Ross Harris

August 27

I think talking about ZH workflows is going way off beam. What we want is a tool that is easy to use and gives an array of useful features and stair types. Currently it's like getting a tooth pulled. I know designers who still use the simple stair tool because it's quicker to iterate with.

Vectorworks are seemingly sticking with a dialog heavy process for just about everything and it's a massive overhead of tweaking settings,OKing them, tweaking again, rinse, repeat ad infinitum... until it errors out. What we need is something like revits family editor where we can make a parametric thing or bricscads parameterize function to make a 3d model parametric. No tool is ever going to be truly flexible to suit every situation, so there needs to be a solution. Making dumb solid models is not it in 2024. Hence why ZH likely use revit - they can take something created in maya or rhino (rhino inside?) and make it parametric so the design can be iterated with out having to endlessly model/remodel stuff. They probably have a basement full of people and budget that just feed that machine ‐ I'd wager not many of us here do not and can't justify a day on a handrail in a project. We just want tools that feel like they were designed for designers not how developers think. There are something like 4 or 5 tools just to do things to walls. How inefficient is that? It seems to be the VW mantra 'we'll just make another tool!` Like i said, the roadmap is packed with spotlight and landmark features and enhancements... not much for the arch tools.

V-Ray also works in revit asa plugin, and revit between maya, so I believe there is a reasonable amount of interoperability in their softwares.

August 26

Safe to say nope. Looking at the road map, you can count the things on there on one hand that relate to architecture. It's mostly Spotlight followed by landmark features.

August 16

How could I forget materials! Another feature half baked on release with promised development left to rot.. Which I was reminded of after a user got a smacked hand in the ai visualiser forum for daring to question it's existence in lieu of... Actual enhancements to neglected tools.

Dev time wasted in an ai visualiser... A curiosity... In lieu of actual enhancements. No doubt this tool will also suffer the same fate as others...

Marionette - let's reinvent the wheel! There was lots of big talk on collaboration with other vendors and being ahem... 'open'... Grasshopper and Rhino? No? OK!

August 16

When you look at this announcement, the amount of spotlight features in the road map, seconded by landmark features it's clear that the ship is being steered into areas where it has a foothold. Architectural features are few and vaguely outlined, and is clearly a lower priority. There hasn't been anything meaningful released for architecture in years, and even then...

Walls - where are the Improvements promised from the ground up rebuild of the tool. Are closures all we get? What about stacked and slanting walls? 🦗 Try moving walls with multiple junctions... you have to disconnect them, or use the move by points tool to force a move and have to rejoin every wall that becomes disconnected. You can move any wall regardless of junctions in revit... And they all stay connected.
Windows and doors - so many documented issues and wish lists. 🦗
Roofs - skylights are a joke, forget about complex roofs or the arcane steps to 'join' multiple roof objects. Soffit, gutters, fascias or downpipes? 🦗
Every annotation tool has inconsistent style functions and leader options. Obvious lack of quality control.
Styles! Why is only half the program styled? Text callouts? Dimensions? Two of the glaring omissions that make the program inconsistent. There was a stated push to get everything over to styles a few versions back. It seems like these things run out of steam and get dropped before they are fully implemented, like the...
Structural member tool - a tentpole feature release (in vw 2018 - 7 years!) left to rot, with only a few fixes recently. Compared to other softwares, a fairly useless tool. But a good weathervane to the attitude to architecture...
Railing tool - it's total junk and just looks erm... nasty.. In any presentation. The promo and training vids show are very disingenuous and only show examples where it doesn't go completely janky.
The University... Coffee break vids are almost comedic. There are many Instances where where the speakers don't know the software. Watch the one on annotations where a question is asked if the callous can easily be aligned... The speaker states no! But the other speaker tries to steer him to the the command, then just has to throw him under the bus and go 'it's here'. It's total cringe in an official video. There are also landmark site modelling vid on vw YouTube that is more useful than any in the uni. If it's there I can't find it... Which is a other issue... Its slow and search is rubbish.

If they want architecture customers to stump up a subscription and start pumping up service select costs for existing users they need to deliver, but I fear they don't really care.

July 11

No issues with Thunderbird open and launching VW 2024 u5 here with win 11. Seems an unusual app to cause a conflict!

June 17

On 6/11/2024 at 5:42 PM, mar schrammeyer said:

Set as required and save in your template

Still only gives you one ahem... 'style'...

This tool NEEDS styles - there are so many variations used within a job:

- Text callout - variations on text size and colour

- Keynote callout - variation's on colour

- Different arrowheads - arrows, dots, etc.

