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
Monday, October 22, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Convert to Lines #25
6/18/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• The next Webinar will cover Digital Terrain Modeling
• How do we learn CAD?
• We built this city
•VectorTasks
•Resources for learning VW
• The Repetitive Tool tool
• Caution: data can be lost
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, June 28th, from 6:00 to 8:00 but THERE IS A CATCH. I’m unable to attend and can’t provide the meeting room. If you would like to see the June Webinar on Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM), we ask if you can provide a space that would also have a high speed internet connection plus a speaker phone. Sam Krause will bring her projector. The last item needed is a projection screen which can be rented (I suggest everyone chip in a couple of bucks) or perhaps one of you could bring one from home. Please let Sam know ASAP so she can email you the location. Sam can be reached at
samkrause@alphamodalities.com
I intend to give Sam a number of CD’s containing Sketchup-based objects which will be given out at the meeting. If you haven’t played much with 3D, with this CD you’ll have an opportunity to combine a few of the objects in a fun way. As a suggestion, perhaps the Porta Potty, Trampoline, and Falling Man could be rendered in one or more of the various styles that VectorWorks allows. Be sure to add a light, if going beyond Open GL, and extrude a ground plane to catch shadows.
....................................................................
How do we best set about learning something as complex as a modern CAD program? We certainly don’t learn well when we’re under deadline. Deadlines are a time for falling back on instincts and the habits honed by repetition. Good intention is also a less than ideal reason to learn any complex tool. Know anybody who has succeeded in teaching themselves French or how to play the piano? Not too many, I’d guess, at least without a mentor, tutor or solid class structure.
Practice-learning is slow-learning mostly, if done on your own, because the processes within CAD do not spring from your personal needs and so the logic of why one tool is used before another seems tenuous. This is compounded because our use of the VW tools varies by project. Unless you do the same design over and over, you’re bound to find new ways to order Layers and Classes, new ways to combine tools to best effect. Your learning is never, ever complete, in that sense, but always evolving toward the better.
If working with VectorWorks has taught me anything, it’s that a simple, direct benefit should be derived when you wrap your hand around any new tool. Pick up a hammer. Drive a nail, pull a nail. This is the payoff that keeps new users coming back. Find a few tools that can bring you immediate benefit. An example would be the polygon tool. If you are creating floors or hardscapes or countertops or any other element that contains an area, duplicate the finished shape and send it to a special layer--call it Outlines--so that you can return to that layer from time to time to tally totals such as lot coverage, for instance, or proof of total perimeters. Another simple but important task is the creation of title blocks. VectorWorks can serve as a terrific tool for designing company graphics. Use Viewports to help order your drawings on the page. Discover PDF creation and import/export. Make key 3D elements to test for fit. Find those tools that are impossible to live without and after you’ve made one of them your own, find another.
....................................................................
The last time I had checked in with the Google collection of Sketchup models, the City of Seattle folder contained a single model. Things have changed! Check out the following:
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=5ff91a4554eac7003710a2250e7f327f
..................................................................
Pat Stanford and Dan Jansenson create value for VectorWorks users via their PodCad podcasts. I’m on one of the latest, along with Jonathan Pickup, talking about user groups.
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
Their current podcast features an interview with Charles Chandler who develops add-on programs for VectorWorks. He was a senior VW programmer at Nemeteschek.
Dan and Pat also do training. Full details are available at >http://www.vectortasks.com
These two are very skilled VectorWorks teachers and the classes they offer are of their own design, not that of the NNA Professional Learning Series. Give them a call if you think you might be interested in traveling to California OR if you might like them to come to Seattle for tutoring, either individually or for a group.
..............................................................
Here is a Jonathan Pickup podcast worth watching, on how to place a superscript symbol over a letter or number.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/podcasts/podcasts.html
...............................................................................
The NNA Knowledge Base continues to grow. If you haven’t stopped in for a while, it might be worth your time to look over the list of topics and pick up a few new moves.
>http://kbase.nemetschek.net/
The 'How To' and the 'Tips and Tricks' folders have the most information by far, in comparison to the other categories ('Architect' has a measly two tips, for instance). In the How To group, you can learn to fillet all the corners of a rectangle in one move. Under Tips and Tricks, you can see how to do a global command to hide all loci in 2D or 3D. While you're rummaging around in the VW resources, visit the Online Video Library.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/library.php
Don’t miss the “Select Movie Type” tab at the top of the page which will give you sets of other QuickTime movies.
.............................................................................
When you get a few free moments, check out the Repetitive Unit tool on the tear-off palette called Details (Architect). Double click the icon and then, to see the libraries of pre-made items, click the far right box in the Mode Bar called Object Properties. Click Choose Symbol to view the various libraries, and again by double-clicking on the icon in the center square.
I wanted to use the sewer and fence symbols (text arrayed along a line) but was frustrated that the letters came out huge and overlaid each other. It turns out that one can better space the letters by entering a larger dimension in the “Pitch” input box. I used a dimension of 15’ for a plot plan at 1/8" per foot. Though now properly spaced, the letters were still too large and needed editing. To fix this, ungroup and double click on one of the letters. That takes you to an edit pane where you can then select the letter and set a smaller text size or select another letter altogether. If the image is other than a letter (such as a footprint along a beach), you must use Scale to reduce its size. When done with your edit, click Exit Symbol in the upper right hand corner of the editing pain--I mean pane--and you will have your sewer line, fence line or footprint as intended.
Having to go through an extensive edit is barely worth it unless you have a considerable number of lines or fences to array across the landscape or are likely to do this type of thing frequently. While the other symbols for wood or roof tiles scale just fine, the category of Miscellaneous could use some work in my opinion.
............................................................
Nemetschek issued a note to the Listserv recently that suggested data can be lost if a drawing is docked to a Mac dock bar and then saved. The fix is not to dock your drawings--unless you can keep your mitts off the save key. I’m assuming that the fix will be delivered in upcoming Version. 13.
..............................................................
July's webinar will cover DWG/DXF files.
RSVP to Sam for the June Webinar (plus any potential meeting places) and I’ll see you next month.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• The next Webinar will cover Digital Terrain Modeling
• How do we learn CAD?
• We built this city
•VectorTasks
•Resources for learning VW
• The Repetitive Tool tool
• Caution: data can be lost
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, June 28th, from 6:00 to 8:00 but THERE IS A CATCH. I’m unable to attend and can’t provide the meeting room. If you would like to see the June Webinar on Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM), we ask if you can provide a space that would also have a high speed internet connection plus a speaker phone. Sam Krause will bring her projector. The last item needed is a projection screen which can be rented (I suggest everyone chip in a couple of bucks) or perhaps one of you could bring one from home. Please let Sam know ASAP so she can email you the location. Sam can be reached at
samkrause@alphamodalities.com
I intend to give Sam a number of CD’s containing Sketchup-based objects which will be given out at the meeting. If you haven’t played much with 3D, with this CD you’ll have an opportunity to combine a few of the objects in a fun way. As a suggestion, perhaps the Porta Potty, Trampoline, and Falling Man could be rendered in one or more of the various styles that VectorWorks allows. Be sure to add a light, if going beyond Open GL, and extrude a ground plane to catch shadows.
....................................................................
How do we best set about learning something as complex as a modern CAD program? We certainly don’t learn well when we’re under deadline. Deadlines are a time for falling back on instincts and the habits honed by repetition. Good intention is also a less than ideal reason to learn any complex tool. Know anybody who has succeeded in teaching themselves French or how to play the piano? Not too many, I’d guess, at least without a mentor, tutor or solid class structure.
Practice-learning is slow-learning mostly, if done on your own, because the processes within CAD do not spring from your personal needs and so the logic of why one tool is used before another seems tenuous. This is compounded because our use of the VW tools varies by project. Unless you do the same design over and over, you’re bound to find new ways to order Layers and Classes, new ways to combine tools to best effect. Your learning is never, ever complete, in that sense, but always evolving toward the better.
If working with VectorWorks has taught me anything, it’s that a simple, direct benefit should be derived when you wrap your hand around any new tool. Pick up a hammer. Drive a nail, pull a nail. This is the payoff that keeps new users coming back. Find a few tools that can bring you immediate benefit. An example would be the polygon tool. If you are creating floors or hardscapes or countertops or any other element that contains an area, duplicate the finished shape and send it to a special layer--call it Outlines--so that you can return to that layer from time to time to tally totals such as lot coverage, for instance, or proof of total perimeters. Another simple but important task is the creation of title blocks. VectorWorks can serve as a terrific tool for designing company graphics. Use Viewports to help order your drawings on the page. Discover PDF creation and import/export. Make key 3D elements to test for fit. Find those tools that are impossible to live without and after you’ve made one of them your own, find another.
....................................................................
