Vectorworks help

[oli]

Hey all,

 

Am fairly new to the whole Vectorworks thing and am working it out slowly.

 

I cant seem to find how to resize objects that have been imported in (ie truss from the Prolyte website). Any clues?

 

Also how do I make sure that my plan is at 1:25?

 

Cheers

[son of lx dad]

I may well be wrong but the idea with CAD packages is that you draw things at actual size. Scale comes at the printing bit. Likewise with the truss what you have, I'd guess, is the objects at actual size for the pieces of truss, if you want smaller truss you get smaller Prolyte truss. Everything is real world till printing.

[gareth]

SoLD is right - by far the best way to work with CAD is to draw at 1:1 and do all your scaling at the output stage. I'm afraid I can't help with your VW-specific questions, though - more of a WYG and TurboCAD man myself ...

[niclights]

For drawing scale use Page/Layer Scale. I find it's a good idea to keep all layers the same scale when using multiple layers. For final output you normally would create viewports where you can specify other scales and which layers are included etc.

 

For scaling symbols right-click/Edit. To exit editing there should be a button [exit symbol] on the toolbar. Easy to miss.

[eamon]

HI

 

This is a link to really fantastic on-line training site. The site is ideal for beginners especially in the theatre end. There is a request for a donation which is very cheap when you consider the scale of the knowledge in the training. You can access the files for free but the onus is on you to pay a donation.

 

I do not know the author but this is probably one of the best/better guides I have come accross. Very anal in its approach but well thought out and easy to follow.

 

http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/thetr263/index.html

 

Hope that helps

 

Re drawing to scale, vectorworks allow you to swap beween scales as you go. I sometimes find the text tool gets all funny when you are inserting text at 1:1. I often swap scale to make aspects of the drawing easier to manipulate. You can obviously zoom in etc but handy when you are running round a large drawing. The output scale (your print) can be changed to be relevant to your paper size.

In previous versions of autocad, you could only adjust the scale at the time of printing or draw in a pre-defined scale from the beginning. I have not used autocad in about 5 years but this may have changed etc.

 

When importing DWG's, as per your above truss, make sure you import them onto a scale 1:1 layer. You can end up with very annoying scaling issues. Sometimes you still have to mess with the DWG to make it fit but this is (to me) a necessary starting point. DWG are 9/10 times drawn at scale 1:1 hence the above.

 

Have a look at the Vectorworks website, the forum section is decent. Spend a bit of time reading the previous posts etc. There are training videos available on the site etc.

 

http://www.nemetschek.net

[oli]

Thanks for all your help,

 

Eamon - That website is fantastic, great find!