SeanOSkea

This is a tiny thing but ever since the service pack update a few weeks ago the VW 2019 Icon has disappeared, replaced with an icon of a blank piece of paper. I thought it was just a glitch and would reappear after a restart or two but its been a while now. I've removed it from the task bar and re-pinned a couple times but still just a blank page.

I'm really astonished this still hasn't been addressed. Esp when the Ladder tool was added three or four years ago. So odd to create a tool for vertical positions without the ability to make actual 3D positions without huge work-arounds. There is that awkward moment in my class every year when all the new lighting students are so excited as I'm teaching them Spotlight. Then some kid will say, "This is awesome. Hey, how do you make a boom?" Not to cut into Joshua's business but the stuff in BeamDraw should be part of the basic program.

This is sad but reassuring. I agree and echo nearly everything here. As much of a VW evangelist I have been over the years the time/lag frustrations have had me investigating other options. I toyed with switching to Sketchup a few years ago but Sketchup seems to be falling apart. Each year we all seem to hold out hope that the next release will fix the performance issues. I've been using 19 since it came out a week (2?) ago and have not noticed any performance improvement despite the multi-threading which I was so excited about. On the other hand, In my desperate desire to find a hardware solution to my issues over the years I've managed to build myself a pretty impressive workstation that all the other software I use runs like a jackrabbit on. I just wish there were less lags with VW. That's the #1 issue for me--that little delay after you click something or exit a dialogue. All those little 2 second delays add up to hours over the course of a big project. Especially when you renter or click twice thinking you missed and end up with two copies, one that you now need to delete, or whatever. That and the constant need to update viewports. And I have cashe on and the RAM to support it. But the candy stripe of doom haunts me. I'm into this program for 15 years and $12 grand or so (not to mention all the hardware 😉 so I'm loath to walk away. But shelling out a grand a year to stay current (something I only do so I can teach the current version to my students) is getting harder especially when so little changes. (remember when software companies would would release a new version every few years when they had a major upgrade. "I just got Photoshop 2 and it supports color!") It's one thing if you're a big architecture firm where that licence upgrade is just a minor operating cost but for us in the arts and education its expensive. I've asked about a VW Lt--something even more stripped down than Fundies, but was told there were no plans. With Unities and Unreals and Blenders and Kritias out their how long is it until an open-source CAD program comes along that can do everything VW does (or more... or even half). If a "Layout" plug-in and some sort of parametric controls for Blender appears I might throw in the towel. I just hope for the sake of the software that I have been so loyal to over the years that VW gets sorted out before that happens. None of these are true for me and I still have performance issues. Single workstation, no drop box and I only have a handful (usually a few textures and lines) in my manager at any one time.

No tilde key, really? Not to re-ignite my MMB controversy 😉 but is that a Euro keyboard thing? Are you actually in the Faroes? Don't Danes use tildies? In any case, I think I'd rather have the spacebar drive that as my hand is resting on that all the time while moving around for Pan anyway. I have trouble with Alt+ as I'm always hitting the windows key on my PC and bringing up the start menu. Not a problem on Macs of course. And three keys to Pan (al la Modo) would drive me crazy. Esp as I spend 50% of my time in VW and 40% in Photoshop where spacebar is blessedly the same. I think the compass rose pie menu would be cool. Up is top, down is front. Right and left R&L of course and the diagonals the four iso corners. Maybe alt+Spacebar would bring up Bottom/back/ bottom isos and Left and right could be shortcuts to ortho and perspective? Whatever solution meets Kevin's original comment about integrated navigation, need to keep your cursor on what your working on, not make you move to some other part of the screen or one of those nav-widgets all the Autodesk products had up in the right corner for a while. Although it looks like they have have give up on those recently too. Ironically one has just appeared in Blender 2.8.

Above I commented that any replacement for the Num-Pad navigation would have to be pretty slick. Well I've downloaded the pre-release of Blender 2.8 and they have a new navigation method that might just be it. Basically, you hold down the ` tilde key to open pie menu that has the various views arranged as a compass rose around your cursor. Then you move the cursor in the direction you want to move your view. This way you don't even have to pause to look at the pie menu you can just hold the key for a second, and push to the right to turn to the right side view. Down and right diagonally for an iso-view etc. Almost like VR pushing the object around on the screen. Pretty cool. I could see using the spacebar for this. Maybe hold SB left-MB stays pan but SB+RMB evokes this nav-move. You can see this demonstrated in the Blender 2.8 features video at about the 0:45 mark. Something to consider.

