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Kevin C

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Everything posted by Kevin C

  1. Anyone noticed the Autosave in VW switching off by itself. VW has just crashed again (second time today), but this time I have just lost 5 hours of work. I know the autosave was on this morning as there are autosaves from this morning's work, but nothing for the last 5 HOURS. Does VW have a hidden keystroke that switchers Autosave off - If there is it should be deleted. I am getting so sick and tired of the instability of Vectorworks and the constant crashing of the software. You know you have the users tied down so much that we cannot afford to move elsewhere. Businesses across the world just now are struggling for basic survival.
  2. Wes, As you said, the old school way is best at this time. Can you please explain what the old school way is, as the only old school say that I can think of is a 100% manual schedule; I.e. a text box? Should we not have moved on from this by now? I also do not agree that data tags should be in viewports - think this a major backward step.
  3. As we all know, getting Vectorworks to draw a roof properly is near on impossible and we usually all spend hours if not days getting one correct - even although there usually has to be a few 'workarounds' to get them to display properly. Question is - Is there a way of bringing the settings from one project into another. It might sound easy, but for some reason, things like pitch / overhangs / inert /eaves profiles and all the other things which take for ever to set up are never copied over. The eyedropper does not go into that much detail. Any help would be appreciated.
  4. Totally agree. Also the naming convention used by VW needs to be thrown out and started again. Roads are not simply 5.5m wide with a 2m wide footpath. There are multiple variations, even to the most basic of housing layout. I've got to the stage where I can produce a site layout which I can generate a very good looking site plan, but it is like going back 20 years in the functionality. Example: Houses: I am currently looking at a 22 unit housing development - 4 house styles. each of them fully modelled (no mean feat with the current limitations of the current roof tools). problem now occurs when trying to reference in the model file to the site file. There is an error message that says the roof is too complex and cannot generate? I am only presuming that this is something to do with VW and the ever present flaw with origins. Road pattern - not overly complex and as a matter of fact, extremely simple, but Vectorworks cannot come close to creating roads that resemble anything close to the intended design. I am unable to incorporate proper site features like occasional swales (pretty much mandated by Sewers for Scotland) as well as a detention basin), build outs / traffic calming, novel junctions and minor access links. This is just the primary roads infrastructure - the private driveways cannot be created. The only solution that I have been able to come up with (and works) is to assume that the site is 100% flat and create the roads / paths / features etc. using extrudes. What this does is give the impression of a development, but has no relation to what is actually on the ground. Also only works when the referencing of the house blocks works, which in this sites case - it does not. Come on VW, devote some of that product development time to allow us to model a sites using simple geometry. The tools which you have produced for roads are I'm sorry to say not fit for purpose (any of them). This is the development I am looking at and there is a lot of topography which needs to be taken account of, but has to be done 100% manually by the use of 2D drawings as VW is simply not up to the job. This is a small development for my practice and I though that I would try once again to see if VW had improved its site tools - unfortunately, although there is the new hardscape tool, which is good. It is not designed for this.TIT-20-02-Type 01-A.pdf
  5. Not really - Just set up the syncing to happen in the middle of the night. OneDrive has a set of conflict rules, so any sync conflicts are highlighted and are manually resolved. Shouldn't happen that often as this is for libraries and templates and if it does - I am judge, jury and executioner.
  6. Going to try again, but I'm not holding out much hope. Thanks for your thoughts.
  7. Christiaan, Not using dropbox - know about that problem, that's why we are using OneDrive (also helps that as a business user I get 1TB of online storage) and I can choose when to sync from local to Network
  8. Fabrica, Tried this - doesn't seem to work. Rebooted the machines and VW just doesn't want to find the folders. There will be a silly setting somewhere that directs everything to a local folder irrespective of user folders.
  9. We're on a combination of Mac and PC. Thanks Christian, but I don't think you understood the call for help. Apple Remote Desktop is useless. This is going on the assumption that we have been able to set this up previously. I have asked many, many, many people about this before and unfortunately everyone comes up with 'Workgroup folders'. Funnily enough I have never had a workgroup folder appear on the resource manager, no matter how many different ways it has been set up, that's where the problem lies.
  10. I found this too. The solution was to delete the North Point in annotation viewport and use the North Point from the Title Block Manager - puts it on the sheet space, but it is not affected by the geo-referencing. I cannot understand why anyone would geo-reference a north symbol and lock it out so that you couldn't change it. All surveys are carried out to grid north etc. for setting out. Also for planning and building warrant submissions, you have to show North as North.
