it is still turned on. Put any kind of a marker--loci work great-- and drag the window or door to your reference marker.
Here’s another way to move your window or door accurately. Click on the door, then click on the 2D Reshape Tool and draw a marquee around the object to be moved, then click on the Move tool or its keyboard equivalent, and insert the dimensions needed, hit enter and away you go.

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Is there a simple way to convert a Viewport to lines? With VectorWorks moving toward the Viewport paradigm and obsoleting the old method of converting your 3D model (or really, a Copy of it) to lines for the purposes of cleaning up elevations, sections and others, you may still find that your Viewport depiction of the project needs to be finessed and reworked in a way that only a wholesale conversion to lines makes practical. Yes, you can continue to drive the model ever more toward complete 3D-edness in order that the model would show itself more accurately, but does this serve your interests in light of the little time you have left to get the project finished and out the door?
Some of us Old Schoolers have secretly slipped into the Legacy folder within the Workspace folder via the Workspace Editor and added back the stalwart Cut 2D Section as well as Cut 3D Section. This gives us additional tools to speed up the conversion of model views to assemblies of easily edited lines. The rest of you, unburdened by legacy claptrap may find that you’d like to occasionally cheat up a little, leaving the VectorWorks Way, to convert the snapshot of whatever view you have captured using Viewports into lines or polygons. Remember that the snapshot I speak of is live, and any conversion breaks its liveness; in other words, its ability to update itself when other changes are made to the model. Again, in the interest of time, this decision to convert may be deemed reasonable.
If you have an appropriate Viewport created which you wish to convert to lines, first create a new Layer to receive the conversion--let’s say this Layer will have a 1/4”=1’ scale (1:48). Click on the Viewport and, in the OIP (object info palette), set its scale to 1:1. Then use the Convert Copy to Lines command under Modify. (Note that using the Ungroup command by itself will not work.) Send it to the new Layer using the OIP palette and there, ungroup and edit as usual. If you don’t first set the Viewport’s scale to 1:1 and still convert copy to lines, sending the resulting conversion to the new layer, you will get a tiny set of lines. You can easily fix this via scaling by the factor shown in the scale box--in the case of 1/4” or 1:48, so scale up by a factor of 48.

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Let’s say you have created a Viewport but wish to return quickly to the Design Layer to continue work or you want to change the Crop outline or you wish to add a few annotations to the Viewport. Where are the key combo’s hidden? Double click on the Viewport to bring up the dialog box. Push down on the Command Key (Mac) or the Control key (PC) and you’ll see revealed the shortcut commands.

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There has been a bit of back and forth on the VW Listserve lately on how to best utilize Classes. There is a myriad of ways to do this, from using all classes and only one layer to all layers and very few classes. Trying to adopt one of them without having it flow organically, so to speak, from your own process, is a recipe for frustration. I say start small and work up as you need to and in so doing, earn your right to insight. With the multiple ways (and locations) to select, set and manipulate, who can blame someone for over-amping their drawing process without meaning to?
Here is a letter taken from the Listserve which may help you, if you are also not sure of how best to use classes. Again, this is a starting place, not where you are likely to end up.

The question:
There are times when I am in a Viewport and I am annotating and I wonder what Class are these labels should be on or does it matter. So I go with the latter usually it goes on the None Class or whatever class I am on currently then when I go to a Design Layer and turn off a couple of the classes, and I go back to the Sheet Layers the objects are gone because they are on those classes I turned off. I never got an education on this area as to where annotations such as labeling, making general notes. Also I notice that the Viewports have classes and layers on them too and I wonder where they should be on. I really don't have a full grasp on Classes when working on Sheet Layers.
Is there any suggestions as to how to organize these classes so I don't have to keep fixing them. It is a major speed hindrance and a frustration. I always forget oh i am suppose to put that on that level. It drives me nuts. Is there a way that I could make this easier on myself? How could better organize this process?
Alex V.

The Answer:
At the risk of being too simple and basic, I'll give it go.
I try to do all my drawing in the "None" class which is always on. Every time I try to draw WITHIN any other class to give it a certain attribute or texture, I will forget that I'm in that specific class and put the next object in a class that I don't want it to be in which haunts you down the road. Burns me every time. There are some items like dimensions and wall styles that are preset to go to there own classes. And sometimes when I'm doing roofs, which are always "Roof Faces" for me, I will set the active class to "Roof". For me, I get into less trouble if I stay in the "None" class.
The same is true for Viewports. I haven't been using VW for that long, but I haven't found a reason yet to have a Viewport in a separate class other than "None". I'm sure somebody has a reason to but if you want its contents invisible or grayed, that can be done through its OIP. If I want to have separate control of a certain object’s visibility, color, texture, or attribute when seen in a Viewport, I will create a separate Class for that object and place it in that class through its OIP in the Design Layer after creation. Then when you're in a Sheet Layer you can control that object separately through the class button in the Viewports OIP, giving objects in that class different attributes or visibilities than it has in the Design Layers.
So in essence, you can have any number of different Viewports of the same floor plan, let's say. If your dimensions are in their own class, you can give them a different line weight or color in each Viewport. Classes are all about controlling visibility. Keeps things in the "None" class until you need to control them.

HTH,
Michael Kingsley
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Hope to see you at the next User Group meeting on Thursday, the 16th!
Tom Greggs
(206 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #18

2006-09-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #18
9/5/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

In this issue:
•Nemetschek is coming to Seattle to demo Version 12.5!
•Your source for 3D outhouses
•Coffee Break and learn VW at the same time
•The Tipping Point and VectorWorks

Greetings VectorWorks people! Our next meeting is Wednesday, September 20th, 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.
For our first meeting of the fall, Ryan Carmody of Nemetschek will be in town for the express purpose of showing us new and refined features of VectorWorks 12.5.This is also the chance, time allowing, to ask any questions about VW. As of this writing, VW 12.5 has not been released.
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One of the important new features since V.12 is the ability to import 3ds models and one of the best sites around to find these free and not-free models is at Turbosquid (love that name). 3ds models are derived from Autodesk’s 3ds Max modeling software. In browsing ‘squid offerings I came upon a darling Honey Bucket outhouse! I realized that no photorealistic rendering of a residence would be complete without a 3D biffy teetering in the distance, especially if it were free to download--and it is.
www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/266626
But that wasn’t the end of it as the Turbosquid site aggregates similar models in a sidebar and there were many outhouses offered, including one done in Poser that looked like the crew at Pixar had built it for an upcoming movie on Pappy Yokum and family:
www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/288187
www.lil-abner.com/strip.htm
While the outhouse hunting was fun, I discovered that there are some wonderful models out there that you may find helpful in augmenting your own designs. Getting access to these models requires you to join but there is no charge for membership.
Remember that when importing 3ds models, you may need to scale up by some factor which varies with the scale of the model. You might also check out:
http://www.amazing3d.com/free/free.shtml
or this small but nice collection of free objects
http://www.klicker.de/models.html
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Pam Lund wrote me with this simple idea: wouldn’t it be great if you could call up a few people whenever and get together over coffee to discuss better ways to use VectorWorks? Anyone could call anyone to get a group meeting going. Interested? Drop Pam a line and ask her to link you together with phone numbers and email addresses and let’s see where this goes. You can reach Pam at plund@spaceplans.com. If you email, put Coffee Break in the subject line.

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I’ve just finished reading an interesting book by Malcolm Gladwell called The Tipping Point. He also authored a book called Blink, a #1 best seller. Mr. Gladwell’s strength is in researching and reporting the findings of those who analyze events and then note the triggering mechanisms which moved said events from little to large.
The fascinating aspect of this book is that the triggering actions typically are small. The resurgence, for instance, of Hush Puppy shoes was due to a small group of N.Y. City fashion designers who began wearing them almost as a backlash to fashions of the day. Personality types also factor largely in how information gets out about a product, idea or, in other examples, how the product or event gained a “sticky” nature or is portrayed as such through advertising.
In thinking about VectorWorks and all it represents--the website, the third party books, the people at NNA-- I was wondering, what part(s) might be considered sticky or not sticky and what event might happen which would bring many more people to buy and use VectorWorks. Today I’d like to suggest what I think might be an emerging “sticky” and I’d like to start with a reference to Jonathan Pickup.
What if word got out about VW and the wonderful, easy ways available for learning how to use this complex piece of software? I’m not talking here about Jonathan’s several books, as great as they may be, but rather his blog, which is an emerging method of viewing a two or three minute Quicktime movie on how to do something, anything, using VectorWorks.
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/archoncad.html
This method of learning is far more effective than looking up the same process in any other media. Its lesson is usually immediate and forceful. It is learned in two minutes, then, class dismissed.
What if we could find a site with a whole passel of Quicktime movies, references to blogs, user opinion and even a kind of democratic voting on which techniques should rise to the top of the heap and which thought processes or software choices within VW help or hinder the user?
For a time, Frank Brault managed a site called VectorExpress which might have been a base for this kind of gathering of ideas and how-to’s but it is morphing into something newer and and potentially far more powerful. (I don’t wish to steal Frank’s thunder so I won’t publish his web address here but rather wait until he announces it officially, presumably on the tails of the release of V. 12.5)
This seems to me to be potentially very exciting; where the teacher becomes the student and the student, the teacher, as new ideas, simple to complex, are logged in and debated. The Listserve functions like this to a degree but is linear in form. The future suggests a branch-like structure which would serve many more without a virtual kind of standing in line. The NNA website is moving, very slowly, in the right direction and could one day be very important to the learning process. Look at this rare, but very helpful how-to QT movie from the NNA Knowledge Base on live sections:
http://kbase.nemetschek.net/gfx/how_to/section.html
and then take a look at Sketchup’s large block of video tutorials, if you have time for a comparison, and consider which one is stickier:
http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html
The attraction of a site which contains ideas collected outside the NNA structure is that those thoughts may represent a more battle-hardened perspective (See Convert To Lines #16 and The Wisdom of Crowds at www.converttolines.blogspot.com).
VectorWorks has many, many ways of effectively presenting information as exerience with the Seattle VW Users Group has shown. Ideally, these paths and processes could be explored and presented to all users via simple learning methods such at QT movies, line drawings or simple text explanations.
To paraphrase Kevin Kelly, a writer quoted in The Tipping Point, the first fax machine was worth nothing because there was no other fax machine for it to talk to. As each new fax machine was sold, the network grew and so also grew in worth. Each additional fax machine that shipped increased the value of all the fax machines operating below it. With the leadership of Pickup, Brault and others, when you buy a copy of VectorWorks, you buy access to all the VW gurus, which is infinitely more valuable than the software itself. (Now, that is a sticky idea and if it doesn’t make it into an NNA VectorWorks advertising campaign, then it’s a loss for them AND us.)
The internet, as Malcolm Gladwell notes, is bringing in, paradoxically, the age of word-of-mouth: “.....all of the sophistication and wizardry and limitless access to information of the New Economy is going to lead us to rely more and more on very primitive kinds of social contacts.” Is there a tipping point in NNA’s future? If there is, people like yourselves, who contribute, argue and participate, will play a role.

See you on the 20th!

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
tomgreggs@comcast.net
(206) 524-2808

Convert to Lines #17

2006-07-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #17
7/7/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users

In this issue:
•More Fun With Viewports:
Distributing Title blocks
Avoiding the red X-box
Creating Elevations of your model
•Closing a polyline
•New VW 12 Multimedia CD’s
•Julian Carr’s DXF tips.
•Do you draw with very few Layers?
•Jonathan Pickup’s new landscape book.
•Keyboard shortcuts
•More tips
•My new blog and changed e-mail address

Greetings VectorWorks Users! It’s summertime but there’s no reason why I can’t pester you with another Convert to Lines, that is if you haven’t completely shut down, left town or become a VW expert in the last little while. If you are still creeping up on Viewports, then this issue may be helpful.
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When Viewports first came out, I was not very happy having to deal with another layer of complexity but the more I use them the happier I seem to be. The first payoff is that you can stack your Layers to suit your model and completely ignore how they’ll look on the printed page since the Viewport can take over that job. VP’s can be moved without changing anything on the represented Layer. Of course, you’ve always been able to move bits of your drawing up or down from Layer to Layer but never before have I been able to keep things completely aligned, top to bottom, and not be tempted to move them around prior to printing. I was happy to realize that I could even key my plot plans and surveys to my model and so send bits of info up or down from 1/4” per ft on one Layer to 1” = 20’ on another.
How does one place a title block on each Sheet? There are two or more ways and the first is to turn your title block into a Viewport, sending a copy to each Sheet. Let me digress just a bit and then I’ll expand on the process: I’ve set up my Templates (those sets of preferences already preset for the typical paper sizes we use) to have only one pre made Layer and this holds my title block-- typically in a one-to-one scale--assuming that you might have a jpeg or a Postscript image as part of your title block. The title block should show the client name, date and any other info that would repeatedly show on each Sheet. Coming back now to Viewports, select the title block Layer and make it Active with all other Layers invisible. Make a VP of this Layer and call it Title Block (You don’t have to Select All--if you do, you may find that your title block bounding-box is used as a crop and as the process completes, you line work disappears, as crop boxes tend to do.) Once it’s been turned to a VP, showing under the VP tab of the Navigation palette, you can copy and paste it as many times as needed onto each sheet. One other way is to duplicate the title block Viewport and send it to the proper Sheet using the Layer button in the OI palette. Either way, each method will generate a new, sequentially numbered title block in the Viewports column. To fill out each title block VP with Sheet-specific text, simply write over the block OR you could double click the VP which will bring up a dialog box where you could check Annotations and then do your text work there. But for me, since the title block embellishments are few, I draw right on top of them preferring to bypass Annotations. Note that using this system, it is easy to make global changes to title block text by editing the original Title Block Layer.
The second, and perhaps easier way is to simply make a symbol of your title block (under Modify>Create Symbol) and save it to a folder in your Resource Browser so that it’s always available. Just drag it onto each new Sheet. For a clear description of this process, go to VW Help and search for Creating a Custom Title Block. There, you will see a method described that will allow you to update text in your block using the Record Format tool. This tool may be a helpful for larger groups looking to maintain continuity in their Sheet naming process but perhaps not so much for smaller groups and individuals.
If any of you have an alternative way of creating title blocks that you’d like to share or a different opinion of text linking via the Record Format tool, let me know and I’ll pass it on.
Continuing with Viewports, let’s say you’ve just made a fresh, new Viewport of one page of your drawing but you find that the Sheet holding the new VP shows only a red box with an X through it. Not to worry, the gremlins have played with your Object Info palette settings and instead of your 2D work displayed in Top/Plan view, it is now showing in left front isometric or some such, but since no 3D element is within this view, it shows only the red box. Reset your OI palette to Top/Plan and you’ll be back in business.
The promise of Viewports is that your model will, with a short command, update itself regularly. Thus a Sheet or a VP Section made early in the game can be refreshed and updated closer to the time you wish to print and issue drawings. Your 3D MODEL can be shown in Left and Back views simply by turning to that view and making a Viewport of each side. But then what? The new way may leave you with the same old problem you had when you were using Cut 3D View or were using Convert Copy to Lines--that is, incomplete drawings requiring removal of lines. But you can’t remove a line from a Viewport, only mask over, and this may, depending on your model, be more work than the original process of line removal. Obviously, staying with an updating model as long as possible is a great, great advantage but only you can decide which of the two methods are most effective and efficient.
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Closing a polyline is frequently important if you want to record an accurate reading of the area within or especially when you wish to extrude a closed shape. Failure to close will create a form that will accept no color or texture and will only show as a wire frame. Frequently you can solve your issue by looking on the Object Info palette (OI for short) for the Closed box which will automatically close your form but sometimes this will create a wrinkle by adding an extra line. Here is a different technique for finding the gap in your extrusion, taken from a post by JIm Linke from the VW Listserve:
“You are right, the polyline is not closed; the first and last vertices may just be on top of each other. You can see this in the OI palette when there are more vertices than there should be. In the OI palette > Vertex: you can use the arrow keys to move around the polyline; if one vertex highlights twice, that is the open point. You can easily see when a polyline is closing while drawing in the bezier, cubic spline or arc mode mode. The last point will smooth the entire curve if it is closed. It is harder to see closure when drawing polylines by corner point. Be sure "Snap to Grid" is off and "Snap to Object" is on. The screen hint will show "Point". The resulting polyline should have the correct number of vertices
(corners). If there is one extra, it is not closed. In this case, convert the polyline to a polygon and make sure the "Closed" check box is checked. If you missed the last point by a little bit, closing the polygon will draw in the missing edge.”
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Nemetschek has just published a new VectorWorks 12 CD that very thoroughly and professionally lays out the advantages of VectorWorks in all its versions. If you know someone who is thinking about getting into VW, let me know and I’ll get them a copy. Its title is “VectorWorks 12 Multimedia CD.”
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Julian Carr of WinDoor fame has put together a short explanation of how to set up your files for export via DXF for AutoCAD users. This is the kind of practical how-to I wish we had more of.
http://www.ozcad.com.au/support/PDFs/TechNote001ExportDWG.pdf

