Architectural Technologist – AECnetwork

The Konstrukshon blog has an article about the AECnetwork.

The AEC Network is an informal, free of charge, global network for the construction sector. All are welcome in this network, all we ask (and this is very important) is that members do not spam other members with sales approaches. We would like to foster an atmosphere where people can openly discuss their areas of expertise and look for collaboration and do not want to discourage participation due to unwanted spam.

Architectural Technologist – The Biker

Just when I thought life was hard, i saw this video on the Konstrukshon blog. This video has nothing to do with Vectorworks, but is it inspirational. When you think life is hard, watch this video and see how this person can do the impossible.

http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=1651

Support Konstrukshon.com

There is one web site I always check out for architectural technology and Vectorworks:

http://blog.konstrukshon.com

This week the author, Steve, joined an online demonstration of BIM and Vectorworks. The review is well worth a read. http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=1595

Steve also has an article about CAD Class tables and what classes should be used for. Again, well worth a visit. http://blog.konstrukshon.com/?p=1569

Just tell Steve I sent you.

3D Modeling Manual for Vectorworks 2009 now Available

My new manual is now shipping from NNA. http://www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.php

3D Modeling in Vectorworks $75

The Vectorworks 3D Modeling Tutorial manual, by Jonathan Pickup, is a must-have workbook for anyone seeking to learn how to free-form model with Vectorworks. The manual will bring you to a competent level of 3D capability through exercises aimed at building a foundation of 3D Vectorworks skills. Specifically, you’ll learn how to create 3D forms through the use of extrudes, sweeps, solids, NURBS, loft surfaces, and 3D primitives.

One of my clients has just finished a course that uses this manual, and she was very happy:

“I have just completed Jonathon’s 3D course, and it has opened a whole new world for me. My design is no longer restricted to rectilinear planes. I can now do angled surfaces and compound curves, spin them around to have a look at them, and chop them into templates for fabrication.” Juliet, Exhibition Designer

Share Files on line

I’ve just been chatting with a friend of mine in the UK. He was talking about sharing files with other architects and it reminded me to tell him about an application one of my clients showed me, dropbox. Dropbox is an application that allows you to share files across your computers and it allows you to share the files with others.

It’s easier than a USB flash drive, and it’s quicker than email. Steve and I tried a small experiment. He created a shared folder for me, and he added a Vectorworks file to it.

I created a Workgroup Reference to the file and added it to my drawing using a Design Layer Viewport. This lets me move his file around, I can rotate it and so on.

This is not a lot different than traditional working.

Because this is a Workgroup Reference, I can update the reference if Steve updates the file from the other side of the world.

Go to the Navigation palette, and update the reference.

The Design Layer viewport updates. This is all over the Internet, and it is almost live. It did take about a minute for the update to appear on my computer, but I still this this is a fantastic way of shared working over the Internet.

Take my advice, go get dropbox.

Get training. Beat your competition. http://www.archoncad.co.nz/training/online_training.php

Permeable Paving

This isn’t really to do with Vectorworks, but I just had a call from this company:

http://www.suretechindustries.co.nz/

This is from their web site

• Works for both grass and gravel
• Big panel size means quick and easy installation
• Panels are lightweight and can be nested together, reducing storage and transportation costs
• UV stabilised injection moulded polypropylene will last a life time
• Made from 100% recycled materials
• Super strong - able to withstand 700 tonnes per square metre
• Can be pegged down for slope stabilisation
• Interlock securely - won't creep
• Designed to allow turf roots to grow without restriction

Help! I can’t Print to PDF!

One of my clients just phoned up in a panic. They were trying to print a job to PDF. All the drawings except for one printed without the text boxes. I thought it might be a font problem, so I suggested a change to Arial (always a fallback font).

“had a few veiwports and referenced viewports on the page - all that use Avante Garde. Then 2 schedules and 1 worksheet - also all used avante garde. No text at all would actually appear in the PDF - even fonts that were not avante garde. Once I deleted the suspect schedule viewport every other bit of text began to appear - then I changed the font to Arial made a new viewport and it worked fine.”

Short Sharp Manual - Intermediate Worksheets

Following the release of the short sharp manuals last month, I have added a new manual to the Short Sharp Manual page.

