Mark Aceto

January has become my new favorite time of year. It's worth noting that VW2020 didn't port the revolutionary Audio ToolSet 2 update from a year ago. And the stock text fields for LED screens are severely lacking compared to the original.

Can I get an AMEN? Hands down, the single greatest feature of 2020.

To help wrap your head around that, turn off hierarchical display. It's really just an organizational naming convention to map attributes/texures. I've actually started using the same organization in my budgets and other documents (Site, Site-Barricade, Site-Restrooms). That said, there's one caveat that drives everyone crazy, and I think this is what you're trying to wrap your head around: the "parent" class doesn't actually function as a parent (screenshot attached). The forums are filled with debates, complaints, and workarounds to this bug feature. VW's answer for their Spotlight template is to add a "-Main" class to everything. That also opens up a whole debate of classes vs layers... that has very little to do with mapping attributes. Pro Tip: with the "Landru-sourced" tools, I always select the default parts classes except when I'm doing something weird. Sometimes, I'll want to be able to hide a class from a sheet layer, so I'll create a "-Hide" class. This is often the case when I'm masking a projection, tweaking the bases on drapes, using the drape tool for event fence (and completely renaming the default classes "Fence-Scrim" and so on). For clarification, you can change the parent name from "SoftGoods" to "Soft Goods" or "Fencing" or "Nerfherder" or whatever you want, and all the parts class will take it: Nerfherder-Curtains, Nerfherder-Borders, and so on. I will usually make that same name match the class in the OIP ("Audio" vs "None"). Keep in mind, all of this starts functioning a little like the 0 class in AutoCAD. Every sub/part/class must be turned on for it to be visible.

Fingers crossed for Twinmotion live sync in VW2020 SP3 (like Lumion last year). We know it's in the works; we just don't know when (SP3 usually drops in March, and the Design Summit is in April). I assume that some of these 3D design/render apps are competitors, so I'm not holding my breath for future integrations with all of them.

That perfectly describes my chief criticism of most new "improvements" introduced over the past few years: death by a thousand clicks. To Andy's point: a symbol that's properly classed, should be replaced with the same attributes and in the same orientation. Otherwise, it's "Two steps forward (six steps back, six steps back, six steps back, six steps back)". This is why most of the shops and designers I work with don't even use the Title Black Tool (and when they do, they heavily misuse it).

I don't need to open the file to know this pain. I can live with the logic of replacing a longer stick with a shorter stick (adjusting the assembly for that would be a nice-to-have) but the unrotated 3D orientation of the replacement symbol (a must-have) is what really grates my gears.

Nope, not fixed in 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020, so I’m not betting on 2021 either.

There are 3 things you can count on in life: Death Taxes Changing the units in your drawing to mm when importing L-A symbols to bumper/speaker PIO's

@bgoff thank you! As a VW user since 2012, I never would have guessed to click and hold vs move by points. The other thing that threw me at first was drawing a rectangle to create the geoimage. Although that sort of made sense in hindsight (cropping images and viewports), it took hours of trial and error until I randomly noticed a rectangle being drawn in the promo video (must have watched it a dozen times before I caught that). I totally get the choices made but some of them break with Vectorworks logic / behavior, and the documentation in the help app is like reading a Jane Austen novel, so a quick video or cheat sheet would be really helpful to get us started with this tool / feature set 🙏 Continued thanks for making this possible - it's a massive game-changer in the outdoor live events industry 🙌

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@bgoff any luck with that video? I need to: Move a geoimage on a design layer to align it with the page Import 3D buildings that are all manner of random (shape?) files from: https://mdc.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ab4d3a61e60c441bbfc1098d701fc991 I'm stabbing in the dark, and getting nowhere fast.

I just called sales, and paid for it. Here's the lowdown for Service Select members (only compatible with Spotlight and Designer): $600 to purchase ConnectCAD 2020 (perpetual license) $132/year to maintain add-on at time of annual SS renewal (for upgrades) So, even though it's not baked into 2020 for free, at least it's less expensive than it was before (not to mention ramping up development in-house). Excited to get cracking as I've had my eye on ConnectCAD for years, and finally pulled the trigger!

Sorry for the confusion, I was joking about my future 16" MacBook Pro... now that it's finally available. However, I don't plan to buy one until the next iteration in summer 2020 (when Catalina is stable, I no longer need 32-bit apps, it has the next gen CPU, Wi-Fi 6, a time-tested keyboard... ) The Beast sounds epic. AMD had some pretty big announcements today too :) The new 16" MBP configured with the same specs as my 2019 MBP (8-core 2.4GHz, 4GB VRAM, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) costs an unbelievable $1,000 LESS (with mostly newer faster components, improved restored keyboard, physical Escape key, a slightly larger screen), so that gives me hope that the upcoming Mac Pro won't kill buyers with upgrade pricing. That said, the CPU has already been trounced by what AMD is currently offering (especially for your VW 300 DPI renders), so I think we still live in a world where we use a MBP as our daily driver (and take onsite), and config a Windows workstation for rendering. Also, they've greatly improved computer trade-in value which really helps everyone who bought a lemon (myself included).

That's also a great way to keep people from messing with your drawing :)

Does anyone have a straight answer on a la carte pricing for this add-on?