The last time I had checked in with the Google collection of Sketchup models, the City of Seattle folder contained a single model. Things have changed! Check out the following:
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=5ff91a4554eac7003710a2250e7f327f
..................................................................
Pat Stanford and Dan Jansenson create value for VectorWorks users via their PodCad podcasts. I’m on one of the latest, along with Jonathan Pickup, talking about user groups.
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
Their current podcast features an interview with Charles Chandler who develops add-on programs for VectorWorks. He was a senior VW programmer at Nemeteschek.
Dan and Pat also do training. Full details are available at >http://www.vectortasks.com
These two are very skilled VectorWorks teachers and the classes they offer are of their own design, not that of the NNA Professional Learning Series. Give them a call if you think you might be interested in traveling to California OR if you might like them to come to Seattle for tutoring, either individually or for a group.
..............................................................
Here is a Jonathan Pickup podcast worth watching, on how to place a superscript symbol over a letter or number.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/podcasts/podcasts.html
...............................................................................
The NNA Knowledge Base continues to grow. If you haven’t stopped in for a while, it might be worth your time to look over the list of topics and pick up a few new moves.
>http://kbase.nemetschek.net/
The 'How To' and the 'Tips and Tricks' folders have the most information by far, in comparison to the other categories ('Architect' has a measly two tips, for instance). In the How To group, you can learn to fillet all the corners of a rectangle in one move. Under Tips and Tricks, you can see how to do a global command to hide all loci in 2D or 3D. While you're rummaging around in the VW resources, visit the Online Video Library.
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/library.php
Don’t miss the “Select Movie Type” tab at the top of the page which will give you sets of other QuickTime movies.
.............................................................................
When you get a few free moments, check out the Repetitive Unit tool on the tear-off palette called Details (Architect). Double click the icon and then, to see the libraries of pre-made items, click the far right box in the Mode Bar called Object Properties. Click Choose Symbol to view the various libraries, and again by double-clicking on the icon in the center square.
I wanted to use the sewer and fence symbols (text arrayed along a line) but was frustrated that the letters came out huge and overlaid each other. It turns out that one can better space the letters by entering a larger dimension in the “Pitch” input box. I used a dimension of 15’ for a plot plan at 1/8" per foot. Though now properly spaced, the letters were still too large and needed editing. To fix this, ungroup and double click on one of the letters. That takes you to an edit pane where you can then select the letter and set a smaller text size or select another letter altogether. If the image is other than a letter (such as a footprint along a beach), you must use Scale to reduce its size. When done with your edit, click Exit Symbol in the upper right hand corner of the editing pain--I mean pane--and you will have your sewer line, fence line or footprint as intended.
Having to go through an extensive edit is barely worth it unless you have a considerable number of lines or fences to array across the landscape or are likely to do this type of thing frequently. While the other symbols for wood or roof tiles scale just fine, the category of Miscellaneous could use some work in my opinion.
............................................................
Nemetschek issued a note to the Listserv recently that suggested data can be lost if a drawing is docked to a Mac dock bar and then saved. The fix is not to dock your drawings--unless you can keep your mitts off the save key. I’m assuming that the fix will be delivered in upcoming Version. 13.
..............................................................
July's webinar will cover DWG/DXF files.
RSVP to Sam for the June Webinar (plus any potential meeting places) and I’ll see you next month.
Tom Greggs
Greggs Building Design
(206) 524-2808
Thursday, April 12, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #24
4/12/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Webinars come to the User Group
• Treasure trove of 3D objects
• Hear the top 7 VW productivity tips
• Pickup’s latest tip. I had no idea you could do this.
•New plugins being offered
•Amazing 3D printer
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, April 26th, from 6:00 to 8:30 EITHER at the Seattle Central Community College OR at my office in the Roosevelt District of Seattle. I will follow up later on with confirmation of the location. My office may be preferable due to the difficulty of getting through the college’s firewall since we’ll need a high speed internet connection. If we meet at my office, I’ll need an overhead projector. CAN YOU BRING OR LEND ONE? It needn’t be particularly powerful. Please let me know asap. (Alternatively, if you have access to a projector that has to stay put, can we meet at your place?) Note that were we to meet at my office or that of another we will start at 6:00 PM sharp, instead of the usual 6:30 PM.
Nemetschek is doing something really nice for the user groups. They have developed a webcasting “webinar”
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/vlearning.php
which you can either take on your own time and pay for OR have it delivered to you free just by attending our user group meetings. Nemetschek hopes to provide ten of these webinars per year, just for us. The first few sessions are on the following topics:
April--Worksheets and spreadsheets using formulas, schedules, etc.
May--Viewports, basic and advanced and how to create plot files and send them to a commercial printer.
June--Survey input and and the DTM tools (terrain modeling) and processes.
I expect the session to last an hour. Afterward we would either follow on with additional discussion or more likely explore other topics and/or answer general questions. I can even see polling you beforehand to see if a homemade tutorial on textures and lighting might or might not be preferable to a webinar focusing on configuring doors and windows, for instance. The bottom line is webcasting brings in more experts. Each new webinar will be live so there will be a chance for direct questioning. If we miss one due to scheduling conflicts, we can still get the webinar beamed to us minus the interactive aspect.
Since we’ve not linked to a webcast before, there may be a few moments of chaos. Please bring a sense of humor. Any time not allotted to the webcast will be spent looking at applying textures and lighting to objects and scenes.
...........................................................................................
He who dies with the biggest collection of 3D objects wins. Of course, I don’t buy into those kinds of notions--that’s crazy talk. I only want a few thousand objects for my library folders. And now I know where to find them--for free.
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
This is a site where you can obtain objects meant to populate models created in Sketchup--Google’s recently acquired 3D app--yet can be imported with one command into VectorWorks files, no problem. These are free models created by Sketchup users, including a copy of Remmy the K’s Seattle Public Library or the Louvre (!) which you can download and import into your next backyard deck-with-trellis rendering. I’m more interested in playing with the cool trampoline I found in the Landscape Architecture section in the Recreation Folder along with a 3D man falling (or bouncing) through space located in the Other Libraries section under 3D People.
The models within are Spartan, much like the app itself, so you won’t find loads of textures, or any textures, really, which would otherwise allow for more realistic renderings. This is not a problem because you can apply your own textures if you have just a little more time to explore VectorWorks. Simply click (or double click for groups) on a polygon and give it a texture from either the VectorWorks textures collection via the Resource palette or apply another texture imported from the web or perhaps one you’ve created yourself. To get get some shadows going, add a big, flat extruded polygon (or use the Floor tool) and place it below your object, then add a single light source pitched to cast a preferred shadow. Use the Flyover tool to tip your creation to the right angle and then render. Since this was so simple, try multiple rendering options including, for those models with textures, Custom Renderworks.
There are other free sources of models such as those made in .3ds format. One site you might check out is Turbosquid.
>http://www.turbosquid.com/3d
Unfortunately, the FREE models, especially architectural types, seem to be few in number. If you want guns or outer space creatures, you’re in luck. The 3ds pay-per-model option is frustrating because of their typical high cost, even allowing for included textures and higher polygon counts. The fun goes out the virtual window when you find that a dozen run-of-the-mill residential objects can equal the cost of a new VectorWorks license.
Cadtoday offers bundled sets of VW formatted, DWG/DXF or 3ds models
>http://www.cadtoday.com/
>http://www.cadtoday.com/gallery.shtml
at what seems like reasonable prices. You can see portions of models from each set, rendered, via the gallery link. There is also a link at the topmost part of their home page that allows you to download the entire model catalog so you can see the full range of their offerings. I was surprised at the number and quality of their models. I saw lots of appliances--a ton of ranges--many lighting fixtures and high quality furnishings. The advantage of Cadtoday models, it seems to me, is in their variety. While one site would be content with one generic model, another, such as Cadtoday, might push to have their models represent a truer view of the product. If you visit the site, be sure to also note the 2D A/E/C details catalog.
While it will always be true that you get what you pay for, Sketchup 3D Warehouse is going to really put pressure on other model providers to lower prices on individual models and bundled sets or to improve content. Google has found a way to harness the excitement and the talents of their members for the benefit of the user base by providing easy-to-use tools and a platform for display and distribution. But it is the users who have made this site what it is. Power to the people. Right on.
PS. Before you leave the warehouse, be sure to check out the monotone or colored 2D people outlines. They’re a perfectly simple way to add scale to your next 3D rendering or 2D elevation view.
.........................................................................................
The following is a must-hear. Tune in to PodCAD Podcast 704 and listen to Top 7 VW Productivity Hints
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/podcast/podcast.html
As I’ve already stated in a previous post sent to the VW Listserv, please listen
to Stanford, Jansenson and Levy’s podcast, then pass the link onto other VW users.
...........................................................................................
Jon Pickup has a new podcast out that shows you a cool, quick way to
turn a group of overlapping lines into a single 2D polygon with one command.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
.............................................................................................
