inikolova

My pleasure. Besides being a QA, I am also involved in the design of every new feature we produce on Vectorworks Cloud Services, so knowing what our customers want and how they work is very important to me. I am filing the wishes that I can distinguish from our conversation in our planning queue 🙂 .

@Christiaan, We are currently discussing the possible ways to support Publish on the cloud in a Project sharing environment. Right now, you can only publish on the cloud from a regular .vwx file. And yes, unfortunately, the viewports in your local file would not be updated. This is a long standing wish that we have, but it is a very hard engineering problem to solve. Since the Cloud is doing the viewport update on a copy of the file that you submitted, how do we merge the updated viewports back to your copy? What If you changed something that affected these viewports? We can easily save another copy in your storage named "_rendered", but then you end up with different files after each rendering, which I think is not ideal also. The best way in my opinion would be if we can find a way to hook up cloud processing to the Update viewport button right within Vectorworks.

@Andy Broomell @_James @Christiaan If you are doing Publish, there is a PDF export setting "Update visible out of date viewport prior to exporting. You must have had this setting turned off. The Cloud is definitely doing rendering, not just export. If this is not working for you, I can help you.

Hi @Sittingducks, We are investigating the issue. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Can you help me understand why this feature would be useful to you and how you would use it? The Vectorworks Cloud Services desktop app has a button that allows you to locate local files on the web. Are you looking for the reverse link basically? But you expect this to work for links that you share with other team members as well? So, from the shared link, the recipient would be able to add the file to their file list, sync to their desktop computer automatically, and then they can directly open the local file from there? The biggest thing that VCS has that Dropbox doesn't is Cloud Processing. You can offload time consuming renderings to the Cloud, so you can continue to use your local Vectorworks while the Cloud is doing the rendering. Vectorworks Cloud Services also offers viewers for panoramic images and videos with VR viewing options. VCS has 3D model viewer with AR viewing option, presentation feature that allows you to link panoramic images to create a virtual walkthrough experience, and many more. In other words, Vectorworks Cloud Services is a cloud storage solution geared towards industry workflows. Please try it with caution. The Vectorworks Cloud Services should be able to work with shortcuts/aliases, but I have not checked it after the sync functionality was completely reengineered. I would not be surprised if there are problems.

Thanks, @Christiaan and @_James, I appreciate the dialogue. I agree that there will be different needs in both directions and we need to find the right balance. Please keep your ideas and suggestions coming! When supported with real life scenarios, they are most helpful, as they help us understand your needs better.

@Christiaan and @_James, Thank you for the clarification! Could you provide a list of items that you think Vectorworks Cloud Services is lacking when compared to the third-party providers you are using currently? I would like to add these things to our list of future improvements. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

@_James, Since Shared Google Drives sync to team member's desktop computers, it would be redundant for you to share the drive via Vectorwiorks Cloud Services, and have it sync to your computer from there. You use Google File Stream, correct? Vectorworks Project sharing supports Google File Stream, but since they do not have Delta sync, its performance will be worse compared to using Project Sharing with Vectorworks Cloud Services or Dropbox directly. So, your idea is if Vectorworks Cloud Services supports integration and sharing with edit permissions of Shared Drives, then you can sync the Google Drive to your Vectorworks Cloud Services folder on your local computer, hence utilizing the Vectorworks Cloud Services' delta sync? This is a lot of implementations on our side, just because Google Drive doesn't have delta sync 😁. I hope this clarifies it a bit.

Hello @_James Yes, unfortunately, the Google Drive integration with Vectorworks Cloud Services doesn't support Shred Drives. We have a few enhancements submitted for this already, and I added your vote to them. This would be useful in other scenarios, but not specifically with Project Sharing. Vectorworks Cloud Services doesn't support sharing with "Sync and Edit" permissions for folders on integrated storages, because that would be redundant, complicated, and really not necessary. Yes, you no longer need Dropbox, or Google Drive, or project sharing server to do Project Sharing. All you need is a shared folder on Vectorworks Cloud Services that syncs to all project participants' desktop computers. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Hi @jnr, Yes, shared link is an active option only for Vectorworks and Dropbox cloud storages. With both, if you don't get the link at the time of the export, you can always go to cloud.vectorworks.net and generate the shareable link from there. For temporary storage, it is greyed out and turned on, because if you don't receive a link, there is no other way you can get to the file. Regarding the behavior when the Cloud Services desktop app is not running, yes - I agree it is not working in the most intuitive way - It shouldn't return to local storage and require you to re-select your cloud-based choice. I will file a bug on your behalf on this. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

@jnr, I know this sounds obvious, but wanted to double check, as I was not able to reproduce the behavior you are describing: On the Export Web View dialog, do you have the checkbox to obtain a shared link turned on? Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

You can currently manage your file organization from your local Vectorworks Cloud Services folder. All changes will be synced to the web portal if you have the VCS desktop app running. We hope to be able to support rename/duplicate/move commands on the web portal in the future. Thank you, @str and @Christiaan for your insights as to how we can continue to enhance Vectorworks Project Sharing with VCS in order for it to become your preferred solution. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will be considered. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

@Christiaan, I would love to hear how would you envision this. There are ideas that are currently circulating in this area, so I would love to hear your idea in more details.