  11. Looking for some help please. My practice is probably is the same situation as most others at the moment. We had to scrabble around to get everyone set up for working from home with regards to hardware and basic software issues. The lockdown looks as if it is going to be going on for at least a few weeks, if not months (please no), and the 'haphazzard' office setup really has to be sorted out as things are starting to get messy (file structure, multiple copies of files etc.). There are a couple of things which we will not be doing - most notably is project sharing. This is of little or no use to a small practice (there are four of us) and we collaborate just fine with external consultants just fine - they all use AutoCAD or Revit, and does not get over the bigger problems of office libraries and standards, which are continually reset every time there is an update to VW. What we need is the following: A setup that allows each user to have their user preferences set. A set of office templates and libraries that is fully accessible by each member of the team (Title blocks as well) An ability to remove the libraries from the local machines and force everyone to use the office standards. This has been a goal in the practice for a number of years and have never managed to get it to work as we could just shout across the office when a change happened - this is much more important now than ever before as we can no longer do this. I can recall when I was using AutoCAD many years ago (around AutoCAD V12), that it was a simple task to change the preferences folder so that it would only read network files for certain items. We all have access to OneDrive for Business, so the network folders can be cloned to local folders and everyone should theoretically be able to work100% remotely and when we get back to the office - it would be a simple change to go back to reading from the network. What would be nice moving forward is when service packs and new releases come out that an option to simply download a custom setup along the lines: Download all the templates and libraries separately and give the option of saving them to a separate location (instead of the hard drive) Download and install the program as a standalone (with the current user data migration kept). We should be able to direct the installation to a network (or cloud sharing / local) folder so that the templates and libraries will be the same on each computer in the office. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
  12. It's not just the memory leak problem, which you are quite correct is still here. It is the host of other issues which Vectorworks has basically ignored the users over the years with the continual 'bodges' and 'workarounds' for functions that are basic necessities in architectural design. Items like doors, windows, stairs, handrails, walls, roofs, floor slabs, schedules, elevations and sections should simply just work. I am sick and tired of being told that when a part of vectorworks does not do the job properly that there isn't a bug, it is working as designed. What this means to me is that when there is a feature, it should work properly for real world situations and not just in a lab. Yes, all the new features are great, but we need a tool that works properly, that means continually reviewing the legacy items and fixing the problems that have been documented many times over the years. Typical examples of where the system is just wrong: If you have a door in an external wall with a side screen and have the external wall components activated haver a look at what happens when you try and elevate it or look at it in 3D - doesn't work never has done Setting out of components - Who in their right minds sets out from the centre of an object - you choose a point for setting out and anchor it. Doors and windows - come on guys, If you want to put a door in a wall, you choose the position of the door to suit your construction - outside face of wall / inside face of outer leaf etc. - you NEVER EVER set to 'centre of wall' Ths means you require to 'offset' the position - this is trial and error based on thickness of the wall and where you want the item placed. God forbid you change a component in the wall that changes the overall thickness and as a result every single component which you have painstakingly placed correctly will require to be reset. If you use styled components and update that way, it wipes all the other data from the components (like scheduling), so don't try. Our drawings do not just contain presentation information, we are now meant to be able to interrogate a model and extract quality data from it. Continually having to do 'workarounds' means that we are always having to 'cheat' to get the data out - not very forward thinking is it. I have also considered ArchiCAD - it is a very good piece of kit, but the physical cost to change my practice over, means it is prohibitive - Vectorworks knows this. There will come a point however, if VW doesn't provide me with a competent piece of software, I will have to bite the bullet and just change to another (might even change to REVIT). Sorry for rant - but getting frustrated again with VW. Just downloaded 2020 SP2.2 and had to uninstall and reinstall the entire program and the upgrade install failed yet again.
  13. Peter, As businesses we take long and hard decisions about choosing the 'best' delivery method for our business model. Vectorworks can be a great design tool and that is why I chose it for my company many years ago (2009), but there are so many bugs that actually prevent me from using the software from anything other than basic 2D work as working in 3D is nay on impossible - generation of hidden line elevations and sections should be instantaneous THEY ARE NOT RENDERING. The big problem is that to change supplier, would cost (for me) between £15K and £20K once you take the cost of software and basic training, not counting the downtime - Vectorworks knows this and since we are on the hook, there is very little that can be done. I'm not going to even start on the tools which do not work properly and are not fit for purpose - roofs / walls / doors / windows / spaces / worksheets - basically all of the tools that are needed to work within a full 3D / BIM environment.
