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...