- Different bubble styles

I could easily have have a dozen styles with variations of the above - currently as the post above notes, the user has to go and change the tool settings - which becomes laborious, and associating them with a class only changes a few basic parameters.

This tool is a massive pain point now that other annotation tools have better functionality.

June 16

Where does one start... Its a practically useless tool that never got in with the cool kids of the annotation tools that got updated. The ones that did get updated... like most things in VW, missed the goal line and ended up with all sorts of inconsistencies. The grid tool is perfect, the detail callout tool didn't have the ability to control the bubble in the style dialog and neither did the section elevation marker have the ability to control its line in the style. The poor callout tool is still somewhere out there adrift.

I use normal section elevations for interior elevations - much quicker and tweakable. If you don't have interior elevations, its no loss.

Don't get me started about the mind numbingly long winded it is to action back referencing on every. single. detail. you. want. There needs to be a settable default so it just does them.

Asylums with doors open wide
Where people had paid to see inside
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, "I still exist"

This is the way, step inside...

Atrocity Exhibition - Joy Division - Closer -1980.

May 2

Video streams here OK.

There's also this video on youtube.. which is awesome and not on the uni.

April 21

This is where a parametric object would be great. VW needs something like revit families or briscad parametrize .. users need to be able to graphically create a parametric object. I have one 2d object that makes all the timber cross section objects with x's, a slash and different fills. In VW I have probably 30 2d symbols..

April 19

3 hours ago, rDesign said:

So, no there is not one ‘international’ building code — despite the name.

Correct. We have our own and unique building act, building code and regulatory system. We share some standards with Australia, but that's it. Our code clauses quite often modify these standards to make them relevant to our conditions. Sapphire has been regionalised so it outputs loading code compliance to AS/NZS1170, Framecad was developed here to provide steel framing to our standards - the NASH steel framing manual is basically a steel frame version of our standard for timber framed buildings - NZS3604:2011. The date is pertinent as it was revised after the Canterbury earthquakes.

In terms of outputting loading codes; NZS3604 is basically a dummies guide to building a house that automatically complies with AS/NZS1170. I.e. floor joist is this long, has a roof load = use this size timber at this spacing. Buildings out of scope with this standard is when engineering is needed. The calcs must be signed off by a chartered professional engineer - this is enshrined in legislation through the building act an the chartered professional engineers act. This is just our rules in a little country at the bottom of the world. I can only image that's it's just as unique and complex in other countries or even between states.

April 19

There's so much missing or refined that needs to be prioritised I feel. As Matt alluded to VW being a global software, a framing tool risks being regionalised to be useful in a code compliance manner - a bracing tool (as an example) would be useless for us here at the bottom of the world if developed for a 'predominant market'. Trusses here can only be engineer designed or provided by specialist software then made by licensed fabricators. All timber framed houses and truss fabrication here are designed (post council approval) by detailers using predominantly Mitek Sapphire in the pre-nail factories, loaded on a truck and delivered to site. Designers here only need to cover the bigger picture stuff with specific detailing to get building consents. Trusses can have complicated loading paths to foundations and are best left to specialist software and engineers.

We also have steel framing gaining in popularity - which is again detailed for prefabrication in specialist software like framecad that talks directly to the machinery rolling the frames.

To be able to cover all the legislative requirements, loading and structural codes around the world and being able to certify compliance would be very diffcult or next to impossibe for software like vectorworks. I can almost guarantee that the sketch up plugins are more for looks or will pump out a design that meets code in a specific locale. If vectorworks were to focus development on a specific region would likely alienate others - especially if this developmet were to raise the cost.

My vote is to leave this to specialist software. We just need to get everyone here interchanging with ifc..

April 2

I'm Auckland based and use the council gis regularly - but only for initial feasibility. The council gis is very ballpark in terms of levels - at worst it's over 1m out compared to a site survey and on one site, the sewer and manholes were 6m away from where the gis put them. My advice is to not use the gis data for resource or building consent design work - get a survey done. Also don't mix surveyors levels with the gis levels - the inaccuracies of the gis with accurate survey levels will skew a site model, hence the odd contours. Take note of the disclaimer you have to agree to - it goes to great lengths to highlight the data is 'informational' and that all liability rests with the user of the data. You are potentially opening yourself up to liability relying on the gis.

ISSUE 1: You can download a georeferenced DWG from the gis - this makes initial creation much quicker. The boundary lines are from LINZ, so are accurate, but the contours are ballpark. The contours (depending on the gis dataset available for the area) can be big steps, so you won't get the detail of a site survey. It sounds like you have mixed the babbage spot levels in, which as I mentioned above, will make the site model inaccurate. Paying for a survey is money well spent and very much a get out of jail free card.