Several new plugins are available from former senior VW programmer Charles Chandler. They can be seen via the link below.
>http://www.softwarecustomizationservices.com/default.php?page=products
If you do landscaping or site work design, check out the substantial Land Planning plugin. If you import 2D architectural files from others, there is one plugin that will convert all parallel lines to walls with one command.
.................................................................................................
You’ve got to see this to believe it-- a new “printer” can produce scaled, true 3D objects as prototypes, both architectural, geologic and machine, from 3D CAD files.
>http://www.ideal.com/contex/default.asp
Don’t miss the movie:
>ftp://ftp.ideal.com/dave/contex_2000k.wmv
......................................................................................................
That’s all for now!
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past newsletters can be found at http://converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Webinars come to the User Group
• Treasure trove of 3D objects
• Hear the top 7 VW productivity tips
• Pickup’s latest tip. I had no idea you could do this.
•New plugins being offered
•Amazing 3D printer
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, April 26th, from 6:00 to 8:30 EITHER at the Seattle Central Community College OR at my office in the Roosevelt District of Seattle. I will follow up later on with confirmation of the location. My office may be preferable due to the difficulty of getting through the college’s firewall since we’ll need a high speed internet connection. If we meet at my office, I’ll need an overhead projector. CAN YOU BRING OR LEND ONE? It needn’t be particularly powerful. Please let me know asap. (Alternatively, if you have access to a projector that has to stay put, can we meet at your place?) Note that were we to meet at my office or that of another we will start at 6:00 PM sharp, instead of the usual 6:30 PM.
Nemetschek is doing something really nice for the user groups. They have developed a webcasting “webinar”
>http://www.nemetschek.net/training/vlearning.php
which you can either take on your own time and pay for OR have it delivered to you free just by attending our user group meetings. Nemetschek hopes to provide ten of these webinars per year, just for us. The first few sessions are on the following topics:
April--Worksheets and spreadsheets using formulas, schedules, etc.
May--Viewports, basic and advanced and how to create plot files and send them to a commercial printer.
June--Survey input and and the DTM tools (terrain modeling) and processes.
I expect the session to last an hour. Afterward we would either follow on with additional discussion or more likely explore other topics and/or answer general questions. I can even see polling you beforehand to see if a homemade tutorial on textures and lighting might or might not be preferable to a webinar focusing on configuring doors and windows, for instance. The bottom line is webcasting brings in more experts. Each new webinar will be live so there will be a chance for direct questioning. If we miss one due to scheduling conflicts, we can still get the webinar beamed to us minus the interactive aspect.
Since we’ve not linked to a webcast before, there may be a few moments of chaos. Please bring a sense of humor. Any time not allotted to the webcast will be spent looking at applying textures and lighting to objects and scenes.
...........................................................................................
He who dies with the biggest collection of 3D objects wins. Of course, I don’t buy into those kinds of notions--that’s crazy talk. I only want a few thousand objects for my library folders. And now I know where to find them--for free.
>http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
This is a site where you can obtain objects meant to populate models created in Sketchup--Google’s recently acquired 3D app--yet can be imported with one command into VectorWorks files, no problem. These are free models created by Sketchup users, including a copy of Remmy the K’s Seattle Public Library or the Louvre (!) which you can download and import into your next backyard deck-with-trellis rendering. I’m more interested in playing with the cool trampoline I found in the Landscape Architecture section in the Recreation Folder along with a 3D man falling (or bouncing) through space located in the Other Libraries section under 3D People.
The models within are Spartan, much like the app itself, so you won’t find loads of textures, or any textures, really, which would otherwise allow for more realistic renderings. This is not a problem because you can apply your own textures if you have just a little more time to explore VectorWorks. Simply click (or double click for groups) on a polygon and give it a texture from either the VectorWorks textures collection via the Resource palette or apply another texture imported from the web or perhaps one you’ve created yourself. To get get some shadows going, add a big, flat extruded polygon (or use the Floor tool) and place it below your object, then add a single light source pitched to cast a preferred shadow. Use the Flyover tool to tip your creation to the right angle and then render. Since this was so simple, try multiple rendering options including, for those models with textures, Custom Renderworks.
There are other free sources of models such as those made in .3ds format. One site you might check out is Turbosquid.
>http://www.turbosquid.com/3d
Unfortunately, the FREE models, especially architectural types, seem to be few in number. If you want guns or outer space creatures, you’re in luck. The 3ds pay-per-model option is frustrating because of their typical high cost, even allowing for included textures and higher polygon counts. The fun goes out the virtual window when you find that a dozen run-of-the-mill residential objects can equal the cost of a new VectorWorks license.
Cadtoday offers bundled sets of VW formatted, DWG/DXF or 3ds models
>http://www.cadtoday.com/
>http://www.cadtoday.com/gallery.shtml
at what seems like reasonable prices. You can see portions of models from each set, rendered, via the gallery link. There is also a link at the topmost part of their home page that allows you to download the entire model catalog so you can see the full range of their offerings. I was surprised at the number and quality of their models. I saw lots of appliances--a ton of ranges--many lighting fixtures and high quality furnishings. The advantage of Cadtoday models, it seems to me, is in their variety. While one site would be content with one generic model, another, such as Cadtoday, might push to have their models represent a truer view of the product. If you visit the site, be sure to also note the 2D A/E/C details catalog.
While it will always be true that you get what you pay for, Sketchup 3D Warehouse is going to really put pressure on other model providers to lower prices on individual models and bundled sets or to improve content. Google has found a way to harness the excitement and the talents of their members for the benefit of the user base by providing easy-to-use tools and a platform for display and distribution. But it is the users who have made this site what it is. Power to the people. Right on.
PS. Before you leave the warehouse, be sure to check out the monotone or colored 2D people outlines. They’re a perfectly simple way to add scale to your next 3D rendering or 2D elevation view.
.........................................................................................
The following is a must-hear. Tune in to PodCAD Podcast 704 and listen to Top 7 VW Productivity Hints
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/home.html
>http://www.podcad.tv/podcad/podcast/podcast.html
As I’ve already stated in a previous post sent to the VW Listserv, please listen
to Stanford, Jansenson and Levy’s podcast, then pass the link onto other VW users.
...........................................................................................
Jon Pickup has a new podcast out that shows you a cool, quick way to
turn a group of overlapping lines into a single 2D polygon with one command.
>http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
.............................................................................................
Several new plugins are available from former senior VW programmer Charles Chandler. They can be seen via the link below.
>http://www.softwarecustomizationservices.com/default.php?page=products
If you do landscaping or site work design, check out the substantial Land Planning plugin. If you import 2D architectural files from others, there is one plugin that will convert all parallel lines to walls with one command.
.................................................................................................
You’ve got to see this to believe it-- a new “printer” can produce scaled, true 3D objects as prototypes, both architectural, geologic and machine, from 3D CAD files.
>http://www.ideal.com/contex/default.asp
Don’t miss the movie:
>ftp://ftp.ideal.com/dave/contex_2000k.wmv
......................................................................................................
That’s all for now!
Tom Greggs
(206) 524-2808
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Convert to Lines #23
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Why do you go to work?
• More degree signs and plus/minus signs (in Windows)
• Putting backgrounds into scenes
• Offsetting walls
•Other Industries gallery renderings
•Jon PIckup’s latest tutorial
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, March 29th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
One our members made a suggestion that we explore, in our next meeting, how to build a house. This topic could easily expand into two or more sessions, depending on the enthusiasm of those who attend. We’ll take it in any direction you want to go.
We’ll be looking at the most efficient, the simple and the practical methods of designing a house. We won’t actually have room to build a real house, given the size of the lecture hall, but we’ll be walking the walls, virtual style! I’ll have a box of fresh fir sawdust on hand that should help set the mood.
..........................................................................................
Why do you go to work each day? There has to be, hopefully, some joy in your decision. I sincerely hope that you are, in part, inspired and find a creative thread within your business activities that satisfies and replenishes. The other part, of course, is money. This is the half of the equation I wish to address. In short; time is money. Learning VectorWorks can lead to real creative satisfaction. But wisdom suggests that urges to explore your creative mind be tempered by good business practice and one of those is the general idea that you don’t run ahead of yourself with any new technology or technique until you have a way to make it pay. VectorWorks today, with 3D and viewports, delivers more content, more accurately, than if you were to draw in 2D. Yes, you do spend more time on the front end getting the model right but once the model is up and running, the time saved on all subsequent actions is huge. Sections: done. Elevations: already done. Change orders of any kind: change data on one page and it jumps across to revise multiple pages. If you are drawing in 2D today, you are not getting the full payoff; you are not getting your full paycheck.
I’ve said that I would never criticize another user in how they employ VectorWorks and I do mean that. So much work is still done in 2D (AutoCad is a huge example of that). People do the work, get paid, and move on. But if you want to leverage a tool for time gains, it is in your power to do that. Now.