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I’d like to hear from VW users who work with only a Layer or two who then draw into a large list of Classes. I’m assuming you draw largely in 2D. What do you see as your advantage? I’m not trying to pick a fight, only to learn, as I believe there is no wrong way to use VW. There are only more (and more) efficient ways of displaying your information. If you have something that works for you, that works for me. But do drop me a line.
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A new training manual for is available for those working in landscape design: VectorWorks Landscape Tutorial 12. New Zealand architect Jonathan Pickup has designed this manual for version 12 to facilitate a smoother introduction to VectorWorks Landmark.
VectorWorks Landmark Tutorial 12 is designed to build upon beginner's knowledge of VectorWorks. The exercise-based manual instructs learners how to import a site plan, add plants, schedule plants, calculate hardscape areas, create 3D site models and 3D buildings, and create 3D designs for presentation purposes. Other topics include setting up layer and class standards, drawing complex site plans, dealing
with walls and roofs, creating an office library, annotation, and customizing VectorWorks.
Visit the ArchonCAD web site at:
http://www.archoncad.co.nz/index.php
There is a pdf file that shows a portion of the book. I highly recommend any of Jonathan’s books.

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There are maybe two or three levels of shortcuts you can learn, the first group you likely already know from other programs. Cut, copy, paste and select-all, quit and save come to mind. If you’ve used VW for much time at all, you may have started to learn the following:
Ungroup---command + u (ctrl + u)
Undo------command + z (ctrl + z)
Rotate (left)-----command + L (ctrl + L)
Duplicate-----command + d (ctrl + d)
Move-----command + m (ctrl + m)
Nudge (one pixel)---shift + arrow key (same in windows)
Send back---command + b (ctrl + b)
Send forward---command + f (ctrl + f)
Trim----command + t (ctrl + t)
You can find seven pages of keyboard shortcuts by going to Help and typing “keyboard shortcuts” into the search box which will deliver your list, but only if you are connected to the internet. After printing out and stapling up the pages, you might find that there are just too many commands to make sense of. Which ones are most helpful at this stage of the game? With that in mind, let me offer a second set that should pay dividends.

Selection tool (arrow)------x (both platforms)
Text tool----1 (both)
Move drawing (boomerang tool) spacebar plus cursor
Line tool---2 (both)
Polygon tool---8 (both)
Rectangle tool---4 (both)
Paste in place---command + option + v (ctrl + alt + v)
Ungroup---command + u (ctrl + u)
Fit to objects (find selected item)----command + 6 (ctrl + 6)
Fit to window----command + 4 (ctrl + 4)
2D reshape tool----use the minus key (both)
Split tool----L (both)
2D mirror tool--- = (equal key) (both)
Return to Top/Plan view---command + 5 (ctrl + 5)
Also works on both platforms to press 0 on numerical keyboard.
Pressing 5 on numerical keyboard puts you in Top View (which is a
3D-view only).
Zoom tool---c (both)
Zoom out by a factor of 2----command + 1 (ctrl + 1)
Zoom out by a factor of 4----comm + opt + 1 (ctrl + alt + 1)
Zoom in by a factor of 2----comm + 2 (ctrl + 2)
Zoom in by a factor of 4-----comm + opt + 2 (ctrl + opt + 2)
Move a wall’s center--u keys toggles through options
Use the u key in general to toggle through Mode Bar options and
use the i key to open Mode Bar dialog boxs
View active layer only---command + option + 3
(ctrl + alt + 3)
View active layer with others grayed (Gray Others)---comm + opt + 4
ctrl + alt + 4
View active layer with others black (Show Others)---comm + opt + 5
ctrl + alt + 5)
These last three are very handy when showing or hiding layers behind your working layer. If you have limited screen real estate, you might also look at the shortcuts for opening and closing palettes such as the Navigation and OI palette.
I expect many of you with experience would have something to add or subtract from this list but for many of you who are not yet using this second set of shortcuts, you may find a handful here that will free you real effort.

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A couple more tips: Using the Drawing Label tool to label plan details, sections, etc. on your Design Layers will get you the exact same label each time you use it forcing you to consecutively number each one via the Object Info palette. If, on the other hand, you add these labels to Sheets after your Viewports have been made, you will find that each time you click on a new detail, section or elevation, the label number will automatically update to the next higher number.

Last tip. To get a plus/minus sign, type shift+option together with the + key. I presume shift+ctrl and the plus key gets you the same thing on a PC.

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I’ve posted all my Convert to Lines newsletters onto a blog:
http://converttolines.blogspot.com
If you know a new(er) user of VW, pass on the address, and while you’re at it, send their e-mail address to me so I can add them to the Convert to Lines mailing list.
If anyone is interested in creating their own blog, Blogger makes it super easy to publish. And it’s free.
http://www.blogger.com/start

My new e-mail address is the same as this post: tomgreggs@comcast.net

That’s it for now!
Tom Greggs

CONVERT TO LINES #16

2006-07-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #16
4/21/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

In this issue:
•The When and the Where.
•The Wisdom of Crowds.
•When is a Plug-in Object a Symbol, or is it the other way around?
•Doing the Splits.
•More books.

Greetings VectorWorks Users! Our next meeting is Thursday, April 27th, 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.
We will take a look at one of the topics below--making symbols and making plug-in objects into symbols. Once a symbol has been made we will look at assigning product information to that symbol. We’ll endeavor to answer your questions, perhaps some you didn’t even know you had! ......................................................................................................

You may recall a book called The Wisdom of Crowds written by James Surowiecki that hit the best seller list at least a year ago. The book is subtitled “Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies and Nations.” It contains, among its many stories, one about a group of 700 people who were asked to give their estimate of the weight of an ox. After all opinions were averaged, the group’s answer was within a pound of the true weight of the animal.
I’ve come to believe that our little user-group fits into this book somehow. When we get together, we reach a mind-mass, if you will, that is remarkably able to solve problems. You might think that I, as the SIG leader, would be handing out answers one by one from behind the lectern. But that would be wrong. The real power is in the collective wisdom of the group. And this is where you come in. Attend and grow wiser. You will go home enabled in ways you would not have imagined. Your contribution, no matter how small, will also shape the knowledge of others.
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When is a plug-in object sometimes converted into a symbol and more vexingly, why is it then often turned back into a plug-in object? And what is the difference between the two anyway? To answer this last question first, a symbol is an object with parameters that can’t be changed by using the Object Info palette. A symbol can be 2D, 3D or a combo of both. Symbols use less memory than a plug-in object and can be assigned database (Worksheet) information. Plug-in objects have many parameters that can be changed via the Object Info palette. A cabinet can have the countertop and splash changed, doors changed for drawers and so on. A symbol can be a simple collection of 2D lines. A plug-in object is constructed by using a script (Tools > Scripts > VectorScript Plug-in Editor). And finally, a plug-in object can be converted to a symbol to gain some of the advantages of a symbol.
If you use a plug-in door for instance--perhaps one of those in Version 12 with the umpteen options for style--at some point you may wish for a way to keep all those selections fixed so that you don’t have to go through a long selection process each time, over and over, whenever you reach for a new door. In the Old Days when the door choices were fewer, you could leave each window or door as a plug-in and set the parameters for the unit at each insertion. You can still operate this way but if you have a lot of windows, doors, cabinets or other plug-in objects that you wish to model, expect to spend much more time in this process of one-by-one customization. But once the door has been set up, why not save it as a symbol and import it into your Resource Browser? That way it will already have been pre configured. To do this you will need to create a set of doors, one for each size you’d typically use and in each form such as solid core door or store door.
Those of you wishing to show a more detailed door or window will be happy with the direction VW has taken. Those wishing for a more simple solution will be “encouraged” to make many more symbol libraries of preset symbols and plug-in objects prior to starting their drawings, then importing these libraries into future drawings or into your templates. The upside is you’ll have much less need to edit your object after insertion. The downside is that time needs to be set aside for creation of these future libraries and individual items.
Let’s run through the drill of how to do this. First, let’s make a new folder within the Resource Browser. With the Browser open, go to Resources > New Resource in (title of your drawing) > Symbol Folder.
Now give the folder its name, such as Solid Core Doors. You’ll see the blue folder (by the way, I’m explaining this in Version 12 of VW). Now, place a plug-in door into your file anywhere. Go to Modify > Create Symbol and name the symbol in the palette presented. A Move palette should come on-screen. Click on the new Doors folder to highlight it. Click Open. You are now in the root or bottom folder for doors. Your door, or doors if you shift-selected, will be moved to this folder where they can be dragged into any new file. Note that they will stay stuck at whatever size they were when turned into a symbol. You can flip them, set their height above Bottom Z (or base line) and your can replace them--all from the Object Info palette.
Perhaps the best of both worlds would be, when converting your door to a symbol, to go to the Options palette and check the box marked Convert to Plug-in Object. Then, when you insert this type of door from the Resource Doors folder, it converts to an editable plug-in object (which you have already pre configured, remember?). Then, if you need to change a bit of trim or the overall width, you’ll have no problems.

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Get to know the Split tool. I wanted to create a shape something similar to a chisel where all four sides of the chisel end tapered inward toward the tip. The Split tool resides on the Basic palette and looks like a-- a--hill with a couple of arrows coming and going. The first mode of the tool works well when splitting a wall as it only takes one click (an alternate would be drawing a line across the wall at the cutting point and using the Trim command). The second mode works nicely when cutting off the sides from my chisel shape although the third cutting mode would save a click by allowing me to chose, via an arrow, which side of the cut I wish to keep and automatically throwing away the trimmed piece. My chisel shape is a 3D polygon but the Split tool also can cut 2D lines and the more complex shapes of Nurbs surfaces and curves.

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Resolve Software, the company that tours the U.S. teaching VW, has some new books out:
www.resolve.ca/products/workbooks.html
Resolve is in partnership with Nemetschek to provide learning resources so I expect the books to be first rate. The covers do resemble the stock manuals until you look carefully look and compare. Then you’ll see that they are not the same. Check ‘em out.
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Come join us next Thursday evening!

Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #15

2006-07-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #15
3/6/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.

In this issue:
•Our next meeting time and topic
•The evolving Tips and Tricks List
•Thoughts on new tools in V. 12
•New VectorWorks training seminars

Greetings VectorWorks Users! Our next meeting is Wednesday, March 22nd, 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.
The slant of our first hour will be toward the newer user with a focus on ending up with a better knowledge of the 3D process. I’ll make sure you go away from our get-together with an improved understanding of drawing with VectorWorks.
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TIPS AND TRICKS FOR THE NEWER VECTORWORKS USER
The list below is for the newer user who will likely encounter stumbling blocks, some due to the software itself but others simply due to the process of drawing in CAD. Feel free to clip this out, amend it, add to it as needed. If you know of other gotcha’s than those written below, drop me a line for the benefit of new and beginner users: those most vulnerable to frustration. Thanks!

1. Is the Snap to Grid button on the floating Constraints palette set to the on or off position? This is a terrific tool if you create a preset grid to help snap to a visible (or invisible) pattern when laying out beam lines or other elements that must align in a grid-like fashion. But after your grid layout work is complete, you may want to turn this button to the ‘off’ position. No matter what size the grid pattern is set to, if you pull a line near one of the coordinates, your snap could be pulled to the grid intersection and you might unknowingly snap off your intended mark. After your grid work has been completed, I suggest you uncheck this box. I set it to ‘off’ by default when I begin drawing.

2. Do you find your doors and windows slipping out of walls when moving them manually? You can lock them in using the Wall Insertion button, second one from the left, on the Mode bar. You can still drop windows and doors into walls when this button is locked. Note also that sometimes a VW symbol that you wish to place touching a wall will be grabbed by that wall. Turning off the Wall Insertion button will stop the grabby action.

3. In VectorWorks, using the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle or square seems like the more practical way to perform such a task than to draw the same shape using the Polygon tool. But If you double click on a rectangular shape made with the Polygon Tool, you will get editing nodes on all corners and also on the middle of each side. This won’t happen when trying to edit a shape made with the Rectangle tool UNLESS you use the Convert to Polygon pull down command to convert your shape. Only then can you can add or remove corners to your object.

4. Picking up the end of a line seems like something that should be easy the first time. Truth is, you have to move the cursor slightly off-center of the line’s end before you get the comforting cross hair shaped screen hint that tells you you’re locked on UNLESS you have the first button unchecked on the mode bar--the diagonal line called Enable Interactive Scaling Mode (for short). If you uncheck this button, you can easily grab it but then you miss out on being able to stretch the line too since the stretching option gets turned off. I usually leave the buttons set so that I can stretch whenever I want and grab and drag too--I just grab more carefully. But if your eyes are tired or you just want it to work with no questions asked, uncheck the first mode bar box.

