barkest

@Philip Smith Ah ok I was not aware you could download the professional version for 1-year. My understanding was 30-day trial so maybe Jim can clear it up. In the past you could open student docs in the professional version but then the doc would remain watermarked once again maybe Jim could explain if that has changed (disappointing if it has). Either way if you are still a student then you can download the student version from the portal and it would of course work fine. I understand that if you have student work you want to convert to professional then if you purchase VW there is a discount and you can have a number of docs converted. There are a few differences between prof and student. Finally if you are in the UK my experience of student portfolios for interviews/jobs is that the watermark is not relevant. http://www.vectorworks.net/education/student2pro

What are the versions? If the one at Uni is a higher version than the one at home then you should do File > Export > Export Vectorworks....... and vice versa I would guess that the student version is the same as the one available on the portal where if you have a valid student id you can register and after approval you can download

Create the print file from 2014 and print at Uni. If it is a PDF then export to PDF, or to an image file etc. I am unsure why you have to open in an earlier version. To clear up my confusion: You are a student who has VW2014 at home and you have 2011 and 2013 at Uni? Not sure where the non student/professional version came in to this unless I missed something? Also, I am pretty sure that 2014 has not been downloadable from the student portal for a few years so how did you upgrade to 2014 or was that sometime ago? If so then just jump to 2017/2018. Out of interest which Uni and I am surprised they have such old installs of VW (they should be up to date or at least only a single year behind)? Sorry for all the questions but I teach at Uni in Southampton and its interesting to know what happens elsewhere

Use both. Su works very well with VW and has done since 2015.

Autodesk products are licensed for 3-years and all products are available to students. VW is 1-year and C4D has to be paid for at currently around £90 for an 18-month license. Dear Maxon its not the way to promote your product to students. This is an issue as the students, or at least mine over the last 6-years (around 700 students), do not use C4D for onward processing as they cannot install it outside of the Uni due to cost. Why should they when the can trade .fbx to Maya for free and honestly the process is seamless. It makes no sense to me but I guess people at Nem and Maxon communicate regularly and recognise this problem (or maybe not).

What about if you fill the shape (bucket tool) and then double the offset of the orginal and then clip the shape with the filled shape. Not tried this but makes sense in my head

There is also the chance that the client loves it and signs up. AR, MR and VR is not all doom and gloom (although you make a fair point).

Yes but its not a magic button. You need to do some set up work first such as colliders etc. But its not a 'huge' amount of work although there is a fair bit of up front learning.

Hi Alan hopefully I addressed this issue in my last PM Good Luck

Hi Alan you are on the right track. Have a look at this for flipped normals and you can correct Good Luck

Merry Christmas all and +1 for the best forum help for any product that I use or have ever used

NV is too far removed from its user base. I appreciate all of the incredible work that Jim does and in all honesty its better than most companies but its not enough. A broken record statement: A clear development path explaining where things are going would help enormously. Too much time hiding behind "We cant inform our competitors" doesn't help. "We are currently working on the stair tool" does help. I have no idea why everything is so secret and why there is so much stress on people finding out what is happening

For AR/MR/VR I would recommend VW > Unity using the Vuforia SDK I appreciate it means another application but honestly I am not sure how you are going to do it without Unity/UDK VW actually plays well with Unity Very quickly you can be up and running

@rDesignThanks for that I did not know about SU Free. You can still download SU 2017 Make https://www.sketchup.com/download/all Disappointed that it now runs in a browser but at Uni we purchase the pro version and it will be interesting to see how we go with Free in the future @Jim Presently you have to save as Su 2015 for VW2017. It used to be the case that you would go back on version but clearly that is not the case currently. Could you confirm the versions of Su that work with 2018 and if you are going to keep pace with at least the previous version of Su? thank you

We use it all of the time and take the models from SU into VW after clean up work. VW tools are far superior and despite claims to the contrary VW is much quicker than SU. The one area where SU beats VW hands down is with texturing, which VW is absolutely awful at. In fact a large green crayon held in a boxing glove would be superior to VW for texturing. SU relies on a lot of plugins which at times is not great but there are several UV mapping tools which help enormously. The model into VW works very well indeed and scaled textures are respected in VW and rescaling of objects is also respected with the texture also resizing correctly. There are a lot of things to be aware of when working between SU and VW but as long as you follow a set of rules you are good to go. I am happy to answer questions on the process. <Edit> I should also say that SU is free (SU Make) and its all you need and we have been using it seriously for years. So the flashy promos are absolutely fine because the product is free. Maybe it is an urban myth but I believe Google stipulated that Trimble had to provide a free version for life during the sale of Su.

@EAlexander When I finish my current project as long as the Uni are ok with it then I will be happy to post it as it is not commercial (education only)

Bottom line is quality of final output and there really is no contest. The Arnold renderer is just beautiful and honestly no matter how hard I work in C4D I just can't reproduce. Materials are a confusing mess and UV mapping is laughable so the time I lose (and there is a lot of it) fixing everything else in C4D, only to end up with an inferior output, I can spend in the object hierarchy. My workflow is so much quicker now from end-to-end and I really don't go back to VW so its a one-way-ride

Slightly off topic but I went with C4D for quite some time then the latest release just wasn't good enough and it hit me that I had only chosen C4D because of the VW pipeline. Once I got over that I dropped it like a rock and took up Maya. It has been a breath of air with the UV tools (just gorgeous) and the Arnold renderer. VW is seamless into Maya without a single issue at all. No doubt, for me at least, it has been a successful decision. I now build in VW and then light, texture and render in Maya. I often use VW structures as reference objects in Maya and rebuild if required. For interest it was BodyPaint and the utter lack of pipeline with Substance Painter and Unity that killed C4D for me. Well those and the complete jumble of a material implementation which confused me no end. I am sure it works for others but the quality of my work has never been higher and that is after less than 3-months. As I say, I appreciate it works for others but not for me.

I can only speak with the experience of the results the students have had here in the UK.

I have students who use Archicad and those who use VW. A very broad answer is VW much better at 2D and Archicad much better at modelling. I was hoping VW would catch up with Sub-D but without texturing it unfortunately hasn't. If I were starting out again now I would go Archichad but bear in mind we are Interior Design and not Architecture so it may well be the other way around for the majority.

Four pencils which would now come with four separate select agreements.

In all honesty even though we have 2018 I am still using 2017 as there is nothing for us of any real significance. Multi-Viewport but that's it and on its own not enough to invest time in 2018. Best release we ever had was 2015 by a country mile - now that was a game changer. Now its too much bling and not enough substance (apologies to those who worked incredibly hard on the release)

Use Collada (.dae) to transfer from VW to SU

Initially basic walking around a space and interaction.

I will be developing for the Hololens again soon after my sidetrack to AR. It is VW to Unity