Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 1 (upgrading to 2008) Rotated Plan View

This week my podcast will show you the rotated plan view in VectorWorks 2008.

If you have a complex plan with rotated parts, you might find, like I do, that drawing the plan in the rotated parts of the building can be a pain.

VectorWorks 2008 has a new plan view called rotated plan. This new view option allows you to rotate the view without rotating the information on the plan.

This allows you to work orthogonally for this part of the building.

When you are finished, you can return to the unrotated plan view to work on other parts of the building.
You can save the rotated plan views as saved views to return to them at any time.
This will be covered in detail in my updated Architect Tutorial Manual for VectorWorks 2008 due late October 2007.

List of Vectorworks Keyboard Shortcuts.

in VectorWorks 2008 you can export a list of all the keyboard shortcuts in your workspace.
Go to the Menu Bar
Choose Tools > Workspaces > Workspace Editor...
Edit your current workspace.
Click on the OK button

Click on the
Export Workspace to Text File... button

When you open the text file you can see all your commands and tools with the keyboard shortcut or hot key listed.

Library of Details with Vectorworks

I saw a question on the VectorWorks tech board about making a library and using it. Some people make a library file with symbols in it that can be used on several jobs. If you make your details into symbols then you can use the Resource Browser to import them into any job.
You find the detail in the Resource Browser.

Drag the detail from the Resource Browser into your drawing.
You detail is now in the drawing and can be edited, moved and so on.
This works well. The details can be created so that when you inset them they become groups. That way you can edit the detail without changing the original symbol.

I’ve been thing for some time that you could also use WorkGroup Referencing to link your detail library to your current project. this would have an advantage when you wanted to update the detail library and have all your projects use the new details.
To get the referenced details onto your drawings use viewports. This would also work well for larger companies where there is more than one person on the project.

Using Vectorworks Spaces

I’m running one of my Architect Courses this week and we got to discussing spaces. I like using space objects in VectorWorks Architect because they can be used for quick 3D bulk and location. The example we are using shows you how to make a quick model of the house to check your concept model against the site constraints.

This can be completed very quickly. It might take you 5 or ten minutes to create the spaces and link them to the site plan. You can check your house concept against the site recession planes (height in relation to the boundary). Checking at this early stage allows you adjust the concept. This gives you the information you need to improve your design.

Maybe you will move a room, reduce it’s height, change the room elevation. You can now choose to do all sorts of things. But without the 3D information you would not be able to fix your design.


If you are interested in finding out more about this concept check out my Short Sharp Manuals, available from http://www.archoncad.com/electronic-manuals.html