[Oh I do like a well-built model...]

@VIRTUALENVIRONS 

Its 90% there.. except I can't fillet the tread cleat to the tyre wall. it will do one, then can't do anything else. Also I imagine adding additional detail like branding and other info that follows the tyre wall curve will also be tricky/impossible in VW. 

Blender is looking like a goer.. so much cool stuff, like a plug in that does a weld style fillet..

[Oh I do like a well-built model...]

Just search on YouTube 'how to model a tractor tyre' and seee how advanced some of the modelling tools are in other softwares...

I'm doing a scale model tractor as a 3d printing project... Started it in vw, but I'll have to go to blender.. or stump up for Rhino (it's totally a business cost ..)

[Best bang for the buck renderer...]

Funny you should mention that... mine has lapsed and in the VW screengrab above is exactly what you are left with - all the resources (low poly proxy's, textures) that were inserted into the VW file. Once you renew it'll render as normal.

[Best bang for the buck renderer...]

11 minutes ago, line-weight said:

That sounds much tidier than the Datasmith export system to me ... if it works.

Oh it is... it's a brilliant workflow. It's just not quite there for me compared to the output I get in TM.. If you need to do renders on the fly I can't rate it highly enough; I usually wait until I get to a point in the project where its 'set' to render in TM, and any changes afterwards that will affect the render, I'll budget an hour or two to do a new TM render. That shed render above was literally 5 mins of work.. and that was just to drop trees, cars and landscaping assets plus adjusting the specular setting on the glass; so for clients who don't expect that sort of work for small  jobs like that, it's a bonus and blows their socks off for virtually no work. To do that in TM is probably 30 mins or so swapping textures, painting grass and finding/placing assets.

Gotta say, I love the depth the built in Enscape sky projects. Just adding some Cirrus makes it feel huge.

[Best bang for the buck renderer...]

Enscape is 100 'in' VW. It doesn't manage its own geometry or textures - it just renders what's in your VW model - it's basically a floating window (dual monitors are a must). In recent versions you can manipulate assets in the Enscape window, but any change you make there happens in VW as well. You have the choice of placing assets from the Enscape library into VW or if through Enscape window, the asset will appear in VW as well as a low poly proxy.

Same with textures - if you download an Enscape texture via the texture library it appears in the resource manager to apply to the object; editing a texture also edits it at the RM level. Some of the best grass I got in Enscape was using the VW grass shader.

[Best bang for the buck renderer...]

I'm torn between Twinmotion and Enscape.

 

Twinmotion:

For exteriors, I love TM.. the assets and grass look amazing, not to mention the lighting with Lumen and Pathtracer. Direct link is good... but going back to do revisions after more modelling can be painful as you end up with duplicate geometry, so there is a bit of housekeeping to do. The bach with the Alfa and the TM house is with Pathtracer on and  skydome - when those features came out it was game changing in terms of lighting. TM has more of a 'vibe' for me personally. At this point you need a PC to get the best out of TM - I have a beast PC mainly for TM; being on a mac you won't get the best out of it as there is heap of work to get lighting and shadows right - I read somewhere that the M3's now have raytracing support... so maybe these will be on par with a PC. Not sure if Lumen works on mac's, but Pathtracer doesn't.

 

Enscape: Absolutely instant bang for buck on interiors. The thing I really like about it is the assets are in the VW file - so whenever you load it - boom - all your assets are there to do a boss render; the VW file is essentially the source of truth. Exteriors don't quite do it for me... there's more work to get a good grass texture and the trees don't look quite as realistic as TM; but I use it more often as I can bang out a render super quick that looks good enough for the client to visualise it, or doing a walkthrough is dead easy and looks great. Given the price rises for a seat, it's not so much the best bang for the dollar anymore, but the mac version has just been released - its not as feature complete as the PC version yet tho. 

 

 

Lumion: I've really tried to like it and get my head into it, but it just doesn't click for me.. It was way more work to get something I was happy with (my opinion only - there are some amazing renders using Lumion) - I'm addicted to my spacemouse, and as it has no support for these, it's practically a non starter for me. Nav with WASD keys does my head in.. Plus its expensive.. and its PC only.

 

TM

 

Enscape

 

TM

 

TM

 

Enscape

 

Lumion

[How to Dimensions]

You mean the right click? Try a different workspace... There are menu issues in the design suite workspace. Changing to the architect workspace fixed the problem for me.

[Oh I do like a well-built model...]

They could do rhino inside... But they won't..

[Contour labels]

That's good to hear that this is being worked on. Contour labelling needs to be controlled by the user... Not where vectorworks thinks. Revit has the best approach to this with its contour labelling tool - draw a line across the contours you want labelled. 

Property line objects also need better segment labelling as well. They should be taggable to put control in the user's hands, dear I say it, like Revit. It's basic stuff that just adds wasted time to projects to get clear output.

[BREAK LINE]

There was a third party plugin called breaker that is exactly what the breaker tool needs to be. Surely an intern can be put on to knocking out some this basic? Even Revit is streets ahead in break line functionality. 

[Who has need for Live Sync with both Blender and D5 Render?]

I had a zoom call with d5 a couple of years back. Basically they weren't prioritising vw due to market share, and once the big fish were done, they'd review their position on it. A pity, cos 2.5 looks amazing.