.....................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about the easy way to print a degree symbol or a plus/minus symbol. But I left out Windows users, sorry to say. I went on the VW Listserv and asked for the Windows folks to fill me in and did they ever! My post generated many replies. Here is but one:
This comes from the HELP file for Character Map in Windows XP:
“If you know the Unicode equivalent of the character you want to insert, you can also insert a special character directly into a document without using Character Map. To do so, open the document and position the insertion point where you want the special character to appear. Then, with NUM LOCK on, hold down the ALT key while using the number pad keys to type the Unicode character value."
It should also be known that you MUST use the Number Pad and NOT the numbers above the letter keys. On a laptop, such as my Dell, I have to also hold down the "Fn" key and use the alternate numbers (ie M=0, J=1, K=2, L=3, U=4, I=5, O=6)
Alt + 0176 = °
Alt + 0177 = ±
To find the Character Map, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
..................................................................................
Want to put a colored background into your drawing? This should be more self evident than it is. To begin, have your 3D model assembled and its Layer displayed. On the Resource Browser, under Resources, click on the triangle at its right and scroll to the bottom of the presented list to New Resource in (name of your file). Scroll the next list to Renderworks Background. I chose One Color and then clicked on the Options button to customize the color. I wanted black and white--the color wheel wouldn’t do--instead I clicked on the vertical b&w bar on the right hand side and adjusted the depth of tone. (If you move the pinpoint marker side to side within the color wheel, you’ll see that you can now generate dark-toned colors) Click to accept your choice of tone. You should then see a swatch of this color displayed in the Resource Browser. Drag the swatch onto your model layer, dropping it anywhere, and render your model. If you want a fast solid black background, simply check the Black background box under VectorWorks Preferences>Display.
..........................................................................................................
Want to offset a wall from some line of reference? When the wall tool was rewritten such that we didn’t have to build the wall components from the middle out anymore, the offset tool was not vested with the same improvements. One must offset from the center of the wall as before. To begin this process, click on the wall tool; click on the Wall Prefs button in the Mode Bar; click on Insertion Options and finally; fill in the offset amount in the Control Offset box. If your wall’s outer ply is siding that is 7/8” thick and you want this amount offset outside the foundation line for instance, you’ll need to take the total wall thickness, divide by half, and subtract 7/8” from that amount which is 2-13/16”. Don’t forget to click on the offset mode bar button to complete the setup for offsetting.
................................................................................................................
I was mucking about in the NNA Galleries the other day and came across two 3D views of the interior of an art gallery done by our old SVUG leader, Jack McKean. They were placed in the Other Industries folder and so far I had missed seeing them. Take a look--they really are well done.
http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/gallery.php?category=other
Scroll about two thirds down to find Jack’s work.
................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup’s latest podcast--the short version--is out at
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
and involves showing how to use the Drape Surface function of the 3D Powerpack to soften the sharp triangulated look of groundwork created with the Terrain modeler. His fuller-featured newsletter is by $ subscription.
..................................................................................................................
That’s it for now. See you on the 29th!
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
In this issue:
• Why do you go to work?
• More degree signs and plus/minus signs (in Windows)
• Putting backgrounds into scenes
• Offsetting walls
•Other Industries gallery renderings
•Jon PIckup’s latest tutorial
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, March 29th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
One our members made a suggestion that we explore, in our next meeting, how to build a house. This topic could easily expand into two or more sessions, depending on the enthusiasm of those who attend. We’ll take it in any direction you want to go.
We’ll be looking at the most efficient, the simple and the practical methods of designing a house. We won’t actually have room to build a real house, given the size of the lecture hall, but we’ll be walking the walls, virtual style! I’ll have a box of fresh fir sawdust on hand that should help set the mood.
..........................................................................................
Why do you go to work each day? There has to be, hopefully, some joy in your decision. I sincerely hope that you are, in part, inspired and find a creative thread within your business activities that satisfies and replenishes. The other part, of course, is money. This is the half of the equation I wish to address. In short; time is money. Learning VectorWorks can lead to real creative satisfaction. But wisdom suggests that urges to explore your creative mind be tempered by good business practice and one of those is the general idea that you don’t run ahead of yourself with any new technology or technique until you have a way to make it pay. VectorWorks today, with 3D and viewports, delivers more content, more accurately, than if you were to draw in 2D. Yes, you do spend more time on the front end getting the model right but once the model is up and running, the time saved on all subsequent actions is huge. Sections: done. Elevations: already done. Change orders of any kind: change data on one page and it jumps across to revise multiple pages. If you are drawing in 2D today, you are not getting the full payoff; you are not getting your full paycheck.
I’ve said that I would never criticize another user in how they employ VectorWorks and I do mean that. So much work is still done in 2D (AutoCad is a huge example of that). People do the work, get paid, and move on. But if you want to leverage a tool for time gains, it is in your power to do that. Now.
.....................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about the easy way to print a degree symbol or a plus/minus symbol. But I left out Windows users, sorry to say. I went on the VW Listserv and asked for the Windows folks to fill me in and did they ever! My post generated many replies. Here is but one:
This comes from the HELP file for Character Map in Windows XP:
“If you know the Unicode equivalent of the character you want to insert, you can also insert a special character directly into a document without using Character Map. To do so, open the document and position the insertion point where you want the special character to appear. Then, with NUM LOCK on, hold down the ALT key while using the number pad keys to type the Unicode character value."
It should also be known that you MUST use the Number Pad and NOT the numbers above the letter keys. On a laptop, such as my Dell, I have to also hold down the "Fn" key and use the alternate numbers (ie M=0, J=1, K=2, L=3, U=4, I=5, O=6)
Alt + 0176 = °
Alt + 0177 = ±
To find the Character Map, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
..................................................................................
Want to put a colored background into your drawing? This should be more self evident than it is. To begin, have your 3D model assembled and its Layer displayed. On the Resource Browser, under Resources, click on the triangle at its right and scroll to the bottom of the presented list to New Resource in (name of your file). Scroll the next list to Renderworks Background. I chose One Color and then clicked on the Options button to customize the color. I wanted black and white--the color wheel wouldn’t do--instead I clicked on the vertical b&w bar on the right hand side and adjusted the depth of tone. (If you move the pinpoint marker side to side within the color wheel, you’ll see that you can now generate dark-toned colors) Click to accept your choice of tone. You should then see a swatch of this color displayed in the Resource Browser. Drag the swatch onto your model layer, dropping it anywhere, and render your model. If you want a fast solid black background, simply check the Black background box under VectorWorks Preferences>Display.
..........................................................................................................
Want to offset a wall from some line of reference? When the wall tool was rewritten such that we didn’t have to build the wall components from the middle out anymore, the offset tool was not vested with the same improvements. One must offset from the center of the wall as before. To begin this process, click on the wall tool; click on the Wall Prefs button in the Mode Bar; click on Insertion Options and finally; fill in the offset amount in the Control Offset box. If your wall’s outer ply is siding that is 7/8” thick and you want this amount offset outside the foundation line for instance, you’ll need to take the total wall thickness, divide by half, and subtract 7/8” from that amount which is 2-13/16”. Don’t forget to click on the offset mode bar button to complete the setup for offsetting.
................................................................................................................
I was mucking about in the NNA Galleries the other day and came across two 3D views of the interior of an art gallery done by our old SVUG leader, Jack McKean. They were placed in the Other Industries folder and so far I had missed seeing them. Take a look--they really are well done.
http://www.nemetschek.net/gallery/gallery.php?category=other
Scroll about two thirds down to find Jack’s work.
................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup’s latest podcast--the short version--is out at
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html
and involves showing how to use the Drape Surface function of the 3D Powerpack to soften the sharp triangulated look of groundwork created with the Terrain modeler. His fuller-featured newsletter is by $ subscription.
..................................................................................................................
That’s it for now. See you on the 29th!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #22
2/18/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•No User Group meeting for February
•Let’s get right to the tips
• PDF thoughts
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
Note that the site has been updated with improved text (now Google-owned) and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address. Also note the forward slash at the end of the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! There will be no User Group meeting for February due to personal obligations.
...............................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about how, when drawing a line, you could see its angle and length in the Object Info palette by clicking on the round Polar button rather than the square, default Cartesian button. If you draw a wall, you have the same ability to read (and set) wall angle and length as with a line by using a polar setting*. Draw a wall and leave it selected. Click onto the Polar button and put in your own angle or length and hit Enter or Return. The wall will pivot on its beginning end to the new angle or length.
