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Jim W

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    v.2020 now available

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    7 hours ago, line-weight said:

     

    I wonder if this will have any effect on the tendency for objects with a 'long' history to at some point go bad, and start refusing certain 3d operations. I tend to "convert to generic solids" at fairly regular intervals in an attempt to avoid this - losing the history.

    I know I heard discussion of how to make history based model objects much healthier than the older ones, but I never got to see the guts of what came out in 2020. I know they did have that top of mind in development talks.

     

    I always converted to generic solids as well before exporting for a 3D print, but that was needed less and less in the later versions. Since I don't use modeling software in my daily work now I haven't seen what 2020 can do in person. I'd have loved to be able to keep each history aspect for powerful editing later and I wanna see about trying out 2020 myself at some point! Maybe I'll take a college class and get a student license. 👨‍🎓

    • Like 5

    v.2020 now available

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    11 hours ago, SeanOSkea said:

    @Jim W Wait? What?! Jim W has left Vectorworks! Oh for F sake. The best person in the tech support has left. This is a sad day. 

    SEAN IM SORRY! 

     

    I still lurk indeed! But I was by no means the best. The guys in tech support were miles ahead of where I had been when I was a tech, we built a lot of systems for sharing knowledge and discussion in my time there, they've got you. I was just possibly the noisiest member of support, lol.

    • Sad 1

    Saving to PDF

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    Export PDf was added to Fundamentals I think in 2018? It wasn't present in 2012 Fund I'm pretty sure. 

    On Windows 10, I'm fairly certain you can just go to File > Print and then it should usually offer Microsoft Print to PDF as a printer choice. You might need Adobe Reader installed to see this, but I always have it so I'm not sure if that's the case. But thats just OS level, and nothing to do with Vectorworks itself.

    If it worked on Windows 7 but you don't see the same thing on 10, then it means you may have had a third party PDF utility installed and you might need to go get it again for your new machine.

    2019 VW slow to start

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    17 hours ago, GAW-Grant said:

    Hi Thanks everyone,  I have discovered that if Chrome is off everything runs much faster ! 


    If thats the case, the next time you look into a computer upgrade, you may want to invest in more RAM. Chrome is my favorite browser but it hogs a LOT of memory.

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted · Edited by Jim W

    21 minutes ago, grant_PD said:

    I work w/ two monitors.  So what I'm hearing is that you can't mix resolutions.  If I got a 4k monitor, my secondary would also need to be 4k?

    You can mix resolutions, its very common. In some OSes you have to have both of them have the same scaling of the UI, but resolutions can be separate without issue.

    When it comes to Vectorworks, IF you mix resolutions, then your experience will be poor, as Vectorworks will have to pick the scaling of one monitor or the other which would make it look a mess on the other. 

    I almost always have dual monitors at minimum in my workflow, but I use Vectorworks on a single display.

     

    34 minutes ago, grant_PD said:

    Slightly off topic (windows fan here, so I'm keeping quiet), are 4k monitors useful for VW/C4d?

    Oh yeah. If you have the graphics power to handle it, its great. Much more room for the UI, the OS elements can be made smaller while still remaining clear. However, I do not wear glasses and have great vision. I have heard from many people with vision concerns that they didnt benefit as much from 4k because they couldnt tolerate the letters being as small as it was possible to make them.

    • Like 1

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted

    Just now, Christiaan said:

     

    What I'd like to know is whether Vectorworks thinks they're worth it to run their Vectorworks Cloud Services. I suspect not.


    Vectorworks isn't allowed to, sadly. Cloud processes require creating a virtualized instance of the OS, and macOS does not allow that, even on it's own hardware. 😞 All Cloud Services instances are Windows because of this. That will hopefully change someday but last I heard it was up to Apple.

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted · Edited by Jim W

    1 hour ago, line-weight said:

    All this means that probably the 'sensible' option for me is to go over to PC. But I don't really want to have to get a grip on a whole new operating system. I am my own IT manager - but want to spend as little time in that role as possible - and can only just keep things in hand with macs at the moment. I'll pay a premium not to have to change OS... up to a point

     

    I personally prefer macOS as a daily driver as well. It's got some annoying bits, but quicklook and expose are still hard to really match even with third party extensions on Windows. 

     

    I will say that OTHER than the annoying autoupdates, Windows 10 is quite well worked out now. I was a big Windows 7 proponent for a long time as I hated 8, but 10 has finally started down the path of improving things again. It's not a terrible time to switch, or to get a mid-range machine in the meantime and learn it slowly. I'd say the main considerations are cloud storage and account syncing solutions before a transition is made. 

    EDIT: Forgot I found this little gem the other day, not AS good as Apple's quicklook, but its 90% of what I want it for on Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/quicklook/9nv4bs3l1h4s?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

    • Like 1

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted

    With Apple, concern for price is just out the window. At this point, it's a heavy price you pay for macOS, but it still has it's staunch fans. It's hard to justify it specifically for Vectorworks since it works cross platform, but for people whose software or ecosystem is completely Mac, this fills the need of "I just can get enough out of an iMac" which has been the problem for Macs for some time. There was NO high end option that you didn't have to overspend on for included mobility or slimness. Now this entry is definitely upmarket and ultra high end, but to be fair they did have a huge hole in that segment.

