On-Line User Group August Newsletter Out

The August issue of the cadsupportonline user group newsletter is now available. The topic this month is WorkSheets.
Worksheets allow you count and schedule stuff in VectorWorks. For example you can count all the trees in a site, schedule all the doors on a particular floor of a project, even find the weight of a bracket in a 3D model .
Worksheets are an under used area of VectorWorks and this workshop should open your eyes about what you are able to do with them.
In this issue I show you how you can use worksheets to:
- count areas and compare them
- count objects that have information attached, information that you could use to make a window schedule.
- count a landscape area and calculate the plant mix
the Question and Answer this month is:
How can I get more than one person to work on the same project?”
The extended podcasts this month are:
epodcast 042
In this podcast I will show you how the chain extrude tool. The chain extrude tool makes it really quick to draw the cross section through a balcony roof or varandah roof and extrude it.
epodcast 043
In this podcast I will show you how to make a solar animation.

If you are a subscriber then you will get your newsletter in the next day or so. If you are not a subscriber and would like to join, then visit this web site for more information:
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/p/short-sharp-training-monthly.html

Door and Window Schedule

I was teaching the other day and i wanted to show the client how to make a window and door schedule, one that would just count the doors and windows in the external walls.

It’s common here to count all the external doors and windows together, but to do this with the standard Window or Door object is not that easy. You can count all the windows, or you can count all the doors, but it’s not easy to count all the external windows and doors together.

One option is to count just the windows, the Next Option is to use a separate symbol that can be used to count windows and doors, but then this defeats the purpose of having all the scheduling attached to the window.

I also looked at the Windoor manager from OZCad (http://www.ozcad.com.au). This lets you assign the doors or windows to the door schedule or the window schedule... Briilant!

next month the user group newsletter will be looking at worksheets, so If you are a subscriber then you will get your newsletter about worksheet... If you are not a subscriber and would like to join, then visit this web site for more information:
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/p/short-sharp-training-monthly.html

Sharing Work in Vectorworks

Ever wondered if you can share work with VectorWorks so that you can have more than one person working on a project?

Using WorkGroup Referencing it’s possible. This concept allows you to share layers from your file to another person, or it allows you to borrow a few layers from another file. The command you need is found on the Tools menu.

Before you use this wonderful feature you need to consider what bits of information you want to share. I find it’s easier to sort out who is going to be working on the job and what parts they will be responsible for. After you’re work this part out the rest is easy.

If you choose to put a few drawings in one file and a few drawings in another then it’s easy to share your work around but this is not what I have in mind. For one thing, you can’t print all the drawings at the same time. So batch print is not useful... I wanted to show you a way that you can have all the drawings in one file and still have several people on the same project.

Worksheets in Vectorworks

I was training at a landscape client today and I was reminded just how powerful worksheets are. We made a worksheet that would count all the plant areas in a layer. That’s easy, so the really fun bit was that we set up the worksheet to allow for 14 types of plants, allow for a percentage mix for each plant type, a different plant spacing and VectorWorks worked out all the plants.

This worksheet has dramatically speed up the client. They don’t want to use actual plants as the areas are vast, 50ha is typical, so placing individual is not an option...

I have a short manual on worksheets available from:
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/p/manuals.html

archoncad interviewed by 101 Marketing

I have been listening to a business podcast for some time now, because he talks about coming internet strategies and stuff. The author got in touch with me the other day and wanted to interview me. You can listen to the interview at:
http://101marketing.blip.tv/

Listen to some of the others as well. One of my favourites was why you should buy an ipod as a business tool...

I’m working on my on-line user group topic for July 2007. The workshop topic is Annotation. Annotation is text and dimensions, but VectorWorks has much more than this, there are tools to make it easy to assemble the notes, labels and references on the drawings. This topic includes;
-    text
-    Dimensions
-    Custom dimensions
-    Call out tool
-    Drawing Labels
-    Reference Markers
-    Elevation Benchmark
-    Tittle Blocks
-    Custom Title Blocks


the Question and Answer this month is:

I want to have walls with brick veneer and I want to place windows in the wall so that above the windows I have a different cladding. How do I do that?”
The extended podcasts this month are:
epodcast 040
This podcast shows you how you can import a survey drawing from a consultant and quickly make it into a 3D Site model.
epodcast 041
This podcast shows you how you can quickly make hardscapes accurately and how you can edit them. This podcast shows you how to add surface and clip surface to edit your hardscapes quickly.

