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.