Hi @Christiaan, We are currently investigating the possibilities that can prevent your data from leaving the physical boundary of the country. The ability to purchase more space is also on our radar. In the meantime, we accommodate individual requests for allocating more space as needed. Yes, we will definitely continue to think in this direction. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Hi @Tom Klaber, The reason why this could be happening is an old workspace that's left over from a previous version. I would make sure that you are using one of the default workspaces that come with Vectorworks 2021 SP3. If you are using an old modified workspace you can edit it with the workspace editor to remove the login menu command. Also note, in order to use Project Sharing with Vectorworks Cloud Services, you must have Vectorworks 2021 SP3. Prior Vectorworks versions will not work properly. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Hi @Tom Klaber, @Matt Hall, Please take a look at the Shared Cloud Folders video on this page: https://www.vectorworks.net/en-US/2021. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Yesterday, Vectorworks 2021 SP3 shipped, and with it Vectorworks Cloud Services' enhanced folder sharing. With the new “Sync and Edit” permission, participants can sync a shared folder to their local desktop computer, enabling workflows that require multiple users to access and edit files stored in a common location. For Vectorworks Design Series users, project sharing and workgroup folders are now supported. I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday, Vectorworks 2021 SP3 shipped, and with it Vectorworks Cloud Services' enhanced folder sharing. With the new “Sync and Edit” permission, participants can sync a shared folder to their local desktop computer, enabling workflows that require multiple users to access and edit files stored in a common location. For Vectorworks Design Series users, project sharing and workgroup folders are now supported. I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday, Vectorworks 2021 SP3 shipped, and with it Vectorworks Cloud Services' enhanced folder sharing. With the new “Sync and Edit” permission, participants can sync a shared folder to their local desktop computer, enabling workflows that require multiple users to access and edit files stored in a common location. For Vectorworks Design Series users, project sharing and workgroup folders are now supported. I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday, Vectorworks 2021 SP3 shipped, and with it Vectorworks Cloud Services' enhanced folder sharing. With the new “Sync and Edit” permission, participants can sync a shared folder to their local desktop computer, enabling workflows that require multiple users to access and edit files stored in a common location. For Vectorworks Design Series users, project sharing and workgroup folders are now supported. I hope you enjoy it!

Hi @MartinBlomberg, A file size of 1MB can contain way more polygons than what the Nomad's AR viewer can currently handle. We have this article that provides some tips on how to try to work around this limitation. https://cloud.vectorworks.net/portal/help/faq/troubleshooting/#how-can-i-optimize-my-model-for-viewing-in-ar. We are currently in process of researching and developing an optimized 3D model viewer that should be able to handle much larger models. I hope this information is helpful. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

@Diana A, If you start the Create animation menu command while having one or more objects selected, at the end, the object info palette will display +1 objects selected. The additional object selected is the newly created Animation path. Make sure you start the Create Animation menu command without having any other object selected in order to end up with just the animation path object selected at the end of the operation. Regarding the Cloud processing - yes there is a 48 hr limit for Animation jobs. The time taken to complete the job depends on the complexity of the model, the rendering mode, the movie duration, the number of frames per second, and the resolution selected for the output movie. Also, it is possible for some frames to take way longer to render than others. For example, if the roughness quality is turned way up and the movie pans to an area of the model that fills the screen with rough reflections then those particular frames will take much longer than average. To see if the movie would succeed at all, try turning down number of frames per second so that the complete movie is tried but the test won’t take tens of hours to do. If that works then slowly increase number of frames. Please let me know if I can help you with anything else. Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Hi @KIT KOLLMEYER, Thank you for letting us know about this problem! We did an initial investigation of the issue and believe that it is specific to submitting Panorama jobs from a Working file (.vwxw). As a workaround, we suggest you try saving the working file as a .vwx file. Go to file File > Save A Copy As and then select .vwx from the file type dropdown Try submitting the job from the .vwx file while we work on a fix for this issue. I apologize for the inconvenience! Best regards, Iskra Nikolova

Hello everyone, The fix for this issue has been deployed to our production servers. Please check it and let us know if you continue to have any issues.

Hello, Is anyone here still experiencing the desktop app's error on startup with the latest released version 8.4.933? If yes, can you please send me the log files right after you have experienced the issue to inikolova@vectorworks.net? On Mac, zip up the entire folder: /Users/<username>/Library/Logs/Nemetschek/Vectorworks Cloud Services. On Win, zip up this one: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\Nemetschek\Vectorworks Cloud Services Thanks, Iskra Nikolova