Architect Special Interest Group July 2019

In this session, we looked at adding blocks of text to Vectorworks, making irregular Section cuts, creating the look of interior wallpaper, as well as using stories, taking advantage of the levels of detail that you can build into a symbol, reviewing turning on and off class visibility through the Organization dialogue box, and discussing the benefits of using Saved Views.

Topics Covered:

• 00:08    Opening a file, we pasted a block of text into Vectorworks from a Word document. Vectorworks is not a text editor. The pasted text’s formatting was lost and we needed to redo it—what a pain! We checked out pasting the text into a worksheet instead. It was equally clunky, although when the grid was turned off, it just looked like a block of text. We could merge cells of text together and wrap the text. Once you have a worksheet set up for handling text, you can use it in project after project. The challenge is spreading it across two pages, but a workaround is using two viewports to generate that effect. If you import a PDF as a reference document, you can update it. You can use any text editor, even Adobe Photoshop, as long as the software can generate a PDF. Whatever you use, the trick is to reference the document. If you use a PDF, you can just plop it on the page and crop it, without using a viewport.
• 23:44    We looked at how to best modify Section lines. When I go to modify something, I see if the Reshape tool has any effect on it. We were able to make an irregular Section cut so that it would show us exactly what we needed in the viewport. Next, we looked at creating wallpaper in an Interior Elevation viewport. We experimented with getting hatch lines to line up. We discussed what techniques might work, whether to do arrays of extrusions in the model or using a hatch on a polygon in the Annotation window of the viewport. When you’re working in a small area, such as the interior of a bathroom, it helps to use the Clip Cube.
• 38:00    You don’t need to use stories. You can set up a two-level project just by making two design layers at different elevations, one above the other. However, if you use stories, you can tie in many objects—lighting fixtures, outlets, etc.—to the story level, or elevation. It might seem complicated to set up, but once you have it to your liking, you can duplicate it from job to job, and it will truly make your life easier. We demonstrated the difference between using stories and only using design layers.
• 53:54    We ended the session by showing how to add different levels of detail to a symbol so that you see greater detail when moving from a section viewport to a detail viewport. We went into a symbol, demonstrating what to revise in order to get these variations in detail. We reviewed turning on and off class visibility through the Organization dialogue box—it allows you to turn them on or off all at the same time, in blocks, or individually. This is such a timesaver! We also discussed the benefits of using Saved Views.

Architect July 2019

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