5. Layer Options and Class Options read the same from top to bottom but should be set differently in most cases. Do not set Layer Options to Show/Snap/Modify Others because that means that you run the risk of reaching down through several layers (if they are set to a visible status) and clicking on some line which looks out of place. If you move said line or throw it away--not knowing it resides on another layer--you may be surprised and disappointed. Most times I leave this Option set to Show/Snap Others. There are those, however, who love having this reach-down option available to them.
When setting Class Options, DON’T, unless you are free of deadlines or know someone to call in case something disappears. Leave this one set at Show/Snap/Modify Others which means your Class-based object won’t be hidden or made impossible to snap to. Later on when you feel more comfortable with Class Options, you will find some unique and helpful reasons for their existence.

6. Speaking of Classes, what is a “None” Class? If it is None, why is it here? If you are not yet Class-crazed, putting each and every item into a special class you’ve created, I suggest you leave the default Class setting set to None. Think of it as the “Anything Can Go Here” Class or the “Slush Bucket” Class or my favorite, the “Put It Here Until You Have A Better Plan” Class.

7. I use the nudge key combo to move objects all the time, even zooming out to nudge them faster as each nudge bump moves your object the distance of one pixel width. But if you are building precise objects, a pixel nudge may introduce error into your plans. You might be better off moving your object by precise amounts in the Dimension bar as you assemble your parts.

8. Why do my 3D renderings look so poor? Renderworks gives you many choices in rendering your project and as you get better you can choose the mode that is quicker or more stylish or the one that looks more photo-realistic. If you guess wrong, your rendering may look washed out. I personally like Custom Renderworks best with the settings in Custom Renderworks Options set generally to High (but not to Very High). If my old G-4 can render drawings in relatively good time, I’m thinking your machine will work just fine. Also put down a ground plane of an extruded rectangle with a fill or use the floor tool and give it a fill as well. This gives shadows a place to land. One last thing: add a light source. One click of the light tool will add a sun-like light which should give you all the shadows and highlights you need. As time goes on, try giving your objects a texture by selecting one of the many finishes (VW 12) found of the Object Info palette under the Render tab. Note that rendering and texturing in VW 12.0 works better than earlier versions. Also note that Open GL--the fastest renderer--puts a light in automatically for you so you needn't worry about adding one.

9. When using the polygon or polyline tool to make an enclosed shape, make sure you actually hit the endline when closing which can be a problem if there are lots of lines cluttering the area around the endpoint or when the Snap Grid button is on (see #1). You can check on the Object Info palette if the poly is closed since there is a button that will check itself if you have done your job. If not, the button will not be checked. Checking it manually will automatically close the link.
Sometimes, when extruding shapes made from polys, you will find that the shape won’t accept a fill or texture. This is likely due to the poly still being open. Double click on the object which returns it to an editing pane. Click the Close button or zoom in and manually close it and you’ll be back in business.

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More thoughts on Version 12
A. One of the best improvements brought forth in VW 12 is something called the Navigation Palette. This will be found in most of the VW modules such as Architect but I don’t believe it is included in the base module called Fundamentals. The Navigation palette contains in one place tabbed, list views of Classes, Layers, Viewports, Sheets and Saved Views. The beauty of this scheme is that you can quickly jump from group to group turning elements on or off or making them gray or invisible. Layers are especially handy since a double click on the layer brings it up on screen as the active layer. If you want another layer to act as a backdrop shown in gray, you can click on and show those layers very quickly. In fact, this palette should help newer users see the relationship between Layers and Classes more easily since the (3) command centers on the Menu Bar--Layers, Classes and the visibility settings under Organize on the Menu Bar have been rendered largely superfluous. The one issue here is that to work most effectively, this palette should always be open and that means you need screen real estate. Two monitors would be the ideal setup if cost effectiveness is paramount or, if you can swing it, one of the big LCD monitors would give you room to spread out.
In reviewing this palette, it is easy to miss the little triangle button on the far right of the palette. Here, you’ll find a pull-down menu for creation of New Classes, Layers, etc., as well as the commands Edit, Duplicate, Delete plus others. Stacking order can also be changed via drag and drop although I did not have 100% success in changing stacking order--sometimes it worked, other times not. Also, Workgroup Referenced items display in italics as in the past. If you don’t see this arrow in the upper right corner of the palette, drag is out toward the right and the arrow should appear.
B. Prior to V.12, Hatches--which are a choice of fill style on the Attributes palette--have never been much of a thrill. I’ve not been willing to create my own and so have left this tool largely unused. WOW--take a look now. Pull down and select Hatch, then, on the button directly below (labeled Default), see what is provided. There are ALL kinds of hatch choices including marsh and mud flats! (Hey, Puget Sound is mud-flat country!)
C. This next tip is a keyboard shortcut that activates the 2d Selection Tool which is your most used tool--the arrow on the primary floating palette on the left side of your screen. Push x. That’s it, no modifier key needed. No need to ever use the mouse again to activate that important selection tool.
D. Dividing lines equally is a function I seem to need frequently. Look under Tools/Drafting Aids/Line into Segments. A locus point can be placed at the beginning and at each point and the reference line can be set to disappear. Another tool that helps in placing either multiple points or single points is the Snap Distance button on the floating Attributes palette--the one on the lower right that looks like a line with a dot on it. Double click this button and a dialog box appears which allows you to input your settings for percentage of line length, fraction or actual distance in feet and inches. Be careful when using the Line into Segments tool. To illustrate my caution, if you have a building 40’ in length and wish to place a locus marker at each 10’ segment but want a 4” diameter column located at each locus mark, you first have to set a locus mark on the edge of your building and move that mark inside 2”. Having done this on each end of the building you then draw a line locus-to-locus and divide from there. Otherwise your centers will not have taken into account the natural offset of your column from the outside of the wall.
E. Many of the Tools palettes and Menu commands in V. 12 need to be reconfigured using the Workspace editor. If you’ve purchased V.12, this may be the time to dig in and learn how to use the editor. It isn’t hard. What’s harder is simply taking the time to look at your usage and then move the commands around to be closer to the mouse cursor or more logical to the way you work.
For instance, in V.12, 3D commands have been placed on the Basic palette on the upper left hand side of your monitor. Should they really go there? Do you need the Spiral tool to be visible? Do you miss not having the Dimension tool here? When was the last time you made an octagon and do you also miss the old Leader Line tool? Shouldn’t VectorWorks Preferences, Document Preferences and Workspaces be together under File? What happened to Cut 3D and Cut 2D Section? I want them back!! And while we’re at it, let’s nest some of the tools we use least.
I have addressed the above by making my own Workspace for Architect. If you haven’t yet taken the time to learn how to use the Workspace Editor and want a copy of this workspace to at least experiment with, drop me a line and I’ll e-mail you a copy which you can place in the VectorWorks folder/Workspace folder. I haven’t eliminated any of the tools in V.12, just rearranged them. If you work in a multi person firm however, don’t ask, as your CAD guru will most likely want his or her own Workspace used.
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Los Angeles based Seminars coming up
Vectortasks™ - A Task Based Learning Seminar for Users of VectorWorks®
Class size is set to a maximum of 16 people to allow a more interactive learning environment. Space is going fast. Register now to ensure your seat for this exciting seminar!
Dan Jansenson and Pat Stanford are proud to announce the next session of the new Vectortasks training seminars:
Fast Track to 2D Production Drawings with VectorWorks®.
This is a special seminar for people transitioning from other CAD systems to VectorWorks, and current users who need to improve their drafting skills: a fast way of coming up to speed quickly.
For more information and to register for the class please see our web site at http://www.vectortasks.com.
The Fast Track seminar is intended for people who need a rapid transition into 2D working drawings with VectorWorks, either from scratch or from existing 3D models. The tools and techniques are applicable to most 2D production environments, but the examples are focused on the architectural and entertainment industries.
Who Should Attend:
The seminar is intended for people already familiar with computer drawing and 2D design and drafting, and are transitioning into VectorWorks from other CAD programs. This seminar is also designed for advanced beginners and intermediate VectorWorks users interested in improving their skills.
How the Seminar is Run:
The seminar is a four-day class. It is offered on two consecutive weeks, all day Friday and Saturday both weeks. The class is a hands-on event and participants are required to bring a computer with a licensed copy of VectorWorks 11 or 12.

Each session will begin with a lecture showing the tools and techniques to be covered. The students will then be given exercises to do. The instructor(s) will be available to answer questions during the work session. Finally, the instructors will complete the exercises on screen, in a step-by-step fashion.
What Will Be Covered:
•The VectorWorks Interface
•Basic Tools and Techniques
•File Organization: design layers and classes
•File Organization: sheet layers and viewports
•Drawing Tools
•Dimensioning Tools
•Annotation Tools
•Walls: tools, types and styles
•Symbols and Plug-In Objects
•Wall Framer/Roof Framer
•Worksheets
•Interacting with Other CAD Systems: import/export–collaborating outside the VW world
•Interacting with Other Users: collaborative work
•Scripts (Custom Selection/Custom Tool/Saved Views)
•Printing & Plotting
For more information and to register for the class please see our web site at http://www.vectortasks.com.
When:
The Seminar will be held on two consecutive Fridays and Saturdays, March 31/April 1 and April 7/8. The class duration is 4 days. Class will run from 9:00AM to 5:00PM each day with morning, afternoon and lunch breaks. Total instructional time for the 4 days is 24 hours.
Where:
The Seminar will be held in Hermosa Beach. Exact class location and directions will be provided after registration.
For more information and to register for the class please see our web site at http://www.vectortasks.com
Dan Jansenson
danj@vectortasks.com
(310) 451-5907
Pat Stanford
Coviana, Inc.
pat@vectortasks.com
(310) 322-4205
VectorWorks is a registered trademark of Nemetschek North America. Vectortasks is a trademark of Dan Jansenson and PatrickStanford.
vw_seminar_list mailing list
vw_seminar_list@coviana.com
http://coviana.com/mailman/listinfo/vw_seminar_list

(If there is enough interest here in the NW, they may consider traveling. Ed.)

That’s it for this issue. Hope to see you soon!

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #14

2006-07-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #14
1/18/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group

In this issue:
•Our next meeting time
•Why is learning CAD so hard?
•More misc. thoughts on V. 12
• VW team coming to Bellingham
• craigslist

Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is next Thursday, the 26th, 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.
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If you, your business and your choice of CAD program were fixed in space, everything would be so easy and predictable. Some CAD programs are tightly targeted to a specific need and they may be easier to learn such as some 2D-only programs, as well as those that only do a subset of 2D/3D such as SketchUp. If your needs are simple, then VectorWorks is easy to learn. If your needs are complex, the time to learn gets longer, of course, but the real sleeper is realizing that one must evolve their personal drawing and thinking style to best employ the choice of CAD software.
This isn’t necessarily a case of having to fit your working style to the demands of a computer program, but rather how one changes to best utilize the new tools at hand. After years of doing things one way, change does not come easily nor without some pain. The bottom line is that you are really juggling three slippery elements--a deep CAD program, your ability to adapt new tools to your work in new ways, and the stress of doing all this while maintaining a business and getting work out the door.
The best strategy in leaning CAD, in my opinion, is to learn only those parts of VW that allow you to get your work done. Start out working in 2D only if that keeps you going forward. Draw only on one layer if that helps with getting work out the door. For those doing architectural work, draw floorplans with 3D walls containing doors and windows and put a roof on. Then go to side views and convert the image to a copy of lines (Convert Copy to Lines) and then do cross sections (stick with 3D Section and don’t yet use Create Section Viewport). Then push, push, push to extend your knowledge of the program to take advantage of each new tool, but only as time allows.
Here is a letter to the VW Listserve that addresses a question from a potential new user coming over from using the 2D program called PowerCadd:
“Don:
VW can be used just like PowerCadd while ignoring the 3D aspects of the program. It would be acceptable to begin drawing in 2D to meet production deadlines and, as time allows, begin exploring the 3D tools. In fact, you can get right to it by designing floors, walls (with windows and doors) and roof all on one layer if you want simplicity. (There really is no wrong way to use VW but there are many, many ways to be more efficient.)
What does take time is simply thinking how to best build-out or assemble your project in 3D and where to quit 3D and begin the job of finishing production drawings. This may be a process that is never-ending assuming each project is unique enough to cause you to consider a slightly more efficient way of generating the model or the fact that there is always another tool that you haven't yet tried that may be helpful to your workflow.
Regarding 3D, there are time savings to be had when creating elevations and sections, of course, but the real help will be in solving structural fit problems (roofs to walls, for instance) and in getting the little creative boost when you see your model in 3D and find that the solution for fixing the trim issue which has bedeviled you is now plain as day. Or, will the 3D beam stick out of the 3D roof (yes). And, of course, you finally have, after all that, the option of getting a really nice looking 3D model with all the whistles, bells, gravy and giblets you could possibly desire.
Find the tools that help you get work out the door and then, as time allows, delve into the 3D tools. The "How to build a house" CD has, in my opinion, too many steps for a newbie to digest to be helpful. It takes a "how to build a 5-course French meal" approach instead of "how to build a 3D birdhouse" which would be my suggestion for the next Learning CD. I haven't yet seen the V.12 Learning CD's but others I've looked at have been well done and worthwhile.
And budget for a book on VW since the manuals from Nemetschek are tool- based rather than process-based; that is, they are more of a dictionary than a manual on usage.“

Jumping from VW 11.5 to Version 12 will demand some time to adjust to the location of new tools. I’ve become an expert in using the Workspace Editor since I wanted to place old commands back where they were or locate those tools I use most frequently a step or two closer to my mouse button. VectorWorks has evolved to the place where users should absolutely customize the workspace for their own way of working (This will be confusing as all get-out in our user meetings when everyone is helping me find a tool in twelve different places).
Adapting to the new wall tools in V.12 will also challenge our routines learned in V.11.5. The more choices one has, the longer it takes to implement those choices--a fact of life. If you’ve seen Julian Carr’s Windoor program for creating windows and doors in VectorWorks, you know that having more control means spending more time to make those choices. VectorWorks 12 gives us more choices and takes much more time in creating and modifying walls than ever before. In 12, rather than create a wall, you “Un-Style an existing wall. This is an unfortunate term since “Edit” would have conveyed the command’s directive more clearly.
One begins by taking one of the very many new walls in the library (of course, almost none of them are exactly how I like my walls shown) and Un-Styling it to an editable position. This includes even giving any library wall a simple color fill--you must Un-Style it first. We are encouraged to create our own library of walls which we then make available in the Resource Browser. The practical way to proceed is to begin creating a wall library of your own that you will then have available for each future drawing thus keeping editing to a minimum.
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The VectorWorks demo team is coming to Bellingham to show Version 12 to the Bellingham VW Users Group. If you know someone in that area interested in CAD, consider passing this on:
Meet at “Barnacles” at the Alaska Ferry Terminal, 355 Harris Avenue, Bellingham, Wednesday, Feb. 1st.
RSVP to Debra Todd at dtbuildingdesign.com.
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And lastly, as was suggested earlier, please consider using craigslist for all inquiries concerning employment and VectorWorks.
http://seattle.craigslist.org/egr/

See you next Thursday, the 26th!

