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jmanganelli

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Everything posted by jmanganelli

  1. Interesting thread. Especially interesting is how a discussion about UI improvements has led to a general discussion about the competitiveness and direction of Vectorworks Architect's development. Vectorworks are doing some good things with managing big data (integrating GIS data manipulation) and the gdtf standard and connectcad. Energos and Marionette have a lot of promise. These developments could give Vectorworks a competitive position in BIM in a roundabout way. Managing data and systems simulation is the future of BIM (beyond 3D BIM). Bentley had already shifted its focus to this several years ago and now Autodesk is shifting the focus of its BIM platform to be the basis for a suite of cloud-based building information management, performance simulation, and analysis tools. While the Vectorworks' interface and BIM authoring tool need to mature, if Vectorworks leverages its initiatives above, there is opportunity to continue to be a competitive bim platform. This is where all CAD/BIM vendors must go --- being platforms or components in systems simulation and analysis platforms. I have used an example in presentations the last several years: If you take something as simple as a disposable coffee cup, add a sensor network, wireless networking, real-time information exchange, real-time analytics, and responsive controls, then even that disposable coffee cup becomes a complex system of systems that fundamentally changes how its design, construction, and operations must be conducted. If it is true of a disposable coffee cup, how much more true is it of buildings of all sizes --- even small, simple buildings and furniture? All building designers, constructors, and operators are in the business of building complex data systems, in an IoT world, whether or not they realize it yet. Vectorworks is positioning itself for this future (imo). More immediately and practically, energy conservation codes have become substantially more rigorous in the last couple decades and continue to rapidly evolve, mostly through their adoption of newer ASHRAE 90.1 standards, and the industry is near an inflection point wherein building performance simulation and performance-based design and construction for code compliance are becoming essential to permitting buildings. So aside from the building as a component in an IoT systems of systems argument, there is also the performance-based code compliance reality that is also practically and immediately driving this industry shift. The opportunity that Vectorworks has is that while many entities are positioning to 'own' the data standards and information management and systesm simulation pipelines, no entity really does yet. So I think the future of Vectorworks BIM is whatever they want to make it. They continue to have the foundations to be major players in BIM. Separate from tool maturation, the trends toward contractor-led BIM and VDC, contractors (in the U.S. anyway) defaulting to Autodesk products, as well as the push toward IPD and accelerated design/construction schedules all put pressure on architects and engineers to use tools that fit in the GC's VDC pipeline....at least that is what I see in commercial/industrial work. Since Vectorworks does not offer a complete CSA/MEP suite, Vectorworks needs a compelling argument for its BIM tool to be part of an Autodesk or Bentley or Bricscad BIM pipeline....or Nemetschek has to leverage and market its own suite of CSA/MEP tools in a more integrated way. Revit has major strengths but also some surprising and significant limitations that never seem to get addressed. So I think there is room for another BIM authoring tool to grow market share in the U.S. and therefore still an opportunity for Vectorworks in the U.S.
  2. Has vectorworks looked into porting the cycles render engine into Vectorworks? i know that vectorworks is working with the cinema 4d render engine amd there is talk about integrating redshift. I was playing around with the rhino 7 WIP today and was very impressed with a render that cycles kicked out quickly and in very high quality with little setup. It has come a long way. It is fast and easy.
  3. @Jim Wilson, thanks. Great points, @GeoWH. I don't think this requires significant UI changes, though you could take that route. But if you don't want to make significant UI changes, I think that it is possible to make customizable palettes or offer a beta UI experience or offer popup context menus. The Foundry has been working through workflow and UI upgrades for MODO, and I think they have handled the entire process of developing, introducing, testing, and getting feedback very well. They've engaged the users, gotten buy-in, made it an open process, and cultivated user fans. McNeel, too, developers of Rhino, also did a great job with developing the gumball and making it an overall good experience with the community.
  4. I agree @mjm and @milezee that the gumball is also very useful. Between the gumball, about a dozen or so shortcut keys, and the right-click context menu, I almost never have to go to the perimeters of the screen when I'm speed modeling. One of the nice things about how the rhino palette customization works is that it is all just drag and drop. You can create a new palette, drag and drop any tool icon onto it, save it once configured, and then assign it to the pop-up context menu. It is simple and quick and easily reconfigurable.
