Mark Aceto
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Posts posted by Mark Aceto
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On 2/13/2019 at 10:39 AM, EAlexander said:I work the same way as Wesley basically. I do think that there is part of the conversation missing:
Unreal Engine 4
I think even dedicated render engines like VRAY, Corona, Octane, etc. should be on the look out for real time game engines. Already making headway in Games and a lot of Archviz is moving towards this. Have you guys looked at Unreal Studio:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/studio
Pretty impressive.
It's also the rendering engine used in Twinmotion.
When still renders are screenshots, and animations take a few minutes to render, there's no reason to spend time and $$$$$$$ on a render farm for Cinema (including the ported version in VW). Even an iMac Pro chokes on Cinema anything. Meanwhile a laptop running Unreal/Twinmotion is rendering in real time. The end result is 80% as good as Cinema but takes 20% of the time (and hardware cost), so it's a no-brainer.
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Would be interested in a similar test specific to VW (and adding the late-2018 MBP with Vega 20 GPU, and also an eGPU). Whether testing video editing or 3D modeling/drafting, the takeaway seems to be how each system performs in relation to the others. In other words, the test wouldn't require the perfect prototype file to interpret results (system A is n% faster at doing this test than systems B, C, D). That's basically what we're trying to figure out here: which system should I buy for my needs (and then factor in how many years it takes Apple to upgrade it, user upgradeability, modularity, built in display or not.. )
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23 hours ago, digitalcarbon said:
this is not going to help anyone...it will start out as saving time but then we will fill up our time with other things and soon our lives will be choked...again.
All I want is a decent GPU in a MacBook Pro. Instead we get bluetooth toothbrushes and an app to tie our shoes. Everything's coming up WALL-E.
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40 minutes ago, mjm said:
By the way, this is a frightening and totally beautiful data display
New game: org chart or burning man art?
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Looking for a way to bump zoom levels incrementally from 200% to 300% to 400% and so on vs. manually entering a custom value every time. Ultimately, it would be great to cycle through zoom levels similar to layers (command up arrow, command down arrow).
Tech Support says that this feature has been requested, so I'm wondering if anyone has written a script, shortcut, buried menu or tool item in Edit Workspace?
For example, select 100%, and then hit command + to bump the zoom level in 100% increments?
For clarification, I'm not looking for:
- Zoom in/out button which does so exponentially (why???): 200%, 400%, 800%, 1600%, 3200%
- Saved views
Thinking this through, there must be a way to set the magnifier glass zoom in/out button percentages similar to adding custom rotation angles...
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17 hours ago, digitalcarbon said:
then everyone on the team in various offices around the world needs to have the latest hardware to handle the vast amounts of import/export...
I can't even get people to use Skype without major arm twisting.
Had a big fiasco with team members using Dropbox last week...not all team members have the same amount of space...so someone deleted the project file off their computer because THEY were running out of HD space...but they deleted it for everyone...this was caught 10 days after the 30 day delete restore ran out...but we got it back with the help of the techs at Dropbox...the point...everyone needs to have the same communication capacity...more arm twisting...
Reminds me of this
anxietyimage illustrating communication between various team sizes (notwithstanding time zones):
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@digitalcarbon DaVinci would be proud. BTW I thought "we cannot manage what we have not measured" was from one of my favorite books, The Mythical Man Month, but I guess not.
Here are few gems from that one:
- “An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices—wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices. The cook has another choice; he can turn up the heat. The result is often an omelette nothing can save—burned in one part, raw in another.”
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"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
- See also: "Everyone knows it takes a woman nine months to have a baby. But you Americans think if you get nine women pregnant, you can have a baby in a month." –Theodore von Karman
As a Mac user of Vectorworks, every September is a clearcut case of expectation vs reality, so I
patientlychoose to wait, and eat my Apple and Vectorworks omelettes a few months later. That also goes for most of the software I use. 1Password is still reverse engineering issues in Mojave. 3Dconnexion still hasn't figured out what Apple broke in High Sierra. -
"Software is never finished, only shipped."
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@JRA-Vectorworks-CAD thank you so much for the webinar, and taking the time to answer everyone's questions.
Additionally, I was wondering if you have any best practices for revising a VW model after importing to TM?