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #14

2006-07-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #13
1/18/06
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group

In this issue:
•Our next meeting time
•Version 12.0 demo'd
•Viewports primer
•New mouse tricks
•Tools removed in v.12

Hello and welcome, Northwest VectorWorks users, and hello to the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group! We won't have a December meeting due to the holidays but I'll send out a letter in January with a date likely set for the third week of that month. I think I'll also set forward our start and finish times from 6:30 to 8:30 PM. instead of the usual 6:00 to 8:00.
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We had a full house in late November to see the latest and the greatest version of VectorWorks as demo’d by Katie and Dan from Nemeteschek. They stopped off in Seattle on their way to the Portland Journal of Light Construction trade show. We ran over our planned meeting time by an hour and a half so many of us had a pretty good glimpse of the program. V.12 is really loaded with improvements but like any learned routine, v.12 asks us to reaquaint ourselves with the revised location of old commands and learn new ones too. If you find yourself frustrated with quickly locating the correct command or tool with deadlines looming, go to Workspace and try changing to the "Classic" setting which puts you back into an arrangement more like v.11.5.
Editing the palette's setup for your own particular need is evermore practical. A couple of 3D tools have been put into the primary "Basic" tool palette which had previously been all 2D. The newer user might click a 3D tool by mistake and find themselves in 3D land, unable to get the 2D tool they were after to snap to anything. Removing the 3D tools from this palette may appeal to many. For those who happen to enter this Twilight Zone, learn the key command for Top Plan View--you'll find it a very useful way to return in one piece.
You'll also have more palettes in 12 but will be able to fine-tune their shape to better fit a small screen, as was confirmed by one of our demo attendees already using 12. If you have two monitors, you'll be happy for the extra screen real estate.
VectorWorks 11 and 11.5 were substantial upgrades because they introduced Viewports which challenged the way we have, in the past, created pages for printing. Allow me to digress a bit for the benefit of those still digesting the concept of Viewports.
Some of us have grabbed the opportunities provided by Viewports and others, myself included, are slower. We prefer to save the occasional Viewport back to what used to be our Save Sheet collection (in the lower View bar) but re-termed in v.11 as Save View. I might want Viewport views of a kitchen, for instance, but prefer not to use Viewports on all pages of my planset. This process goes somewhat against the grain of the program which would rather have us turn all Saved Views into Viewports which we’d then assign to new Sheets.
That process works well for some. For instance, really large projects are well served using Viewports. Imagine a new wharehouse that you’d set up to draw at 1/16" scale. Using Viewports, you could capture portions of the drawing and array them convienently on Sheets for printing knowing you'd never be able to get the whole project printed on one sheet. You can show them at a new, larger scale too. As the drawing fills out over time, the Viewport can be refreshed.
Small projects work well with Viewports. A desk, designed in 3D but showing in Top-Plan, can be turned into a Viewport. By sending it to a new Sheet, you can duplicate it three times and have an array of (the same) four views of the object. But each view can be substantially changed via the Object Info Palette to show new info, for instance, going from top-plan view for the first image to left isometric view for the second or perspective sketch view with an oil paint background on others. Thus you can present your client with one page showing very dynamic views of your object.
VectorWorks 12 supports mouse scrolling, zooming and greater context right-clicking. I have a neat little Logitec roller ball mouse I bought for $20 from Comp USA which has the typical left/right buttons but also long, narrow scroll button on each side of the roller ball. I can scroll vertically AND horizontally with these buttons. If your mouse has a wheel, you can pan by holding down the wheel and moving the mouse--a one-handed operation. Rolling a mouse wheel also zooms you back and forth.
I still mostly hold down the spacebar to turn the cursor into a hand when I want to drag around a drawing. Note that this method does not interupt any process so you can be in the middle of using a tool and still move your drawing about.
Context (right button) clicking gives you some new options, among them finding/changing layer scale. If you don't use this method, changing a layer's scale requires far more mouse clicks than before. A great new right-click tool is Force Select. You can be in any view and select a layer element or class element from among the clutter of others and have the program send you back to that layer or class where you can then edit the item. This is a boon for larger, complex drawings.
Two tools were taken out of v.12 prematurely, in my view; Cut 3D Section and Align Layer Views were removed. I've since put them back in my revised workspace. For those of you cutting sections regularly to test and adjust the fit of key 3D elements in your drawings such as roof plane-to-wall plate, you will miss this tool. A new tool has been introduced that is somewhat like Align Layer Views called the Stack View tool. It has some benefits over Align Layer Views but as of this writing, there is no way to measure between the elements shown in the model revealed thus making it a visual tool only and so, limited. In my next Convert To Lines, I'll talk you through editing a workspace to bring these tools back, if so desired.

Happy Holidays

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #12

2006-07-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #12
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
11/8/05

In this issue:
• Nemetschek is coming to town this month to demo V.12
• Flogging Viewports
• Using Sketch (VW 11.5 and up)
• The VW 12 upgrade manuals=$, other books on the way

Greetings to all northwest VectorWorks users! As stated above, the VectorWorks demo team, on their way to the JLC Live Pacific Northwest builder’s show, (Dec 01 - Dec 02, Oregon Convention Center in Portland) will stop off in Seattle Wednesday night, November 30th, to demo Version 12. We’ll meet at the usual place, the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall, from 6 PM to 8 PM. 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. If you want a map, try:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&country=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=home&address=2310+S.+Lane+St.&city=Seattle&state=WA&zipcode=98144
As I said in my last newsletter, this upgrade is massive--improvements have been made in nearly all areas of the program. You’ll have to see it to believe it and we’ll have Nemeteschek’s best to take us through the new tools and tricks.
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It’s hard to interrupt a smooth workflow to learn a new way to do things, especially if you think your own way works just fine, thank you very much. Or you’re a newer user and danged if they didn’t go and add one more hard-to-learn step to the whole process. Let’s review.
In the old days, we used to assign our developed layers and classes to sheets prior to printing, which we’d compose down on the lower left on a bar that also gave us additional ways for viewing our drawing. With the advent of V.11 and Viewports, this compositional tool was renamed Views (officially located on the “View bar” and not to be confused with “View” located on the mode bar). Nothing changed but the name. If you wanted to continue assembling your drawings there and print from there, you could. You didn’t have to employ Viewports if you didn’t want to. I like Views’ pop-up menu because it helps me create, then segregate my sheets from the welter of layers that inevitably accrue in a larger project. Just managing the whereabouts of the sheets is a job and Views have remained, for me, a logical place to perform that task.
But Viewports, having been invented, now challenge the old way of organizing our drawings, offering more ways to show our projects without having to spend time doing additional work. In other words, do more with less effort.
Right off the bat, Viewports deliver a unique advantage and that is, if you have your View page assembled, once you Select All and turn that into a Viewport, you can then move the Viewport anywhere on the sheet which frees you to compose the page without shifting layers out of alignment with other layers of your model. You can maintain the integrity of your model by making proxy views of the assembled elements which you can then slide about the page without penalty. But there’s more.
For a while now, users have been yelling that they want “croppable views” and “live sections”. This means that they wanted to draw a marquee around portions of their drawings and have those portions assigned to other sheets of the drawing set and, if the main drawing changed, the cropped portion would change too. Same with live sections--if you had sectioned a drawing early in your process, the Viewport made of said section would remain live--it would change as the main model evolved. You could also, if you wanted, create a croppable view of a kitchen, then duplicate it several times, sliding each to a portion of the sheet, then, using the Object Info palette, give each copy a unique view, such as left isometric or a unique rendering, such as Sketch, Custom Renderworks, or Open GL. Now, suddenly, you had many more options to organize your model’s information and views.
Note that when you make your first Viewport, you are called on to create a Sheet to place it on. Can you stick with printing from Views and only use Viewports for a page or two? Yes. You may find that converting each page of your set to a Viewport, when only one or two pages benefit from a Viewport-style display, is too much. On the other hand, users have reported that they’ve gotten into the swing of it and so convert all Views into Viewports and then into Sheets. Some don’t like having to keep track of most project pages in Views and other project pages in the new Sheets pulldown menu. Is this extra work? The answer may depend on how big or what type of model you are drawing. A cabinet maker may love Viewports because he or she can create only one Viewport of the cabinet or furnishing, then duplicate it and array the dupe’s around the sheet and give each dupe’ it’s own orientation and rendering. If you are working predominantly in 2D, Viewports may have less benefit beyond page composition. Big projects with lots of 3D will likely be finished with all Views turned to Viewports, then turned to Sheets.
It may have been an easier stretch of the imagination if Nemetschek had left Sheets in the lower left corner where they were in Version 10 but had allowed us to create Viewports and then send them to those sheets as we do now with objects via the Object Info palette.
Perhaps the desired interoperability of VW files and AutoCAD files precluded this approach, for one of the advantages of Viewports, as I understand it, is that they make big improvements in file compatibility with AutoCAD.
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Here is a simple drill which employs both Viewports and Sketch. Draw four walls with fill, add windows and a door. Give them a solid fill* too. Push one of the corner keys on your numeric keypad to move the model to an isometric 3D view. Render it using Custom Renderworks or any of the other choices (but not Sketch). Once rendered, Select All and create a Viewport under the View pull-down menu (top menu bar). You will be asked to make a Sheet for this Viewport. Go back to the same model, unchanged. Now Select All and render again using Hidden Line. Remember this next command: Once your model has been rendered in Hidden Line, go back to the Render pull down menu and go once again to Hidden Line and look at the third option which should read “Line Render Options”. Check the box that says Sketch Hidden Line Results. Choose your sketch quality now. Then, once sketched, select all, make a second Viewport which will be sent directly atop the first solid-fill Viewport. You can test this by going to the Sheet and clicking on the front Viewport (which looks exactly like the back Viewport). You will see the Object Info palette reflect the Sketch rendering. Send it to the back and click on the now top Viewport and you’ll see the O.I. palette show that that one was rendered in Custom Renderworks. Then send it to the back again where it started out. We’re almost there. Now go back to View and Update All Viewports. Shore is purty!
But why can’t I just make Viewports of the same model and then, using the Object Info palette, make one VP Final Quality Rendering or whatever, and the other Sketch? You can, but the Sketch’d VP will be shown as Wireframe, not solid. This is where N.N.A. could improve things by giving us an option on the O.I. palette under Sketch>Render Settings to give the model a solid fill and do away with the clunky method I’ve described above.
*Class Settings affect color and fill and in the case of windows, you are likely to want the window to be in a see-through form, not with a gray window shade blocking inside views which is the default format. In the Object Info palette for doors and windows, you’ll see under Class Settings, Style settings 1,2,3, and so on. Windows also have a Class Setting for glazing called None and 1,2,3, and so on. Intuitively, I would think that None means that the window has no fill but that would be wrong. To give the window no fill, check Style-Glazing 1 and go to the Classes pull down menu and you’ll find there is now a new Class for Glazing 1. Select this class and give all members of this class a no-fill designation. Your window will now be a see-through type.
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VW 12 manuals will not be included free for those users buying UPGRADES of any of the new modules. Here’s Dan Monaghan’s post to the VW Listserve on the topic:
“The cost of the printed manual is not $100 dollars. It is $25 for the
Fundamentals manual, and $35 for the Fundamentals + Designer manual set,
http://www.nemetschek.net/support/manuals.php
I think it's important to note that we didn't "remove" the manual from the
upgrade, but rather replaced it with the Upgrade Companion CD. The Upgrade
Companion provides a faster and more convenient way to learn about the new
and improved technology in VectorWorks 12. It also contains searchable PDF
of both manuals, something users have been asking us for.”
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2005/103105.php

Perhaps a seasoned user only needs to learn a smaller set of commands for the new tools which could be downloaded from N.N.A. or the item could be looked up in the PDF manual or you could opt to put broadband on your work machine and always be a click away from online help. Or you could call the help desk.
On the other hand, this is a BIG upgrade with lots of opportunity/responsibility to help the user make a smooth transition to the new program. On the other, other hand, more third party books are coming out, although they specialize in general usage technique, not tool definitions as the N.N.A. manuals do. Jonathan Pickup will be marketing a new VW 12 Essential Manual shortly and a new Architect manual in a month's time.
http://archoncad.blogspot.com
http://www.archoncad.co.nz
http://www.vectorworkusergroup.co.nz
jon@archoncad.co.nz
Check out his new blog.

Thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you on the 30th.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #11

2006-07-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #11
7/18/05

In this issue:
•Nemetschek is coming to town
•Call for photos of cool projects.
•Old CAD review
•A good book
•File structure and beyond

Greetings from the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group! Summertime is for fishing and surfing and kayaking and maybe not for polishing your CAD skills so I’m out on a limb here with this post but Nemetschek is coming to town August 4 and you may be interested in seeing what’s up. They’ll be meeting in Seattle at the Lighting Design Lab and you should be getting your own postcard in the mail with details.
Also Nemetschek is planning an advertising campaign which will feature photos of finished projects of all kinds. Especially sought are photos of projects that may have some recognizability within the community. Here is Deirdre Kidd’s post:

“We are putting together a new ad campaign and we are looking for photos of finished projects to include in this campaign. The campaign will feature one ad with several different projects and while the ad will be similar each month, the projects will all be different. So, as you can imagine, we need lots of images. I was hoping that you [SIG Leaders], or some members of your group, or even VectorWorks users that you know in your area might have some completed projects that we could feature in this campaign. And, if a firm has several impressive projects, I am interested in those as well. If you have a project you would like to include, or you know of an impressive VectorWorks project, please send an e-mail directly to me, dkidd@nemetschek.net If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks for your help!”
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Granddads CAD. I came across an old issue of Macintosh Construction Forum, a black and white newsletter which began publishing not too long after the Mac Plus first hit the retail channel. This twelve page issue was from June, 1989 and in it was an article entitled CADD On The Mac--The Most Popular CADD Packages Go Head-To-Head, by John Stebbins. The programs reviewed were ArchiCAD 3.34 ($3,950), Architrion ll 5.00 ($2495), Claris CAD 1.0 ($788), Dreams ($500), Generic Level l ($150), MiniCAD Plus 1.0 ($695), Pegasys ll ($1795), Power Draw 2.0 ($795) and VersaCAD 2.1 ($1995).
The programs were laid out with their differences highlighted spreadsheet-fashion and quite a few factors were considered. For instance, MiniCAD could run on a Mac 512KE but you needed a powerhouse like the Mac ll to run ArchiCAD and Architrion. MiniCAD had no tutorial in the manual (some things never change) but did have a built-in spreadsheet plus unlimited layers while ArchiCAD only supported sixteen (gotcha!). ArchiCAD could rotate objects and MiniCAD could not. Virtually unlimited drawing area is checked yes for MiniCAD and no for ArchiCAD. Only in Power Draw and VersaCAD could you cut objects with a line. Only Architrion did automatic exploded views. Cool. MiniCAD had associative dimensioning (!). Import and export of DXF cost an extra $500 if you were using MiniCAD. MiniCAD could render surfaces but could not provide shades or shadows unlike ArchiCAD or Architrion.
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There is a listserve for VW user group leaders and I posed a question about file structure that was answered thusly:
“Gentle People,
It is just this sort of thing that I have tried to address in my book Vectorworks by Project. My co-author, Ray Massacessi and I noticed that people had an easier time understanding things if they were presented in a work context. So we broke the training down into projects. The first project uses an existing file (from the included CD) and simply teaches different ways to move around in a drawing while doing a door takeoff. The second project starts with a partially completed organizational chart and teaches basic editing and primitive creation. The next three units focus respectively on: the simplest way to create a 2D floor plan (fewest and most basic tools); A more elaborate floor plan and elevations for a ranch house (wall tools and wall editing etc.), and finally a set of 3D plans and elevations using the 3D view manipulation and viewports to create a simple set of drawings for a commercial building. We did not cover the VW Architect tools yet. But we may if more people buy the basic book. We are also considering a metric version. We keep tweaking it to make it better as we only do short run printing. The book is available on the NNA website for $29.95. If they are out of the book you can also order it from my local booksellers website: http://www.nicolasbooks.com”
Louis B. Smith, Jr, AIA
Ascent Design
P.O. Box 130706
Ann Arbor MI 48113
Phone: 734-929-6957
fax: 734-929-6958
email: lbsmith@ascentdesignpc.com
web: http://www.ascentdesignpc.com
I bought the book. I like it very much and feel it would be a great intro book since it takes the new VW user through processes that gives them a basic understanding of how to maneuver and then, use of 2D tools and finally, 3D tools. If I had a new person to teach VW to, I would ask them to first buy this book.
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What’s the point of using CAD over hand drawing? I’ve copied a letter from the VW Listserve that eloquently lists some of those reasons and also talks about the manner in which we eventually sort out all the data--the info--that comprises a working set of drawings. Here it is:

“You'll need to come up with a system that works for you.
There are endless numbers of ways VW can be used, but
there is also a path of least resistance that will help guide
you in developing your own design.