  5. Hi Jim (or to whom it may concern), Is there any intention to improve the ability to speed model with Vectorworks? It seems that the vectorworks 3d modeling tools and workflows are pretty good and pretty comprehensive, but could be much more optimized for speed modeling than they currently are. Alternatively, has anyone come up with really useful shortcut key arrangements and/or UI customizations to improve the speed of speed modeling in Vectorworks? For reference, I modified the right-click menu in rhino to have sets of tool palettes in the right-click menu, and it lets me model very fast in rhino. I have customized my vectorworks object context menu and am trying to get as fast in vectorworks as i am in rhino but it is difficult to do so at the moment. The functioning of the tools forces me to move the mouse away from the objects on which i'm working in order to select modes or settings. Can these settings be built into the dynamic tool tip so that if, for instance, I right-click on the push-pull tool in my object context menu, then the dynamic tool tip autopopulates with the icons to select which of the three push-pull modes I want to use? This would keep me from having to move my cursor up to the top of the viewport and it would allow me to stay in more of a very fast flow of modeling.
  6. This is a great point. Can you allow users to make their own classification categories (in lieu of high/medium/low) so that per symbol we can choose to turn on and off different representations of assets individually? Extending further, could you then allow us to keyframe animate this, so that, for instance, we could have an asset in a space and demonstrate build out sequencing? I suppose that the idea to allow this to be used for animation comes from MODO. In MODO, all channels are animatable. This is very useful. Come to think of it, if you added a transparency option to symbols as well that could also be set per representation and animated, it would allow for things like making an animation of a space wherein an overview of the space is presented and then assets are faded in or out or emphasized or deemphasized as the animation progresses, but in a quick and dirty and quick way without having to export and go to Cinema 4D, or MODO, etc. This could be quite useful.
  7. Another example is, if designing a warehouse with high rack storage and an automatic sprinkler system and internal roof drainage system installed under the roof, then it is necessary to visually analyze and communicate how high the racks can be while allowing adequate clearance under the automatic sprinkler system piping and roof drainage system piping. If the warehouse roof has a long run in both directions, then the sprinkler piping and roof drain lines can drop quite a bit over the total run of the roof. It is useful to be able to look at a section cut to understand these spatial relationships without having all of the other piping in the foreground and background overlaid on top of it.
  8. This is very useful. Thank you. Please do implement the symbol section cuts feature. When modeling a commercial/industrial/laboratory space, it is important to show cuts through the equipment that is intersected when a building section or floor plan is generated. Having 2D views loaded up with 3D geometry can become heavy and slow to process. Having sections loaded up with wireframe views of equipment can make a visual mess. Often, if looking at a section or plan of a room with specific equipment in it, the value in showing the equipment is to understand clearance around it. So having a cut through the equipment affords visual analysis and keeps the drawings readable.
  9. Hi Ruiguo, I purchased a XP-Pen Star 06 in January. It works very well with Adobe CS, Xara, the Affinity programs, and Vectorworks. I do not have experience with the Deco 02.
  10. Charlotte, $2200 for the VWA 2018 license, and I will pay sales tax and escrow fee. $175 for Bluebeam revu standard. please let me know if you’d like to proceed. thanks, joe
  11. Hi All, I am selling a Vectorworks Architect 2018 license and a 2017 Bluebeam Revu license. I just dropped the asking price. Message me if you are interested. My asking price for the Vectorworks Architect 2018 license is $2200. This is a 25% discount off of the retail price of the software license. In addition, I will pay the sales tax and escrow fee out of the $2200. This is a total savings of around $900-$1000, or about 30% off of the full retail price to buy the license new. My asking price for the 2017 Bluebeam Revu Standard license is $175. This is a 50% discount off of the retail price of the software license. In addition, you get the maintenance service for no additional charge til April. If you're interested in purchasing either of these software applications, please respond to this posting or contact me through linkedin. Love Vectorworks Architect. Great tool. Hate to sell it. But my priorities have recently shifted. Please let me know if you have questions or comments. Best, Joe
  12. Hi Emma, Id like to sell a VWA 2018 license with VSS through May of 2018. Are you interested? Joe
  13. I deleted my reply. I don't want to get into sales taxes in two different countries.
  14. Check out this thread for more on alternatives for using aerial photos and satellite images to create meshes: https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/51710-working-with-lidar/
  15. Hi All, Has anyone paired vectorworks with projectwise for project information/document/sharing management? If yes, what has been your experience? or do you have experience integrating vectorworks with aconex, asite adoddle, newforma, Sharepoint, archdesk, selfie, or similar for project management/information management/collaboration? If yes, what has been your experience? and what about blue beam integration with these? I know that blue beam is integrated into projectwise and sharepoint. I've heard that vectorworks and blue beam are working on much tighter vectorworks/Bluebeam integration for the future. It seems that this could be a benefit when interacting with project management software that is also integrated with blue beam. thanks in advance, joe
  16. Does anyone have experience using box for model collaboration?
  17. Just learned of two sources for free LIDAR data: https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
  18. Robert, thanks for the info. It will be very interesting to see what the researchers do. Sarah's work is terrific. Thanks for linking to it.
