zoomer

The amount of VRAM does not effect speed, only the VRAM's speed and its connection speed. It is more that you need to have enough of VRAM, to get your whole Model and Textures into the GPU.

Is your drawing geometry far from VW internal origin ?

OK, good to know.

When trying to find ESC, some people had problems with accidental double clicks on ESC. That made them "escape" too far in their Apps. Of course VW is unaffected.

Points and Blanks are ok for Paths on a Server ? When I tried years ago with Mac Mini Server, I had even Problems with my Server Name in upper case letters ....

OK, I understand .... Will that control work for sections too ? Upper Layer always in front ? I never cared about visibility stacking. One Layer for each Story. Indeed, that means a lot of CMD+F CMD+B work. Like you draw all your walls and finally create the Slab by these > it will cover everything in Top Plan View. In that BIM workflow the typical the 2D send backward/forward does not work for me, I see no reaction. Maybe too many depth levels. I always have to use complete "sent to Back/Front"

How do you like the ESC key ? Keyboard without stroke is said to be ... ahm ... strange but a better haptic feedback at the end, when typing accepted would help ? The enormous touchpad, with palm detection, not disturbing. But haven't heard of someone who liked or needed that size. So I expect further things in the future (like Pen input) ?

And I wish to have all kind of haptic objects that will be recognized by the system. Like programmable Boxes that resemble different Stories, that you arrange somewhere on your tablet to control current visibilities or other things. Things like Rulers that tell the machine that you want to draw straight, at an angle or lock to a specific Axis that way. Or workflow boxes that will switch Workspace UI to specific tasks. Different Pens or Tools that provide different settings like Auto Classing, Line Weights and such things.

^ This was an A5 sized Tablet (?). (21,00x14,85 cm) I think that is a good size for a Tablet. As I see un the underlaying graphics I had on mine, I used an Area of about 18,0x14,8 cm (at 4/3 Monitor aspect ratio times last millennium) You used only half of it ? In Mouse (accelerated) or Tablet (linear) Mode ?

I think there is the "red house" (Always Active File) Setting needed in RM when we switch Files, which we had in old RB. (Which didn't always work for me) That is very frequent wished on the german Forums. For the user-ignoring "Edit" of non active Files, I think at least a hint like : "This resource is not in your current file - do you want to import that ... ?"

Difficult as Im still 100% on the Mac side. The old Mac Pro stucks with 10.7. so no newer VW experience possible any more. Mac Book Pro already bequeathed. Could try my Time Machine Mac Mini Server in screen sharing mode

I had expected far more people opting for Mouse+Keyboard only. And maybe they are right at the end. What I want for me personally is a Monitor Touch Pencil device that sits flat on my table. So opposed to a sloped Surface Studio position where the dial wheel or other Tools will slowly slide down the screen. With an option to set it vertical like a standard Screen when used with Apps or Workflows that may not support a Tablet Mode. Also it should have all attributes of a good monitor like a high resolution or large colorspace. Screen size should be at least 30". While I think when being larger, like it was at times when you draw with ink and T-square/Mayline on a 2x1 m table, you would no more sit still on your chair but need to do your gymnastics around your tablet which for me sounds attractive. Important is that is not a Graphic Tablet only but a Screen you work on so that you can watch your hands. Otherwise I see no sense to do larger hand movements as I will do with Mouse usage. Those Wacom attempts didn't work in the past for me. It can be an All in One device for standard office use, as long as it has fast and future proof connections (TB3, USB-C, ...) to accelerate that device with additional and replaceable workstations to allow long term usage. Or simply as a separate input device like Cintiq/Canvas. The Monitor Mode Stand could be something external, like a simple easel.

My 3D Apps check at their start if GPU is able to handle all advanced OpenGL. If not they will switch down all advanced GPU features if not just go down to CPU only view drawing. Or you can set it down manually. So they will start and run on low specs. Of course there will be a point where it gets so slow that it is unrealistic to use it that way at all. Until that point, it is a nice option to have. I think VW may work similarly if I set OpenGL down to "best compatibility" ?

