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| Architosh News Reports | |
| Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com) |
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Architosh Special Feature: VectorWorks Architect - Preview of Late Beta
As part of our special report on Diehl Graphsoft we will be delivering a series of preview looks at VectorWorks ARCHITECT, their new and first 'vertical market' application add-on to MiniCAD VectorWorks. To hear in his own words, read the Richard Diehl interview to get the reason for and summary of VectorWorks ARCHITECT, and why Diehl Graphsoft will be delivering a series of new add-on products to VectorWorks. VectorWorks ARCHITECT has a series of entirely new organizational and planning tools designed to aid architects in various stages of the development of a project. Today we will just cover the interface changes and couple of the new tools and features. Next week we will go indepth over the many new enhancements. ARCHITECT, as the company refers in short to the new add-on, will require VectorWorks 8.5 in order to work, so anyone interested in ARCHITECT must plan on upgrading to the new version. The good news is VectorWorks 8.5 is a free upgrade and will be mailed to all registered users on a CD. ARCHITECT's New Menus ARCHITECT is more than just a new "workspace", the add-on program installs on top of VectorWorks 8.5 and the installer requires you to locate the VectorWorks 8.5 folder. Once installed, you must select the VectorWorks ARCHITECT workspace to begin using the new features and add a separate serial number in order to active the new software's features. Without the serial number, the new ARCHITECT interface will be present but many of the new menu items will not open. ARCHITECT adds a number of new menu items, changes a few existing menu items and adds and moves submenu items around to better facilitate the way 'architects' work. In reference to "existing menus and options" we mean the VectorWorks 8.0 "AEC workspace". To see the difference click on the old and new menus below by holding down on the mouse and selecting to view the graphic image in its own window (refer to the help sections of your appropriate browser if you need help) :
The old VectorWorks 8.1 menu under the "AEC Workspace"
The new VectorWorks ARCHITECT menu bar Notice that the following new menus are added and changed around, Notes, Model, View, etc. Notes is an entirely new menu, while the menu items File, Tool, Organize, Model, and Design have all new submenus with combinations of old, revised and entirely new ARCHITECT unique menu commands. In addition to these new menu changes, VectorWorks ARCHITECT has its own preferences which include options for Records and Schedules, Current Note Sets, Current Wall Types, Door Hardware Library, Room Finish Library, Wall Type Library, and Elevation Definitions -- all new or enhanced functions in ARCHITECT. We will get more into each menu item next week. The Overall Interface - ARCHITECT Essentially the ARCHITECT interface is the same interface as VectorWorks 8.5, with the addition of new menu items and palettes. One new palette in VectorWorks 8.5 is the new Object Browser. We will get into that next week in a separate article on VectorWorks 8.5, the upgrade.
The graphic image above is the new VectorWorks ARCHITECT interface. Notice the addition palettes for new tools like Notes, and even RenderWorks. To the right in the image above is the new Object Browser. Essentially the Object Browser is a new convenient way to access large collections of symbols and objects and to insert them into your drawing. It provides a single source for the insertion of both Plug-in Objects and symbols in your drawing. The Object Browser has four components: a popup menu at the top that lets you choose an active library from your current library collection, a viewing pane in the center that lets you browse and select objects from the active library, and two buttons at the bottom that let you add and delete libraries from your current collection.. (we will get more into this later in a more indepth report). New Items in ARCHITECT VectorWorks ARCHITECT has a series of entirely new organizational and planning tools designed to aid architects in various stages of the development of a project. One such series of tools are designed for programming studies, assisting in the creation and management of architectural programming information and space planning. There are also a series of new tools and menus for structuring CAD documents according to standards used in practice and developed office standards. ARCHITECT provides a scalable, sheet-based standard that uses the VA Setup Assistant to create sheets that already have the class and layer visibility built in. Once a document is setup with standard sheets, you can automatically draw in accordance with the document structure using the new Task Manager command. ARCHITECT standards are centered around the concept of sheets (just like traditional hand drafting on mylar or vellum sheets). A project file contains a number of sheets, each with their own particular visibility for layers and classes. The sheets are built for your automatically by the VA Setup Assistant from one of 54 available sheet types. Furthermore, the generated sheets are scalable, meaning they create only the amount of drawing organizational structure they need. So a small project can be developed with fewer sheets with a simpler subset of layers and classes. VectorWorks ARCHITECT is still in late beta and a number of the items in the developing documentation are not completed so we are just getting into the program. There is a substantial amount of new features to address and work through so we will be bringing a series of articles on ARCHITECT next week. Diehl Graphsoft hopes to have this product out by the end of this year and from the looks of it, it is very near complete now. So stay tuned...more to come on this one!
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