[Why are we restricted to using Door Hardware Sets?]

Totally needs an overhaul. Also needs the ability to be able to recess hardware into a door leaf for door pulls in pocket doors.

[How about a 'VW Store'?]

https://www.revitcity.com/downloads.php

 

This was a lifesaver/godsend/treasure trove when I was a Revit user. People make stuff and share it for the benefit of the user base - this gives people the warm fuzzies about a product by the sense of community. We need something like this.

[Site Model and Grade Limits -- Grade limit / Define by contours keeps crashing]

I've had a similar experience. An upgraded workspace was copied to our brand new training PCs and the all acted possessed. I ditched the workspaces and did a purge of other files and templates the other trainer brought for that interiorcad session and they worked beautifully on the next sessions.. 

From that experience I recreate my template and workspace every new version..

[Surface Array to respect per face texturing]

If you have an extruded object that is textured - say profiled metal sheeting, with the chosen colour on the top face and white on the underside, when turning into a surface array it will default the array to one colour. 

This is super annoying when rendering things like commercial/industrial builds where you see the back face of the profiled metal with interior renders. In know I could just use textures for the cladding, but it looks rubbish when rendered compared to a surface array - more so when lit. The only option is to push up the complexity and duplicate the array with differing textures, either on top of the original or class them to switch them on or off for different render viewports or views when using an external engine - lots of extra work..

 

[Styled Callout tool and enhanced text options]

1 minute ago, Andy Broomell said:

in the meantime you can employ the Eyedropper tool

Yep - the eyedropper is sure getting a workout! 

[Styled Callout tool and enhanced text options]

It's about time the callout tool, keynote legend and text were shown a bit of style love after markers got a makeover. It's a royal pain to have to have to keep changing settings to use these tools. It's worse if you want to add some visual flair with colour, bubble 'styles' with differing margins or boxed text. It's all painfully manual.

With the styled markers we need callouts and text need to able to have this functionality for consistant annotations across the drawing set.

Styles should:

- Text, fill, leader line and bubble should be able to be independently styled

- Margins per style

- Text style per style

- Set radius of rounded rectangle

- Class assignment as part of style

Style the Keynote legend -

- Allow bubble options as per callout tool and ability to set radius of rounded rectangle.

- Style fill

- style text styles for title and body texts.

Text Styles should include - 

- Bubble stylings as per above with fill.

- Its been asked many times over the years - rich text with better formatting options, bullet points... heck even Revit got rich text as a 'major enhancement ' a couple of years back..

[How to Draw a Corrugated Roof?]

Extruding a profile and using the surface array command does the business. If your profile has a tweak to the ridge that laps under the next sheet it looks 99% realistic

 

[GUI]

My bad - I thought it flew open briefly right at the beginning as it looked like the mouse hovered over the text layer.. just watched it back on half speed.. and it was Friday (here) and it's been a hectic few weeks... that's my excuse anyway lol!

But... I bet they won't. Like most improvements or new features, it winds up being just short of the mark. Back referencing being a good example. Why on earth is there no global pref to always allow labels to always back ref?? Who thought having to dig into dialogs for every viewport was a good idea.. or am I missing something...

Anyhoo.. instead of just adding a ribbonesq toolbar, the tool and attributes palettes are still a mess.. Attributes could be in the tool bar or in smart options, the tools could have been in a six segment smart options - having only four is just short of being game changing in having access to all tools under the cursor.

In the current GUI, there are lots of places to do some things - not all - like visibility. This looks like a new coat of paint and reorg other than genuine workflow improvements.. with the exception of the text and size dropdowns... but how long has this been requested? With subs, the money needs to be put where the mouth is and follow through with really good, well thought out upgrades. If its nearly ready, where is the community involvement? you know, input from people who stare and curse at it daily?

 

[GUI]

This is a missed opportunity in the the class and layer drop downs could have had the visibility functionality of the palettes, thereby negating their need to be present...

[Updated Roadmap Topic]

Some very nice additions to the road map 👌 

[My wish: VW2021 to have no new features. Please.]

'19 was good, '21 was mint right out of the gate... '22.. a bit petulant. Worst was `18... was actively looking to switch then, but decided to stick it out and '19 put a bit of a smile back. All PC. 

[Vectorworks abandoning perpetual licences]

Archicad is about to go from $550 per month to $1100 per month in this neck of the woods... Revit is holding at $495 per month with VW $330 per month... still the best bang for buck.

[Mac V's Windows]

On 2/10/2022 at 3:39 AM, line-weight said:

You can run twinmotion on mac but it looks like they regard windows users as higher priority - recent releases of TM have had features available to PC users but not mac users, who it seems have to wait in line before those things are made available.

I don't think it's a case of prioritizing windows users, macs don't support hardware based raytracing which is what twinmotions pathtracer requires. Enscape utilizes raytracing and Nvidia's DLSS for AI based upsampling. So with apple not willing to play ball with raytracing hardware and other advances by more open entities rendering is going to streak ahead on windows machines.

[Requesting ability for text styles to be 'Colored by Class']

Just tested this - the text colour of a text style will change colour when assigned to a class with a different colour to the text style - but it unstyles the text in the process. What would be desirable I think, is for it to keep the text styled while still adopting class parameters like colour, so that if the text style is edited, will still update throughout the file.