Ross Harris

The one thing you will get with a windows PC is epic backwards compatibility with old versions of VW on windows 10/11, not like Apple's scorched earth policy on os hardware compatibility and obsolescence. Apple certainly has the visual aspect sorted - the screens are gorgeous, but that is a huge cost in monitors and with no 27/32“ iMac... 4k on windows certainly needs work.. If you go PC, get a custom built gaming rig and avoid the workstation type systems and graphics cards - it's a total waste of money. A machine built with quality parts won't be a constant headache of driver upgrades and config issues. I build my own machines and never touch them once the OS is installed and the drivers are loaded. Windows update will sort most of these and the NVIDIA app will prompt for a driver update when needed. It's fairly slick these days. I have to stay PC because of Revit and other windows only/or better featured apps, and the Twinmotion pathtracer is windows only - and is likely to be for some time; I believe the M4 has ray tracing hardware support now, but due to the legal spat between apple and epic.. The ROI on PC's for me has been excellent - they last for years with only component upgrades like the GPU, but even then it's far between with good top end models. This will all change again when ARM processors make x86 go the way of the dodo..!

You should also be able to create a styled object from the style drop down in the OIP like you can for an unstyled plug in object.. another of the annoying inconsistencies in VW.

Can't recommend this enough... Saw a training lab full of brand new PC's used for the first training session installed with the trainers old workspace that had been migrated over many versions act like they were possessed..

Toggl Track is great and highly recommend, plus it works nicely with toggl plan if you want project management as well. There is a clone that's mostly free called clockify that I've used a lot and can also recommend, you only need to pay for it if you need advanced features or team functions. Both toggl and clockify have browser extensions that allow you to set the timer going and will pause once it detects there's been no activity and will prompt you when you start working again and ask if it was a correct pause. Plus you can use it to see how much time is spent on other tasks, like office admin, training, library maintenance, 🪲's. The reporting features of both apps are awesome and has, on many occasions, shut a client up on time breakdown 'discussions'. Like any tracking app, you just have to keep it forward in your mind that you need to start or stop timers or log the task when done.

Horizontal viewports will only be any use if they are live (like another BIM platform...) - having to update viewports is an absolute productivity killer.

Truer words cannot be said. So many people expect a rendering package to be a magic wand of some kind...

The fact it took 7 years for it to get any attention to fix bugs and give it some basic usability fixes-its basically the poster child for new features being unfinished on release and left to rot. It's like a lot of tools - siloed. It doesn't interact with any other function (grids for example), you can't attach baseplates, end plates, splices or stiffeners to them. Basically the only benefit over solid modelling is that it gives you a (now fixed for beams) too plan fill and some ifc. Other than that, pretty useless.

I'd prefer stacking, tapered and slanting walls over closures. Those three items are what I've seen mostly requested on the forum over the years. In Revit. The closre is mostly backed into the window/door family and are infinitely more flexible. Dunno about archicad - been years since I've used that. I should have said a wall intersection on a corner... I certainly can't move these. You need the T join tool to join them. I really love Vectorworks, and I have love/hate relationship with Revit, but when you fork out for a sub, you need to see some bang for buck and VW2025 is pretty underwhelming.

Walls are a bit janky in the joining side of things... Try rearranging a T junctionby dragging walls; you can't unless you disconnect a wall first, then have to use a tool to reconnect them if they misbehave when trying to drag the end to rejoin. In going back to revit, you can move any wall and any junction with out it either breaking or having to dismantle the junction, which I had totally forgotten about... And is just how you expect a modern BIM app to work. Added bonus are helper dimensions that pop up (which you can turn into an actual dimension) when you select a wall so you can punch in a dimension without having to put a dimension in place. With all the 'wall reengineering'thats been done all we have to show for it is two iterations of wall closures.... The big problem is that new features or enhancements get 90% to being awesome... And are totally forgotten. Looking at you structural member.. There doesn't seem to be a big picture vision for usability and consistancy - development seems very siloed.

And the kicker is you can make this stuff, but in VW it's all a one trick pony... I make an object in Revit, I can make it parametric, so I can reuse things multiple times across different procjects. As this post abely demonstrates it's utterly confusing have now have 2d geometry cutting objects. I've mentioned in other posts that to 'design without limits' there needs to be an environment like the Revit family editor where we can make our own things and have them be parametric so we don't have to rely on the limitations of a tool and mind numbing dialog box based creation that needs to be 'ok'd to see if it's right, be forced to use multiple tools on one thing to make something we want or continually model one-off stuff because what we have previously modelled isn't quite right for a different project... Each time I mention it a VWer will extol the pitfalls of such an environment and that it's 'not where they are heading'. Revit's family editor is extremely liberating .. the only pitfall I've encountered is the time to make something parametric, but that's time you make back in spades by not have to continually model these things. To do something like the ceiling in that original post - in Revit you'd use a slab topping and a beam system under it with a profile family (tha can also be fully parametric should you want to change the beam size) to include the small recess in the centre of each rib - no faffing about with cutting or voiding out a slab. And it will remail fully tweakable should changes crop up (and they usually do). Can't do that in VW without practically starting again...