Sorry if I went off on a tangent about the number-keys. But in a neighboring thread somewhere here I read a post from Jim that said something like "yeah I think the number pad's days are numbered..." or words to that affect, and it sent a chill down my spine. Then I read Kevin's post at the top that said navigation should not require a keypad and I thought, "I gotta jump in here and defend the keypad!" Maybe its just my work-style 'cause I've always used a full keyboard, but its totally second nature to me. But then I can't imagine working with a drawing tablet--I have a Intuos and now a Huion drawing monitor which I love for digital art but have never wrapped my head around for working in VW. Any replacement that eliminated the number pad would have to be as easy and intuitive. Kevin seems happy with the drop down but for me that's several steps and moves your cursor away from what your working on. Reaching over with a thumb and taping a key is much less disruptive for me. But Kevin is also right, esp in places like Sub-surfaces where you really do want to orbit around an object in space non-cardinaly and the fly-over tool kicks you out of sub-edit mode. Very disruptive. The num-pad or drop down doesn't but those big 90-deg moves that are fine/desirable when you're building walls are usually too clumsy when your making a tree or something.

Ok, I question the 98% maybe its just semantics. I teach at a university and we have hundreds of workstations both Mac and PC and they all have MMB. But maybe you're talking about a true, independent (not a scroll wheel you hold down) button. If that's what you mean then ok. I use a 9 button gammer-mouse that I have programmed all the extra buttons for Flyover, X, TAB, Undo, etc. Any more than 9 and I wouldn't be able to keep them straight. Any less and its hard to decide what would be the most useful commands to assign. But I am completely at a loss when I'm helping a student on their laptop and they don't have a Num-pad.Having to reach up to the view bar to the drop down is incredibly cumbersome. I know there are keyboard shortcuts but I never remember them because I never use them. And they are all clumsy combos like Shift+alt+5 or something. Dropping the num-pad navigation before we have something si-fi like eye-tracking intuitive vr navigation would be devastating to me.

No offense, Zoomer, but who doesn't have a MMB? PCs have had them for a decade and Mac has had them for at least 5 or 6 years. I haven't seen a 1 or 2 button mouse in years. I can't imaging working in WV (or PS) without the scroll wheel zoom. I just don't like MMB + modifier key for basic stuff like Mays's Alt+MMB to pan. That just an non-intuitive combination for me.

I'm intrigued by the Name field in the OIP that appeared in 17? 18? Obviously VW is keeping track of these names somewhere as it wont let you reuse a name. But it would be extremely handy to have an organizer pallet or maybe just a tab in the Navigation palette. Ideally, it wouldn't be a list of every generic object like most modeling software has (i.e. cube1, cube2, cylinder1, cube3, plane1,...) but only a list of objects (or groups!) that we have specifically given names to. Ideally, selecting that object in the list would jump you to its location class and layer even if you were on a sheet. As you can sort of do this already with a worksheet and the select on document command, it seems like most of the required elements are already in there. All we need it the palette.

Boy, I don't know. I agree with Zoomer's (3 year old post) I love the num-pad navigation. I dreamed of multi-view panes for years but when we finally got it last year I hardly used it. I think largely because the num-pad is second nature to me. I even absentmindedly try to use it in 2D aps like Photoshop. I haven't used Rhino but I do use Maya, Blender, and Unreal and navigation in those programs is one of the things I struggle with the most. My navigation wish list is more for things like an XYZ lock (each independent, not one at a time like in the reshape tool), a super quick and boomerang "hide all but selected" command, as many programs have. Clip-cube is ok but not quite the same especially when your object is adjacent to other objects. I think we'll agree that Mirror and rotate should not be separate tools with 2-hand shortcuts (Ctrl+=) but something integrated into other tools, like you've mentioned in other places, Kevin. On the other hand, the Pan/space is invaluable. Both in VW and PS. When I'm in other programs like Maya where pan is Alt-MMB I go nuts. But I'd love to see an XYZ lock right there in the view bar. And a gizmo/widget (I refuse to call it a 3D drager!) as part of the basic interface with move/scale/rotate built in and mirror and reshape available with a modifier key. Throw in UV unwrapping and (for godsakes) vertical lighting positions and I'll be happy.