You'll need to first define what goal for efficiency you
hope to gain by using VW over hand drawing. For me
some of those goals include:

1. Speed:
A. Replication Tools ( Mirror, Offset, Duplicate )
B. Plotting and printing on many types of media

2. Accuracy:
A. 12 decimal real numbers.
B. Smart Cursor.
C. Dialog edit.
D. No loss copies.

3. Reliability:
B. Storage and retrieval of drawings.
a. Easy to Copy and Replicate ( Electronic File, not paper)
b. Easy to distribute (Native .mcd and Import, Export of .dwg)
c. Backup ( Auto Save, other)

4. Ease of changing and modifying a drawing:

5. Reduction of Contradictions:

A. Reuse of objects ( Saved Views, Viewports and Layer Links )
a. Localization of objects, NO duplication. ( Layers )
b. Global control over attributes. ( Classes w/ attributes )
c. Data output for Schedules. ( Worksheets and Record
Formats )
d. Dialog edit of high level objects (PIOs)
e. Global Editing ( Custom Selection, Symbols )

So, you'll have to make your own outline based on what
is important to you. If you agree with what I have outlined
then you'll see that my primary path to an efficient drawing
system, will include data uniqueness as a major goal. To that
end you will discover ways of using classes and layers in
combination with the other elements I mentioned, like VPs
and Saved Views to meet this need. This leads the way to
avoiding contradictions and wasted time, editing 12 sheets
because a window moved 6".

The problem you will soon discover, if you have not already,
is how do you control the appearance and visibility of an object
that is dashed and thin on one sheet and heavy and solid on
another. Or is visible on one sheet but not on another. The easy
solution is to use classes to control the attributes (and sometimes
the visibility) of objects grouped by type, and Layers to control the
visibility and group by location. I create shared and non-shared
layers, and classes to define the attributes for everything, from
wall line thickness, to the hatch pattern for CMU.

Another benefit to using a class and layer system is in the
categorization of the objects. You'll need to design your system
so that you know, right away, what class a counter top should be
in, and what class and layer a Window should be in. With a well
laid out schema, you can quickly locate and change any
number of things about any group of objects. You can also
create any view you want of that data, be it a 3D ortho, or a
material takeoff in a spreadsheet.

This gets you into a complex matrix where you'll need to manage
a multi dimensional array of Classes, Layers, Attributes, visibility
and many other parameters. This can be done in part with Saved
Views, VPs, and with the help of Records and Worksheets,
VectorScripts and a myriad of other tools. Trying to understand
someone else's file can be very difficult and unintuitive, if it is
anything more than an electronic version of a paper set.

The only way you'll be able to manage such a system, is if you
understand it. And the best way to do that, is to design it yourself.”

From Patrick Higgins
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And lastly, to save one step when placing arrowheads other than the standard arrow style, draw your line then DO select the standard arrowhead but then scroll and select the correct choice from the library with one click (which undoes your first choice). This is somewhat faster than avoiding the standard arrowhead choosing instead to scroll and place a different head on your line. My way is not intuitive but is faster.
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OK, go back to your beach and your trashy novel. Lesson’s over for the day.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
206-524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #10

2006-07-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Convert To Lines #10
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
4/4/05

In this issue:
Changes in VW 11.5

Greetings, Seattle VectorWorks Users plus all of you beyond the horizon in places like Goldendale, Wenachee, Vancouver and Spokane. Welcome!
This letter is a reminder of our upcoming meeting taking place April 20th, a Wednesday, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the portable-style building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
I’ll have some goodies to give out. If you have VW 11 and haven’t upgraded to 11.5, I’ll bring a stack of updater CD’s that Nemetschek has provided us and you are welcome to take one, particularly if you downloaded the updater but would like a hard copy. You needn’t have the interim updater to advance to 11.5 as this one disk does it all. They’ve also included a special disk of textures that are just for us--I haven’t seen it offered elsewhere.
I’ll also bring Greco’s awesome 3D cityscape I’d mentioned in the last newsletter.
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Nemetschek mailed to me, in addition to the updaters, a disk intended to demonstrate the advantages of version 11.5. Of course, I’d read the list of improvements on the website when 11.5 first came out, but in viewing the QT movie within, I found the disk far more informative. For instance, the freehand tool has long been useless to me as it creates jaggy lines with far too many editing nodes. If you drew fast there were fewer nodes but you’d tend to lose control and go squiggly. Draw slow and the nodes multiplied like crazy. In an example from the QT movie, in VW 11, drawing a kidney shaped pond created some 600 nodes. With VW 11.5 the same shape made 60. Now, with 11.5, you have much more editing control. The Freehand tool suddenly becomes functional.
I stumbled onto this interesting change: In VW 11, if you drew out a stair-stepped polyline and wanted to stretch it, you had to use the 2D Reshape tool. In VW 11.5, simply grabbing an upper corner allows you to pull the whole upwards save for one leg which remains anchored.
I did notice that one tool was missing. I use Material Fill to place symbols of sand, gravel or concrete from time to time. It has been eliminated! In its place is Stipple which does none of those. Am I missing something obvious? If so, write and set me straight. But I can edit my way back by using the Workspace Editor, scrolling down the left hand side of the Editor (under Commands) perusing existing folders till I see Legacy. Inside is Material Fill. Drag it sideways across the middle divider bar and onto Menu / AEC. Scroll down and drop it where it used to be, below Tile.
While you’re in the Workspace Editor, here is something else you can fix if you use Architect. The Wall tool has bugged me since it has a worthless tool sitting in front of Walls, the real wall tool. Get rid of Wall Type Tool. If you can tell me why this tool is important I’ll have a prize for you in May. I and others on the listserve find no reason for its existence. In the Workspace Editor, on the right hand pane, either pull Walls below and out of the clutches of Wall Type Tool, or delete Wall Type Tool and the others in this group, and then recreate them by dragging over Walls from the Wall folder at the bottom of the left side pane and then scrolling up to Architect, pull a copy of the Window Wall--which you eliminated during the delete--over and onto Walls. Now you see the L-shaped wall on your palette and not the brick-on-edge shape of the old Wall Type Tool. Remember the prize. Your reason has to be good, you must respond in one week and you must attend the meeting in May to collect. I can’t afford to pay postage on your prize.
The cutting tools have improved giving you much more flexibility. I didn’t see this one small improvement mentioned, but I found that when I am in plan view and cut out a piece of wall--as I do to place a header-line symbol for a window or door--that the cutting-rectangle now cuts both sides of the wall. Prior to this, the rectangle I’d place over the wall would cut one side only. Jack McKean will co-host on the 20th and will cover all the cutting tools. I think you’ll learn some timesaving tricks.
Have you seen the new Sketch function in 11.5? It really is a deeply integrated tool. Not only can you draw in Sketch mode but the Smart Cursor cues will still work. You can find the wall’s corner when snapping, for instance, even though it may show overstrikes or gaps.
To try this new feature, just select Sketch from View / Rendering and begin drawing. If you’ve drawn any sort of volume while in Sketch mode, hit number 1 on your numerical keypad to bounce yourself into left front isometric view. Your model stays in Sketch style. Who would want to draw this way? Perhaps the landscape designers out there who want a hand-drawn look maintained while in the process of drawing rather than generated at the end.
Because Sketch is vector based, if you want color or other effects for the finished look, you’ll need either two Layers or two Viewports to stack the sketched line work over a colored, non-Sketched copy of the model. On the disk from Nemetschek, the example showed the body of the model done in Artistic Renderworks / Oil Painting. No one much uses oil painting I’m guessing, but with the NNA model clad in stone and brick, the final assembly looked pretty cool.
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Whatever it is that’s been bugging you, causing you to lose momentum, I’d like to hear about it on April 20th. Do you bog when creating a workable file structure? Are you dragged down trying to manage too many Classes and too many multiple Layer-Linked sheets? You’d like a boost to your 3D capabilities? Roofs make you restless?
Bring in your questions and lets talk about them. Be assured, there is a simple solution but finding it on your own is sometimes not so simple. Together we’ll find the answers.
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Lastly, I’d like to thank those of you that have written back over the months expressing appreciation for the Convert To Lines newsletters and for sharing tips and/or examples of your work. All serve as fuel helping me keep a positive point of view.
Following the April 20th meeting, May 25th will be our last get-together before summer vacation. We’ll take off June through August to play and recharge. Expect to hear from me once more before May and then sometime in early September as we jump into fall.

Cheers,

Tom Greggs
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
206-524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #9

2006-07-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #9
3/13/05

In this issue:
Reasons to go 3D
Making a 3D rockery
Finding out about the Split tool
The Art of Perspective Drawing

Hello northwest VectorWorks Users! Our next Seattle VectorWorks User Group meeting will be held on April 20th, a Wednesday, skipping March entirely since the Seattle Central Community College will be closed for spring break in the latter half of this month. When we meet again, we’ll be focusing on 3D from an incremental point of view. (If you are way into 3D, skip down to the tips section at the bottom.) Expect another e-mailed meeting reminder much closer to that date.
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3D is a visible proof that your figures add up. Or not. Do the assembled elements of your design fit together? Will the beam poke out through the roof or fit correctly when seen in left-front isometric view? Do you need to prove that your structure meets a complex zoning code which factors in different grades on each side of the building?
Many of you have heard me talk about putting the “pretty picture” at the back of the process for the sake of being able to see how things fit together and I think most of you who are new to 3D may find real value in thinking about creating lines and then, later, adding color and texture. Even interior designers may find value in converting 3D views to lines and adding color from another source than VectorWorks, especially now that the sketch feature has been added to VW 11.5. Later, as time allows, learning to add lights and textures from within VectorWorks will bring another kind of drama to their designs.
But the devil (read “money”) is in the details and this is the main reason to learn to do parts or all of your projects in 3D. Money gets saved when you discover an error that would have slipped by with no 3D model and the visible double check. The builder’s estimator and superintendent come to the party more quickly when they can clearly see your intent and so assign a cost. Your 3D illustration keeps them from cutting corners around the plan or starting assembly from the wrong corner or from just not seeing the detail. At the end of the day, when you’re tired, VectorWorks’ 3D tools will give you a creative energy boost empowering you to take banding details a little farther than your first idea or two and this will hopefully remove the problem of having to run to the project in emergency-mode. It’s all about the money.
OK, you say, but what about all the time it takes to set up and manage 3D? I would reply that for every hour that you spend setting up your work for 3D, you gain the time back when you draw your sections and elevations since we need only measure up and set the element once. Every other view will have those lines in the correct location saving having to place them one by one. Imagine your typical process of creating elevation drawings. What if you spent your time removing lines, having to only rarely add them? That’s a timesaver.
If you do get to the stage of producing “pretty pictures” I certainly won’t respect you any less however I may ask you to share some of your knowledge with the rest of us on how you typically set up your models.
But what did he mean by the “incremental” comment at the top of this piece? That’s the art of knowing just enough to solve a problem or two by using VW’s 3D tools. I expect, in our next meeting, to show you a number of ways to move toward that goal.
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Some tips:
If you are a landscaper and want to draw rocks for a rockery, a simple way to do this is to extrude a squarish rectangle, give it a solid fill color and extrude it approximately the same depth as one of the other dimensions. Then go to an Orthographic view (View/Right Isometric for instance). Use the Split Tool in line mode to cut off random corners. Rotate the block and split off more until you get a rocklike object.

The Split Tool resides on the 2D Object palette and you can read about the several types of objects it can edit by going to page 8-29 in the VectorWorks V11 User’s Guide or by going to the Help file and clicking on What’s This, then clicking on the Split Tool icon. This Find Info tip came from Patrick Higgins and was borrowed from the VectorWorks listserve.

Everyone most likely uses the keyboard to cut, copy or paste and probably also uses keys to activate Duplicate, Rotate, Nudge and Join. But what about getting the 2D Reshape Tool up quickly or the Active Only (Layers) command set to clear away the clutter of other visible Layers through use of the keyboard? There are a LOT of keyboard commands available to you. Adding a handful to your bag of tricks could save you some real time over the course of a year.

To find the shortcuts list, start up VW and go to the VectorWorks Help command and type “Keyboard Shortcuts” (w/o quotes) into the Search box . The Print command will generate a five page list of timesavers.
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The Art of Perspective Drawing was a Grumbacher Library publication from 1968 and was composed entirely of works by the illustrator Simon Greco*. I met and befriended Simon late in his life and he gave me a copy of the Perspective book (which described the principles of perspective drawing) plus a large print of one of his paintings done for Trans World Airlines showing their pride and joy, a propeller powered airliner, skimming the skyline of Manhattan. Greco created a superb painting in 3D and I doubt you’ll see the like of it again. I’ll bring my print of this work to share with you at the next meeting of the Seattle VectorWorks User Group.

Tom Greggs
206-524-2808

*On the flyleaf of the perspective book is this note:
“Mr. Greco, a noted teacher, painter and illustrator, is well known for his work in connection with the Life Magazine series of the Epic of Man. Originals of his commercial commissions are in the collection of the U.S. Naval Academy, The Smithsonian Institution, The American Museum of Natural History, Adirondack Museum and Betsy Ross House. As a fine arts painter, his work has been exhibited at the U. of Pennsylvania, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum and many others.”

