Ross Harris
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Posts posted by Ross Harris
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yes yes YES to this!
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Exactly - I used surface array and a small extrude of a profiled metal cladding to make the roof and wall cladding on the attached - it gives infinitely more realism to renders than displacement mapping can or where this isn't available.
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Yep for the mx ergo and 3dconnexion space mouse. Never leave home without ‘em. I struggle to use VW without the space mouse these days.
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I've got Big Sur on a 15" 2019 MBP, 2.3ghz 8 core, 32gb RAM running a Radeon RX580 8gb card in an eGPU with two 27" dell monitors at 2560x1440 - VW 2021 SP2 working as well as it did on Catalina except for fuzzy toolbar icons on the dell monitors running at native resolution.. all the other palettes and quick prefs are nice and crisp
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@JuanPI'm still having the jumping issue mentioned above with the latest beta driver build r3278 - is there any feedback on this issue you can share?
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Sounds epic!
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I do residential and light commercial - and model everything in VW, including the site and the 2d detailing work. These latter two areas alone are where I find ArchiCAD falls over, and I've found modelling in VW so much more direct and intuitive as well - especially for structural members.
I also find its the little things - like add surface and clip surface, then extrude or convert to slab to name one, that speed up my work; I find Archicad's workflow arduous. V2021 made a number of great usability tweaks - the only major gripe I have left is updating viewports - which will hopefully evaporate once Redshift integration comes along..
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Can vouch for InteriorCAD xs - phenomenal product.
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Enscape is 😉
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If you can, hold out for the nvidia RTX 3000 series graphics cards being released for next week... they are significantly more powerful (and very well priced) than the RTX 2000 cards. Bear in mind that VW graphics requirements go up every year and 2021 will likely need more graphics oomph looking at the first teaser Tuesday.
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I’ve made custom drawing labels with the data tag tool - works not to bad and is totally customisable.
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@PatStanford very true! Survey dwgs can have so much rubbish in them - depends on how good their cad person/team is. I’ve ripped a couple of surveyors for their rubbish files... at least vectorworks will still Import the file regardless of of object distance. Revit will refuse any file import that has objects over 4km apart (if I’m remembering correctly) - that was the first time I had to ask a surveyors cad person fix their mess up..! The zebra effect on 3D objects is the main giveaway for far put objects/origin distance issues.
Scale is another issue I’ve struck too - I’ve had files from one particular surveyor that were always double the stated on dimensions or boundary lines. I asked colleagues who are on Revit and ArchiCAD to import and see if they had the same problem after the surveyor said it was mine or vectorworks fault. Oddly enough after pointing out two other people on different platforms had the same issue, the next version came through right... 🤔-
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Similar to Boh's method, I create a design layer viewport (DLVP) of the building on the site layer that has the DTM (always generated from a surveyors dwg) on it - this way I can accurately set the finished floor level in real world figures by setting the z height of the DLVP in the object info palette - it has saved my bacon on a few occasions where the builder or surveyor stuffed up the datums and fingers get pointed to me saying "are you gonna pay for this?. You draw the plan wrong!" That would be no... see here on the model? See ya!
Anyho, referencing the building to the DTM keeps north correct (its usually always up) and takes out the potential to move it stuffing up solar studies. Its easy to create a DLVP of the site and send that to the building layers once the siting has been established to make the foundation suite the site contours and you've then got the site layer as a backup to any potential disputes.
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What’s also disappointing is the complete silence from VW on this - apart from Dr. Sarkar saying that TM and Unreal Engine integration was happening. @JuanP @Dave Donley can you give any form of an update? It should hardly be a secret as every other major platform already has direct link, and in terms of Graphisoft, bundle it with their subscription... A bone has got to be thrown to Mac users.
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@Vlado can tagging with Data Tags be enabled for property line segments? This would solve the issue of distance/bearing lables being obscured or in less than desirable places on short segments. Tagging contour lines on site models would also solve the craziness that happens on steep sites...
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Materialize is a great app for (windoze only tho) making tilable images, amongst other things 😉
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Whats the graphics card you currently have?