But yes we are long overdue for a xyz lock. Heck I'd give up x=select and zoom lope (Y is available) to have a momentary switch plan lock with those keys!

I love set working plane. I've moved it into my Basic toolset I use it so much. Don't forget you can click on the Eye looking at to the pink grid icon in the view bar to "look at working plane" when you do that it swings your view around so that XYX commands like move and Duplicate Array work relative to the working plane. When you're finished just hit the Nub Pad 0 key (or select top/plan) and your back to normal.

What is the little (I think its a) magnifying glass icon that pops up in the screen hints in 2019. I'm assuming its some kind of quick access to the zoom lope or something but I can't seen to find any keys or clicks that do anything. Anybody know what this is. Jim?

Sure but you have to create an extra viewport just to make the cut. And (although it crashed when I was messing with it) it looks like it has a way to automatically dash-hidden line object over the cutting plane. That will save a lot of drawing in the viewport annotations. If it works.

Well this looks promising but playing with it cause my first POOF! crash of 2019.

I had the same issue especially on bezier curves or other organic shapes. Set preferences to "Good and compatible" solved it. Now zoom is great.

I couldn't agree more. The first thing I do in any software from Windows up is go in and turn off all the bells and whistles. I really couldn't care less if its a 1990s radio button or an animated glowing ball of amazing, if I'm staring at the wait cursor for half the time I'm working. Blender just released the EVEE UI that allows you to work in a fully rendered and lit environment in real-time and that's an open source software. So many of the exciting additions to VW--sub surfaces, displacement maps, caustics, etc--that I was so excited about when they came out, I hardly ever use because they slow you down to a crawl. Fast 3d, fast view-ports, fast renders, fast save/open. Those are the things that affect you more than anything else.

No kidding. Maybe We won't have to use the clip cube to generate our +72" ground plans any more.

I agree! I'm astonished we still don't have a universal widget or toggle-able XYZ locks as part of the basic interface. I'm a VW cheerleader but WV 19 is basically indistinguishable from VW 2012. I haven't really noticed any performance upgrade from 18 as far as the multi threading goes. My 6 core 8700K and GTX 1080 that rips though every other application I use still seem to be pretty sleepy on the dang tool I use every day!

I did. I bought it knowing I'd be able to get drawings into it one way or another. And export to PDF works perfectly. I spent all day cutting stuff up. Its amazing how even simple things like corrugated cardboard look amazing when cut with the laser. No crushing or tearing. Cut any kind of paper product fine. 1/8 and 1/4 Lauan no problem. Acetate, acrylic look fantastic. The only thing I failed at was 1/4 Masonite. To cut through it the charing was just too much. It could do 1/8 Maso fine. I'm pretty impressed. The way I build models has just had a quantum change!

To answer my own question, Exporting as a PDF from VW opened and cut on the Glowforge with no issues or no intermediate steps. Super easy.

Oh I forgot the other part of your question. No, it renders for a few seconds then its black and stays black. OGL is fine but any RW style doesn't do anything but black. I haven't had the issue in VPs using Hidden line etc--"drafting". Only in renderings. Sean

VW 18 SP4 I7-8700k 3.70 (oc to 4) 32RAM GTX 1080 Wind 10 I'll look for the CineRender next time it happens. I've just been preemptively saving and restarting before I do a FQ render lately. They seem to go a little quicker after a 'refresh' too. I can't wait for multi-threading next month!!! Did you see my post about the disappearing textures? That's a long running problem too. Thanks Sean

A few versions back, and a few years ago I posted the question as to why textures randomly disappear on objects after awhile. I'm using 2018 and still having the issue. It seems to happen on Extrude along a path objects more than others but not exclusively. When you select the object, the Render Tab sill shows the texture applied so its not like I'm accidentally assigning no texture to them. As soon as you re-assign the texture its fine but I always have to hunt around in a model before I run a big render as there will almost always be a few. Often they are inside of groups or even in symbols. The rest of the group or symbol will be fine but one piece will draw white. And its white like No texture and White fill as AO still appears--not like a white hole in the render. I'm hoping this goes away in 19? VW 18 I7-8700k 3.70 32RAM GTX 1080 Wind 10