  14. Quick update - we are still experiencing major memory leaks in the majority of files since the upgrade to 2020. None of the service packs have sorted the problems. We have one project which we are desperately trying to move forward to full production drawings, but VW keeps crashing. All Macs were completely stripped out over Christmas and reinstalled with clean OS and primary software, which with SP2.1 should have fixed the problem - It hasn't. Can you please update when this problem is to get sorted.
  15. Try this one - https://www.pdf2go.com/compress-pdf I generally set it for 150 dpi. There are other functions on the site - split pdf's / merge pdf's and lots more.
  16. Unfortunately, You have to forget everything that Vectorworks tells you to do. Of all the tried and failed installs (and there has been many) , the only way I have now found that works is to completely remove Vectorworks, reboot the computer and then do a clean install of the SP2 full installation. This means that you lose your customisation, but a small price to pay to stop the continual crashing of the software. You could keep a copy of the user settings and then over-write them, but it's easier to start from scratch (trust me). Not sure about you, but over the Christmas shutdown this year, I will be stripping out all of the office computers and installing a fresh operating system (Catalina) - I haven't decided on which order to put the software back in - Any thoughts?? Office 365 SketchUp Pro Parallels (for NBS Builder and Elmhurst Energy Design software that doesn't work on the Mac) Vectorworks 2020 And that's just the main ones??
  17. Well we are now midway through the third week in November - Service Pack 2 ?????? What would be decent of VW is just to admit there is a problem - apologise for it, then devote resources to fixing it. Obviously the software industry does not admit its failures, but I think that VW ( and all other software providers) forget that in today's world of total reliance on computers, people's livelihoods depend on being able to use the software which they have purchased - we cannot just change to another provider and they know this. There are different situations that users are reporting - this problem is across the board, which means that something is wrong at the core of the software. Can you please fix it.
  18. Just had the same problem again (not for the first time since upgrading to VW 2020) - This is just a simple 2D site development layout, no renderings or complex 3D model - Really not good enough. 500GB SSD Hard drive - There should be more than enough juice in my mac to cope with this.
  19. Julian, The problem which I have is that I invested heavily in both Vectorworks and Apple over 10 years ago (I now realise that it may not have been the best business decision), so unless I make the decision to change to PC over the next 4 years - that's when I will be due to upgrade my youngest mac, I will have to stick with apple products so I do not have the luxury of switching to Revit due to the poor physical performance of Vectorworks although I could change all my machines over to running 100% boot camp (seems a waste though). Vectorworks Architect has over the years progressed greatly in 'pure BIM workflow' and to its credit, it is probably one of the best on the market. However, BIM workflow does not generate income into a business, production information generates income and this is where Vectorworks falls down every time. The ability to create and visualise a building model that can have proper production information referenced both to and from it is a critical point in all projects nowadays. Clients know that we can produce high quality models and renderings and expect us to be able to collaborate with others on a level playing field - Ie be able to export ifc models that contain all the project information for costing, scheduling etc. The fact that the defect standard format in the world is Revit, with nearly all third party information being created in revit format and bloated to such an extent that renders the BIM objects pretty well useless only compounds the issue for Vectorworks users. I am seriously considering changing from VW to another design software solution, as Vectorworks year after year just ignore the basic production faults with the program and ignore the paying users who rely on the software to pay the bills, like the ability to generate a door schedule that can have internal and external doors on the same schedule and not have to worry that the guess what we construct to default and standards that are different in different countries - like the vast majority to external doors are a standard size (I.e. we have to use what is available to for a contractor to buy from a merchant) and get them to fit - usually with a barrier free threshold into a standard brick opening width and height. Guess what vectorworks cannot do this. This is just one example, also working with wall constructions made up of more than a single component - you cannot generate a section which is of any use at a detail level of greater than 1:100 - ability to attach objects to components of a wall and not left / centre / right. People will say that there is a custom setting, but if the wall thickness changes - the custom setting is useless. Another problem is hatches, Vectorworks Architect at least is (or should be) primarily a building design program, not an graphic design program. It should have the ability to produce high quality graphic representations but not at the expense of detailed building design - This is where it fails.
  20. Agreed, But if you remember one of the 'improvements' this year was a more compressed pdf file. This just hasn't happened, just some tools to compress the raster images within the pdf. Not much use when your pdf's don't have any raster images in them. I don't have full blown Acrobat (4 licences is a lot of money just to reduce a file size!
