Mark Aceto

96% of marketshare sitting on the table with greedy Autodesk. Imagine if a $99/month sub came along and disrupted that!

As we've been able to for years. Here are the existing plans (Designer plans cost more when paired with BW and/or CC):

The updates to the most expensive add-on, Braceworks, have been glacially incremental at best. As Braceworks-user, I will be judging this "increasing frequency" over the next year. The reason I dropped (Project Wizards) Merlin is because they moved to a SaaS model in the name of increasing development but the opposite happened. Development all but ceased, and they just stuck their hand out. Every developer promises this boilerplate marketing. The onus is on VW to make good on it over the next year.

That's 2 apps lol. There's not going to be an Affinity photo that takes the place of Spotlight / Designer / Braceworks / ConnectCAD in the next decade or more. A competitor to any of those apps doesn't even exist today. My point was if VW had come out with a Steve Jobs-style announcement: "VW costs this much... BW costs this much... CC costs this much... The other guys cost this much... Well, we're combining Architect, Landmark, Braceworks, ConnectCAD... and starting today, you can have all of that for $99/month." That would create incentive for users sitting on 2018 licenses or passing on Service Select to subscribe. Same with users paying through the nose for Revit or AutoCAD. That would increase new users, and get all users on the current version. The rising tide raises all boats... To be crystal clear, what I'm saying is that other than some discounts this fall, there was no good news to come with the bad news. The only good news was, "If you're already a SS member, nothing will get worse for you." The promise of a higher quality app isn't the same as what I described above. It's just the status quo minus something that was taken away (perpetual licenses). That's why the reaction has been, "This is a cash grab." It's a poorly executed transition, and it will be interesting to see how all this pans out a few years from now.

The difference is Cinema merged all of its modules into one “Design Suite” for everyone (which also greatly simplified things) for $99/month. Adobe took their entire suite of apps (roughly $6,000) for $30/month. However VW will continue charging $150/month for a single module, and it goes up to $328/month for Designer/Braceworks/ConnectCAD (what I have). I never had a license for a single Adobe app but ever since Creative Cloud was released, I’ve rented all of them for $30/month. That’s $3,600 over the past decade. And they never would have seen a cent from me otherwise. That’s how you do SaaS.

That is correct. The burden will be put on new users not existing ones.

… and the busiest quarter of the year testing them.

This. There’s an enhancement that’s near and dear to my heart that seemed soooooo close to making it into 2023 but was going to slip a whole year. If you’re a Mac user, you’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling every year around WWDC. Anyway, the very beginning of this enhancement will make an appearance in September, and I’m told it will be improved throughout the year. That’s only one little nugget of hope, and the proof will be in the pudding, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction, so fingers crossed…

Totally get this but also consider a few other things: there will be discounts on 2023 and other incentives to convert to SS, so get SS to buy (literally) yourself another year to weigh your longterm options because, sadly, this December is “now or never.”

Rhino does the same thing with a perpetual license.

Except that Creative Cloud is an entire suite of software valued at over $6000 for $30 a month, so this is more like half the value for 1 app at 5x the price.

Update on the monitor... Got the Dell UltraSharp 43 U4320Q 42.5" and... it's probably getting returned (unless it's a cable issue but I doubt it). I wish I had tested it for a few days before selling the Dell UltraSharp 40" curved monitor to a buddy that just started up his own studio. I stand by every other Dell and BenQ monitor I've owned but this thing is trash (although still better than the LG 43" I had for a week in 2018). Anyway, buyer beware. Also, I'm addicted to curved monitors now, so that's great. Big flat screens look convex now... EDIT: holy smokes, everyone should check this setting on their monitors! Changing the response time from Fast (5ms) to Normal (8ms) eliminated the horrendous ghosting! It seems to be one of those software things like the infamous "soap opera effect" TV motion settings. I may keep this sucker after all...

Following up with a couple months later update as I'm plating up my first drawing set on this machine... Anything on the design layers is fast AF. No remorse. Rendering is everything I hoped for at this price point. No regret. But then we get to the sheet layers... and for the sake of science, I'm happy to report that my CPU, GPU, RAM are nowhere near pegged (or leaking memory). HOWEVER, it's just as slow and painful a slog as it's ever been, especially when it comes to the worst offenders: sections and hidden line. I want someone to tell me what Windows, Linux, whatever workstation will speed up these workflows. It's a trick question. They won't. This has to be some late 90's code that can't even take advantage of fast single core clock speed. BTW this Studio is only nominally faster than than any other M1 when it comes to single core. I'm sure the RAM / VRAM help but, like I said, none of the hardware is pegged. So, spending more money on a Mac (or any computer) to speed up working sheet layers hits a demising return somewhere around the middle. After that mid-tier threshold, investing in higher performance hardware will only speed up rendering. I'm honestly (seriously, literally) at the point of hiring an assistant to plate up my drawings because that would be a better ROI than blowing it on hardware that won't move the needle.

Also, the ability to import FBX models of people like every other 3D design app in the year of our lord 2022 would be nice:

This one is also using an architectural rendering trick inside the viewport on the sheet layer: Polygon tool Lasso mode (draw a big fat circle around the whole thing) Choose a heavy line weight to achieve that outline For clarification, none of these views are schematic (2D by definition). They're just various perspective renders. Searching for schematic views will send you down a rabbit hole of frustration and disappointment.

Apple.

Is it OK to rename these design layers or will that cause issues?

Ugh... Upvote but all of this stuff is so obvious, and it's been years since it was abandoned. I'd submit a VE if I thought it would make a difference.

Upvoted. BTW users also can't edit filters? Shaking my head... Here's my workaround (that will now live in my head rent-free as I manually maintain this):

Tagging classes with "CC" worked but I'm not a fan of tagging.

Because con- classes are at the top of the Classes palette, and sys- classes are at the bottom, I'm trying to find a way to group them together, so let me know which method will not cause issues: Batch rename all CC classes with a CC- prefix Something else? BTW I tried to create a filter but there doesn't seem to be a multistep filter that will search for con- AND sys- (sidebar: that filter feature really needs some love to get where it could be). I guess I could tag classes with CC?

New gig, similar challenge... I have 16 inputs going into a router (half are backups), and 8 outputs coming out of it. Drawing the schematic view is super simple. Not sure how to accomplish this in 3D with a cable path. I'm also not sure if the Router device needs to be something special (like a CTP_) to work with the 3D model / cable path. Sorry, I'm sure this stuff is super basic for most CC users. The media servers and the router are in the same rack, so maybe CC just magically figures it all out? For clarification, there are no adapters in the signal flow: Media server HDMI Router HDMI Projector

Nice! @jnr you update to 12.5 yet?

On 1 screen or 2? And when you say "VW 2022 freezing", do you mean only VW freezes (Application Stopped Responding; Force Quit), or do you mean you were using VW when macOS froze (resulting in a reboot or login)?

A little more context for monitor shoppers, 4k displays start around 27" and go up to 43". However, 3840 x 2160 is only readable on a 42" or larger screen, so you have to scale 4k to whatever resolution works for your eyes. For example, on a 32" display that might be 1620 high; on a 27" display that might be 1440 high. Same with the popular 21:9 ultra wides like I have. Absolutely no one is using this 40" display at the native 5k x 2k (unless they're wearing reading glasses, and holding their face 6" from the screen). The setting is my sig is where most people land. I mention this because when you see a 21:9 screen that's 1600 pixels high, guess what: only 1440 are readable (and "Retina" would be 800 lol).