This manual is about Intermediate Worksheets. Not beginners worksheets, intermediate worksheets. The manual looks at 10 different worksheet examples to will focus on several worksheet issues. We will learn how to solve these issues using worksheets. We will look at several specific worksheet techniques to solve specific problems:
Counting Car Parks
Counting Site Areas (impermeable surface)
Building Occupancy for car park requirements
Building Occupancy for fire design.
Problems with design layer viewports.
Counting Landscape areas with several sites.
Problems counting just one sort of joist.
Bracing worksheet using connected worksheets, IF statements and sorting.
Roof Area calculations for downpipes or roofing materials.
Wall Area scheduling for quantity take-offs.

Find the manual here: http://www.archoncad.com/intermediate-worksheets.html

When considering any purchase the following words by respected poet and philosopher John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) are as relevant today as when he wrote them :

"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that's all. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing that you bought it to do. The common law of business prohibits paying a little and getting a lot..... it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it's well to add something for the risk that you run - and if you do that you have enough to pay for something better."

Oscar Wilde wrote:

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

When you look at a purchase, do not look at the price, look at the value you will get from the purchase. For example, if you are looking at a Vectorworks upgrade, how much time will it save you? if Vectorworks 2009 is easier to use and saves you 4 minutes a day (or 1/2 a minute per hour), what is the value of that? There are about 2000 chargable hours a year, so that works out to be a saving of 16.7 hours/year. if your change out rate was $100/hour, that’s a return of $1670.00. Combine the upgrade with my online training and gain 10 minutes a day. 1.25 minutes per hour, 2000 chargeable hours, 41.7 hours, @$100/hr = $4170.00 return. Can you afford to NOT upgrade?

Vectorworks 2008 & 2009 - 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 .

  

VectorWorks offers the possibility of  creating spreadsheets within the drawing.  That means you can count things, create databases, extract information from objects and do mathematical operations and functions without having to leave VectorWorks.

These spreadsheets, or worksheets as they are called in VectorWorks, are linked to the source of information so the worksheet can be updated when the source changes or to put it another way, if you edit the things in the drawing the spreadsheet can be updated easily.

The most powerful worksheets in VectorWorks are databases linked to Symbols or Plug-in Objects listing the data entered in the different fields.  As you add these objects into the file you can update the worksheet and check the information.  An example of this would be a bracing spreadsheet that tracks the bracing objects in the drawing.  As you add bracing objects the worksheet tracks the number, type and length of the brace and puts this information into the worksheet, telling you if you have achieved enough bracing in each direction.  

We can classify the worksheets into a few different groups depending on the nature of the worksheets:

Count / select objects ( generally symbols ) through the file.  They do not need to have a record attached and they need not be in the same Class or Layer.  We can choose to count symbols on a specific layer or assigned to a specific class.

Do mathematical operations with the parameters of drawn objects: areas, perimeters, volume etc.  Name the objects ( Object Info Palette) and find properties of them and their combinations

Create reports using symbols with records and list the field values from the symbols in the report.  

A classic use for worksheets is to compare the area of the  building to the area of the site.  Many places in the world only allow you to build on a portion of the site, so you need to compare the areas. You can use two polygons and the worksheet can be set up to find these areas, and do the maths for you as well. When you change the building area, you only need to recalculate the worksheet to see the updated calculation. 

Another cool worksheet is the window schedule. This worksheet looks for all the windows in the building and gives you a customised report on them. You can choose how much information is shown on the report. The report can be sorted by the window numbers, you can change window sizes directly from the worksheet, and you can select windows directly from the worksheet. 

For more information on creating worksheets, you can buy my Vectorworks Essential Tutorial Manual (http://www.archoncad.com), or you can buy a short sharp manual just on worksheets (http://www.archoncad.com/introduction-to-worksheets.html). 

This month there is an online training session on more advanced worksheets, but you need to subscribe to join this. Subscribe to my Short Sharp Training (http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/join_int.php) You will get a manual with exercises and movies for this topic.

Cost vs Value

When considering any purchase the following words by respected poet and philosopher John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) are as relevant today as when he wrote them :

"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that's all. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing that you bought it to do. The common law of business prohibits paying a little and getting a lot..... it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it's well to add something for the risk that you run - and if you do that you have enough to pay for something better."

Oscar Wilde wrote:

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

When you look at a purchase, do not look at the price, look at the value you will get from the purchase. For example, if you are looking at a Vectorworks upgrade, how much time will it save you? if Vectorworks 2009 is easier to use and saves you 4 minutes a day (or 1/2 a minute per hour), what is the value of that? There are about 2000 chargable hours a year, so that works out to be a saving of 16.7 hours/year. if your change out rate was $100/hour, that’s a return of $1670.00. Combine the upgrade with my online training and gain 10 minutes a day. 1.25 minutes per hour, 2000 chargeable hours, 41.7 hours, @$100/hr = $4170.00 return. Can you afford to NOT upgrade?

