Back to Basics - Creating Exercises with Vectorworks

It is all very well learning how to customise Vectorworks, learning how to create your own Vectorworks tools, and other cool stuff. If you do not know the basics very well it is a waste of time. It may seem to be tedious that we go over the basics again, but I really feel that revisiting the basics will make your process faster and more productive.

I have a manual that teaches the basic creation tools. The reason for this is that all professional teams make sure that the players know the basics very well. I have been reading about a famous basketball coach who made his players shoot hundreds of shots each day from different parts of the court. If the basketball players are professionals why do they need to practice the basics so much? Well, the answer is that even professional sportsmen need to practice the basics because then the basics become automatic. When the players are under pressure they can carry out the basics automatically because they have been practicing.

Rencently,  I was teaching some highly skilled users. When I used the Select Similar and the Visibility tool they were surprised. Although they had seen the tools, they had never used or thought about using them before.Teaching these uses about these tools created a real spark of interest and they were very happy that the training covered these tools. The users felt that these tools gave them a real increase in productivity.

Often when I see users struggling, they are not struggling so much with the advanced features of Vectorworks, they are often struggling with the basic tools and concepts. That is why we are going to have some back to basics sessions. This manual session is looking at creation tools from the Basic tool set.

Selection Tool

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This is the first tool that you should learn and it is the most useful. This tool is used to select objects so that you can an work with them (copy, edit, modify, etc.). There are several options that go with this tool. Setting these options (modes) to suit your drawing style will make Vectorworks work better for you.

When you are finished using the other creating tools, click on this tool.

Pan Tool

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This tool is used to move the view around the screen. Typically, you would use this tool when you are zoomed in so that you can move the screen across to see the required area.

Zoom Tool

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This tool is used for zooming in or out. Drawing is a lot easier if you adjust the zoom level to clearly see the objects you are creating, editing, or dimensioning.

Text Tool

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This tool is used to create or edit text. If you create drawings without any text, it can be very difficult for others to understand the drawing. Text becomes important to write descriptions of the objects and to create instructions on the drawings.

Introduction to Lines

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Lines can be described by coordinates (X and Y) or they can be described  by length and angle. The coordinates are called Cartesian coordinates and the length and angle are known as Polar coordinates.

The Object Info palette allows you to select in which way you would like to see the coordinates.

This is a sample of the manual that is available in my store. The manual comes with the exercise file so that you can follow the instructions and learn to use the basic tools. 

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