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2006-07-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #8
February 3, 2005

In this issue:
VectorWorks manuals
Setting up the model

Greetings VectorWorks Users! Our next Seattle User Group meeting is February 23rd beginning at 6:00 PM and finishing at 8:00 PM.

Let’s get right into the first topic.

Consider the authors of the VectorWorks manuals. How do you go about structuring information when there are so many tools for drawing lines, so many processes for assembling sheets for the printing of finished work, so many ways to put together and highlight a model. In a highly engineered product that is constantly being churned, old ideas and tools roll out while new ideas, techniques, and methods roll in. Listing all of these processes, options and choices is the job of the lexicographer--the dictionary editor.
But would you make a cake while trying to pull a recipe from a dictionary? No. Better to read from something written by one who actually makes a living sifting flour and mixing butter. Those of us who bought VectorWorks may have thought, reasonably, that the manuals which came with the product would be both dictionary and recipe book. We may have expected that at some point in our reading we would encounter a soothing voice that would tell us how best to navigate through the confusion.
Nemetschek, you will be happy to hear, is serious about doing what they can to provide us with the best instruction out there. They have recognized, evidenced by steps they’ve recently taken, that you should have the best manuals available to you, regardless of where they were produced. They have also indicated a sincere interest in improving the web site by providing more how-to tutorials of all kinds.
My point in this is that you will benefit by owning a 3rd party manual which will speed the learning of VectorWorks. You might choose one of the new NNA Training Guides:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.html
or one of several books offered here:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/manuals.html
Buy one of these. Whether you purchase it yourself or NNA provides the book and buries the cost in the next upgrade is (as I’ve suggested to them) beside the point. The newer user proceeding without 3rd party guidance will struggle needlessly.
I have found that manuals I’ve purchased for my own use have provided me with relevant information month after month. An idea closed to me at an earlier stage of growth becomes clearer later and so the manual keeps giving back. If you read the book, learn everything, and want to move on, I will help you sell it. Just approach VectorWorks with the understanding that the factory manuals are, for the most part, very much like dictionaries. The hard-won, practical knowledge that you’ll need to really take off will be found at one of the web sites listed above.

OK, back to our next meeting. We’ll keep on with our approach of having a mix of topics that run from beginner to advanced. Work Group Referencing is something we think of as an advanced topic but a new user, working by themselves, can use WGR to set up a very interesting file structure which is designed to limit the number of alterations rippling through the plan when primary changes are made. Stuart Gerger will start off this part of the demo. Poppi Handy will talk about Fences and why she really likes this tool (Poppi: email me!). Those of you using VW10.5 and down will hear more about how Sheets has had its name changed to Views in VW11. You’ll find the change won’t alter your methods at all but only give you new and improved composition options. I may extrude some knee braces or trellises. This is a fun way to get some simple 3D accessories into your work. I’ll also bring an illustration graphically showing the benefits of exporting VW 3D models into Photoshop for touchup prior to printing.
We’ll meet at the Wood Construction Center located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.

The process of setting up a file in VectorWorks depends on who you work for. If you have an employer who has already worked out the job specifics such as height of objects and their stacking order, then you might appreciate a tool such as Model Setup which is found in VW Architect. With Model Setup you just plug in floor to floor heights and a manageable set of Layers are automatically created for you. Model Setup is part of a package of tools including Document Setup, Create Standard Viewports and Standard Naming. These tools, particularly Standard Viewports and Standard Naming are going to be part of a system that will be handed down to you. The logic for naming Layers, Classes, and Sheets will have come from somewhere else.
If you’re self-employed or have a good deal of autonomy at work, then everything is different. In this world, since you are responsible for what sits on a Layer or what object inhabits a class, you’ll want to use your own terminology. The terms MOD and SLAB* preceding every Layer name--as automatically created by Model Setup--may not help readability. We also rarely know for certain the heights of our walls and floors until after we’ve drawn for a while. I don’t like being pinned down ahead of time and so whenever I draw a new set of walls on a Layer, I use the Object Info palette to set the wall’s overall height and the height of its base and skip over entering these numbers in the Layer Setup dialog box leaving those input boxes blank.
If there‘s a bug with this method, it is that (with the exception of things that stick to walls like windows and doors) a bed or a sink-base placed on a Second Story layer will default to 0’ winding up, effectively, on the Main Story when viewed in 3D**. If this were to happen, you could move them all at once with the Move Tool or individually, one by one, with the Object Info palette. I like the flexibility of using the OI palette enough that I am willing to put up with moving object to their correct heights rather than be forced to preset the Layer height in Layer Setup. If you populate your multistory drawings with lots of 3D elements, you may find my system harder than just setting up heights as God and Nemetschek intended in the Layer Setup dialog box. Bottom line, you have three ways to set your object heights: Layer Setup, Model Setup or via the Object Info palette.

*Rather than use Mod or Slab as prefixes to label Layers, why not use something that makes for easier reading while still giving you an identifier that marks the Layer as belonging to the Model or as having a 3D entity within? In that case, if the Main Story contains live 3D walls, the Layer name might be “Main Story (3D)”. Use “3D” as a suffix. The roof framing plan may have no 3D elements within so no special label would be needed. All Layers lacking a 3D suffix would be assumed to be composed of only 2D elements.

**The only reason to preset a height of any given Layer is that whatever you draw there will stick on the base setting of that height. If you decide to set your wall’s total height and base height as you go along (as I do), avoiding the Layer Setup options, note this one proviso: at some point before you start placing doors and windows into those walls, set, at least, their base height. If you are drawing on the Basement Layer and have not set a base height for those walls, when you do begin to place doors and windows, they will naturally default to 0’ and so will show up as though on the Main Story Layer when you look at your assembled model in 3D. If you later come back to set the wall’s height, the doors or windows previously placed will not automatically adjust and you will have to set the window or door base height for each via the Object Info palette. However, they will automatically adjust if they read the wall’s base height first.

See you on the 23rd.

Tom Greggs
206-524-2808

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2006-07-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

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Seattle VectorWorks User Group
1/8/05

In this issue:
3D and the Seattle Library
Contemporary World Architecture

Greetings, Seattle VectorWorks Users plus any and all readers out beyond the city limits. This is a reminder of our upcoming meeting taking place January 19th, a Wednesday, from 6:00 to 8:00. We’ll cover the new Viewports concept in VW 11 plus the Objects from Polyline tool and anything else we can fit within our two hours. If you are a beginner, we’ll find time to help you with a few key concepts. Jack Mckean will bring along several VW 10 Learning Series CD’s which we’ll give away. I’ll bring the new VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which you are welcome to borrow. You’ll remember, the 11’s require a deposit.
One more comment about Viewports: Jack’s been using this tool in the drawing of a large commercial project and he’s found it to be very helpful setting the scale of his Layers at the small setting of 1/16” per foot but using Viewports to create printable pages where the scale has been increased to 1/4” per foot. I’m interested in how to keep my Layers aligned in smaller projects and not swish them around as I do now when I am ready to optimize each page layout prior to printing. Can Viewports accomplish this task while leaving the Layers aligned in case project requirements change?
The meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.

This being a reminder, I’m not going to run on and on with this drill or that task or continue to shame you into doing more with 3D (although this is the season for new resolutions!). Instead allow me to go off-topic just a bit to encourage anyone who hasn’t seen the new Seattle Library to make time to see this amazing structure. There is a CAD related art piece there--a continuous film of CAD objects in wireframe mode which I think you would find interesting. These objects are projected on a huge concrete wall in the center of the building. I went up to the eighth floor, took a left upon exiting the elevators and walked east on a short, narrow hallway to look down on this unfolding art. What you see is a huge globe of sorts rotating toward you, bringing CAD objects of all kinds and sizes lazily up and over the horizon where they finally roll off and dissolve into space. This art installation is part of a permanent collection. While you’re enjoying and observing all this wonderful library space, try to imagine designing it without CAD.
The other discovery was a wonderful book of Architecture found at the University Bookstore in the U. District. They have an open display of The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, down from $160 to the rock bottom price of $128. This large-format color atlas shows architecture not just country by country but region by region within each country. There are some fine CAD drawings included as counterpoint to many of the project photos. Our very own Experience Music Project building designed by Frank Gehry Partners is shown in the US/West Coast selection of buildings along with the new Gehry Walt Disney Concert Hall and, in the middle of the country, Gehry’s Weatherhead School of Management building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I have to say we suffer in comparison, what with the “guitar strings” structure cluttering the roof along with a satellite dish. Gehry’s forms prove to be fragile, in my opinion, when overlaid with angular shapes, somewhat like a flowing french phrase with a gesundheit stuck in the middle. But I risk creating a real debate here when I really only wanted to pass on the joy of looking at a beautiful book with no intention of paying for it.
See you Wednesday after next!

PS. Check out the brand new Training Guides on the NNA website.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2004/121604.html
Note the link at the bottom of the release.

Tom Greggs

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2006-07-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

Convert to Lines #6
12/3/04

In this issue:
Roof creation
Extrude along path
Model View tool

Greetings, VectorWorks Users! Here is a follow-up to the December 1st Roofs seminar plus the announcement of the upcoming January meeting for 2005!
Roof creation is mostly about drawing a polygon and then extruding it and tipping it to fit the purpose as intended--shedding rain away thus preventing it from dripping into our cereal bowls. Most roofs are made up of more than one plane so that means, when you make a number of extruded, pitched polygons by hand, they probably won’t fit correctly the first time out.
In Top/Plan View, place a locus point at the area where these planes should knit. Copy the locus point into memory. Change to Side View to measure the horizontal distance from one peak to the other, then go back to Top/Plan View. Double-click on your 3D roof and you are whisked to a new editing screen. Paste-In-Place the locus point onto this new screen and then use the 2D Reshape Tool to stretch your roof poly to the new shape. Exit by hitting the Done button in the upper right hand corner of your screen and you are back to Top/Plan View and ready to reshape the next, adjoining polygon.
I like to view the roof in relation to the walls below so when I go to a side view of the roof, assuming it is on a different layer than my walls, I use the Align Layer Views command to swing the walls into alignment. I like limiting my visible layers to just walls and roofs since other pieces of the drawing clutter up the view making it harder to see and make choices. Regardless of what you are building, be it cabinets or gears, use Align Layer Views to gain understanding of the Layer to Layer relationships.
I used VectorWorks 11 + Architect for the evening’s discussion and so I made use of all the automated tools. But when the going gets complicated and automatic doesn’t get it done, Ungroup the roof planes and edit each one just like it was any other extruded polygon.
The 2D Reshape tool and the 3D reshape tool are a bit confusing since the 2D reshape tool IS used to change 3D shapes. But remember that when you edit a simple 3D shape, you are taken to an editing pane where the 3D info has been stripped away and stored. You are now editing a 2D entity. Exiting restores the 3D elements. The 3D Reshape tool edits more complex 3D entities including Nurbs surfaces such at Extrude Along Path objects, and also walls.
I’m hoping for one little old improvement in the roof tools in the next VW upgrade and that would be automatic creation of fascia and barge rafters. VW does this now but only when the barge or fascia is in relation to a cut rafter tail. If you had a 2x4 top cord truss and wanted a 2x8 fascia, you’d have to create this deeper board yourself. You can use a simple extrude, one by one, to create these however that process can be laborious. Just prior to the 1st, I tried a couple of new ways to create fascia and barges with mixed results. In one case, I used the automatic roof framing tool in VW 11 which made individual 3D rafters for the entire roof including barge rafters. Then I threw away every other stick of framing while keeping the barges. Don’t check the Create Ridge Board box or this will leave a gap between the barges at their tops. If you want to stretch the barge to enclose a gutter end, simply lengthen the span in the Object Info palette.
But David Rosenfeld suggested using the Wall tool to make a fascia or any kind of repeating band. This is a good idea since you can type in the wall width and height, 1-1/2” by 7-1/2” in this case, in the Object Info palette. But what happens when you have a gable roof mixed in with hips? Continue to run the “wall” across the front of the gable then go to a straight on view of the gable and use the 3D Reshape tool to add a reshape node to this “wall” at both top and bottom allowing you to drag it upwards to fit the gable.
When the shape is more complex than a simple rectangle, use the Extrude Along Path tool. I use it for gutters and belly bands with drip caps. Note that the Extrude Along Path tool will place your shape’s centroid or middle average onto the center of your pathway (called the Path Object). So you have to either outsmart this tendency or use Edit Group to shift the shape one way or the other to get it to align correctly. I’ve resigned myself to using the Edit function since I rarely get it right the first time. It is worth the effort however. In two projects that had complicated drip bands, the final 2D elevation drawings had them showing perfectly so I didn’t have to add lines by hand. This is a time saver. You will also see in 3D any error if your band is terminating or transitioning in an incorrect manner. I expect Nemetschelk to improve the Extrude Along Path tool with an alignment option in a future upgrade.
As noted above, the Extrude Along Path tool creates a more complex 3D entity. The Path that you create is converted to a Nurbs curve. This means that when you need to lengthen or shorten the Path, click on Edit Group and then use the 3D Reshape tool and not the 2D reshape tool to make the change. Paste in your locus points for reference since estimating distance in the editing pane without using a reference is especially difficult. Lastly, whenever pasting in references into the editing window or pane, be sure to remove them before clicking on Done so they won’t mar the finished 3D views.
How many of you have used the Model View tool to assemble your layers into models? I have been using the original, much less intuitive method called Create Layer Link. Model View has been under my nose since at least Version 10.5 and I’ve finally discovered it! Model View may only be available in Architect but I sincerely hope that it has made it to all versions of VW. I’d be interested in knowing if the bare VectorWorks package has Model View installed. Try this tool with its improved interface now.
Here is a question concerning the coming year: should we break up the meeting structure to allow us to focus on the newer user one month and then cover topics more interesting to advanced users the following month? Or should we continue on, mixing and matching both during our evenings as time and inclination allow? Jonathan Pickup, author of many manuals on using VW, strongly suggests the two party system. But he also meets many more months of the year than we do and he charges $ for these meetings, understandable in part because he has to fly to the various cities served. Here is the list of offerings they attempt to provide the newer user during the course of a year:
•New Drawing Methods
•Preferences and Constraints
•Setting Up a Domestic Project
•How to Use Layers and Classes
•Building a Simple House
•Creating and Using Symbols
•Walls, Floors, Columns
•Simple Roofs
•Intro to 3D Modeling
•Intro to Worksheets
•Setting Up Large Projects
•PowerPac
•Intro to Rendering
•Intro to Site Modeling
•Intro to Customizing
If you are a newer user who would benefit from a structured intro similar to that offered by the New Zealand VectorWorks User Group, then let me know. Our reality is that we would structure the evenings to suite our own biases but use Jonathan’s well developed pdf files, based on his books, to guide us. He has very generously offered to give us these files for SVUG use.
The URL for the NZ User Group: http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/home.htm
Jonathan’s book sales site:
https://vesta.safe-order.net/archoncad/manuals/manuals.php
Jack’s back! Jack McKean will host the January meeting and cover the Viewports concept in VW 11. He is finding it a terrific improvement for organizing drawings. I’ll take a look at Objects from Polyline in VW Architect which allows you to create thirteen different items from any polyline shape such as creation of massing models (quick housing shapes), piping runs, seating layouts, space planning and more.
I’ll bring the Learning Series CD’s so if you wish to borrow one, be prepared to write me a check for $75 which I’ll hold until the safe return of the CD which should be mailed back to me after approximately 2-1/2 weeks. If you are out of meeting range, mail me the check plus a nonrefundable check for $5 to cover to-and-fro mailing. If you get and return one, I can keep the same check and mail a fresh one out. When your last CD is back safe in my hands, I’ll return your uncashed check by mail.
For further info on the Learning Series CD contents:
http://www.nemetschek.net/training/trainingcd.html
Plan to meet on January 19, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. The event is free.
Write down the date on your calendar and expect a reminder e-mail sometime closer to the 19th.