One can create a survey line as well by typing in a property bearing of, say 35°15’44”. An easier way might be to use the Property Bounds tool on the Tools palette--it’s on the tear-off palette sporting a bulldozer and looks a bit like a necklace. I’ve not liked this tool in the past since it frequently causes my earlier inputs to disappear if I click the wrong button and also has crashed my computer. I was reading Jon Pickup’s VectorWorks Architect book and was surprised to see that there was a simple option to using the Property Bounds tool of which I was unaware. If you click on the tool, you should see a wrench icon in the upper left corner of your drawing window. Click on it and a dialog box comes up which offers a button called Simple Dialog. Select it and your next click brings up a new box with only line angle and length inputs but with a second button which can close the shape. If your property does not involve curves, this option might be the one to use. Note that you can also input bearing as 35d15m44s instead of ° ‘ “.
Also, in setting a line’s angle, don’t forget another option; the Angle Snaps button on the Constraints palette--it’s the button that looks a little like an asterisk. Double click it and set the angle prior to beginning your line.
*Tom Baer, in his VectorWorks 10 Visual Quickstart Guide (still a fine book to acquire--I found mine on Amazon) says “Like most CAD programs, VectorWorks uses the two coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar. Cartesian (aka x-y or rectangular) coordinates identify a point in the plane by its horizontal and vertical distances from a point of reference called the origin. Polar coordinates define a point by describing the line between the point and the origin by specifying its length (L) and its angle (A). Angles are measured counterclockwise from the 3 o’clock position. You can switch between systems at will, using whichever is the more convenient. Sometimes what’s important is the angle of a line (say, the slope of a roof): sometimes the distance above the floor (its Y value) is what needs to be defined.”
In my last newsletter I also talked about how to generate a plus/minus sign. Of course, right in the OI palette of any dimension resides a Tolerance button which gives you an opportunity to indicate the plus/minus amount. You get your sign, but you also have to indicate the amount of tolerance which might be intolerable.
..................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup has an interesting blog item that teaches one how to make transparent people for placing in front of your projects. Sign up for his online newsletter to see this movie and more using the link at the bottom of the page.
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/93BCF830-4B6C-4097-B96F-80DAD5285028.html
......................................................................................................................
A few weeks back yours truly was quoted in a Nemetschek announcement heralding the working relationship between NNA and Adobe in the continuing development of the Acrobat PDF format.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2007/012207.php
Last week, in a follow up post in eDispatch,
http://www.nemetschek.net/edispatch/Vol60/index.php
Sean Flaherty expanded on the theme. Yes, more and more capability will be created in the Acrobat software and this should increase your ability to share information. All good. The part I was responding to so enthusiastically was the simple fact that the Acrobat code was included in the various VW packages (except Fundamentals, I believe). To make great PDF’s, you don’t need to buy Acrobat. On the Mac, the PDF function is built-in to the OS, but from what I’ve seen and heard, the Acrobat code within VectorWorks produces quick, quality PDF’s. I’ve created several sets of drawings with the Batch PDF tool and it is truly amazing to see them created and then displayed (if you check the display button) on your screen with your first sheet showing and the following sheets listed in a right hand column in thumbnail form*. Importing engineering sized PDF’s from your engineers and dropping them onto a sheet is easy. Just import it in then use the IO palette to move it to a new sheet.
Simply stated, if you’ve got it, you’ll use it. PDF’s are like a fax machine on steroids with human growth hormone sprinkled on top but without the baseball commissioner (a quote that NNA will likely pass on, sorry to say). Yes, many of you, being the forward thinking individuals that you are, bought Acrobat years ago** and wonder what the big deal is. The deal is now that we’re all on board; this critical mass will seriously begin to work in our favor .
*I will say that larger files need RAM and if you don’t have the memory, you might find, as I did, that the text displays as a combination of Russian plus Egyptian hieroglyphs.
**I remember picking up a huge stack of free red floppies marked Adobe Acrobat Version 1.0 many, many years ago. I was a member of dBug, a Mac user group here in Seattle and the software was free for members. Although there was a flier describing the intent of the new program, I couldn’t really get my mind around the concept so I threw the bundle back into the bin.
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•No User Group meeting for February
•Let’s get right to the tips
• PDF thoughts
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com/
Note that the site has been updated with improved text (now Google-owned) and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address. Also note the forward slash at the end of the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! There will be no User Group meeting for February due to personal obligations.
...............................................................................................
In my last newsletter, I talked about how, when drawing a line, you could see its angle and length in the Object Info palette by clicking on the round Polar button rather than the square, default Cartesian button. If you draw a wall, you have the same ability to read (and set) wall angle and length as with a line by using a polar setting*. Draw a wall and leave it selected. Click onto the Polar button and put in your own angle or length and hit Enter or Return. The wall will pivot on its beginning end to the new angle or length.
One can create a survey line as well by typing in a property bearing of, say 35°15’44”. An easier way might be to use the Property Bounds tool on the Tools palette--it’s on the tear-off palette sporting a bulldozer and looks a bit like a necklace. I’ve not liked this tool in the past since it frequently causes my earlier inputs to disappear if I click the wrong button and also has crashed my computer. I was reading Jon Pickup’s VectorWorks Architect book and was surprised to see that there was a simple option to using the Property Bounds tool of which I was unaware. If you click on the tool, you should see a wrench icon in the upper left corner of your drawing window. Click on it and a dialog box comes up which offers a button called Simple Dialog. Select it and your next click brings up a new box with only line angle and length inputs but with a second button which can close the shape. If your property does not involve curves, this option might be the one to use. Note that you can also input bearing as 35d15m44s instead of ° ‘ “.
Also, in setting a line’s angle, don’t forget another option; the Angle Snaps button on the Constraints palette--it’s the button that looks a little like an asterisk. Double click it and set the angle prior to beginning your line.
*Tom Baer, in his VectorWorks 10 Visual Quickstart Guide (still a fine book to acquire--I found mine on Amazon) says “Like most CAD programs, VectorWorks uses the two coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar. Cartesian (aka x-y or rectangular) coordinates identify a point in the plane by its horizontal and vertical distances from a point of reference called the origin. Polar coordinates define a point by describing the line between the point and the origin by specifying its length (L) and its angle (A). Angles are measured counterclockwise from the 3 o’clock position. You can switch between systems at will, using whichever is the more convenient. Sometimes what’s important is the angle of a line (say, the slope of a roof): sometimes the distance above the floor (its Y value) is what needs to be defined.”
In my last newsletter I also talked about how to generate a plus/minus sign. Of course, right in the OI palette of any dimension resides a Tolerance button which gives you an opportunity to indicate the plus/minus amount. You get your sign, but you also have to indicate the amount of tolerance which might be intolerable.
..................................................................................................................
Jonathan Pickup has an interesting blog item that teaches one how to make transparent people for placing in front of your projects. Sign up for his online newsletter to see this movie and more using the link at the bottom of the page.
http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/93BCF830-4B6C-4097-B96F-80DAD5285028.html
......................................................................................................................
A few weeks back yours truly was quoted in a Nemetschek announcement heralding the working relationship between NNA and Adobe in the continuing development of the Acrobat PDF format.
http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/2007/012207.php
Last week, in a follow up post in eDispatch,
http://www.nemetschek.net/edispatch/Vol60/index.php
Sean Flaherty expanded on the theme. Yes, more and more capability will be created in the Acrobat software and this should increase your ability to share information. All good. The part I was responding to so enthusiastically was the simple fact that the Acrobat code was included in the various VW packages (except Fundamentals, I believe). To make great PDF’s, you don’t need to buy Acrobat. On the Mac, the PDF function is built-in to the OS, but from what I’ve seen and heard, the Acrobat code within VectorWorks produces quick, quality PDF’s. I’ve created several sets of drawings with the Batch PDF tool and it is truly amazing to see them created and then displayed (if you check the display button) on your screen with your first sheet showing and the following sheets listed in a right hand column in thumbnail form*. Importing engineering sized PDF’s from your engineers and dropping them onto a sheet is easy. Just import it in then use the IO palette to move it to a new sheet.
Simply stated, if you’ve got it, you’ll use it. PDF’s are like a fax machine on steroids with human growth hormone sprinkled on top but without the baseball commissioner (a quote that NNA will likely pass on, sorry to say). Yes, many of you, being the forward thinking individuals that you are, bought Acrobat years ago** and wonder what the big deal is. The deal is now that we’re all on board; this critical mass will seriously begin to work in our favor .
*I will say that larger files need RAM and if you don’t have the memory, you might find, as I did, that the text displays as a combination of Russian plus Egyptian hieroglyphs.
**I remember picking up a huge stack of free red floppies marked Adobe Acrobat Version 1.0 many, many years ago. I was a member of dBug, a Mac user group here in Seattle and the software was free for members. Although there was a flier describing the intent of the new program, I couldn’t really get my mind around the concept so I threw the bundle back into the bin.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
CONVERT TO LINES #21
1/14/07
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•Giving thanks
•Knowledge is power
•A viewports trick
•Thoughts on Sketchup
•More tricks and misc.