  21. Ok, I seem to be in the minority, but my team has not noticed any improvement - only slowdown. Wed must just be doings things completely wrong. One thing however that continues to amaze me is that it is assumed that we start a project with a brand new clean set of files every time - this is not the case. We use styles and objects from libraries that have been built up over years of use. If VW is trying to say that the software will only work to its fullest capability when the project is started and only using objects etc. that have been created in that specific version of VW, please tell us and we will try and change to suit. On another item which was championed as being a new 2020 feature - reduced and optimised pdf file sizes. Yes, VW gives options for compressing image etc. but the basic pdf file for say a site layout drawing is now far larger than 2019 and hardly compresses at all when using third party compression tools anymore. Simple line drawings have never been an issue, but if you have any fill or hatch on a drawing and want to add some detail, it's a joke. I now have files which I cannot sent to local authorities because the file size is greater than 5MB - This means I cannot submit for planning consent or building warrant without having too strip all the detail out of a drawing.
  22. Can anyone provide a list of product enhancements for the Vectorworks Architect / Fundamentals modules that actually took place this year. We have now upgraded all machines in the office to VW2020 (SP1 came out yesterday - still to see if that stops the crashing) and apart from the changes to introduce 'barn doors' and tinkering with the doors and windows model - but not fixing the underlying issues with the whole module, cannot really seen anything. I am definitely not interested in a fancy new graphics interface with lovely icons - That does not improve productivity or efficiency. The new and improved Graphics module is to put not too fine a point on it, its not worth the paper its written on, as if anything, Vectorworks is much slower and much less responsive than before, it is also much more liable to crashing - we have even had 'panic reports' from one of the iMac's recently with the only change to the system being the upgrade to VW2020 - This has never happened before. We have had to change all the graphics settings to "best compatibility" to be able to carry out any work. My understanding of the 'improvements are as follows: Live data Visualisation - This is after the fact and assumes that all items are correctly attributed. Note that the allocations of spaces and zones is integral to this tool. This is a problem unless the usability of the space tool has been overhauled to a point where it works - the space tool is far to complicated and on a working model, spaces have to be deleted to made the drawing manageable (the program slows to a crawl and to carry out any amendment takes forever). GIS Improvements - It is extremely unlikely that we would use such a tool and there are very few benefits if any from the examples shown that would persuade me to invest in ArcGIS History-Based modelling - Apart from spending an inordinate amount of time to prepare a level of detail that is not required for that vast majority of building projects, I can see no benefit in this tool Graphics module Improvements - As mentioned previously, we have four iMacs in the office, all 27" i7 5K Retina with at least 24GB Ram and 4GB graphics cards (mine has an 8GB) and this 'fantastic new feature' has done nothing but slow the whole system down to a crawl. If this is an improvement, I can only presume that the extra coding in the program slowed it up so much that VW needed to change the graphics system to try and maintain the status quo - It didn't work. IFC referencing - Have not tried, but way down the line List Browser Direct editing - It is not user friendly, far too responsive. Is there any way of switching it off??? Section views - Only useful if walls and floors / doors windows slabs and roofs all interconnect properly and don't all disconnect at the first change to the model - Wait to be convinced if there is any improvements Walkthrough animation - hopefully this will be good, will wait and see. But again, not a productivity improvement Widget groups - This is akin to the "improvement" to the OIP last year where you mandated that class selection be carried out using a 'hierarchical display' - not funny and not useful. Can anyone please tell me what functional improvements have been made. All I really want to for VW to improve what for all intents is / could be, a fantastic program without destroying the systems that actually work and fixing what is blatantly obvious to all working users that which is broken - doors / windows / stairs / roofs / walls etc. I.e. allow us to design a building the way we want to design it and be able to produce proper production and detail information - not just pretty pictures.
  23. Help please. We are trying (and failing miserably) to create a window schedule of a 1.5 storey house that has rooflights and dormers. We can create window and door schedules easily enough, but when we try and include dormer windows or rooflights - they are just ignored by VW - Help.
  24. I think that the biggest problem with the dwg import is the settings that VW applies each time. First, when importing a dwg file, the dwg file seems to take precedence over the existing VWX file and over-writes all of the class settings in the VWX file (it should be the other way around). When I am working with other consultants, you learn how they assemble their files and work with them, but a lot of people forget that AutoCAD works on the basis of using line colours to define pen thicknesses - VWX does not. Also when importing a dwg file, why is the fill set on solid for every AutoCAD layer that is imported? It would be great if there could be an option to have a tab setting so that the imported class can have fill on or off and also to be able to change dwg layer colours during the import process at the same time as setting the line weights.
  25. This is what doors and windows have needed - Please can you at least try and incorporate these features into the door and window tools..
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