Furniture Symbols

Vectorworks comes with a lot of nice furniture, in the Libraries > Objects-Imperial or Objects-Metric. But, what if you want something special, like a Ray and Charles Eames chair?

I recommend the sketchup warehouse (http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/).

Later versions of Vectorworks can import sketchup models, so you can download a chair from the warehouse and import these into a new file. Always import into a new file, that way you can edit the model and make it in to a symbol to add to your library.

The sketchup library is searchable, so you can search for the things you want. It is always being expanded, and the models are usually good.

Watch out for very large models, it will make your Vectorworks files large.

Vectorworks 2008 + 2009 Creating a Library

First of all, you do not create one library for Vectorworks with everything in it, nor do you create a template file with every class, layer, sheet layer, hatch, texture and symbol that you might ever need. 

in Vectorworks 2008 and 2009, Vectorworks introduced the concept of the User Folder, which you can read about on this blog, in April 2009. 

So if Vectorworks doesn’t use one library, what does it use? Vectorworks uses a series of library folders in a place you can choose (see the blog on User Folder). Each folder relates to a Vectorworks tool, command or concept. 

When you place a hatch, you can make Vectorworks display the hatches you like to use. You can’t do this if you put everything in one file, but if you put your hatch file in the Attributes-Hatches folder, you will see all your hatches when you choose a hatch in the Attributes Palette. This will save you heaps of time looking for hatches. 

When you create new layers and classes, you can get Vectorworks to give you a list of your typical classes. This saves time in typing and editing the classes to suit your drawings system. It also saves time checking line weights and line styles, because the imported class has all the settings you choose. 

Design layers and sheet layers can also be imported.

You can import more than one class at a time, so you could create 30 or 40 classes in the time it takes you to import one class. The same principle applies to the design layers and sheet layers. 

Several tools, like the repetitive unit, stairs, plants, hardscapes and so on, have their own libraries. Until you edit these libraries the tools can be next to useless. When you edit the libraries to suit you, the tools become fantastic time savers.

Learn how to set up these libraries and make Vectorworks more effective for you. You might save yourself 40 minutes every day. This month my Short Sharp Training (http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/join_int.php) will be covering this in detail. There is a free meeting, but that is filled up now. Subscribers will get notes and movies for this topic.

Vectorworks - Setting the Number of Undos I’ve been reading a Vectorworks discussion list about a user that is having trouble with his Vectorworks going slow and crashing, especially with rendered viewports. The problems went away when the undos were reduced to 3. Go to the Menu Bar. Choose Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences... Change the Maximium Number of Undos to a low number a see if many of your problems go away.

I’ve been reading a Vectorworks discussion list about a user that is having trouble with his Vectorworks going slow and crashing, especially with rendered viewports. 

The problems went away when the undos were reduced to 3.

Go to the Menu Bar.

Choose Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences...

Change the Maximium Number of Undos to a low number a see if many of your problems go away. 

Excited About the Future of Vectorworks?

When wall styles first came out, people asked to the ability to put the wall components on different classes. We got that in Vectorworks 2008.

When landscapers complained that placing large areas of planting was unworkable, we got the Landscape Area tool in 2009.

When architects complained that the roof framer could not place purlins on top of rafters, we got that ability in Vectorworks 2009. 

I don’t know what the future of Vectorworks is, but I do know the people that make Vectorworks listen to the users, so you should tell them what the future of Vectorworks should be. The community board is a great place to tell NNA what you think is missing, so they can think about adding it:

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm

It takes a while for suggestions to make it into Vectorworks, but don’t despair. Sometimes new ideas are quick to arrive, sometimes they take time. 

So, am I excited about the future of Vectorworks? 

Yes! When NNA listens to users I realize we have a long term program that we can invest into. It makes sense for my clients to invest in manuals, courses and al sorts of training. 

Get to the Community Board, get involved in it and help make Vectorworks better. 

Exits Group

I thought it was me making a mistake, but others have pointed this out as well. 

If you hit the key twice, you exit groups, viewports, symbol editing and all the other container type objects. So, if you want a quick way to exit groups and so on, this is it.

Press Release - Short Sharp Manuals

(Napier, New Zealand) 29 May 2009 Archoncad announces Short Sharp Manuals 

NEW - SHORT SHARP MANUALS - unlock the power of Vectorworks!!!