•Nemetschek buys ArchiCAD
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com
Note that the site has been updated with improved text and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, January 25th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
Sam Krause of Alpha Modalities will be taking us through some of the 3D tools. If you are not a 3D pro, come out and see how to make the most of VectorWorks’ 3D tools and beyond. Take a new step in the new year and little by little, we’ll have you saving time and effort like never before.
.................................................................................
This is a good time of the year to look back and appreciate those who make life easier. In the case of the Seattle VW Users Group, I want to first thank the folks at Seattle Central Community College who extend the facilities there for our use. We’re provided--for free--a really nice lecture hall with overhead projector, secure parking, and staff that wants us to have a great learning environment during the time we are there. From Suan-vinh, the custodian, to teacher Dave Borgatti, from Construction Center administrator Michelle, to others like Ivan Hass who teaches introductory VectorWorks CADD. They all have been willing to go the extra distance to ensure that we have the best experience that can be had. Thank you all!
Two URL’s for the wood construction program:
http://seattlecentral.edu/wood/
http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/woodconstruction/
I also want to thank the larger VW community which, amazingly, wraps the globe. I met an excited landscape architect in October at the JLCLive show which took place at the Convention and Trade Center. She was leaving the VW demo booth having bought her first copy of VectorWorks and was she happy! But then the struggles set in which involved several frustrations that were not of her making. In response to these problems, I went on the NNA Listserv and posted a help note. Several folks from around the world wrote her offering aid. A thoughtful landscape architect out of Wenatchee, Thom Vetter, contacted her with an offer of additional help. Jonathan Pickup called her from New Zealand (she bought his Landmark book). I tutored her for an hour, gratis. She joined the Listserv and called NNA Tech help and did her part to get over the trouble spots. Getting great help is part of the VectorWorks experience. A helping hand is there if you need it. Thanks to all of you who ease the struggles of others, whether it’s teaching an alphabet to a youngster, a CAD program to anybody, or helping with any other challenging endeavor.
...................................................................................
The cool thing about the advent of blogs is that the power to teach no longer resides in the hands of a few entities. I don’t mean to suggest that those pre-blog sources were not quality repositories of knowledge or that there was/is some kind of benefit to the control of that information. Heretofore, dissemination of knowledge has been very costly and that mandril of costs, so to speak, has meant that the shape of the knowledge, as it leaves the form, is sometimes ill fitting. This “one size fits all” approach is currently being augmented with information from several independent sources. One of them is PodCAD, produced by two guys from Southern California: Pat Stanford, and Dan Jansenson. At PodCAD you can listen to audio podcast interviews of persons who are deeply involved in CAD and with VectorWorks. These two have also created a business called Vectortasks for teaching VectorWorks to others. Pat is the leader of the L.A. VW Users Group and Dan has authored the Renderworks Recipe Book. What I really like about PodCAD’s audio interviews is the fireside informality--they’re very relaxing while being informative at the same time. Check ‘em out at:
www.podcad.tv
www.vectortasks.com
www.danjansenson.com
..................................................................................
Some of us, having moved slowly into Viewports, are still nostalgic for Convert To Lines* since the 3D model that provides the basis for elevation views or sections may be complex and in showing these views, the masking process might be harder than the old way of converting to lines and ungrouping, then deleting what’s unneeded. This is a moving target; some projects are going to be easier to mask than others. I recently had a super-tight time constraint in producing some preliminary drawings, both floor plans and elevations. I made a viewport of the 3D model (in this case, created via the Model View tool found on the Visualization palette. Note that you have the ability to duplicate this vp on your sheet and, via the OIP, create new views of each side). I chose to Convert Copy to LInes from one of the elevation viewports. I copied and then deleted the line work atop the viewport, then went back to my working layer (properly called “design layer”) and pasted in the line work which came in quite small, needing scaling by 48 times which happens to match the scale of my drawing: 1/4” per foot or 1 to 48. The advantage here was that I had live vp’s as a backup to my converted lines. I had no time to ungroup roofs and rework them to fit correctly, something I would always do if time were not such an issue. But if I changed something on my floorplan in the last few minutes, I had a vp to aid me in correcting the lines. This workaround is not as elegant as keeping the vp as the primary element on the sheet, but hey, whatever works in love and war.
*In Convert to Lines #19 I wrote about the overall process of converting VP’s to lines.
................................................................................
Is learning and using Sketchup a good reason to not mess with implementing 3D within VectorWorks? I’ve been watching the Sketchup tutorials and I love how easy and breezy they are.
http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html
I can see the attraction of doing quick design development using this non-CAD CAD program (THEY’RE the ones that say it’s not CAD).
I’ve talked to some folks lately who have never utilized VW’s 3D capabilities and I wonder about that. I know that not everyone can haul their organization into the 3D world without some pain. Sketchup seems to be so quick and easy that it might help one develop the general form of a project while also giving the client an early peek at the design too. But then what? For me, 3D informs 2D. It isn’t the nice picture that is important, though if it helps sell the job, that’s great. Where 3D shines is in allowing you to adjust your model toward correctness. If it doesn’t go together in 3D, it will be obvious either in isometric view or via section and so can be adjusted until it is correct. This ability to adjust and fit has proven itself as it allows me to catch mistakes and also helps me to take the design a little further than I might have because I can clearly see where something doesn’t work, either structurally or aesthetically.
Since, as I said, 3D informs 2D. I build up my model in 3D volumes as soon as possible to establish floor levels, structural supports, wall-to-rafter fit and so on. This means that the client can see the project sooner--sometimes MUCH sooner, than later. Lastly, I get to proceed with the assurance of having established 3D markers that I won’t have to revisit to confirm correctness later on so this helps avoid the situation where one late change creates an unintended error someplace else. You CAN get quite a bit of Sketchup-like control using VectorWorks and in addition, be able to keep the key decision-making represented by these precise volumes and all within ONE program.
I have no doubt Sketchup will be used by more and more people but the job of getting your work right and then proceeding to finished drawings while still keeping elevations, sections and other views live throughout most of your sheets--this is where the real money is, in my opinion.
.............................................................................
.............................................................................
Misc.
How do you make a section of an object in any other view than in Top Plan View? Sometimes a horizontal cut is preferred. Easy. Make a viewport of the object and turn it to the desired view using the Object Info palette. Then cut your Section Viewport FROM your viewport.
http://kbase.nemetschek.net/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=117&catId=23
I ran into trouble making a Viewport of a building which had wall components turned on (Document Settings>Document Pref’s) and there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to turn them off via the OI palette. Stretch down the palette and click on Advanced Properties and you’ll see a button that will turn off wall components.
...............................................................................
From an NNA Listserv poster:
To put an image on a rug:
Choose Model->Create Image Prop. Import your image file. Uncheck Constant Reflectivity and Create Plug-In Object. You can choose to create a mask or not, depending. This will create a textured rectangular 3D polygon for you, without you having to mess with sizing the polygon for the image aspect ratio and trying to get the texture mapping lined up exactly. Since it is a 3D polygon you can rotate it in 3D, like to make a rug on the floor or something. For vertically-oriented images, if you choose the Create Plug-In Object option you can later resize the polygon using OI palette.
............................................................................................
When you wish to type a plus-over-minus symbol such as when a dimension is variable, on a Mac, hit Shift-plus-Option-plus the + key: ± (if this didn’t translate via e-mail, it looks like a plus neatly stacked over a minus). On a PC, you have to be using a font with a plus/minus symbol already built in. I found such a font on my Windows PC called Universal Math. If I’m incorrect here, PC users, let me know.
...................................................................................
Ok, draw a sloping line. In the OI palette, you see by default a dimension of total height of the line and total length, but not true length. If you click on the round icon below the cross-hair icon, you’ll see the line’s true length AND degree of slope.
..........................................................................................................
Download and try Ikea’s free 3D kitchen planner. I saw a client run this during our meeting at their home. Impressive, especially for free. Perhaps Google with buy it to go with their free junior version of Sketchup.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/complete_kitchen_guide/planner_tool/download/index.html
..............................................................................................
............................................................................................
“Nemetschek AG acquires a 54.3% stake in Graphisoft
Budapest, 2006 December 31. - Nemetschek AG has acquired 54.3% of the 10.6 million shares in Graphisoft SE (headquartered in Budapest) at a price of EUR 9 per share. The acquisition was implemented by exercising the call option with Graphisoft shareholders agreed on December 21, 2006.”
The above was taken from ArchiCAD’s website. Apparently Nemetschek intends to follow up later on to buy greater control of the company by making a public tender offer for all remaining shares. What does this portend for VectorWorks and ArchiCAD and for AllPlan, Nemetchek’s high end CAD program? I surfed the forums of the NNA VW website, Architosh and also the forum at ArchiCAD. There, I found an interesting comment from none other than a past Seattle VW User Group Leader Geoff Briggs. who jumped ship to ArchiCAD about five years ago. (His posts follows the next few thoughts.)