     

    The main issue I'm happy looks to be solved is thermal throttling. iMacs and MBPs all had that issue and I'm glad to see they took it seriously. 

     

    As for secondhand Mac pros, I suspect a lot of the 2009-era cheesegraters and 2013 trashcan models will become available but the price may not drop very much. I DO predict however that now that a new Pro is available, macOS will start dropping support for the older models much sooner.

     

    I would have liked to see some more reasonable 2999- level price points and configurations for it too, but now they have a platform that it's possible in. I guarantee that fancy rollcage, (WHEELS!) fans and machined facing isn't more than $600 on it's own, so they could decide to put more mortal silicone in there if they wanted to after this initial rollout. They only have policy stopping them now.

    • Like 3
    • Popular Post
    • Popular Post

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Wesley Burrows said:

    Interesting to note they mentioned Maxon and more specifically Redshift (GPU render engine now owned by Maxon) which is currently NVIDIA only. 


    Came across this quote from Maxon:

    “Tapping into the amazing performance of the new Mac Pro, we’re excited to develop Redshift for Metal, and we’re working with Apple to bring an optimized version to the Mac Pro for the first time by the end of the year. We’re also actively developing Metal support for Cinema 4D, which will provide our Mac users with accelerated workflows for the most complex content creation. The new Mac Pro graphics architecture is incredibly powerful and is the best system to run Cinema 4D.” — David McGavran, CEO, Maxon

    Guess that means Redshift is coming to AMD more than it does that Apple and Nvidia are going to clear up this current driver incompatibility nonsense. Hmmm.

    But honestly, i'm just so happy to see what they're offering. Does it cost way too freaking much? Of course, but thats how Apple rolls. It was slightly- (Oh man I almost said the new Mac Pro was Slightly GRATING but even thats too much pun for me.) irritating that they effectively took credit for cooling and accessibility design thats been standard in gaming PCs for years now but I'm just so happy to see them stretch far in that direction that I'll forgive it.

    Still have to see how the support for these PCI devices pans out, but for Vectorworks its gonna be awesome regardless. Base specs for this thing should handle Vectorworks like a dream since it's still limited to one GPU at the moment. If folk have transitioned over to Lumion or Cinema4D though, they'll REALLY fly. Aaaaaaand if you're still gripping your old cheesegrater from 2010 tightly, its safe to say you got your investments worth out of the old machine, hehe. 5,999 to jump a decade into the future aint so bad.

    • Like 5

    WWDC 2019 - Mac Pro Hopes

    in Hardware

    Posted

    Keynote is this coming Monday! Its still not looking super solid, even on the rumor mill side, but I still hold out hope for a significant upgrade to Apples Pro offerings:

    https://www.macrumors.com/guide/wwdc-2019-what-to-expect/

    With all they're throwing into eGPU support, I have to guess that they plan a "Modular" Mac Pro to be upgradable with external modules, rather than giving users access to the gut directly like they last did with the cheesegrater Mac Pro tower. Fingers crossed.

    Vectorworks 19 Font List

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 5/30/2019 at 10:51 AM, CipesDesign said:

    In my opinion VW's needs to show actual fonts in the font pulldown selection menus. It is ridiculous for the user to open another document (no, another application!) just to see what any given font looks like. This has been on the wishlist for a long time, so I am giving it a little bump.


    Because of my new account, I get to vote for it AGAIN! Hehe:

     

    • Like 4

    Lumion Ingratiation is Amazing

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Isn't it freaking DOPE!? 

    In general, you CAN do texturing in Vectorworks and Lumion will show them just fine, but their library has more advanced textures and supports more types of layered shaders in materials than Vectorworks does. I found it was best leaving the geometry and assignment of material by class to the Vectorworks side, and then do replacement of textures, lighting, water, moving objects and custom texture mapping in Lumion.

    • Like 3

    Darkness!

    in Rendering

    Posted

    You likely have added Light objects, but have them all turned off, so that disabled the Default Lighting that is included in files by default. You should be able to get around it by either enabling a Light object, or by going to View > Set Lighting Options and increasing the Ambient lighting value, which if my guess is right is near or at 0 for this file.

    Worth getting a dual processor motherboard?

    in Rendering

    Posted

    6 hours ago, herbieherb said:

    I don't think it's worth it. If the performance of the 32-core threadripper isn't enough for you yet, you'd probably still be cheaper with a second threadripper computer than with a dual processor xeon board. With Cinema4D you have the possibility to combine the computing power of both computers.


    I agree strongly with this. Dual CPU hardware is quite pricey, so much so that you rapidly enter the territory of distributed rendering solutions being much cheaper.

    new macbook pro Hardware advice

    in Hardware

    Posted

    So it worked REALLY well on a MBP if the GPU the MBP had included was already weak like the Intel options the 13" models had. But I saw very little change in actual performace when i added an external GPU to a MBP that had a decent GPU already inside it. The detriment you get to performance over thunderbolt 3 is minimal compared to older cords, but it still existed.

    Also, High sierra eGPU support is really rough, a LOT of manual poking can get you there if youre persistant, but it was a headache. Mojave compatibility was basically plug and play, but came with the limit to AMD cards only, and even then a small selection of them.

    That said, the new 15" MBPs have solid graphics choices for a laptop honestly, bringing in the 8core CPUs finally is a nice change as well. My work now has me on windows-only, but I still plan to keep an eye on the Silver Side.

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