Also, like a lot of colleagues, I find myself limiting VW rendering to OpenGL and Hidden Line. That keeps the file size down, speeds it up, and reduces crashes which are particularly beneficial when sharing with collaborators (especially if they're using an older/weaker/Apple computer). So I'm really just plating up the 3D model these days. In fact, I'm almost at the point of not using Renderworks textures at all for those reasons and also because I (or someone else) can add much more realistic materials in a standalone render app (in a fraction of the time no less). As you've been a longtime user of 3D software and traditional drawing/presenting processes, how has exporting to TM changed/streamlined your VW workflow?
Thanks again!
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On 1/1/2019 at 3:49 PM, Sebastiano B. said:
Sonnet Puck with a RX 570 eGPU
Given that it delivers 45w of power, it's just a few USB ports away from being the holy grail: eGPU/charger/dongle (abiding by the "one in, one out" rule). This gives me hope about the future... the GPU abides.
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23 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:
After installing Mac Security Update 2019-001 Version 10.13.6, I'm back to unplugging/plugging back in my 3Dconnexion CadMouse on my 2014 MBP following a restart.
False alarm; mysteriously working fine again.
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6 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:
The combo update is not yet available but should be soon (for those running 10.14.2).
Combo update is live.
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On 1/14/2019 at 8:48 AM, Mark Aceto said:
To be clear, this is a "recent Macs" issue; not a Mojave issue.
After installing Mac Security Update 2019-001 Version 10.13.6, I'm back to unplugging/plugging back in my 3Dconnexion CadMouse on my 2014 MBP following a restart.
So, at lease we have a lead inside the walled garden now...
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10.14.3 was released today (along with updates to every other Apple device).
The combo update is not yet available but should be soon (for those running 10.14.2).
Tempted to try this out on one of my machines but also inclined to wait for VW2019 sp3.
Curious to hear if 10.14.3 fixes the issues that folks were experiencing with prior versions of Mojave.
Break a leg!
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21 hours ago, Michael H. said:
New versions of VW can be frustrating, I feel your pain. I now follow these self-guided rules which seems to work well for me.
- If I start a project in a specific VW version, finish it in that version.
- Don't migrate to a new version of VW until at least SP2 or SP3. Just because a new version has been released doesn't mean I have to jump on the bandwagon immediately.
- Spend some time to play around with any new version to learn features, see what works or doesn't before taking the leap. I tend to move to a new version about 6 months after the initial release.
- Every now and then I re-do my templates from scratch.
I'm now on VW2019 and it's been plain sailing so far. Hope your issues get resolved.
And if you're using a Mac, for the love of all things holy, wait until their annual OS sp3 update (and plan for that upgrade cycle when making hardware purchase decisions).
In general, I would never expect sp2 of any software to be as stable as sp6, and no one is holding a gun to my head to upgrade. All software/firmware/hardware/automobiles/motorcycles/toothbrushes... have wrinkles to iron out between v1 and v3, so that is to be expected and should be weighed into the decision to upgrade. The decision to upgrade is always a choice, especially when choosing to take the leap for a team.
If there's room for improvement on VW end, it's pushing out that sp3 update sooner than March every year. Another solution would be more "point" updates like we're seeing with the 2019 release, especially now that the updater is built into the app itself (vs a standalone installer). Rather than letting the perfect get in the way of the good, it would be nice to see a 2.2 release in January, 2.3 in February... and so on, patching fixes quicker than a 5-month gap in between sp2 and sp3. I'm also being very careful to tip toe around the trap of "put more engineers on this thing" because that is not my intention at all. Just looking for solutions to these pain points.
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2 hours ago, Jim Wilson said:
I've often seen class for a simplified version of it for everyone else.
Simply adding a Note (text) field to the OIP (like the Dimension tool) would solve this vs. clicking the "Edit Note..." button to open another dialog.
Bonus: add the usual text editing options to the OIP.
There's plenty of space available on this 3008x1692 scaled display:
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Also, what's up with the Callout tool? Why isn't it as simple to edit as Dimensions (inline or in the OIP)? Is that an architectural thing?
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3 minutes ago, Jim Wilson said:
Its related to how the printer definites it's page sizes on Mac, setting it to Custom lets you control it rather than rely on the defaults. You almost always want to be overriding the defaults because they sometimes have arbitrary margins.