AllPlan is hard to learn and has share only in Europe, I understand. VectorWorks has many more times the seats of ArchiCAD and an upgrade of ArchiCAD costs about the same as a new copy of VectorWorks. VW is easier to learn. What will happen? For the time being, likely nothing, as VW and ArchiCAD continue to grow market share. What will happen is that we will have increased momentum against AutoCad + Revit.
Here is Geoff’s post:
“A very interesting development indeed. While there are some striking similarities to Autodesk's acquisition of Revit there are just as many differences. Autodesk started out as market leader, with their goal to keep it that way. Nemetschek is an underdog looking to make a move. And a bold move they are making. They are now without question the #3 AEC vendor on the planet. They have as much hope of knocking off the top dogs as Apple has of surpassing Microsoft. But hopefully, like Apple of late, they realize that there are more ways lead than in sales.
So where does that leave us? The ink is barely dry and already speculation runs wild. But hey, why not. It's tempting to conjure all the various application merges that could ensue. But remember Nemetschek AG acquired VectorWorks and runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary. Good move on their part as VectorWorks has more users than AllPlan and ArchiCAD combined. That's not by accident. They started with a good product, added a lot of marketing and really put the screws to the little company from Maryland. Now Nemetschek NA is a pretty tight ship. They own Maxon as well, another company with a great product that does very well in an entirely different niche market. C4D [Cinema 4D] is not the rendering engine for VectorWorks, nor is AllPlan the CAD engine. So far plug-ins and co-marketing are as close as these disparate branches have grown.
Does that mean no merging of technology? I sure hope not. Like Wes, I believe something has to happen for ArchiCAD to stay in the game against the Revit juggernaut. (Revit still has plenty of flaws but with all the resources, marketing and programming, that Autodesk is throwing their way they are beginning to push BIM forward in ways that ArchiCAD has failed to do despite having the field to themselves for so long.) But I disagree that all their holdings will (or should) be brought under one roof. Wendy is right about VectorWorks, despite it's not being a true BIM application it is much easier to learn and much much cheaper than any other professional CAD app. Nemetschek will have no problem positioning it as the value leader.
The wild card is AllPlan. Powerful but hard to master. No North American presence, small market share, miniscule mind share. Does it make sense to part-out AllPlan, sending programmers and technology to Hungary? I think it does. Programmers (and cash) are what Graphisoft needs most. They have like 60 to the American's thousands. And unlike VectorWorks, AllPlan competes directly with ArchiCAD, at least in Europe where migrating their existing high profile customers to ArchiCAD would be a huge coupe. I hope their own experience with AllPlan, combined with ArchiCAD's popularity worldwide makes it clear that doing the reverse (assimilating ArchiCAD into AllPlan) would be suicide.
Of course it's not that simple. Autodesk cannot kill ADT (at least not for a while) even if they want too. Likewise NemAG may not be able to kill AllPlan without key customers deserting. And corporate cultures may clash. For the time being if they do for ArchiCAD what they did for VectorWorks that will most definitely get the ball rolling in the right direction.
_________________
Regards,
Geoff Briggs
I & I Design
............................................................................................
That’s all for now. See you on the 25th! (Mark your calendar!!)
Tom Greggs
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
(206) 524-2808
PS I will follow up with a second reminder just before the 25th, if you don’t mind.
Serving the Seattle VectorWorks Users Group and Northwest VectorWorks users.
In this issue:
•Giving thanks
•Knowledge is power
•A viewports trick
•Thoughts on Sketchup
•More tricks and misc.
•Nemetschek buys ArchiCAD
An archive of past news letters can be found at http://.converttolines.blogspot.com
Note that the site has been updated with improved text and, partly as a result, the URL has changed and no longer uses www in the address.
Greetings VectorWorks users! Our next meeting is Thursday, January 25th, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Seattle Central Community College Wood Construction Center lecture hall. The hall is located at 2310 S. Lane St. (intersection of 23rd Avenue South and South Lane Street). Parking is available in the gated lot off South King Street, just one block south of Jackson Street. The lecture hall is the building directly adjacent to the parking lot at its south side. Walk up the wooden side-ramp to the second door.
Sam Krause of Alpha Modalities will be taking us through some of the 3D tools. If you are not a 3D pro, come out and see how to make the most of VectorWorks’ 3D tools and beyond. Take a new step in the new year and little by little, we’ll have you saving time and effort like never before.
.................................................................................
This is a good time of the year to look back and appreciate those who make life easier. In the case of the Seattle VW Users Group, I want to first thank the folks at Seattle Central Community College who extend the facilities there for our use. We’re provided--for free--a really nice lecture hall with overhead projector, secure parking, and staff that wants us to have a great learning environment during the time we are there. From Suan-vinh, the custodian, to teacher Dave Borgatti, from Construction Center administrator Michelle, to others like Ivan Hass who teaches introductory VectorWorks CADD. They all have been willing to go the extra distance to ensure that we have the best experience that can be had. Thank you all!
Two URL’s for the wood construction program:
http://seattlecentral.edu/wood/
http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/woodconstruction/
I also want to thank the larger VW community which, amazingly, wraps the globe. I met an excited landscape architect in October at the JLCLive show which took place at the Convention and Trade Center. She was leaving the VW demo booth having bought her first copy of VectorWorks and was she happy! But then the struggles set in which involved several frustrations that were not of her making. In response to these problems, I went on the NNA Listserv and posted a help note. Several folks from around the world wrote her offering aid. A thoughtful landscape architect out of Wenatchee, Thom Vetter, contacted her with an offer of additional help. Jonathan Pickup called her from New Zealand (she bought his Landmark book). I tutored her for an hour, gratis. She joined the Listserv and called NNA Tech help and did her part to get over the trouble spots. Getting great help is part of the VectorWorks experience. A helping hand is there if you need it. Thanks to all of you who ease the struggles of others, whether it’s teaching an alphabet to a youngster, a CAD program to anybody, or helping with any other challenging endeavor.
...................................................................................
The cool thing about the advent of blogs is that the power to teach no longer resides in the hands of a few entities. I don’t mean to suggest that those pre-blog sources were not quality repositories of knowledge or that there was/is some kind of benefit to the control of that information. Heretofore, dissemination of knowledge has been very costly and that mandril of costs, so to speak, has meant that the shape of the knowledge, as it leaves the form, is sometimes ill fitting. This “one size fits all” approach is currently being augmented with information from several independent sources. One of them is PodCAD, produced by two guys from Southern California: Pat Stanford, and Dan Jansenson. At PodCAD you can listen to audio podcast interviews of persons who are deeply involved in CAD and with VectorWorks. These two have also created a business called Vectortasks for teaching VectorWorks to others. Pat is the leader of the L.A. VW Users Group and Dan has authored the Renderworks Recipe Book. What I really like about PodCAD’s audio interviews is the fireside informality--they’re very relaxing while being informative at the same time. Check ‘em out at:
www.podcad.tv
www.vectortasks.com
www.danjansenson.com
..................................................................................
Some of us, having moved slowly into Viewports, are still nostalgic for Convert To Lines* since the 3D model that provides the basis for elevation views or sections may be complex and in showing these views, the masking process might be harder than the old way of converting to lines and ungrouping, then deleting what’s unneeded. This is a moving target; some projects are going to be easier to mask than others. I recently had a super-tight time constraint in producing some preliminary drawings, both floor plans and elevations. I made a viewport of the 3D model (in this case, created via the Model View tool found on the Visualization palette. Note that you have the ability to duplicate this vp on your sheet and, via the OIP, create new views of each side). I chose to Convert Copy to LInes from one of the elevation viewports. I copied and then deleted the line work atop the viewport, then went back to my working layer (properly called “design layer”) and pasted in the line work which came in quite small, needing scaling by 48 times which happens to match the scale of my drawing: 1/4” per foot or 1 to 48. The advantage here was that I had live vp’s as a backup to my converted lines. I had no time to ungroup roofs and rework them to fit correctly, something I would always do if time were not such an issue. But if I changed something on my floorplan in the last few minutes, I had a vp to aid me in correcting the lines. This workaround is not as elegant as keeping the vp as the primary element on the sheet, but hey, whatever works in love and war.
*In Convert to Lines #19 I wrote about the overall process of converting VP’s to lines.
................................................................................
Is learning and using Sketchup a good reason to not mess with implementing 3D within VectorWorks? I’ve been watching the Sketchup tutorials and I love how easy and breezy they are.
http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html
I can see the attraction of doing quick design development using this non-CAD CAD program (THEY’RE the ones that say it’s not CAD).