  19. Hi Robert, Thank you for the detailed response. The 100% python-based nature of Marionette is one of the things to which I was referring when I said that Vectorworks has done an incredible job of implementing a number of significant enhancements in a short while that are very competitive in the industry. Are there any plans to further explore (and/or make documentation for) use cases that leverage these capabilities? Perhaps with regard to vehicular or pedestrian flow optimization? Daylighting optimization? Code compliance?
  20. @Peter Neufeldthank you for the detailed and useful explanation. Did the surveyor say how he/she converted the data to a csv file?
  21. @J. WallaceI have used rhino for Delaunay triangulation to create site meshes. It was one click operation. Rhinos trial version should allow 25 saves. So you might could mesh the points with the trial version quickly. Biggest unknown forms has to do with mesh size. I've never run the script on a point cloud that large. But, rhino is good at handling large data sets, so it might do it. you can also send me the data if you want and I can try to mesh it in rhino tonight. @JimWcome to think of it, a Delaunay triangulation command would be a good addition to vectorworks, especially as a quick way to build meshes from point data.
  22. Actually, found a lower price alternative to contextcapture that looks good. https://www.capturingreality.com/ anyone have any experience with it?
  23. I know that in rhino ( delaunay-triangulation tool ) or rhino + grasshopper, you could make a graphical algorithm that would create a mesh from the points. Perhaps you can do something similar with Marionette. A quick google search turned up: - this open source option: http://assettocorsamods.net/threads/lidar-point-cloud-to-mesh-tutorial.422/ - or this free solution: http://gmv.cast.uark.edu/scanning/point-clouds-to-mesh-in-meshlab/ - or sketchup: https://forums.sketchup.com/t/from-contours-lidar-data-point-cloud-system/42303 - dedicated specialty app: http://www.vrmesh.com/products/studio.asp - dedicated high-end specialty app:
  24. Hi Jim (or anyone else), I have a general question about the future of Vectorworks development. What is Vectorworks doing (if anything) with incorporating predictive analytics, and/or rule-based intelligence, and/or machine learning technologies into the functioning of Vectorworks? Bentley, Graphisoft, and Autodesk have all introduced predictive / intelligent tools in the last few years. These are all early forays into incorporating predictive analytics and/or intelligence into their overall toolsets. What is Vectorworks doing in this regard? I ask because I have really come to enjoy using Vectorworks, but I am on the fence committing to it as my primary design and BIM-authoring tool package. I followed Vectorworks development for a long time before starting to use it and my impression is that Vectorworks 6-7 years ago was not at all competitive with Revit, AECOsim, or ArchiCAD as a BIM authoring tool and as a design tool ( back then, it had 32-bit architecture, out-dated geometry kernel, limited 3d capabilities, limited support for IFC, limited/no scripting/graphical scripting capabilities, limited ability to handle large data sets, limited visualization capabilities, no building performance analysis, more problematic file exchange performance). In the last several years, Vectorworks has made up an incredible amount of ground at an incredible pace and is now as strong as or stronger than each of the other major tools in some ways. I'm not saying that Vectorworks is "the best program" in all areas. But I think that it is a very competitive BIM authoring tool. Right now it is an incredible value. And its focus on the user needs does seem to have yielded great, easy, fast, intuitive workflows. But the near future of BIM authoring tool development seems to be in reducing time to develop designs and improving design performance validation by incorporating predictive analytics and rule-based intelligence such that designers indicate design intent (for instance by laying out a stair, a road, a sketch line, a room, a roof line, etc. with some conceptual strokes) and then the program applies a combination of a set of rules and perhaps some learning about typical user preferences in order to instantaneously complete the geometry so that the designer may then evaluate the repercussions of the particular strategy on the overall design instantaneously. Graphisoft and Bentley have both introduced tools that offer this ability. In addition to its stair tool, Graphisoft also uses predictive technology to allocate computing resources more efficiently to speed up workflow. Bentley is probably leading with regard to automating and integrating context capture, automated conversion of point cloud data to usable models, and civil infrastructure design, and is also using predictive technology to improve its help assistant (Connect Advisor). Autodesk is deploying predictive analytics with regard to sketching and performance data management, among other applications. And yet a search of the Vectorworks Community forum yielded no results for "Vectorworks"+"predictive analytics" or +"rule-based intelligence", nor did a google search. So what is Vectorworks doing with predictive analytics and rule-based intelligence and machine learning? Is it staying competitive? Or will we realize over the next several years that Vectorworks has allowed a significant gap to develop with regard to predictive analytics and rule-based intelligent tools compared to its competitors and that it then has to close that gap in order to catch up with where the industry is? Thanks in advance for your response(s). Best, Joe
  25. Yes, modo is supposed to add features for VR soon. Also, the unreal engine is now free for designers to use for commercial use.
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