Sean Flaherty

Donald, Doesn't the Connect tool already incorporate the behavior you mention? I think you mean if you have a line that overlaps a boundary, you want to "shorten" the line to meet the boundary. The Connect tool will either shorten or extend the line as necessary to meet the boundary. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

You might try the following VectorWorks-specific library: http://zygote.com/vectorworks/ Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Scott, When you say "quirky" do you mean from a design and UI perspective or that some operations don't work correctly? Thanks, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Ken, Thanks for the info, I'll be interested to hear your feedback on the 9 changes. We had a lot of feedback from new customers of VW 8 and MiniCAD that basic line editing was more complicated than in other packages because of the number of commands, and also that common operations were spread across several tools (such as join and extend). For VW 9, we reduced the command set to a core set of more powerful tools (in our opinion) which behaved more consistently across object types. Let me or the board know what you think! Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

What do you find that the Extend tool does that the connect/combine tool does not? It was designed to have the functionality of the Extend tool plus many common capabilities of the Trim tool and Join command. ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

In response to popular request, beta drivers for XP can now be downloaded. http://www.ealaddin.com/support/hasp/enduser.asp#latestDD HDD32.ZIP will install the latest (4.35) dongle drivers which work for us in testing. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

quote: Originally posted by doug shaffer: 1. This is the main problem which occurs in 9.0.1 and NOT in 9.0 - There are glitches when drawing 'walls', polygons, etc., in plan when using the 'tab' key to move through the data entry fields at the top of the screen. For example: begin a wall, then tab once to move to the 'x' field. Then enter a dimension of 3', for example, and push the return key. The result is that a horizontal wall that is 3 ft. long is drawn and the wall tool is still activated, 'waiting' to be continued. It used to be (in VW8.x and VWA9.0) that I could continue the wall 12" vertically (for example) by tabbing over to the 'y' field and entering a dimension of 12". When this is done in VWA9.0.1, the wall jumps to a spot that is 12" vertically, but ALSO 3 FT. HORIZONTALLY. I assume this is bug, not a new feature, of 9.0.1. Doug, I'm having trouble duplicating how this works differently in 9.0.1. If I click in the drawing with the wall tool and hit tab the "+-X" field is highlighted. When I type in "3'" and hit return the endpoint of the wall is no constrained to 3' to the right of the starting point. It can be moved in the Y direction but not X. Now if I hit tab twice to highlight the "+-Y" field, type in "12"", and hit return, the wall is also constrained in the Y direction to 12" up from the starting point. The second point is now fully constrained and moving the mouse has no effect on the second point. This seems identical to how it has worked in 9.0.0 and 8.5.2, so I must be missing a step. Can you see what I'm doing differently from you? Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Donald, The viewer provides a way for people without Acrobat (which does cost money) to share drawings with others. If you have a working solution there is no need to change...but we have heard this request from many of our customers. We don't do any special font embedding different from the way VectorWorks handles fonts. For your purposes it is the same as if the Viewer user had a full copy of VectorwWorks. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Fred, Archken makes a good suggestion here. The display format only affects how the numbers display, not what they really are. Using INT will eliminate the decimal portion, leaving the next-lowest simple integer. You may in fact want the ROUND function will round the number to the closest simple integer. For example: "=INT(8.7)" will return "8" "=ROUND(8.7)" will return "9" Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net [This message has been edited by SeanFlaherty (edited 08-18-2001).]

I don't understand the statement that we're not "willing" to make tweaks for Windows. I assume you're making this statement based on the change in solid modeling performance that was stated in the previous message. Rest assured that we are 100% committed to serving customers on both platforms. Much of the re-engineering for VW 9, in fact, was to use modern Windows development techniques instead of the Macintosh emulator that was running behind the scenes in 8.5 and earlier versions. Simple example of how this helps you: launch VW 8 and look at the CPU usage meter. It is pinned at 100% even when idle because VW 8 is running an emulated event processor. In VW 9, your machine operates as usual when VW 9 is idles allowing your machine to more efficiently use the processor time available. These and other run-time improvements can be found throught VW 9. Solids modeling is difficult right now to measure performance changes between the platforms and verisons. The short of it is that in VW 8.5, the Mac modeler was much slower than on Windows with comparable hardware (an entirely different controversy). There was much more room for improvement on the Mac than on Windows. Even in VW 9, solids modeling is quicker on Windows than on the Macintosh because of differences in chip and compiler capabilities; there was less room for tuning. ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

