Bart Rammeloo

As far as I can tell, Acad is using Subdivision Surfaces. Meaning a couple of polygons thrown into a rounding algorithm. The result of such an operation is ... lots of polygons (faces). That's the way ArchiCAD does it in combination with CINEMA 4D. You can do the same thing if you combine CINEMA 4D with VW. It might be that Autodesk uses Maya's Sub-D technology. That's not the same as Subdivision Surfaces, as Sub-D is curve-based and very similar to NURBS. You can convert Sub-D to NURBS without losing information. If that is the case, then they have something we don't. But if it's the former, then we have nothing much to worry about. It's not integrated into VW, but with a simple 3DS or DXF exchange from C4D to VW you achieve exactly the same thing.

Modo is not a solid modeler, it's a polygon modeler. That means it uses polygons (faces) as a basis. You can make things that look organic, but that are at its basis only faces (lots of them). Plus, you can't make real booleans, real roundings and so on. CINEMA 4D has the same "weakness". It's really apples and oranges.

This has nothing to do with NNA, but with the Parasolid kernel. Siemens is working on multicore support for Mac. Once they have that, NNA can implement it. Remember, this multicore functionality only influences some parts of Vectorworks, not all. For most of your daily operations the (lack of) multicore support will make no speed difference. The major improvement here is that Parasolid is used - period. The multicore support is just an interesting extra.

And what would a "star cloth" be? A piece of cloth in the shape of a star? Cloth with stars printed on it? I'm sorry, but as a Belgian, I miss the vocabulary to understand this

Frosted glass is not really within RenderWorks's capabilities. If you really need that, you might want to consider more high-end rendering solutions.

I case you'd like to know: the trees in Artlantis are from VBvisual - www.vbvisual.com. Xfrog has also shrubbery and flowers (in 3d), but not a lot of them. Doschdesign.com also offers a collection of plants and trees.

Have you ever tried Maxwell? It produces great results, but it's even slower than Radiosity in RenderWorks. Artlantis R produces great results and has a very good interface, but it has the same limitations as before: once you want to get rid of the render artefacts, you're stuck.

One possible tip when you're converting your NURBS to Mesh geometry: change the tesselation level in your preferences. The lower you set it, the lighter your export becomes. I would, by the way, not use the export to Strata anymore. Just export to 3DS (small file) or DXF (large file, but same information as 3DS). And dare I say that 50 MB for 2 chairs is horribly large? I regularly get office chair designs with alls screws, bolts, handles, interior frames and caps included (from BULO), and they are never larger than 15 MB - and I'm talking about geometry that is production ready.

Well, you cannot really call Mathematica a 3D or graphics application, can you? I know the output can be graphical and 3D, but that doesn't make it fit into the same category as C4D.

You can just revolve a spline. That should do the trick. Drawing a parabolic spline is pure math, so that part shouldn't be hard. Just watch out for the quality of the 3D-object. VW 8 doesn't use NURBS, and the representation of your 3D-shape might not be attractive.

2 thoughts: (1) open the DWG in ACAD, and see what it looks like. re-save it as DWG if it looks good and import that in VIZ. (2) Export you model as IGES, and open that in VIZ (assuming that VIZ can read IGES like MAX can).

Yes, that's right. Your dongle is your license. You should have insurance for your dongles - just like you have insurance for your computers. Your PC vendor will not replace your computer for free when it gets stolen or when you loose it. The same is true for dongles.

Well, there still is the base version of VectorWorks. That one doesn't come with loads op PIO's. Anyway guys, I think you're willfully overlooking a couple of things. I'm going to mention two of the most important changes. (1) change of internal precision. This happened when they went from 8 to 9. The result to some people was that their file sizes doubled and that their machines all of a sudden performed twice as slow. However, this allowed for the DXF and DWG exchange we have today. In 8 this exchange wasn't worth a dime. I prefer a good exchange, and so should you if you are an engineering firm. (2) viewports. That too increased the file size and slowed down the program. But what you get in return more than compensates the disadvantages. With Sheet layers and viewports we finally have a decent page layout system which is, by the way, not only fully compatible with ACAD but which is also better than ACAD's. I think you should look deeper into what 12 has to offer you. Just try zooming in and out while you have a heavy 2D-drawing open. You'll see that 12 performs much better than previous versions.

There's nothing wrong with Hypertreading if your application makes us of it. Which, if I'm correct, VectorWorks doesn't. RenderWorks, again if remember correctly, does however. I might be wrong, but isn't it easier to achieve higher general speeds with dual core than with single core? Isn't it easier to use 2 processors of speed X instead of using 1 processor of twice speed X?

There will be no support for 11.5 or older versions on IntelMac. VectorWorks 12 will get its own IntelMac version.

Is it really a good idea to do this with RenderWorks? Your walk- or flythrough tools in VW don't exactly offer the highest level of control. You might be more satisfied with an external tool like CINEMA 4D. It renders faster and offers better animation tools. Don't get me wrong, I love RenderWorks and it is beautifully integrated into VectorWorks, but it's perhaps not the best tool for this kind of job. Oh, and C4D supports both Hyperthreading and Dual core to the fullest. [ 02-15-2006, 06:53 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

I'm on the side of those who feel that learning how to draw - by hand - is a way of learning how to look at the world. It sharpens your perception. It's the same with moulding or sculpting - or even photographing, despite what other people might think. If it however comes down to technical drawing, you're much better of with CAD. Every generation sees disadvantages in new methods. I remember my dad who had to use a ruling-pen, while drawing pens were already on the market for a couple of years. I myself had to use a drawing pen at school, while every professional was using a CAD-solution. Nowadays you hardly see anyone using pens anymore. Is that a loss? I don't think so. Your understanding of technical things is not influenced by the drawing methods you use. But your spatial experience is without a doubt defined by the ways used to register and represent space.

Along the line: when you use stacked layers, and you assign textures through a class, then you should be able to set the texture origin for the class, so that you don't get texture gaps of jumps accross layers.

I would wait for 12.0.1 for a final judgement on VW's stability. The first version of a new generation is never compteltely satisfying. At least, that's been the case with previous generations of VectorWorks

You should ensure your dongle - just like you would ensure every other piece of hardware you own. It should be ensured for the price of the licence.

As far as I know, there's currently no acceptable technology that allows you to achieve the same kind of transparancy at the same speed on the Windows platform. There are technologies (otherwise Illustrator wouldn't be able to use transparancy), but they're too slow for typical CAD-drawings with lots of surfaces and lines. The incompatibility is solved when you switch off Quartz on the Mac. You then go back to the same system as in 11.5 and older versions. [ 01-10-2006, 05:29 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

quote: Originally posted by Christiaan: I'm not sure that Mac-specific development is that high on the list of VW developers priorities these days. Think Intel Mac. Then ask your question again. Most software developers are working hard to get their code to Intel Macs, so I guess it's fair to assume that NNA is concentrating on that rather than on Spotlight integration. Of course, I might be wrong, but it seems logical.

But only in the lanmark version...

Did you set the 3D-tesselation to the highest level? You can do that in the Vectorworks Prefererences.

This is a bit of topic, but you should really check out the new HAIR module for C4D R9.5. It's great for rendering out grass fields. A couple of examples (from CGtalk): CGTalk - neosushi CTTalk - JamesMK CGTalk - holle CGTalk - tinrocket - #1 CGTalk - tinrocket - #2 CGTalk - TimC Cheers, BaRa [ 12-16-2005, 11:33 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]