Tom Klaber

I have never fully understood the differences between Allplan and VWs. I have never met anybody who uses Allplan. I have watched a few online videos and it seems to be a slightly more technical and BIM centric program. I have always wondered why VWs and Allplan were not rolled together.

It is frustrating because of the potential. I think we all see it. VW is an incredibly powerful tool and if it was not so dumb in certain isolated areas, it would be amazing. I am an optimist, and despite being disappointed year after, I am hopeful that this next release will have some real upsides.

The conclusion I got from my friend at Pelli is that Revit was too restrictive to design in. It was easier and less restrictive to design in Rhino and then when things are more settled move to Revit. He said that it was good for documenting a design rather than exploring design options and they did not want their thinking to be restricted by software limitations. When I was using both, I did feel VWs allowed me to create and develop more complex ideas. The freer interface and capabilities come a cost of being more chaotic on the back end. Revit seems to document and coordinate extremely well at a cost of user freedom. The old adage: Revit mades easy things hard and hard things easy.

Revit 8 Years ago was a joke. And unless you were building skyscrapers, Revit 2 years ago was a joke. I have not used it since then, and I have heard they have made some improvements, but for the "smart sized firm" it does not seem to hold a lot of benefit. My friends at larger firms who use it say they "Love it!' but then say they do not use it for design or details - only documentation of plans sections elevations ect. I have been pushing my firm to consider moving to Revit for compatibility issues with consultants, but as a small firm that does mostly 3-5 story brownstones, it is a tough tough sell.

How is it different than a regular viewport?

I have been asking for this for 5 years. Maxwell is pretty affordable. We are a small firm and the ability to do high end renderings in house would be a huge benefit. I would still see myself using renderworks for my day to day and then switching over to Maxwell for important presentations and final images. We would pay for it for sure. Maybe for 2013...????

I think it is simply meant to make modeling easier. Sometimes I will have, for example, the kitchen of my model on its own layer for no other reason except that it is hard to navigate, select, and see what I am doing when the rest of the geometry is in the way. With the clip cube, you select an object you want to edit - or one near by - and press the button and it will simplify the view by making invisible everything outside the cube. I do not think it is for viewing as much as it is for editing, but as others have pointed out, it seems to signal the capability to do live sections. I am still more excited by the auto coordinating detail tags.

The seeming ease that the box is modified, points to live sections. I though the whole point of the move to the parasolid modeling kernel was features such as this. I was less interested in the push pull - which was cool but I never use it in practice, but I could use better sectioning power.

The intriguing thing about the detail viewport which was not shown in the video was the linked tags that keep track of the location of the view port - auto coordinating the drawing set. I hope this is true. How ReVit.

Same exact problem. I am flummoxed.

You know what, you are right. Mine too. They do a better job of sticking to eachother but they still float. Drives me nuts. Anybody have a release date on 2013?

Why is it not VWs fault? Adobe programs have fixed interfaces on Macs. It is clearly possible to do it, but they have instead decided to go with the floaty-ness.

I was creating a new interior elevation tag and was flummoxed by the fact that while you can link text records to symbols that make the symbol instances customizable, you can not add edible or toggelable graphical attributes. I want to create a tag that lets me choose wether I want the N, S, E or W arrows or any combination of them. Otherwise I need 5 Symbols to cover the various combinations I will need (all 4, 3, 2 arrows opposite, 2 arrows kitty corner, 1 arrow). Maybe VW just needs an updated tag library, but this should be pretty simple to make. Any ideas?

We need a whole new stair tool. I would as them to stop fussing around with the current and rebuild from ground up. One of the worst most frustation tools in VW.

When you create a symbol, there is an option of selecting world based units or page based units. If you chose page based units - you can create a symbol that prints the same size no matter what the scale.

I just want dockable pallets. I came from VW on a PC where everything had its place. Now that I am on a Mac I am constantly frustrated by my pallets ability to block important information. As hard as I try to keep everything in its place, things inevitably get dragged around, and I spend stupid time searching for buttons and commands because they are not in the same place overtime. JUST LET ME DOCK THE DARN THING.

The whole library needs a tune up. It seems most items were modeled in the early 90s. A 3d warehouse of sorts would be really great. I am sure all of us are constantly duplicating work by modeling things like TVs and Laptops. It would be great to collect those symbols and redistribute.

Thank you. That was it.

I have been using the door and window scheduling for about a year and I have just encountered an odd problem. When I generate the schedule it duplicates itself 4 times. It is terribly irritating. I know you are going to say that I have duplicate doors or design layers with doors, but that is not the problem. If I go in and change the ID tag of a single door to say"EG999" that single door will show up on the schedule 4 times. Has anybody else encountered this? Thanks, TK

You can create dimension styles that should be able to have a set precision value. I would recommend against creating a separate referenced filed for dimensions - you will create a workflow issue as you will have to constantly switch between files when making changes. You can also use the Magic Wand tool to select all dimensions, and then change all the precision display value at one. 3 or 4 click operation.

A colleague of mine asked what I know about Chief Architect - I said nothing - I had not heard of it before. I did some research and watched some of the feature videos and while I do not think it is as robust a program - I WANT some of those features: Auto-place outlets. Switching tools that connect lights to switches. In the video the switch auto corrected to a 3way when the string was attached to a second switch. Modifiable light symbols that auto schedule. Make lights like doors and windows with modifiable data that I can auto schedule. I do not want them or need them to necessarily auto attache to the ceiling - I just want a better smarter way of dealing with my lighting plans and schedules.

I have discovered that if you have an arrow head selected as "on" as a default drawing setting (when nothing is selected) and then change the default to "Class style" the arrow will be stuck on. Everything drawn hence forth will have an arrow despite the fact that is no longer the setting. The only way to change it is to go back to the arrow that was perviously selected - turn it off - then go back to class styles. A little thing - but causes some annoyances.

Line lights are easy to make - and great for adding fast cove lights ect.. But it frustrates me that the brightness setting is not per distance but rather an over all. So when I am lighting around cove - I make a line that is 10'2, 3'9" ect - when I enter the brightness at 2000, lets say - that is then distributed over the length of the line light. I obviously want the same intensity, but rather the 3'9" line light will be about 3 times stronger than the 10'2" line light at the same intensity. In the real world, string lights are specified as intensity per/foot or per/meter - should be the same in VWs.

It seems as if 3D objects should be able to keep their fill when in top/plan mode. In a way auto-generate a top poly-line rendering of the object to display in 2D. IThis coding is might be more complicated and memory intensive than I think, but other programs seem to have no problem.

I want that! I would by that plugin in a second if it was available for VWs. Better would be that it be built in for 2013.