What kind of processor/machine are you talking about? I'll get you an answer... I've searched through the archives for previous 64-bit architecture discussion and couldn't find anything. ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Donald, OpenGL on the Macintosh is now Altivec enabled, so VectorWorks customers should see an advantage in this rendering mode (assuming that they have the latest OpenGL drivers from Apple). quote: Originally posted by Donald Wardlaw: G4's work fine for VW, but since VW does not employ Altivec instructions, there should not be much difference in performance between say a 500 mhz. G4 and a 500 mhz. G3. Donald ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Mike, The Trim command will definitely be returning in 9.5 (due this fall). Your comment about preferences though hits one area of software design that I think is a problem with many applications now. If we added a preference for every time we changed a behavior, VW would have HUNDREDS of preferences. We hear constantly about the complexity of our competition and strive constantly to avoid a situation like the "system variables" that exist in AutoCAD. I've also seen legacy applications fade away under their inability to move forward any more since they have to maintain so many old and unused branches of code. Have you ever had the feeling when running a Microsoft application that it will do exactly what you want...if you could just find that preference setting you need? Where there are clear consistencies in UI paradigms I think we should take advantage of them. Preferences are useful when there is no clear "correct" behavior and several paths are required by different user sets. That being said (sometimes it is good to hear the philosophy!), you seem to making a case for this behavior being a preference. I'll keep listening to users and see whether this should be added in an update as well. Best Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

I can explain our reason for making this change and would be interested to hear your comments. A big part of VectorWorks 9 was a push to standardize our interface to match OS UI conventions on both platforms. For years, new users have complained about the shift-selection behavior being non-standard. Two particular points were cited: shift-click and shift-marquee behaved iconsistently (one toggled the selection, one extended it) and that the shift-marquee behaved differently from other Macintosh applications (including the Finder!). When we investigated this further, we found a clear reference in the Apple interface guidelines, also probably explaining why we don't work like other drawing programs on the Macintosh. These inconsistencies are the kind of things that make a product very difficult for new users to learn and adopt. If you've ever used a program that didn't properly support shift and cntrl selection operations in lists, for example, you've experienced the same type of frustration that new users were facing with MiniCAD and VectorWorks before the current version. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Redraw is 10-15% slower in 9. I agree with you that we should always strive to make things faster, but don't forget that we DOUBLED the accuracy of this version. Any coordinate math now moves twice the data as before. There are some gains in operations that take advantage of a more accurate coordinate system (such as changing units, scale, or drawing size no longer have the long pause after execution), but ultimately 9 uses more accurate, but slower math for geometry. That being said, a small slowdown in redraw is not the problem that bothers you, but rather the interactive responsiveness of the product. We have programmers working on this now and hope to make improvements in an upcoming update. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

In what ways do you mean when you say "video response". Our tests on document redraw times (the time it takes to redraw an entire document) are within 10-15% of 8.5.2. Do you mean the time it takes to rotate images in 3D, feedback in tools, or some other area? ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Speed is definitely one of our top priorities for rendering, but it is important to not only consider particular technologies. RenderWorks 9 is twice as fast as RenderWorks 8 in many cases, without dual processor support. This speed bump is available to ALL users rather than just the 5% with dual processor machines. Another point to consider is that multi-threading an application for multiple processors can actually cause it to run slower on a single processor because of the additional overhead of thread management. We will continue to find ways to speed our application for users, and multi-processing is just one of many technologies that we will consider. Best Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Petri, Support for Chinese is possible in 9.0.1, but you'll need to make a couple changes to enable this since it is not officially enabled in the English version. I'll can send these to you if you get in touch with me via e-mail: flaherty@nemetschek.net. Best Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net [This message has been edited by SeanFlaherty (edited 07-19-2001).]

John, Here's some clues from a developer working in this area: " I think that they are having alias problems because under OS 9, they are connecting to their fileserver using the AppleTalk protocol, while under OS X they are connecting using TCP/IP. The AppleTalk-based alias does not contain information on how to identify the TCP/IP-connected file server. They should try using the Network Browser or the Chooser under OS 9 to connect to their fileserver using TCP/IP (they should not use an existing server alias to connect). I've forgotten the details of how to do this when both protocols are available, but I can look for them if necessary. After doing this, they should open the target file and use the Reselect Document button in the Edit Workgroup Reference dialog to reselect the source file. They should then save the target file (making sure the mod date changes afterwards). They should then reboot under OS X and try opening the target file. My guess is that it will access the source file successfully." Can you confirm what protocols you're using on each platform? Best Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

Carl, This looks like overzealous upgrading of the specs on our part. Windows 95 is still supported by the version that you have. Regards, Sean ------------------ Sean Flaherty CTO Nemetschek North America flaherty@nemetschek.net

We'll be making an annoucement about this at the MacWorld/New York show later this week. Keep an eye on our web site! Regards, Sean ******************************* * Sean Flaherty * * Chief Technology Officer * * VectorWorks Product Manager * * Nemetschek North America * * sean@nemetschek.net * *******************************

Have you tried exporting as VRML from RenderWorks? This seems to produce a much better result in Cinema 4D than DXF/DWG. Best Regards, Sean