If you are a subscriber then you will get your newsletter in the next day or so. If you are not a subscriber and would like to join, then visit this web site for more information:
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/p/short-sharp-training-monthly.html

WorkGroup Referencing 1

What is WorkGroup Referencing?

WorkGroup Referencing is the ability to link one VectorWorks file to another. For example, you have two people working on a large project. One person is doing most of the plans and sections, the other is doing all the details.

So far so good, you could always do this with VectorWorks, just have two files. But when you want to print all the drawings you have to open two files. Wouldn’t it be nice to just have the one file to print all the drawings from? This is what WorkGroup Referencing allows you to do.

The concept of WorkGroup Referencing sounds simple enough, and it really is easy to set up a WorkGroup Reference. The challenging part of the whole process is deciding what to link.

Elevation Benchmark Tool

if you want to use the elevation benchmark tool, DO NOT move the origin on the file, the elevation benchmark will not work with Auto-Reference...

On-Line User Group June Newsletter out

What is WorkGroup Referencing? 

WorkGroup Referencing is the ability to link one VectorWorks file to another. For example, you have two people working on a large project. One person is doing most of the plans and sections, the other is doing all the details. 

So far so good, you could always do this with VectorWorks, just have two files. But when you want to print all the drawings you have to open two files. Wouldn’t it be nice to just have the one file to print all the drawings from? This is what WorkGroup Referencing allows you to do. 

The concept of WorkGroup Referencing sounds simple enough, and it really is easy to set up a WorkGroup Reference. The challenging part of the whole process is deciding what to link. 

If you are using grey layers or grey classes to make stuff go transparent in your viewports, you might find that the printed drawing doesn’t suit you. In VectorWorks you have no control over the grey colour in grey layer and grey classes.

You can switch the classes to grey, but I don’t like the results much.

But there is a better way. In viewports you can edit the class attributes to have the grey colour that you want.

Find the viewport you want to edit.

Click on the classes button to open this dialog box.

Select the classes you want to edit.

Edit the colour, line weight and line style to suit.

Notice how much better the grey lines look now.

By changing the class overrides on the walls, I can make the drawing better still.

On-Line User Group May Newsletter out

the on-line user group newsletter has been out for about 2 weeks now. If you haven’t received yours yet, email me.

jon@archoncad.co.nz

The main topic for May is Textures and Rendering. Rnedering is where you start to enjoy your 3D models, but you need textures to make the rendering come alive. We cover
- rendering modes
- creating simple textures
- assigning textures
- creating textures from an image
- a great trick to judge the texture on the object.


The question and answer session is on creating 3D fillet welds on a 3D bracket.

The two extended podcasts are:
- how to set your units to dimension ini one unit, and have a different usit for worksheets.
- how to quickly edit viewports.

As with all the on-line user group newsletters there are notes, screen shots to show you what to do and links to movies so that you can see me carrying out the exercise.

for more information and to regisiter for the on-line user group please visit:
https://plus36.safe-order.net/archoncad/manuals/usergroup.php

Cheers,
Jonathan
VectorWorks training manuals and support
on-line user group
http://www.archoncad.co.nz

I Don’t Want Existing Plants on My Plant List in Vectorworks

If you are drawing a landscape project that has existing plants in it and you don’t want these to show up in the plant list, it’s easy to do.

Place all the plants that you want. If you create a plant list at this point, all the plants will be there. But let’s say that a few plants are existing and will be left, but you don’t want these on your plant list.


Select one of the existing plants.

On the Object Info Palette, find the option for
On Plant List

Click on this option to turn it off. Now this plant will not appear in the plant list.

If you change your mind, find the plant again, turn on the option for
On Plant List

Then recalculate the worksheet and the plant will appear in the plant list.

VectorWorks Files get Corrupted on the Mac

if you have a problem where your VectorWorks files on the Macintosh get corrupted and lose all their information.
From Julian Carr:
The problem happens when you minimize a VectorWorks document (send it to the Dock) and then immediately save.

In VectorWorks 12 on the Mac when you have more than one VectorWorks document open and you minimize the active one, you will notice that the Data and Mode Bars at the top of the now active document are not displayed properly until you click in the document window. This is when the problem happens. If you do not click on that document to fully activate it, any save you do including Autosave , Apple S or choosing Save from the File menu, will cause the partially activated document to become zero K on disk.

