December 21st, 2016

File > New... | Find and Modify... | Organization...

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File > New...

 

Hello everyone!
 
Happy Holidays once again, and happy opening (or closing) to many of you doing the holiday circuit of shows.
 
We held our third Ann Arbor Vectorworks User Group Meeting on December 10th and had a new crowd of attendees!  We went over the new Cable Tools in Vectorworks 2017, of which none of the people in attendance, aside from myself, actually owned a license for 2017.  Most of the tools seemed like magic to them, and most saw an opportunity to finally do design, engineering and equipment pull list generation out of one piece of software.
 
From this we got onto the subject of the different uses of Vectorworks in our industry, including ways that non-designers and draftsman can utilize Vectorworks to get an idea of scope with shows and designs.  All in all, it was a very successful meeting and everyone in attendance took some new information away from the discussions.
 
I look forward to seeing more of you in the meetings coming up in the New Year!

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Find and Modify...

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Question:
"When I’m drafting a project, I keep needing the same custom label legends in multiple projects.  Is there an easy way to transfer the legends?"
 
Answer:
Vectorworks treats Label Legends as symbols in the Resource Manager.  This means it's as simple as importing the legend like you would a symbol, by either searching for it by name in the Resource Manager, or opening the previous file alongside the new file, and importing it direct.  Hope this helps!
 
Question:
"What was your favorite project to work on?"
 
Answer:
Oh... Well, I guess there are two of them.  My favorite show to have designed was probably my set design for Les Miserables for a local high school.  I spent about two months on design, build and tweaks on a set that included a show portal with multiple levels, a full screen projected backdrop, and a 24’ raised turntable.  Needless to say, it took a lot out of me, but left me feeling very satisfied with Vectorworks’ capabilities of showing a design and building from it.

My favorite project to work on from a technician side was the first big gig I had here with TLS Productions, Inc.  I was an Audio Tech for the North American International Auto Show, working in the Toyota booth.  I was in charge of running cable, testing out the system and insuring that it was ready for the designer to come in and run the show.  At the time, it was a completely new and exciting process, and it allowed me to take information from the design and apply it to Vectorworks in a way that I could communicate the plan to stagehands and other techs on site.

If I keep thinking about it, I’ll probably come up with at least 5 more shows I loved... so I think I should stop while I’m ahead.

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Organization...

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This month’s tutorial comes in the form of a video that I stumbled upon.  One of the most confusing parts of Vectorworks I hear from fellow users is Viewports & Sheet Layers.  Sean O’ Skea has an amazing, and surprisingly brief tutorial on the subject.

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