Pharr

Hi Shaun, VectorWorks 8.5 used a QuickDraw 3D based rendering system and RenderWorks was built on this. As of RenderWorks 9, we transitioned to a completely different implementation of RenderWorks, and the qualitative change in shadow behavior you mention (I'm assuming it is as you describe) was related to this. Your report of this issue last November is the only reference to this change in behavior in our database. We are aware of it, but as it is related to library functionality over which we don't have complete control, we have not been able to resolve it yet. I'm sorry this has had such impact on your work with VectorWorks.

Hi Donald & everyone, It does look like there is an issue here, and we have been investigating it -- but it has been difficult for us to isolate it, compounded by the fact that some staff related to this area are on vacation. We are working on it and will post feedback when we have it. Thanks!

To use VW 10.5, you will need to run MacOS 9.2 or later. If this implies you will need to upgrade machines, then yes, you are stuck with 10.1.2 until you modernize your hardware. Paul Pharr NNA

There were some subtle changes, but nothing too significant as far as I know. You can have your IT guys contact pharr [at] nemetschek.net and let us know what you are seeing. [ 09-12-2003, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: Pharr ]

VectorWorks 10.5 requires MacOS 9.2 or greater for a number of reasons internal to the software. It is a free update as long as your hardware supports MacOS 9.2. If not, then you must either upgrade your hardware or stay with VectorWorks 10.1.2. Or you can try this suggestion cross-posted from the VECTORWORKS-L: You might try OS9 Helper at this location . I had some trouble with it on my Mac clone and went back to OS 9.1, but it may do the trick with a genuine Apple machine. Jim Linke [ 09-11-2003, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Pharr ]

Hi Austin, I understand your point of view. We made a tradeoff in functionality with which you don't agree. From our point of view, the current system is in many ways better, but even in the case you mention, the new system puts RenderWorks on a single predictable machine. In VW9 and prior, If RenderWorks serial numbers are installed on all machines, RenderWorks is available to those workstations which launch VectorWorks first and unavailable to those which launch after the licenses are used. Annoyingly unpredictable behavior. You make a vaild point that the configurations of your machines are different, and this increases your administration burden. We are aware that maintaining a site with numerous VectorWorks seats is not as carefree as we'd like it to be - for the reason you cite and others - but it has not yet outweighed other quality and feature issues in our development priorities. Our license agreement allows the installation of our products on one machine per serial number. Our serial number system allows those users who own multiple serial numbers to enter them on all workstations to ease their administrative overhead. The fact that our serial number enforcement system allows you to violate the license agreement doesn't diminish the agreement. There are plenty of ways to violate the agreement which require no assistance from us. Having said all this, the appropriate people for you to be talking to are in our sales department. Tell them your situation and they will work with you to come up with a mutually agreeable solution. Thanks!

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JNR, We agree with you that the ability to link sections of the drawing with dynamically updating "viewports" is an important direction for us, but it was too big a project for the length of our VectorWorks 10 development cycle. We focused instead on improving VectorWorks in ways such that your bad experience with VectorWorks 9 will not be repeated - including overall quality and numerous usability features. I think you'll see that VectorWorks 10 receives a warm reception for what it does well even if we haven't addressed all outstanding user wishes. If by ODBC you are referring to the ability to drop hot-linked excel spreadsheets into your drawing, I think your terminology is somewhat inaccurate - OLE or embedded objects is Microsoft's description. We are unable to currently support that capability on the Mac (as is Graphisoft in ArchiCad) so we have not developed it.

Irving, VectorWorks 10 is fully compatible and tested with Jaguar. 9.5.3 will go final in the near future to provide a release level solution for Jaguar users.

What is the problem you have with the walkthrough tool? Please be specific - include operating system, VW version, and video card model.

Hi Chris, You are correct in your impression that we have made a lot of changes for VW 10 and even so, we have not implemented every wish. We still have a long list remaining. We did carefully match the outstanding wishes with available implementation resources and came up with a package which addressed a bunch of longstanding requests. Wishes like ODBC integration have not been forgotten, but thet have less appeal for our average user than some of the other areas in which we invested effort. That's not to say that we're writing them off - just that they didn't make the cut this time around.