Archoncad is pleased to announce SHORT SHARP MANUALS - a resource 'library' of concise manuals each exploring a single Vectorworks topic - to show you how to unlock the power of Vectorworks.

This new training resource is designed to sharpen your Vectorworks skills using a single task manual that explores and explains a single area of Vectorworks.

Each SHORT SHARP MANUAL clearly demonstrates key learning tasks and techniques, with 15-25 pages of step-by-step instructions and screenshots. By focusing on single topics, we give you access to new Vectorworks skills and techniques in small meaningful chunks!

Respected Vectorworks training author, Jonathan Pickup said...

"I have a great example of these manuals helping a client. The client found an area of Vectorworks that he was really struggling with - how create an automated room finish schedule. So, he downloaded my SHORT SHARP manual 'Creating a Room Finishes Schedule' and followed the very good description of how to do this. He has found the investment in the manuals to be truly worthwhile and great value to his business.

He also discovered my manual was the only place he could learn how to use this technique, as there does not seem to be any explanation of how to set up an automated Room Finish Schedule in NNA published User Guides, or Professional Learning Series DVD’s, on the VectorWorks web site, in any of the NNA VectorWorks forums or data bases or in any history of the VectorWorks User Discussion List.

This is just one story - there are many other examples of these short sharp manuals unlocking the power of Vectorworks and providing my clients with new services to offer their clients. " 

The Short Sharp manual is published exclusively on-line at Archoncad.com. There are currently 14 SHORT SHARP Manuals available, and they are quick and easy to download. And they are very economical (exceptional value for money)!

Jonathan Pickup also said... "We will be adding one or two new manuals each month, and welcome feedback and suggestions for future short sharp manual topics. In this way, we will build a fantastic resource for the Vectorworks users community and enable our clients to optimize Vectorworks capability"

For more information, please visit http://www.archoncad.com/electronic-manuals.html

Jonathan Pickup is an architect trained in New Zealand and in the UK with many years of experience. He has over 15 years of experience in writing and producing Vectorworks manuals and providing customer support. His company, ArchonCAD, is the premier provider of third-party manuals and training resources for Vectorworks.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Jonathan Pickup

http://www.archoncad.com

skype me: archoncad@skype.com

follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/archoncad

Resource Browser Thumbnail view

I’m just writing a section in my new productivity manual, and I remembered this trick. Right now I'm writing about how to make your own stair library. 

The stairs so up on the Resource Browser in plan view if that was the view when you created the symbols. 

They look OK, but what if you wanted to know more the stair?

You can select all the symbols in the Resource Browser.

Right mouse click on one of the symbols. Choose the view you want. All your symbols have the same view. Now I find it easier to see what each stair looks like. 

Short Sharp Training Monthly

This month, the Short Sharp Training monthly manual looked at detailing. I have seen several tutorials and tips and tricks for creating drawings, but hardly any for drawing details. Strange really, when we spend so much time on our detailing as architects and landscapers. This month the manual was a big effort, 41 pages! Sometimes I wonder if i am writing too much or covering the wrong information, so it’s nice when I get an email from a subscriber that really likes the monthly manuals and online training. 

Hi Jonathan,

I was in Texas on business during your last presentation, thinking I could join your meeting from there, but alas, it was not to be.  (Way disappointing.) I just finished going through your PDF and its embedded videos, and again, I have to tell you you're great.  I'm amazed how much material you covered in a relatively short time and then managed to write down as well.  Fabulous work which I appreciate immensely.  Hoping that [you are] increasing the number of your subscribers.  Should be! 

Later,

Mavis

The ability to pick up a few productive tricks each month should not be over rated. Most of my experienced users learn a trick or two every month, less experienced users learn a technique that saves them a few minutes a day. A few minutes a day. it doesn’t sound much, until you figure that is 15 mins each week, an hour a month. the next month you learn a new technique and you are saving 2 hours a month, 24 hours a year. 

Go to http://www.archoncad.co.nz/usergroup/join_int.php or email jon@archoncad.co.nz to find out more!

Vectorworks Library

What is the Vectorworks library? That’s a terrible question really. it should be ”What ARE the Vectorworks libraries? 

• Symbol library (which you can store anywhere)

• Symbol libraries for tools (stored in the Defaults folder)

• Layer and class standards (stored in the Standards folder)

• Hatch library (stored in the Defaults folder)

• Gradient Library (stored in the Defaults folder)

• Wall Style library (stored in the Defaults folder)

• The Notes database (which you can store anywhere)

• A default template with all the default tool preferences set (stored in the Templates folder).