CONVERT TO LINES #5

2006-07-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

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November 18, 2004

In this issue
Extruding objects

Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group. In my last post, I had suggested that those interested solely in roofs meet December 1st, a Wednesday, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. A number of folks responded and so we will go forward with that meeting but I’m sending this post out to one and all in case your schedule or your interest changes. There is plenty of room so just show up. The more, the merrier.
I have a Vectorworks 10 Learning Series CD, Foundation ll that I’ll give away at the meeting. Those that wish can draw for it--as in pick-a-number. Disk topics include Walls, Advanced 3D, Creating Scripts, Worksheets and Databases, Setting Up a Drawing System and Workgroup Referencing. If you have VW 10 Learning Series CD’s at home that you’ve finished viewing, bring them to the SVUG meetings and share them or swap them!
I also have the full set of VW 11 Learning Series CD’s which I plan to lend out. These include the Vectorworks Foundations l & ll, Architect, Landmark, Spotlight and Renderworks. I’m still working out a plan for this to work but at this point I am considering accepting and holding a check for the retail amount of the CD plus a few dollars to cover mailing the CD out and back. There would be a two week period before the disk would be overdue. Upon receipt of the CD, I would tear up the check and mail you back the pieces. Only one CD at a time would be issued to any one person. Let me know if this interests you.
The Dec. 1 Roofs meeting will be held at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
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Let’s get right into some tips. When you want to make a plane such as a ground plane, do you choose Extrude or Floor? The Floor tool gives you a dialog box that allows you to set the floor height in space. The Extrude Tool does not have this same advantage. You will have to drag it to its proper location or use the Move command. You can angle an extruded object by going to a side view and using the 3D Rotate Tool. If the yard slopes or you are making a sloping driveway or other tipped surface, this is the tool to use. A Floor cannot be tilted. If you wish to apply a texture to an extruded object, doing so will cover all surfaces. Pasting a texture onto a floor will only texture the top plane and not the other sides. There is also another option and that is using the Roof Face command which will give you a combination of advantages from both Extrude and Floor. There is--and I believe this is in Architect and perhaps Landmark--a road tool that makes sizing from the Object Info Palette and easy chore. It also has a curb option. Import from Object Libraries the Sitework-Parking & Roads library. Once imported into your Resource Browser, choose Road Straight Drive and use it as a road or any other flat or sloped surface.

Here is a link to a trove of QT movies of VW
http://www.nemetschek.net/movies/index.html

If you have ever wondered about cabinet hinges, check out this site.
http://www.allwoodwork.com/article/woodwork/glossary_of_cabinet_hinge_terms.htm

See you on the 1st of December!

Tom Greggs
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
(206)-524-2808

CONVERT TO LINES #4

2006-07-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #4
10/29/04

In this issue:
Speeding up rendering
Class options vs. Layer options
Setting the height of objects

Question:
Would any of you turn out in early December for an evening of roof editing only? The Seattle Vectorworks User Group usually skips December and November due to the busy holiday time opting instead to meet sometime during the third week of January. There are, however, enough people interested in learning more about the roof tools--how to set up, then edit, roofs--that I would come out in December if you are interested.
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If you would like to attend a roof-only SVUG meeting on December 1st,Wednesday night, 6:00-8:00 PM, e-mail me at tomgreggs@mindspring.com. I will only be confirming the date (for this meeting only) to those that e-mail me in reply to this post.
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Our last get-together in October was a good one considering we met during the seventh game of the Red Sox, Yankees duel. Ivan Hass, who teaches VW at the Wood Construction Center, took a turn at the podium and talked about the power of using Classes in organizing drawings. I tried his ideas out this week when I put a spiral stair into a drawing. I've never used the Circular Stair tool before (VW Architect) but it works well. I also placed a light above the stair hoping to better show it through a side window as I developed the 3D views. But I found that every time I rendered the model, the time to render was considerably longer than before. So I made a new class and named it Spiral Stair and turned it invisible. I moved the stair into this class using the Object Info Palette. Now I can render those scenes where stair visibility is less important at much faster speeds.
Classes are also a boon when you place objects on top of one another and find that they create a conflict. An example would be two wall types, say a concrete foundation wall and a short stud wall. They tend to grab at one another and form unintended joints. If I create a class for each one, then move those walls to their separate class, I can edit them independently and keep them behaving properly.
Consider this exercise of creating a partial daylight basement story set 3'-6" into the ground. The The basement walls will be made up of 8" thick concrete for the lower, in-ground half and 4" wide studs for the upper. On the mode bar under Class make custom classes for each kind of wall and call one Wall-Conc. and the other Wall-Stud. Go to the menu bar to Organize/Layer Option and select Active Only or Gray Others. Select your new Wall-Conc. class and draw the concrete portion of wall there and the stud wall, aligned above, on the Wall-Stud class. Let them both be 8' tall (∆ Z) and have 0" for the base level (Bot.Z). Insert a 3' wide door into the stud wall. Cut the stud wall 3" off the sides of the door such that the total door and wall combo is 3'-6" wide (drawn a line across the wall and use the Trim tool). Keep all the wall segments intact. Transfer the cut markers to the foundation wall via the Object Info palette and cut that wall. Delete the cut foundation segment.
Shorten all stud walls by 4' (∆Z or Delta Z), except the door wall which we'll leave at 8', and raise the bottom height of the shortened walls (Bot. Z) by 4'. Go to the foundation wall class that you have created and select those walls and shorten by 4'. You should be able to return to the Class default of Show/Snap/Modify Others and see your new basement wall composite of foundation and cripple wall showing a door that extends to the basement level free of conflict with the adjoining foundation walls.
Some points to make:
•Layer Options is not the same as Layer Visibility (Visible, Invisible, Gray) but are often used in tandem.
•Return your Class Options setting to Show/Snap/ Modify Others. Too often, after changing these options I find that parts of my drawing have disappeared or what is there cannot be snapped to or changed. There is no virus, you simply have to review Class Options and you will find, in setting it back to Show/Snap/Modify Others, that the missing items return. If you have ghosts in your machine, this is were they will likely surface. If the above fix doesn't work, check Class visibility to see if one of them has been made invisible.
•Note that the default setting in Layers Options should be anything but Show/Snap/Modify Others. Imagine that you were working away with several layers visible but you didn’t know that Show/Snap/Modify Others was turned on. You might accidentally reach down to another layer and move or even delete important information. Instead, set the Layer Option on the menu bar at Show/Snap Others thus turning off the Modify option.
•When drawing one object atop another, where each is on a different layer or class, Show/Snap Others is better than Gray Others since you can reach down to the other class object and snap your new line or wall to that object's exact corner. Loci are also great markers to place on corners and then move up or down using the Object Info palette.
•If you are just dipping your toe into 3D, try this exercise at the end of a day when you need a change of pace from production drawing. Try out the Artistic rendering options if you have the new VW 11 or experiment with lighting and take your model just a little further on.
•Lastly, when creating these new 3D elements, you may feel they are in the way of your 2D drawing, showing solid when you wish to show a dotted line instead. In this case I move these objects to a layer that can contain all 3D items that don't show well on the 2D page. I often have a layer called Floor Planes where I will place the 3D floors, any extrusions or object made with Extrude Along Path. Belly bands, drip caps or outriggers can be moved there as well as foundation walls though I almost always leave live stud walls on my 2D working drawing layers. To convert the foundation walls to lines, select them and use Tool/Convert Copy To Lines. Send the new lines to your 2D working drawing layer.

At our October meeting we also talked about setting the height of objects. Do you make use of the Bot. Z and Delta Z input boxes found on the Layers Setup dialog box when you set your floors or layer levels? This is probably the conventional method but I confess that I like using the Object Info palette to set my objects. This is in part because I work from one story, usually the Main Story and then go up or down with many stops in between for odd Layers that aren’t so easily set up in advance. I develop my layer height typically well after I create the layer. The Object Info palette thus seems more fluid to me as the place to set heights.
Ivan and Jack McKean use the Layers Setup screen to set the major levels of their drawings and that gives them one advantage: if you are placing lots of furnishings, they will snap to the Bot. Z height of that layer. In my case, If I insert a commode into a basement, I have to set the Bot. Z of the toilet in the Object Info Palette if I want to see that toilet in a 3D view. But since I tend to show more exterior and less interior in my drawings, I haven’t felt the pinch of having to set the Bot. Z for every little stick of furniture. Set up your layer heights whichever works best for you.
Some thoughts:
•When you go below your 0" level, you have to note the height with a negative sign.
•You can do addition, subtraction and multiplication right in the Object Info palette data input boxes.
If we make a floor or a surface of some kind with a 10" thickness and we set the top of the floor to 0", the bottom of the floor will be -10". If we place a wall beneath that floor, the wall’s Bot. Z will be -8'-0" plus the floor thickness. Instead of adding in your head the total height of the wall and the total height of the floor, you can type in the math and hit return and VW will properly set the wall elevation. But don’t use the 'plus' key if you are going below your 0" level. Type into the Object Info palette for the floor+wall combo: -8' - 10". That is an equation that sends you downward just as 8' + 10" sends you upward.
Hang in there with Classes. You will benefit once you get familiar through regular use.

Final thoughts:
•For those that do interior design, check out this great plugin for Vectorworks called InteriorCAD (interiorcad.com). This program allows you to do cabinets, shelving, closets and so much more. They have a fine pdf file that takes you through the various options. But you simply draw a polygon to define the outside perimeter of your object and then set about inputting the various elements. Download the demo, load it into your plugins folder and then use the Workspace Editor to move it to one of your palettes. Works with VW 10.5 as of this writing.
•Apologies to those of you who use VW for purposes other than architectural. Some day I will know this program well enough to write or teach more evenly.

Expect an e-mail in early January announcing our next general SVUG meeting.

Sincerely,

Tom Greggs

CONVERT TO LINES #3

2006-07-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

Convert To Lines #3
10/6/04

In this issue:
Editing polygons/roofs
Editing wall heights
Observations of a New VectorWorks User

Greetings from the Seattle Vectorworks User Group! Our next meeting will be on October 20th, a Wednesday, and we’ll go from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
Topics? We have a goodly number but what we really want to do is to key on whatever topics you would like to cover. E-mail myself or Jack McKean with suggestions. Title your message “Vectorworks Suggestions” and send to:
tomgreggs@mindspring.com
jacmac@accessiblemagic.com
We had a good turnout for our September meeting where we talked about editing polygons, 3D polygons and roofs. Jack showed a terrific medical sling designed for transporting injured people which he designed using the 3D Powerpack tools within Vectorworks and Poser.
Here follows a recap of the polygon editing process plus I’ve included a letter taken from the Vectorworks Listserve which you might find interesting.
Having editing knowledge is important because anytime you have something with volume--a bracket, a floor or a roof for example--you will want to change its shape at some point. (If you haven't tried creating objects in 3D, read up on the Extrude tool, the Create Floor and Create Roof tools.)The following describes the editing of a roof but contains the information needed to edit most 3D shapes.
Once you have created a roof with the automatic Create Roof tool you may find that you wish to edit it beyond the capability of the choices available on the Edit Roof dialog box. Ungroup the roof using the Ungroup command. What remains are Roof Faces. Mark out the outline of the needed change over the roof face you wish to modify using 2D lines, loci or whatever. Copy (not duplicate) these markers. Now select the roof face and click on Edit Group. You will be taken to a NEW editing pane although it will look much like the window you’ve just left. The roof info (rafter depth, birdsmouth, location in space) will have been logged, then removed. The result is a bare 2D polygon ready to edit using the 2D Reshape editing tool. This process works the same for other 3D polygons except for walls.
Before you begin to edit within this new pane, use the Paste In Place command to get your markers to show up atop your polygon--they will land just as you had placed them back in your main drawing window. Edit the polygon to fit these marker guides. Delete the markers. Hit the Exit Group button on the upper right hand corner of the editing pane and your are back in roof land.
I try to stay with the automatic roof tool as long as possible since it gives me so many options to adjust. But at a certain point, I bust up the roof to do the more unique editing plane by plane.
Some key points:
•Walls cannot be edited in the manner described above. Change the vertical shape of walls using the 3D Reshape Tool.
•If you are attempting to edit a rectangle or square and you can’t seem to change its shape, you may have created that shape using the Rectangle tool. Convert this shape to a polygon using Convert to Polygon command then use the 2D Reshape tool from there.
•Rather than using the Edit Group command or the keyboard shortcut, just double-click on the edge of the volume needing editing and you will be taken to the editing pane.
•If you overlay another polygon onto your primary polygon (or Roof Face) for editing, rather than moving the primary poly's vertices one by one to fit your pattern, try selecting the primary polygon and the editing shape and subtract one from the other via using Clip Surface thus cutting away the unwanted roof shape in one action.
•There was one additional command I didn’t demo at our September meeting and that was the Align Layer Views command. Let’s say our roof (or any other object) needs to be edited in relation to a wall or other 3D element but said element resides on another layer. Once you change the roof to a Front View to better mark the area needing editing, you lose view of your other objects which are still in Plan View and not Front View. Click on Align Layer View in the Menu Bar and the wall will swing into alignment with the roof letting you see both together. I find the Align Layer View tool indispensable .

Back to the topic of getting your input. Please write us back a short note on what you think might help you.
I’m very curious if any of you struggle setting up your projects, wanting more information on how to use Layers, Classes and Layer Linking. Which tool do you use to set up the height of your model elements? Do you use Model Setup and if so, is it the greatest thing since the squeezable ketchup bottle or does it seem to impede your progress?

And now that letter.

From: John Martens
Reply-To: VectorWorks User Discussion List
To:
Date: Saturday, October 2, 2004 10:54 AM
Subject: OT: Observations of a New Vectorworks User

I am a one-man operation and have been working in Vectorworks Architect (PC)
for approximately a year and a half. I had no familiarity with the program
when I started and have had to learn it on my own through various books,
tutorials, and mostly struggling by doing. I have been on this listserve
for about six months, and I would like to share some of my observations.