In the tests I have seen the Surface devices don't throttle down (CPU) over time under heavy load. Oppose to most similar windows devices and especially fan-less designs. They will make some noise instead and seem to have overall good thermal management. Some years ago, for the Apple iMac (using desktop CPU ?), a $300 upgrade from i5 to i7, although its small increase in CPU frequency, that option was more than 40% faster in Cinebench Multi CPU, which is a lot. So mainly because of hyper threading. For the surface devices with mobile GPU, only 2 Cores, the results between i5 and i7 seem to resemble exactly the difference between clock speeds only. So a CPU upgrade is questionable for these devices. It is not worth the extra price, only mandatory to get access to the max GPU option. So for it would be interesting to go even with one of the regular options and not try to fulfill VW min specs. If that would mean I can not open the most complex projects, display wireframe only and have very slow experience, I maybe could life well with that. If VW will crash already at its start, it would not make sense at all.

The newest Surface Book is well inside VW min specs. i7, 16 GB RAM, fast SSD and M965 with 2 GB VRAM. But in this configuration we are in about a $3k range, simple double as much as you normally would pay for such kind of device. Also a smaller Surface Pro would be even more mobile and would have same CPU, RAM, SSD options, just misses the discrete GPU, needed for VW. Interesting is that for the newest mobile CPU's, the i7 configurations, although having additional Hyperthreading (virtual cores), aren't noticeably faster in Cinebench.

It is, for rendering purposes mainly. As I do rendering, rendering speed is the most limiting factor, because Cinebench is always available, it is mostly the only benchmark I care. I have no experience with other Game or artificial benchmarks. If Multi CPU Cinebench for a machine of interest is 2 times faster than my machine, I know it will render nearly 2 times faster in C4D - but also in Renderworks, Modo and Vray. Simplified, if a machine is fast enough for rendering, it will be fast enough for other (less demanding) tasks automatically. As other tasks opposed to rendering, which mostly uses multiple cores, may often still be single threaded, I will look at the single core Cinebench as well, and maybe prefer to accept a little smaller multi core result when looking for the best single core result, as this will help in all other software and tasks too. Or in short, if 2 systems have similar multi CPU result, I will always prefer the one with the faster single CPU result. Also Cinebench OpenGL Test for me is a reliable tool to compare GPU speeds. (VW, and most Software on OS X uses OpenGL) Simplified, a GPU with a high CB OpenGL score will very likely be a quite powerful Card in ActiveX on Windows. So yes, Cinebench is a valuable Benchmark for VW Work. Look at highest single core CPU speed for overall VW work. You can forget about multi core speeds as long as you do not render in RW. Look for fastest OpenGL scores for VW screen drawing speed. (And keep in mind that you also need enough NVRAM, when you compare GPU speeds)

I had this too in some cases. (Crosshair cursor lagging behind mouse cursor, like a magnetic field that pulls cross hair away from the cursor) But didn't notice that again some many weeks. (Although im running "best Performance" OpenGL) Perhaps it was file related, or other device like Enterprise related which I no more use and I think it was eliminated after an App restart.

I don't get what the problem really is, Preview App works well on everyday use with PDFs and large amounts of highres Images. Just typical plans and elevations wit a certain amount of details and especially landscape plans from VW users, likely containing additional teaser images are extremely slow. It feels like old times when you had too few RAM and it needed to swap to HDD or some kind of single threaded or 32 bit only behavior, in fact even slower.

