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Posts posted by Ross Harris
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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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It might have the speed on paper, but it's the architecture of the components. A system from in 2009 is practically prehistoric compared to systems in the last 3-4 years. Bus speeds, memory bandwidth, memory type (DDR3 in your rig vs. DDR5), PCIe lanes are considerably faster on current cpus, which the software (windows, directx, drivers, vw) in 2024 is written to leverage.
I had the same issue years ago with my old 2008 cheese grater Mac Pro - great machine, but the architecture just let it down and was put out to pasture in 2015.
When looking at minimum system specs, you might need to consider the other things you'll be using, like chrome running lots of tabs, pdfs open in acrobat, outlook - known resource hogs. System specs only consider the software they represent, not real world use cases of a computer with multiple programs running - which they can't - no vendor can account for individuals computing workflows/habits.
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Your Xeons came out in Q1, 2009.. so pretty old tech. Maxon recommend a Kaby Lake minimum - that's a 2016 release
Last ditch options are downloading the latest NVIDIA driver and running windows update to get most current win 10 version (updates directx at the same time) that will run on the pc. Failing that it's got to be compatibility issue with old hardware.
You'd probably best to start thinking about an upgrade for VW 2024 and newer - the good news is you won't need dual CPU or Quadro to make VW fly - a current i7 14700k or a Ryzen 9 7900X3D with a rtx4070ti super (our two office rigs have i7 13700k/rtx4070 and i9 13900k/rtx4080 respectively) will make your current rig look like a bicycle being overtaken by a Veyron on the Autobarn - for less than matching your current config with today's products (dual Xeons, quadros,etc) - unless you need this config for another use, that is. My home home rig is a Ryzen 9 3900x/rtx3080ti (CPU is from 2019) and is no slouch using VW - no maxon plugin errors on any of these machines or our laptops.
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This is something that should be updated when the drawing set is published. Other softwares manage this - at the moment it's just another thing to forget when under pressure. At the very least it should be significantly easier than the process to update them all as noted above.
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Wow! I've not seen 24gb sticks before... Just checked my usual retailer and there they are! They certainly weren't there a month ago when I specified a rig - most sets are on back order so I presume it's a recent development/availability here. There's more 96gb sets coming through than 48gb though, and not to stupidly priced.. which is great for ITX builds with only two slots, which I'm keen to do
Which makes your issue puzzling cos they should be interleaving... 🤔
I just built a 14900k/4090/64gb rig late last year to run VW+Interiorcad and Enscape with with two 42“ monitors for a colleague... It doesn't break a sweat; Interiorcad can can be heavily taxing with a buildings worth of fully detailed cabinetry on top of piping out to Enscape for real time rendering.
Is there anything loading at startup that's sucking the life out of the machine?
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It's probably not the ram clock that's the issue... 48gb is an odd number, meaning that the two sticks are not a matched pair and can't read and write in interleaved mode. Which as far as I can recall means it writes to both sticks simultaneously - when it can't there is a reduction in speed.
I'd look at getting a matched pair of ram sticks with the rated clock speed for your CPU. Matched pairs go up in multiples - 16gb, 32gb, 64gb etc.
If you've not overclocked, DDR5 5600 or higher(assuming the board is a DDR5 board) should do the business.
We've got two matched pairs of 32gb DDR5 5600 for 64gb in our 13900k rigs and they are flying with multiple acrobat docs, photo viewer, chrome tabs and occasionally YouTube running.
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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..
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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 ..)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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They could do rhino inside... But they won't..
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Totally needs an overhaul. Also needs the ability to be able to recess hardware into a door leaf for door pulls in pocket doors.
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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.
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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..
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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..
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1 minute ago, Andy Broomell said:
in the meantime you can employ the Eyedropper tool
Yep - the eyedropper is sure getting a workout!
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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..
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Incompatible Plug-ins Report: MaxonDocument Builder // MaxonRenderDevice
in Troubleshooting
Posted · Edited by Ross Harris
100% agree on that! Great detective work on the AVX issue too.