Recommendation to Mac users is to make sure their Autosave is saving to a backup folder (VW Prefs/Session tab) and to NOT minimize VectorWorks documents. You can use the Window menu to switch between open documents or press Apple ~ to toggle between open documents (the ~ key is just below the ESC key).


- good advice, so take notice...

On-Line User Group Topic June 2007

I’m working on my on-line user group topic for June 2007. The workshop topic is Customising VectorWorks. This topic includes;


changing your workspace

adding tools
deleting tools

changing the context menus

making simple tools

how to get started with VectorScript.

Some people might think that VectorScript is too hard to get started with. That’s what I thought too, before I got started, that’s why I wrote this topic. I think that if you understand the basic concepts of VectorScript you can make simple tools that will speed up your use of VectorWorks. I believe that the notes this month will do this for you.

How To Fillet The Corners Of A Rectangle With Vectorworks

If you wanted to fillet the corners of a rectangle there are a few of ways to do it. You can use the fillet tool to take off the corners of the rectangle, but I also think that could be faster ways to do it.

Start with a rectangle.

Choose the fillet tool, choose the 3rd mode on the mode bar, then click on the last button on the mode bar. This button is the preferences or settings button and it is where you enter the fillet radius for this tool and it sets the fillet radius for then next two techniques that I want to show you.

If you have Click-Click drawing set as a VectorWorks preference, click on the first line then click on the second line. This places a fillet at the corner.

A quicker way to do this is to use the 2D Reshape Tool. This tool has a mode for changing the vertex type (the second mode on the mode bar). This means that wit one click you can change the vertex type from corner point (pointy corner) to a fillet corner (chose the fillet corner button on the mode bar).

And I know one more way to do this quickly. Make sure the rectangle is selected. We have a command on the menu bar:
Modify > Poly Smoothing > Arc Smoothing.
This will fillet all the corners at the same time, but the object has to be a polygon...

Setting Units for Areas and Dimensions

I saw on the VectorWorks Tech Forum someone that was looking for a solution where they want to have the worksheet count in one type of unit and the dimensions count in different unit.

The answer is to use primary and secondary units. Use primary units for the worksheet counting and use secondary units for the dimensions.

Sketch Symbols for VectorWorks

I saw this web site on the VectorWorks Tech board the other day:

http://en.isymbol.eu/

This web site sells sketch symbols for VectorWorks. I think these are really cool, and a fantastic way to improve the presentation of your VectorWorks drawings.

If you get in touch with iSymbol, tell them you heard it here...

Ever Feel That Critics Are Getting You Down?

Ever feel that you are not doing a good job, even though you are trying your best? Do critics get you down? I’ve got a good quote to make you feel better:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming..."

Theodore Roosevelt
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

On-Line User Group Newsletter out today

the on-line user group newsletter is a bit late this month due to work commitments ( 2 weeks of training courses in Melbourne and Auckland), but it will be sent out this weekend (April 21st).

The main topic this month is how to build your library. You may think that your library is just a file with standard symbols but that’s not my belief. I believe that your library is really you VectorWorks system of drawing and it includes:
- symbol library
- symbol libraries for tools (drawing border, plants, repetitive unit, etc)
- hatches
- gradients
- layer and class standards
- Wall Styles
and so on. There are notes and exercises on making your office system.

The question and answer session is on dimension standards.

The two extended podcasts are:
- importing a detail from a multi-page PDF file and making a viewport
- using worksheets to count up all the landscaping on each site, for a multi-site development

As with all the on-line user group newsletters there are notes, screen shots to show you what to do and links to movies so that you can see me carrying out the exercise.

for more information and to regisiter for the on-line user group please visit:
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/p/short-sharp-training-monthly.html

Cheers,
Jonathan
VectorWorks training manuals and support
on-line user group
http://www.archoncad.co.nz

What can you do with Worksheets in Vectorworks?

Worksheets are extremely powerful for counting stuff. You can count areas, lengths, symbols and do calculations on the stuff you count. I was recently training a landscape architect who wanted to count all the plants, lawn areas, paving etc for a house development, but he also wanted to count the individual house lots as well as the overall qualtities.
Can this be done.... Sure, pretty easily.
Here you can see that we could have each site counted individually, and you could count all the sites combined.
If you want to find out more about this contact me for training
jon@archoncad.co.nz