Exporting from Vectorworks to another ie Autocad

As I close down my practice, which will be the subject of a much longer blog, I have handed over one project to another Architects office. Now I work within the Vectorworks environment, I like the way it works and feels, for me it feels like home. But the new practice want to work in Autocad Lt, this is a slight problem, the project file I have is quite large and although it is need of a clean, it works fine on my version of Vectorworks, But as I export the complete file to dwg, thins started to go slightly wrong, and yes before you ask, I did check and load the exported file into my copy of Autocad, all be it on a Mac, and it worked just fine, given a little patience.

So I had a call, the file you sent over keeps crashing, what are you loading it into, oh an old copy of Autocad lt, ah I say, best I come over, do you have a copy of Vectorworks, yes they replied, good.

To cut a long story short, I managed to export the model to Vectorworks 2016, and show the practice how to deal with this type of model, splitting up the various levels into different files for Autocad, and making Xrefs to a series of master site plans.

You might ask why not use IFC after all its what I teach at University, but in real life the output was a lot of work to make work and often dam difficult. The Autocad export offered the route of least resistance.

This is only the start, I have several other projects being exported to Archicad, which is a Nemetschek company, same as Vectorworks, but there is no real export link other than IFC or using dwg, both ways of importing the projects into Archicad seem to indicate spending a lot of time correcting,

So there it is retirement is not a simple process, apart from the legal bits of shutting down, the need for my PI runoff etc, I thought the drawing side would be a piece of cake, not so.

CAD research on Google Search results

I was doing some research on CAD use over the globe and used this excellent service from Google Trends to compare search terms on three main products :

• Autocad
• Archicad
• Vectorworks
• Sketchup

The graph below show a remarkable scale of interest, and not in the order I was expecting.

ok Autocad I expected to be top, but Sketchup so high and the other two Vectorwork and Archicad so low, remarkable.

Cobie Spreadsheet use

Cobie Use

I have started to take a serious look at Cobie use as an Architectural Technologist, so I started first with who will want to use it, and came up with a sort of sketch of a projects time line, from design through to construction, through to client hand over.

Todays sketch is my first attempt to understand the flow of spreadsheet information, and some of the links that may arise, and what information may flow, from simple room areas, to door and window lists, through to zones and sub zones.

It was the last point I started to wonder about, my own experience in that zones created by us, so often get changed, ok fire zones, maybe not, but it got me thinking, about easting and northing zones, which would not be changed or renamed.

My view on Cobie files is that they are so ridged, but perhaps thats ok, at the end of the day, deep learning does not care, so I can see them being used by the contractor to link say purchase orders. And certainly clients will use the zones,. as will any computer program organising the building, for say room use.

It's plainly obvious that some programs are better than others at producing Cobie files, Revit has to be the easiest, as they are just part of every day life, constantly being produced & updated, automatically, and they are two way, instant change when a drawing is updated, and can also be updated in the produced spreadsheet, with instant updates on the drawing, Vectorworks, Archicad and so many others don't come near to this.

As always I did some online research, with the basics on Cobie and a couple of other informative sites on the use of Cobie files.

Yes I know the photo today is a little basic, but it's a thought, a way of taking links and trying to understand them.

My article on using spreadsheet, and linking them 

Wiki
Cobie presentation

BS 1192-4:2014

Practical BIM

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