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I save them as page based symbols that become a group on import to sheet layers - that way I can use different text styles for headings etc and do indented lists and so forth and edit them without having to convert them To a group from a symbol manually.
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For those who are into the enscape beta trial, the latest version 28 preview now has the asset library in vectorworks 😎
Get it here https://enscape3d.com/version-history-preview/
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Set your view in VW to normal perspective and try that.
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Enscape's integration is so good.. I can't wait for assets to be rolled out. Below is why I can't justify Renderworks.
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@herbieherb sorry did not mean to offend or intend to change the meaning of the quote snippet. If I had of left the PCIE bit in the quote my response would still have been the same. With redshift on the horizon rendering in VW is in for a an overhaul and more so than ever the graphics card will be the most important part of the machine (also noted here about future iterations leaning on the gpu even more) and I think it would be worth the cost to spec the machine forward with a PCIE 4 capable motherboard, as the forthcoming Ryzen 4000/zen 3 chips will als support the current Socket AM4 but only on an X570/B550 chipped motherboard. With that in mind, if redshift or another renderer is going to use all you can give it in terms of bandwidth and gpu grunt, it makes sense to think ahead - it’s easy to change a graphics card but is a bigger job to change the motherboard.
Regarding CPU’s - I have a threadripper and I won’t be buying another one.. I cant justify the time needed - nor will clientS pay for it - to set up a scene in vectorworks (not to mention the lack of good 3D trees, vehicles etc I’d have to work around or purchase), then the time to render, tying up the machine. I’m using Twinmotion for this now and in a fraction of the time it would take to do the above, crank out stunning renders that sell the job. Even factoring in the cost of buying TM and the speed of doing a scene, it’s cheaper then buying a Threadripper. There is just no way I’d ever consider using renderworks again for 3D renders - the only exception currently using custom renderworks for elevations.
In my other life as a VW trainer, when you start going over renderworks and the time to do an offline render, it kills any enthusiasm that’s been built up over the course of the coaching when they want to see a 3D render... Throw it into enscape - even in its current beta form, and everyone is blown away. Which leads me to my other point above to the OP is to not think “I’ll never use Twinmotion or enscape..or lumion...”, chances are you might just want to try a demo... and get hooked - build the machine with bit of fat in it so you can try these things out, if you don’t it last you longer between upgrades.-
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1 hour ago, herbieherb said:
graphics card as a critical bottleneck for Vectorworks in the near future
With redshift integration coming the need for a better gpu might be a consideration - but without a hint of timing it’s a question of when - hopefully sooner rather than later! I personally think it’s a good idea to think broadly about what the currently use is and what i could use it for when plotting an overhaul; most software gets more demanding on each version generally. Overspeccing a bit now just delays an inevitable upgrade - a 2070/2080 is a reasonable bump compared to the massive jump of say, an Nvidia Titan or a 32 core threadripper, which I don’t think you’d see a return on in both money spent 🤢 or performance 🤔
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I would go with the X570 because it’s going to be futureproofing your rig and there are a few good contenders in the price range of the B450/550. M.2 SSD’S are rolling out with PCIE 4 support and going by leaks, the forthcoming nvidia ampere/rtx3000 series will support PCIE 4, so the next ssd or graphics card upgrade will definitely use it. I find for me, my cpu/main board/ram does at least one graphics card upgrade before I cycle out the cpu and main board between gpu upgrades - this spreads out the upgrade cost rather than being a lump sum.
I’d also go with an RTX 2070 super as an absolute minimum - the 1660 is a fairly low end card - OpenGL will leverage the card when navigating around your model and if you get tempted (this happens a lot by people who say they aren’t interested initially) by real-time rendering engines (enscape, Twinmotion, etc) over the long wait for renderworks renders (there are a lot of threads in the forum covering this), you’ll need at least a 2070 and you’ll kick yourself not being able to trial one effectively with hardware below min spec.-
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Since data tags arrived, I've stopped using the windoor tags and made custom data tags that you can tag windoor objects in either the design layer or viewport annotations - so much more flexible. There is a video on the ozcad site covering them and also how to display user field data as well.