I'm highly interested in your Tablet Workflow as I also don't find a satisfying Keyboard/Mouse Workflow in VW. As it was no problem pre VW with my left hand shortcuts only, right hand mouse and NumBlock input in any App, I think it is VW's need for Drag/Selection Tool to still keep pressing the mouse and left hand NumBlock for numeric input and such things that drives me crazy. I wanted to retry my old Wacom tablets (A3 with Serial Plug and old Volito ?) but unfortunately none of them will run on macOS Sierra anymore. I have no handicap with mouse hand at all. If I got that correct, Mouse is no option for you in any way.. So I have a few questions. 1. What are your UI problems exactly, has there something changed significantly after VW 2016 ? 2. Did you ever tried Magic Trackpad (if you are OSX) as it is reasonable large ? (Current Macbooks are equal and OS X touchpads the first that I was ever able to use or even to renounce of the mouse in most cases because of their quality. For Windows, only the 2 Surface laptops from MS seem to have similar ergonomics, but irrelevant for VW) 3. Did you use Mouse or Tablet Mode for Cursor Movements with you Pen 4. What Size of Tablet did you prefer ? (I had to set my A3 to a small A5-like Area to not have too long tedious ways in either mode (!) while smaller tablets did not work either)

If I am not the only one interested in, I would of course like to see that as a wish to be considered in future development. And yes for now I would like to know if VW will run on a Surface Pro4 or a lower specced Surface Book in any way. If I should see hardware recommendations as a recommendation for comfortable working for current project needs or as an absolute minimum needed to make the software run at all.

It is not meant as a replacement for a CAD workstation. Screen estate or rendering demands may not suitable for comfortable working anyway. As long as I had my 17" Macbook Pro and it got old and slow for current software I could use it for such low level purposes on files in that case of course until a come back to my main machine. But that was such a brick that you avoid to take it anywhere if possible. These new devices are very mobile, can serve as Tablet and Laptop at the same time and provide still much more power than my older software was ever used to have at times when it was in real use. CPU, RAM and SSD are not limiting at all and much faster in Ultra Books now. Just their use of onboard GPUs is a problem in VW, while these are also much faster than what was used in the past and allowed to work on complex models at that time. Older Software with its limited Toolsets would be quite ok for such tasks but often prevents from opening current file versions or import formats. So for me it would be nice to be able to use such a device to just open a current file or import a DWG or IFC to examine a new project and give some quick feedback. Maybe someone else was curious and already tried VW on such a device and can give some feedback.

Thinking about the students posts that try to run their VW on weak machines, a current standard VW will likely not run at all instead of just being slow. Maybe that would only work with older VW versions, or a very unlikely special Low Spec or Tablet edition of VW. Should work on Windows with it's legacy support. Not on OS X though because of OS support between App and Device.

I see it the same way.

I'm not sure if it is a good idea, in case of your non rectangular plan, to mix these 3 Levels of complexity : 1. Hyperbolic Paraboloids 2. Sloping Eaves 3. Sloping Ridge I would expect that having one sloping eaves or one sloping ridge are used to avoid any Hyperbolic Paraboloids. If you use both for design reasons I would still expect being used to avoid any Hyperbolic Paraboloids. Or the other case, keeping the roof edges level and use Hyperbolic Paraboloids. If you could live which such a design approach it would be quiet easy with an Multiple Extrude. Draw the first End Profile and the second end Profile and Multi Extrude. Just make sure to keep the same 2D Slope of the Roof Area for both Profiles. You can go into Edit Mode and change your Profiles to play with points of ridge and eaves for their resulting slopes.

Thanks Benson, seems that I get it partly. What mostly works : - Select a Drawing Tool - Set "G" at a given point - Navigate to a special position from there by numeric input - After Enter+Enter you have kind of a temporary snap point to click for your Tool's first point 1. The Drawing Tool has to be activated first 2. "G" has to be used before using any click of the Drawing Tool. 3. That created snapping point mostly works. But sometimes I see 199,999999 cm instead of 200 cm though. 4. I can't repeat "G" to set a new zeroed out Origin to move from there again. 5. I can use "G" when I am already in my Tool mode, by pressing TAB until I reach the end of the Cursor Bar, which finally will not give the size of an element but the distance from "G" 6. For rectangles, changing edges by Drag Tool or 3D Modify Tool, there is no way to "G" or TAB to move at a given distance from the previous location. OK, I think I can do what I need. For me it looks a bit complicated and unergonomic and needs much concentration. For me it will be easier to renounce of the "G" and do it in tedious but less concentration needed 2 step way like first snap it to the given point and move to desired direction in a second step, or even input the new distance by some OIP math for rectangles.