I’ve talked to some folks lately who have never utilized VW’s 3D capabilities and I wonder about that. I know that not everyone can haul their organization into the 3D world without some pain. Sketchup seems to be so quick and easy that it might help one develop the general form of a project while also giving the client an early peek at the design too. But then what? For me, 3D informs 2D. It isn’t the nice picture that is important, though if it helps sell the job, that’s great. Where 3D shines is in allowing you to adjust your model toward correctness. If it doesn’t go together in 3D, it will be obvious either in isometric view or via section and so can be adjusted until it is correct. This ability to adjust and fit has proven itself as it allows me to catch mistakes and also helps me to take the design a little further than I might have because I can clearly see where something doesn’t work, either structurally or aesthetically.
Since, as I said, 3D informs 2D. I build up my model in 3D volumes as soon as possible to establish floor levels, structural supports, wall-to-rafter fit and so on. This means that the client can see the project sooner--sometimes MUCH sooner, than later. Lastly, I get to proceed with the assurance of having established 3D markers that I won’t have to revisit to confirm correctness later on so this helps avoid the situation where one late change creates an unintended error someplace else. You CAN get quite a bit of Sketchup-like control using VectorWorks and in addition, be able to keep the key decision-making represented by these precise volumes and all within ONE program.
I have no doubt Sketchup will be used by more and more people but the job of getting your work right and then proceeding to finished drawings while still keeping elevations, sections and other views live throughout most of your sheets--this is where the real money is, in my opinion.
.............................................................................
.............................................................................
Misc.
How do you make a section of an object in any other view than in Top Plan View? Sometimes a horizontal cut is preferred. Easy. Make a viewport of the object and turn it to the desired view using the Object Info palette. Then cut your Section Viewport FROM your viewport.
http://kbase.nemetschek.net/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=117&catId=23
I ran into trouble making a Viewport of a building which had wall components turned on (Document Settings>Document Pref’s) and there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to turn them off via the OI palette. Stretch down the palette and click on Advanced Properties and you’ll see a button that will turn off wall components.
...............................................................................
From an NNA Listserv poster:
To put an image on a rug:
Choose Model->Create Image Prop. Import your image file. Uncheck Constant Reflectivity and Create Plug-In Object. You can choose to create a mask or not, depending. This will create a textured rectangular 3D polygon for you, without you having to mess with sizing the polygon for the image aspect ratio and trying to get the texture mapping lined up exactly. Since it is a 3D polygon you can rotate it in 3D, like to make a rug on the floor or something. For vertically-oriented images, if you choose the Create Plug-In Object option you can later resize the polygon using OI palette.
............................................................................................
When you wish to type a plus-over-minus symbol such as when a dimension is variable, on a Mac, hit Shift-plus-Option-plus the + key: ± (if this didn’t translate via e-mail, it looks like a plus neatly stacked over a minus). On a PC, you have to be using a font with a plus/minus symbol already built in. I found such a font on my Windows PC called Universal Math. If I’m incorrect here, PC users, let me know.
...................................................................................
Ok, draw a sloping line. In the OI palette, you see by default a dimension of total height of the line and total length, but not true length. If you click on the round icon below the cross-hair icon, you’ll see the line’s true length AND degree of slope.
..........................................................................................................
Download and try Ikea’s free 3D kitchen planner. I saw a client run this during our meeting at their home. Impressive, especially for free. Perhaps Google with buy it to go with their free junior version of Sketchup.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/complete_kitchen_guide/planner_tool/download/index.html
..............................................................................................
............................................................................................
“Nemetschek AG acquires a 54.3% stake in Graphisoft
Budapest, 2006 December 31. - Nemetschek AG has acquired 54.3% of the 10.6 million shares in Graphisoft SE (headquartered in Budapest) at a price of EUR 9 per share. The acquisition was implemented by exercising the call option with Graphisoft shareholders agreed on December 21, 2006.”
The above was taken from ArchiCAD’s website. Apparently Nemetschek intends to follow up later on to buy greater control of the company by making a public tender offer for all remaining shares. What does this portend for VectorWorks and ArchiCAD and for AllPlan, Nemetchek’s high end CAD program? I surfed the forums of the NNA VW website, Architosh and also the forum at ArchiCAD. There, I found an interesting comment from none other than a past Seattle VW User Group Leader Geoff Briggs. who jumped ship to ArchiCAD about five years ago. (His posts follows the next few thoughts.)
AllPlan is hard to learn and has share only in Europe, I understand. VectorWorks has many more times the seats of ArchiCAD and an upgrade of ArchiCAD costs about the same as a new copy of VectorWorks. VW is easier to learn. What will happen? For the time being, likely nothing, as VW and ArchiCAD continue to grow market share. What will happen is that we will have increased momentum against AutoCad + Revit.
Here is Geoff’s post:
“A very interesting development indeed. While there are some striking similarities to Autodesk's acquisition of Revit there are just as many differences. Autodesk started out as market leader, with their goal to keep it that way. Nemetschek is an underdog looking to make a move. And a bold move they are making. They are now without question the #3 AEC vendor on the planet. They have as much hope of knocking off the top dogs as Apple has of surpassing Microsoft. But hopefully, like Apple of late, they realize that there are more ways lead than in sales.
So where does that leave us? The ink is barely dry and already speculation runs wild. But hey, why not. It's tempting to conjure all the various application merges that could ensue. But remember Nemetschek AG acquired VectorWorks and runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary. Good move on their part as VectorWorks has more users than AllPlan and ArchiCAD combined. That's not by accident. They started with a good product, added a lot of marketing and really put the screws to the little company from Maryland. Now Nemetschek NA is a pretty tight ship. They own Maxon as well, another company with a great product that does very well in an entirely different niche market. C4D [Cinema 4D] is not the rendering engine for VectorWorks, nor is AllPlan the CAD engine. So far plug-ins and co-marketing are as close as these disparate branches have grown.
Does that mean no merging of technology? I sure hope not. Like Wes, I believe something has to happen for ArchiCAD to stay in the game against the Revit juggernaut. (Revit still has plenty of flaws but with all the resources, marketing and programming, that Autodesk is throwing their way they are beginning to push BIM forward in ways that ArchiCAD has failed to do despite having the field to themselves for so long.) But I disagree that all their holdings will (or should) be brought under one roof. Wendy is right about VectorWorks, despite it's not being a true BIM application it is much easier to learn and much much cheaper than any other professional CAD app. Nemetschek will have no problem positioning it as the value leader.
The wild card is AllPlan. Powerful but hard to master. No North American presence, small market share, miniscule mind share. Does it make sense to part-out AllPlan, sending programmers and technology to Hungary? I think it does. Programmers (and cash) are what Graphisoft needs most. They have like 60 to the American's thousands. And unlike VectorWorks, AllPlan competes directly with ArchiCAD, at least in Europe where migrating their existing high profile customers to ArchiCAD would be a huge coupe. I hope their own experience with AllPlan, combined with ArchiCAD's popularity worldwide makes it clear that doing the reverse (assimilating ArchiCAD into AllPlan) would be suicide.
Of course it's not that simple. Autodesk cannot kill ADT (at least not for a while) even if they want too. Likewise NemAG may not be able to kill AllPlan without key customers deserting. And corporate cultures may clash. For the time being if they do for ArchiCAD what they did for VectorWorks that will most definitely get the ball rolling in the right direction.
_________________
Regards,
Geoff Briggs
I & I Design
............................................................................................
That’s all for now. See you on the 25th! (Mark your calendar!!)
Tom Greggs
Seattle VectorWorks Users Group
(206) 524-2808
PS I will follow up with a second reminder just before the 25th, if you don’t mind.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
CONVERT TO LINES #19
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.
.................................................................
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.
..................................................................
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.
.................................................................
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.
...........................................................................................
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.
...........................................................................
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.
.................................................................................
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
...............................................................................
Hope to see you at the next User Group meeting on Thursday, the 16th!
Tom Greggs
(206 524-2808
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.
.................................................................
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.
..................................................................
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.
.................................................................
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.
...........................................................................................
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.
...........................................................................
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.
.................................................................................
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
...............................................................................
Hope to see you at the next User Group meeting on Thursday, the 16th!
Tom Greggs
(206 524-2808
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
CONVERT TO LINES #18
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.
..............................................................................
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
.................................................................................
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.
.....................................................................................
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
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.
..............................................................................
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
.................................................................................
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.
.....................................................................................
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
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Convert to Lines #17
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.
..............................................................................................................
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.
...............................................................................................................
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.”
................................................................................................................
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.”
...............................................................................................................
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
..................................................................................................................
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.
................................................................................................................
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.
...............................................................................................................
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.
..............................................................................................................
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.
...............................................................................................................
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
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.
..............................................................................................................
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.
...............................................................................................................
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.”
................................................................................................................
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.”
...............................................................................................................
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
..................................................................................................................
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.
................................................................................................................
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.
...............................................................................................................
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
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