ISSUE 2: Model your house FFL on a design layer at 0m elevation and then create a design layer viewport (DLVP) to send the 'house' as a 3d viewport to the site model. That way you can grab the DLVP and position it where you like and it will report the actual vertical height to the FFL in the site layer. My 'house' layers are storey driven, and the site layer is not associated with a story, so I create a viewport with the house layers in the usual way, but send them to the site layer - not a sheet layer.

Your site layer should be set to 0m elevation so that a gis or survey I port will always report the correct levels.

Elevation benchmarks - I usually use them in control point mode in the annotation space of the viewport (for flexibility) taking the FFL of the DLVP height in the OIP from the site model layer. From memory, I think elevation benchmarks will report the height of a DLVP... Will have to test 🤔

ISSUE 3:

1. The red lines are a cube representing the top and bottom extents of the site model.

2. The skirt extents are in the site model settings - you can have it go to 0, a set elevation or it can be to the lowest contour of the site model - which is good for sites at 100m elevation for example. Also good to allow the site model to extend if you are doing cuts that go below the exisitng site contours.

Depending on how you have set the contour multipliers in the site model settings, they can be different to the the gis - also the interpolation VW does creating the site model can create contour variations. Also mixing in survey data with the gis data will cause this to go whacky - as noted above.

I can't overstate getting a survey done. An accurate model starts with accurate data, and in the worst case, can save you a day in court .. I will turn a job away if the client won't get a survey done. This is even more critical and mandatory in flood zones since the flooding last year.

March 18

Although that achieves the result, the update has resolved one workaround (contour units) and added another with the steps to create a label less site model to use the 'add contours' button and tools.

One takeaway is that it is less onerous that tricking the site model to stay in a different unit to the rest of the project units... but still - how is a new user supposed to work this out?

Also, 'custom label placement' should be renamed to 'Auto contour placement' There's nothing custom about that preference in the dialog. The user should be able to turn this off and still be able to use the tools activated by the 'add contour labels' button in the OIP.

So, for update 5 or VW 2025, can we please:

Rename 'Custom Label Placement' to 'Auto label placement'
Allow the 'add contour label' tools to be used when the above pref is off.

Once that's done, we just need to property lines to be data taggable and it will be just about perfect. 😍

March 18

What we need here is a pin object option, with lock remaining a full lock up - this would be useful across the board.

March 15

We almost got there....

The ability to place contour labels under a poly line is fantastic... but... why oh why, can we not have an easy way to start with no contour labels and allow the polyline mode to place them where we want and these be the only contour labels on the site model? Am I missing something?

For all the amazing capabilities in the site model that really stands VW apart, its things like this to document a 2d plan that completely let the whole show down. That and property line annotations - these should be data taggable. The big R gets this stuff right..

Generally, the tweaking to the site contour labelling in this update has been fantastic and has been wished for many times on this forum over the years... but it just needed to go the extra millimeter to give total control of labels to the user. 🥹

Please.. in Update 5 can we have the option to have no contour labels on the site model but still use the polyline mode to place them?

March 14

@napwszzm rerun the updater and you should see update 4a - works a charm.

March 13

NZ's a special place 😉 😁

March 12

Sorry - should have mentioned, I've run repair on the updated install and the clean install with no change in result.

March 12

@JuanP nothing - I double click and get the busy cursor for a couple of seconds and thats it. I've rebooted and also done a clean install of VW from the customer portal after doing the update from the updater. This is happening on my office and home PC's where 3.1 was working perfectly.

March 12

I've installed the AU/NZ version of update 4 and it won't even launch..

March 4

I prefer to do floor finish slabs on top of the structural slab so I can schedule/quantify all the floor finishes. Plus, all our floor finishes except polished slabs are inside walls, so is 'construction correct'.

February 16

Twinmotion 100% for presentation exteriors. Enscape for something quick - mainly use this for interiors tho.

February 13

Yep a totally reasonable question. All software has it's pros and cons... Now that we've got Revit (after an 8 year sabbatical) it gives a refreshing perspective give on things generally. Both do exceptional things.

The unfortunate side effect of raising prices is that it becomes within distance of the competition, you naturally start looking at the alternatives and what they can offer.

February 8

2 hours ago, High_Viz said:

every day is a school day

100% agree on that! Great detective work on the AVX issue too.

February 7

Go to a system builder for your new machine - the big box brands (dell. HP, etc) always scrimp on a system component somewhere to enhance their profit margin to the end users misfortune.. not to mention the insidious crapware they preload to 'assist'...

You don't need a workstation spec machine - a hot gaming rig will do the business. I usually upspec as much as I can with the CPU and memory - hard drives and new graphics cards are easy to add in or swap later on for a bit more longevity.

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