The issue I have with VW is that the people who helm the features that direct the coders often completely miss basic/logical functionality, make it convoluted, or just make another tool to make the tool do something the tool should do. Just count how many tools there are to modify walls! 2d geometry for making holes - the 'countertop method'. The problem with this is that it cuts a hole right through the object and wouldn't work for something like the image in the original post. The 2d cutting geometry would need to have some kind of depth of cut control, which could create a number of issues to make work right. The implementation in countertops is almost spot on.. it just needs an offset parameter to adjust the position of things like undermount sinks or drain grooves without having to go into the symbol to modify it relative to the insertion point- a logical function and far more user friendly parameter than the only current option of potentially stuffing up a symbol. To make things utterly confusing the groundwork was never laid to rename the cutting functionality of the 2d polygons... Who would think a sink has to be set to 'insert in walls' to cut the countertop! What needs to happen is something like Revit's void object that can be nested in a family that will cut things when inserted. Revit has a whacky implementation to get the void to actually cut,or you can set a default parameter to 'cut with voids when loaded'. VW are so close with the 'wall hole component' in that there should be some way to make a void symbol to create that waffle type pattern like that ceiling non destructivly, or an option to have an object have a void type capability, like the polystyrene pods used in on ground waffle slabs, a flush pull recessed into a door leaf, recessed lighting, skylights, etc... All without having to add an additional bit of geometry... But also leaving the ability to add cutting geometry if a particular hole shape was needed. The major achilles heel here is 'wall hole objects' are limited to a small number of elements and to make them work is destructive. Hopefully this is what the 'openings' feature in the roadmap entails... But that's only for slabs and walls....which would be very shortsighted for the potential uses this can have for roofs and other objects like door leaves, solid modelled objects, etc, etc.

Look into Enscape if you machine meets the specs for the Mac version. Far superior renderings and visualisation in real time. A sub will pay for itself in the time your machine is tied up waiting for renderworks to churn through it - it also won't bat an eyelid at rendering with shadows and texturing modelled perforated panelling. The attached was a quick'n'dirty render to check how it would render out - it has a fully modelled perforated facade. Enscape didn't break a sweat navigating the model, rendering (generated an image in less than 30 secs) or exporting a hd video of the project that was shown at a Krah conference. Enscape is also awesome for client presentations -as it's real time, it looks way better than VW ever will. Plus, the new AI enhancer is actually useful for static renders.

Your 'slab' would need to be a countertop for this to work. It's not good practice to use objects like a countertop for a slab - you'll end up with all sorts of issues with wall/floor interactions, ifc etc. Tom's solution is the best at present, but there is a hope that the functionality of the countertop/hole cutting geometry is proliferated throughout the program.

You couldn't pay me to waste time waiting for the offline renderer in vectorworks... I highly recommend enscape, as it has the unique ability to put its assets in the VW model - so when you open enscape, everything is there - almost gives you the feeling of not leaving vectorworks... Plus there new ai enhancer is actually darn good. Twinmotion is also awesome and free - the attached pic is a Twinmotion render. Enscape and Twinmotion have learning curves, but the near instant results and image quality are 1000% worth it IMHO.

There's pros and cons to both, but certainly the community here is exceptional - I'm deeply indebted to it! I've not found anything close on the Autodesk side of things. I'm using Revit now for commercial/industrial projects for the simple reason it's far easier here to collaborate seamlessly with structural and services engineers (electrical, mep, fire suppression) via BIM Collaborate Pro, but it's a love/hate relationship. I'm hopeful that the recent announcement that Nemetschek have an agreement with Autodesk to gain access to construction cloud for easier collaboration with Revit based collaborators will actually come to fruition and work like it should. Won't hold my breath tho... Now, I mainly use Vectorworks for residential stuff because the visual output is much nicer and easier to achieve in my opinion, and modelling components, assemblies and claddings is so very much easier, rendering nicely in Escape or Twinmotion - which seems to have more impact to that area of clientele. Site modelling is also a cut above - I have to shell out for the Environment plugin for Revit to get anywhere near close. VW is also good as a solid modeller for Revit content or components that don't need to be parametric - Revit has some significant modelling shortcomings and is a beast that constantly needs feeding with 3d objects and families - these can absorb a significant amount of time - both in looking for the right family or making them. Both softwares have steep learning curves - just consider what's important to you and your output rather than it being a join the masses decision.