Something is corrupt in that file because a fresh file gives me this (as it should):
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1 hour ago, Jim Wilson said:
You should be able to override that pretty easily with these steps
Experiencing the same bug (which I'd rather not have to override in the next SP):
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Fewer dialogs, more palettes = less friction. Good examples of this: Cinema, Rhino, Maya, Unreal/Twinmotion, Adobe...
The most frustrating thing about dialogs is when I'm starting at a blank OIP on a 4k monitor, and I have to dive into a dialog with multiple tabs. This is more often the case with every release. Good examples of OIP efficiency are all the Spotlight PIO's that third party developers designed (and are baked into VW now). I'd much rather draw stairs and ramps using those tools because they're a thousand times faster. The hoist POI is great. Also, the door and window PIO's make great use of the OIP. We all know how dreadful the notorious stair tool is. Same with fencing and railing. And 3 different types of tree PIO's... But that's drifting into continuity.
You bring up a good point with the various industry workspaces vs the Lightroom process. As parametric modeling becomes more and more procedural, this seems like the next thing to evolve. Especially, since I use every workspace, and not editing any of them results in far less deleting of the user folder/preferences. I would much rather have a palette or Menu header for each industry than have to separately and pull apart and dock the redundant palettes for every workspace. And that's not to mention that when creating a custom workspace, we can only drag one menu/tool item at a time which is a nonstarter for me (and has been for years).Someone else pointed out how other 3D apps like Cinema display/edit materials vs textures in the resource manager (the iTunes of VW). This would also be a welcome improvement, particularly better previews.
Lastly, I have no wish for a Dynamic / On-Demand UI Display. Again, continuity... KISS.
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7 hours ago, SVA Architects said:
As I said before, Mojave has put many developers in a ‘spin’. It is a ‘fundamentally’ different OS. I desperately need a new Mac but dont want to downgrade the OS it will come with.
All of the 2017 Macs shipped with High Sierra, so you should be fine downgrading from Mojave to HS on those models. The maxed out 2017 iMac and the base 2017 iMac Pro are great options (and priced comparably). Also, check out Apple's refurbished site.
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Just got off the phone with 3Dconnexion tech support. They have bug reports for iMac Pro and recent MacBook Pro models. They're tracking it as "mac-48", and hoping to have it fixed by the next driver update.
To be clear, this is a "recent Macs" issue; not a Mojave issue.
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4 hours ago, zoomer said:
Like in the case of 3DConnexion, where the latest driver update from 3 days ago mainly fixes
that all warning dialog for access rights will really appear.
Having this issue on iMac Pro running High Sierra.
@Jim Wilson this topic is drifting from Mojave compatibility to 3Dconnexion compatibility. Could we move these recent posts to a new thread for "3Dconnexion Restart Bug" or something?
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7 hours ago, SVA Architects said:
Much as I hate MS Windows, I am trialling VW on an old i7/Quadro Dell Precision laptop I keep for certain Windows tasks. It takes ages to start up but once running at least it does not spin and crash.
At this time I no longer know what else to do for the first time in 20 years. I would say the the Mojave/Mac situation is in crisis for CAD users.
I hope someone at Apple is listening and working very hard. Dell, HP and Autodesk must be feeling very happy right now and waiting for switchers to call.
I started with Minicad over 20 years ago due to the Apple option. If I switch I may not stay with VW. The stats show there still more VW Windows crashes than OSX ones. I may be small fry but so are the other 50% of Apple VW users. It all adds up. I will give it three more months...
Another solution is continue using High Sierra for the next few months. Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade.
Custom Shortcuts - Add OPTION+
in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests
Posted · Edited by Mark Aceto
TLDR: add Option+ modifier to presets in VW workspace editor
At the moment there are a few ways to create custom shortcuts:
Mac Sys Prefs works for most shortcut but not for Rotate... Does anyone know why? Oddly enough, it does work as expected for Rotate 3D... It also works fine for other shortcuts I've created in this manner.
The VW workspace editor limits you to preselected modifier keys that do not include Option+. Consequently, most of the provided modifiers are already dedicated to built in shortcuts and, unlike Mac Sys Prefs, will not override them (you'll get an error message if you try).
In the meantime, the workaround is Command+Option+R in Mac Sys Prefs to Rotate 3D... and it's saving me tons of annoying extra mousing and clicking.