Learning Vectorworks: I started out with the Vectorworks tutorial CDs and
found them rather helpful but problematic in that many of the operations
performed on the screen were done so quickly that I missed critical steps.
If one would be able to slow down important phases and speed up the obvious
ones, I would have had a much easier time with those CDs, but I found that
playing those parts over and over became tedious at best.

Reading the manuals, of course, was very helpful, but studying 700 or 800
pages simply is not practical when you're also trying to keep your work flow
moving. I found the Tom Bear book a worthwhile $25 investment, if nothing
else to give a different perspective in a reasonably concise manner.

This listserve has become an extremely valuable part of learning this
program. Since I am a one-man operation and frankly have no one else to
talk to about this program, the everyday human commentary from this
listserve has given me the real world perspective which was almost
impossible to get out of the books and tutorials. It is also very
gratifying to see a community of users who are willing to take their own
valuable time to help one another!

The biggest breakthrough, however, for me has been finally loosening up my
wallet to shell out for Jonathan Pickup's two indispensable tutorial
volumes, Essential VW and VW Architect Tutorial. Jonathan's approach is
limited to an architect's perspective on producing production drawings, and
unfortunately that may render it inappropriate for other users, but that is
the huge advantage that it gives to those of us doing architectural
drawings.

As we all know, there are many different ways of doing each of many
different things that VW is capable of, but when you are doing one
particular type of drawing such as architectural, there tends to be a best
way for each of those processes and that is the one that Jonathan recommends
and presents. Rather than getting lost in the minutiae, he focuses on the
big picture and takes the user carefully and concisely, step by step to the
end result. Given the extent that I value my own time and the amount of
time these two volumes have saved me so far, the cost of them is minuscule
and I only regret that I did not start out from day one with those volumes.

Working in 3-D: I know that a lot has been mentioned on this listserve about
the pros and cons of working in three dimensions, but I would like to add
one major point. As architects or designers we are trained to think in
three dimensions while we typically work in two. Sitting over the drawing
board, we work in two dimensions but are constantly thinking about the
three-dimensional implications of what we are drawing, and we usually
anticipate these relationships correctly. On the other hand, for all the
efforts we put into that, I do not believe we are capable of anticipating
every relationship, every proportion, every intersection. How many times
have we gone to a job site and wished we had proportioned that soffit a
little differently or lowered that ceiling plane in that one area, or
realized that the back of that half-wall could've been detailed a little
better? For me it has been a startling improvement to be working in three
dimensions and being able to step back, walk around, or look up or down at
some complex intersection in order to resolve it more appropriately. The
bottom line is that working in three dimensions makes us all better
designers, and isn't that what we are supposed to be anyway?

Plug-Ins, extra tools, etc.: I have also been amazed at how useful the tools
and commands found on sites like VectorBits, Vector Depot and the many other
great web sites have been. Again, I am amazed at the spirit of sharing from
the creators of those many tools who offer them for free. Among the tools
for purchase, I have found Matt Panzer's recent viewport tool to be
outstanding, a great timesaver and real bargain. It works like a charm and
has saved me hours and hours of time, particularly in being able to take
files started in Vectorworks 10 and work on them in the much improved
Vectorworks 11. With it you really can transition a file from one program
version to another.

Vectorworks 11: Hallelujah! I have been working on a large project that has
a very irregular roof, and every time a wall is added or changed I had to go
through the laborious process editing it point by point to the roof. What
was a less than perfect process that could take as much as a half an hour
can now be accomplished precisely in one click with the "fit walls to roof"
command. And then there are viewports, which granted can be a painful
paradigm shift and not always the easiest to grasp at first, but for me once
I was able to make the mental shift has become another invaluable
improvement. And the many other touted improvements I find to be real
improvements, not just the typical marketing hype..

Anyway, I hope this is not too long-winded for you all, but hey, as I said,
I have no one else to banter with and I hope these thoughts might be of
interest to some of you. Keep up the good Vectorworking!

John Martens

One can enroll onto the Nemetschek Listserve by going to
http://www.nemetschek.net/support/mailinglists.html
Hope to see you again in October

Tom Greggs

CONVERT TO LINES #2

2006-07-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #2
9/10/04

In this issue:
Talking 'bout walls: Inserting wall elements (cavities) and
dimensioning to face-of-stud

The Seattle Vectorworks Users Group invites you to attend the next meeting planned for Wednesday evening, September 29th, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall.
The Wood Construction Center is located at 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street. Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side.
This event is free. We are an independent group not affiliated with the school.
Our goal is to help you get the most out of using Vectorworks.
We have gotten your e-mail address with the help of Nemetschek or you were already on our list. I’m interested in not sending out unwanted e-mails about this group. If you have received the mailing in error, let me know and I’ll be glad to remove your address. And of course, if you know of someone who might be interested in our user group, by all means, pass on this info.
We meet intermittently during the year taking the summers off. We are developing ideas for upcoming meetings and would appreciate hearing from you on what topics you’d like to participate in if you were able to attend. Would it be something like how to apply textures, how Work Group Referencing works, how to set up a simple file? Would it be how to better understand layer linking, what’s scripting all about, how do cabinetmakers structure their drawings? What about VW 11 and Viewports? Don’t forget the topog tools and plugin programs like WinDoor or simply how to edit a polygon.
We can mostly set up the evening to provide some very useful information wherever you are in your learning curve. We treat beginners with care. And those of you with lots of experience can help me learn something new.
You can reach me, Tom Greggs, at tomgreggs@mindspring.com and you can also find information on our meeting schedule and planned topic by surfing to www.accessiblemagic.com.
Let me know what you’d like to learn.
.................................................................................................................
In my first letter sent out this summer I listed some tips for users who haven’t yet tried using the numerical keys 1 through 9 to easily rotate through all faces and angles of your object . Below are two techniques that tie together. The first is for those new to cavity lines and the second is for more advanced users.

First tip! When you draw a wall, the Object Info Palette gives you the opportunity to insert cavities into that wall. Let’s say your finished wall is 4” wide and you want 1/2” wallboard showing on each side. The imagined midpoint of the 4” wall is 2”. Subtract 1/2” from 2” and you get 1-1/2”. This is the dimension you type into the Cavity dialogue box. Click for another cavity line and use the same number--assuming the wall has the same wallboard on each side--but this time type a negative number or -1 1/2 (You may type a dash between the whole number and the fraction. Doesn’t matter.). Done! While still in the dialogue box, I like to give the cavity lines a lighter weight so they don’t compete for attention with the primary wall lines.

Second tip! How do you plan for wall widths on your drawings? If you are using Vectorworks in the world of architecture, it seems there are quite a number of those that size their wall width to match that of studs and they tend to dimension to face-of-stud. And there are others that build up and show the wall cavities and dimension to the finished-face of their walls. Yes, I know that many dimension to the wall’s centerline. In residential construction, the framer is most efficient when he lays out to the wall’s edge position and so you might consider dimensioning your drawings to suite that convention which is face-of-stud.
In any case, both of the styles above rely on someone else eventually doing the math, adding or subtracting the various finishes. This can actually be a good thing since client wishes change and site conditions are fully revealed only upon demolition. But mostly, you can be out front with your drawings and give the installer the best of both worlds using Vectorworks. When drawing at 1/4” per foot or less we will make the cavity lines disappear so our walls are clean. This helps with readability when dimensioning to key structural elements. When drawing on other pages at 1/2” per foot or more, we will show the SAME walls but use other dimensions set to the finished-face. If we wish we can then bring the cavity lines back to a visible state with a click.
There are two key tools that help in placing and adjusting wall locations: Connected Walls and Hide Wall Cavities. Putting the two tools together, I can build up a composite wall of stud plus wall coverings and now zoom in on the line within the wall defining face-of-stud, grab that line and drag the wall to the correct location. The wall connection will not break. Once done you can run the dimension chain from cavity line to cavity line or face-of-stud to face-of-stud. When these inner lines have been dimensioned, you can turn off cavity lines for those pages that don’t need the detail when it’s time to print (File/Document Preferences). Just check the box “Hide Wall Cavities” in the Document Pref’s. On other pages showing areas requiring careful fitting such as baths or kitchens or at larger scales, dimension to the outer edge of the wall or finished-face and uncheck the “Hide Wall Cavities” box to to show cavity lines prior to printing.
Here are some points to understand;
•The idea is that you take the time to construct your walls to reflect their true thickness and insert cavity lines showing at least the face-of-stud line. Draw your walls once at their correct width then duplicate and send the walls to other layers using the Object Info Palette or use Work Group Referencing to develop other views or use the new Viewports in VW 11 which allows you to block out and highlight portions of your plan at larger scale. On the topic of Viewports, they do not become a collection of static lines. When you change the referenced drawing, the Viewport can be refreshed with a single command.
• Associative dimensioning--that is, sticky dimensions that stay stuck to a wall edge--do not stay sticky when you place them on an inner cavity line. The dimension tool will recognize the inner line so you can snap to it but you must manually grab the dimension end and stretch it to the new location if you decide to move the wall after you’ve dimensioned it. I’d love for associative dimensions to recognize the inner lines but I do not find the lack of sticky within the wall to be a big impediment.
•Get comfortable setting up walls to their true thickness and learn to place cavities. This is not hard once you go through it a few times as you will likely have the same few walls to draw again and again so typing in the correct dimension becomes routine. Plus you can save that wall into the library.
•You must remember the turn-cavities-on/turn-cavities-off drill as you print plan pages. I’ll lobby Nemetschek for a sheet-level toggle that allows us to show cavities, or not, page by page rather than going to a single global checkbox as is now the case.
•And lastly, what about the dimension line that looks a little off in the framing drawing because it was set in 1/2” or the thickness of the wallboard? Will that confuse anyone? Not likely at 1/4” per foot, especially if you state clearly that the dimension lines on the floor plan or framing plan pages are set to face-of-stud.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design

2006-07-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO LINES #1

Seattle VW Users Group Update
8/04/04

Greetings! This letter has been sent to you and other Seattle based individuals interested in VectorWorks. Perhaps you attended the Nemetschek VectorWorks 11 road show that came through Seattle in July or you have dropped in a time or two to the SVUG meetings at the Wood Construction Center. My name is Tom Greggs and I hope to lead the Seattle VectorWorks User Group this fall. I reside in Seattle and make my living using VectorWorks for a goodly part of each weekday. I’m writing hoping to encourage you to join us as we meet periodically throughout the year for the goal of learning how to better utilize this remarkable tool. We don’t have dues. We don’t have a dress code. We are only interest is in getting better at what we do, whether it be stage design, product design, landscaping, cabinet construction, architecture or whatever.
The following is a letter I wrote shortly after our last meeting. If you read it you may get a sense of what the evening was like. If it sounds interesting, stick through to the end and we may talk later in the summer in order to set up our first fall meeting.

CONVERT TO LINES
In this issue:
Align Layers and Past in Place
3D views and the numerical keyboard

The Seattle VectorWorks Users Group met last month at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall and I took a turn hosting this time and gave Jack McKean—who typically stands at the head of the class—a well earned rest.
My interest is in architecture but the basis of my discussion that night serves anyone who builds up unique elements to form a whole (this assumes that you are using VW Layers for your various parts and are not assembling all onto just one layer). Let me recap what we covered.
What I wanted to show that evening was the importance of the Align Layers command and the Paste in Place command when used in tandem. In my case, the focus was roof editing. If I have a roof on its own layer and I want to modify it somehow in its relation to the wall that supports it, how do I change it without having to make a Layer Link model to see parts in relation and how do I do this quickly?
But before I go on, I'd like to ask if you use your number keys to get Front, Back, Side and angled 3-D views? If you have an extended keyboard, take a look at the grid of keys 1 through 9 on the right side of the board. The cross that forms the middle of the grid all generate straight-on 3-D views. The middle key 5 is Top View. The back key 8 is the back view. The front key 2 is the Front View and so on. The outer corner keys 1, 7, 9 and 3 are all 3-D isometric (angled) views. Wonderfully logical. You do not need a modifier key combination to change 3D views.
Are you still with me? Do you care? If not, skip to the last paragraph. For the rest of you, let's go back to our roof. Why don’t I just make a Layer Link of all the layers and show the whole model? This is because the more I draw, the more lines I have to look through. It’s confusing. If I can limit my layers to just two, I can pick out my wall or window edges more easily. So, If I’m looking at my work in Left Side view (push the #4 key)--and I want to see my wall in relation, first make sure you have the wall layer showing as visible or as gray. Then click Align Layer Views and the wall will spin out of Plan View and align with the roof in the same left view manner. Click on the roof layer then change the pitch or overhang. Then click on the wall layer and change its height as needed to grow it to the roof.
In my demo from that evening, I modified a roof plane that needed a shorter overhang than its adjoining roof planes in order that it not extend into a building setback. I broke that face free and tilted it back and lowered it, swinging the hip rafters off and away from the outer corners in the process. Being able to quickly change views from Top view to Side view gave me a means to readjust hip locations and lower or raise the walls as needed.
In a very real way, being able to accurately adjust one 3D part to fit another meant you could prove to yourself that the roof would work even though you may never have swung a 28-once framing hammer in your life. Once your model is built-out in the third dimension, solving construction problems in VectorWorks means that when you go out onto the job site to confer with the framer, you’ll be imbued with confidence. The first words out of your mouth will more likely be “I think this is how the roof will work” than the more usual phrase of “Don’t hit me!”
We talked about why the Paste in Place tool was an aid in modifying roof faces or other polygons. I won’t go into detail on that one now (this letter is getting a little windy as it is). We also talked about why the nudge tool presents a special challenge for cabinet makers and how buying an extra pair of glasses with a focal range set just for CAD work reduces eye strain. Plenty more tips were donated by those attending.
And this is partly why I love going to the SVUG meetings. I get info’ that helps me over certain hurdles that have hung me up for a while. It is so nice to be given a free tip or two that removes an impediment to smoothly using VectorWorks. Thanks to everyone that attended and shared.
Oh, and the other important reason I look forward to attending the SVUG meetings is that it gives me a chance to stop for dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant just down Jackson.
So here’s the real reason for this letter. Would you consider attending a future meeting? What would you like to cover: simple stuff or complex? Do you have a particular interest or perhaps a bit of knowledge you might like to share? Let me know your thoughts as an aid for planning another meeting after summer break. I hope to cover each meeting with a follow-up e-mail in similar fashion to the above.
Also, of course, let me know if you want off my list or if there are others you may know who use VW and may want to be included.
Jack McKean, as most of you know, has been putting in lots of time in the past few years making sure that the hall was booked, that Nemetschek was notified and indeed had sent out announcements to registered users about our upcoming meetings. He then has put aside time to organize himself and host those SVUG evenings pulling most of the lecture duty. Jack: a hearty thank you from all of us.

Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
tomgreggs@mindspring.com