Life after/beyond PowerCadd?

[S. Shubin]

I bought Vectorworks

Had it for a week

Went through almost 3 of their courses so far

I’m glad I got it

I think it’s going to be really good for generating a set of plans

The program is impressive

[pjmeli]

You can go from formZ‘s modeling into formZ’s layout and then export as DXF
Then you could import that DXF into the CAD program of your choice
Below is a DXF that I exported out of the layout in formZ and then imported into HighDesign
Those dimensions were added in HighDesign
So you’re able to bring in something that you can snap to and you’re able to bring it in at scale

I think the presumption from the forum thread was that it was a finished product when exported as a pdf into a Layout program of some type. They preferred to eliminate Draft altogether. If you export as dwg/dxf you'll have to do a lot of work to it…

Besides PC my preferred CAD program is Sketchup/Layout, but I'm feeling uneasy about Trimble…any big corporation really…
There's no way in Hell I'd use anything that worked even remotely like AutoCad…
Been looking at Rhino and Blender a little but that seems like a time pit…

With PowerCadd I developed a workflow where I would place pdf's from clients on markup sheets with an overlay layer on top. Then I could measure/draw on top of the pdf as needed and send red-lines to draftspersons to finish. Very handy, and it's hard to beat being able to select details and then copy them to the clipboard and save them as pdfs for my libraries.

Most of my detail library is made with Sketchup/Layout saved as pdfs.

Paul

[pjmeli]

I think it’s going to be really good for generating a set of plans
The program is impressive

Yeah I used it for years before I gave up on my General Contractor career and switched to what I should have been doing all along…Engineering.

Right now Vectorworks is on offer with a 25% discount
I like to make my own components so Fundamentals would work for me…
Curious what the 2D tools are like…

Paul

[S. Shubin]

Curious what the 2D tools are like…

The Offset tool can be set to automatically make an enclosed shape which is kind of nice
I don’t have to draw the lines on the far left and the far right

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The below is a single object made with the polyline tool. It is an enclosed polyline

You can hide whatever lines you want that make up part of that polyline. And if for some reason you wanted to bring those lines back — you go to the object info palette and select one item and their showing again
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[S. Shubin]

Here is a feature I really like

OK so all programs I’ve ever worked with either work with the paper in portrait or landscape

Now say for instance you’re drawing a wall from left to right or up and down or at 45°, well you can hold the shift key to constrain it to make sure that you get it right on that horizontal or vertical line

But what do you do when you have a building that is not along the horizontal or the vertical and you’re gonna be drawing A LOT OF WALLS

Well there are programs that have perpendicular constraints or snaps. But sometimes its kind of a pain to work with. And even being able to customize what angle things will constrain to when you press the shift key — well that’s OK but not the best of situations

Well Vectorworks allows you to rotate your paper to whatever angle you want so you could use your normal tools along the horizontal and vertical

And you can save those rotated views so you can quickly get to them when you want
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[S. Shubin]

I like being able to take a polyline object that only has one line running around the perimeter, and then using Vectorwork specialty tools, be able to come up with this in less than a minute.

Being able to specify exactly what kind of a border I want — what kind of spacing — how wide — and what kind of pattern, size, and angle I want in the field
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[pjmeli]

I bought Vectorworks
Had it for a week
Went through almost 3 of their courses so far
I’m glad I got it
I think it’s going to be really good for generating a set of plans
The program is impressive

Which version did you get?

[S. Shubin]

Which version did you get?

Designer

[S. Shubin]

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[S. Shubin]

I was a little surprised to see that Vectorworks has constraints.

But the way they’re implemented is not the best when you go to edit them. It’s hard to see a coincident constraint for instance, that is, when you select it within the edit box. Onshape handles constraints much better

Nonetheless — I’m certainly happy that it does have them even though they’re not the easiest to work with