Hi Kurt, We have taken your sentiment to heart in the development of VectorWorks 10 - really listening to where people are having problems with the application and devoting resources to fixing longstanding problem areas. I can't say whether your concerns were addressed as they are not specifically cited, but I can say that we have tried to focus effort in a way that people like you - fans of VectorWorks 8 - will notice and appreciate. Our money back guarantee applies to buyers of our upgrade as well as new customers. Give VW 10 a try and see if it meets your expectations. I think your approach to 10.2 is very sensible. Apple is being much more aggressive than in the past with regard to adding functionality in their incremental OS releases. This inevitably reduces the stability of the OS, and you are making the right decision to let the dust settle before adopting 10.2.

Hi Donald, It's hard to come up with quantitative evidence that VectorWorks 10 is better tested by some measure than was VectorWorks 9. Quantitative quality statistics are complicated by the reality that there only has to be a single bug in the most inopportune place to render an application unusable for a given user. I can say that we have heard from internal testers and beta testers alike from the beginning of the VectorWorks 10 testing cycle through to release that VectorWorks 10 is much more stable and reliable than 9.0.x was at release. I also personally believe that it is more robust overall than any other VectorWorks or MiniCAD release. I'm quite confident that 10 will be well received in this respect.

Andi, You need to install the 9.5.2 application and install the 9.5.3b2 update as well as the beta dongle drivers available with the 9.5.3b2. Read the note about the need to reinstall the dongle drivers after every reboot. We know this is not an optimal situation and we are working on a solution, but it will allow you to continue with your work. If you find this unacceptable, you should uninstall MacOS X 10.2 and go back to the stable 10.1.5 system until we have issued the final release of VectorWorks 9.5.3. Apple made a number of changes in 10.2 which broke functionality in VectorWorks, and a month is not enough time to find and fix them all.

We have updated the 9.5.3b1 page at //www.nemetschek.net/downloads/vectorworks/9.5.3_page.html to include information about the copy/paste issue as well as revert to saved crashing. There is no workaround to these problems other than avoiding MacOS X 10.2 until we can release a version of 9.5.3 which resolves them. Paul C. PharrCAD Software ManagerNemetschek North America

Hi Everyone, There is a little bit of misinformation in this thread, which I'll try to correct. There seems to be a copy/paste crash which affects some people more than others and may or may not be related to 10.2. We have certainly heard more about it since 10.2 was released, but that may be conincidence. We are doing all we can to investigate it. There is also a known problem which is well documented on the 9.5.3b1 release web page wherein the application will crash within the first 10-20 seconds after it is relaunched after any crash, including the copy/paste crash. The only way around this is to reboot the machine. This is caused by a networking problem introduced in MacOS X 10.2 by Apple and which they are investigating. We are sorry that these problems are affecting your work, but unfortunately that is the price you must pay for working with the newest version of Apple's operating system. Nemetschek and Apple are both working hard to resolve these issues as soon as we can. Until then, we encourage you to incorporate whatever modifications to your work habits are necessary to avoid productivity loss, including possibly reverting to MacOS X 10.1.5. Thanks, Paul C. PharrCAD Software ManagerNemetschek North America

John, The 9.5.0 CD should install dongle drivers for MacOS X, but if you installed using the updater, then the dongle drivers need to be installed in a separate step using: http://webupdate.nemetschek.net/nnapub/mac/MacOSXDongleSupplement.sit In any event, this would be good to try. Restart your Mac after installing this & see if you are up and running. Paul C. PharrCAD Software ManagerNemetschek North America

This is a problem you will see if you select a location within your existing 9.0.1 folder into which to install 9.5.0. My suggeation is not to select an install directory for your 9.5.0 version, but rather select an install *volume* using the popup menu. Then the problem you are experiencing cannot happen. This problem will be identified and avoided by our final release 9.5.0 installer. Paul C. PharrCAD Software ManagerNNA

Hi everyone, We have found the source of some significant instability under Windows 95/98/ME and we would like to get feedback if you are affected. We have found that under Windows 95/98/ME, running with your video card set to 256 colors will cause the application to rapidly consume system resources and ultimately crash. If you are experiencing this behavior, increase your color depth and respond to this post if it fixes your problem. Thanks! Paul C. Pharr CAD Software Manager Nemetschek North America

I'm happy to report that I received the following response from Apple's video engineering folks today: "The fix for your issue should be the in next system update, due out shortly." I can also confirm that the fix for these issues is in the next VectorWorks update, also due out shortly. I'm sorry that these problems are still present after so long, but we have been working hard on all fronts to get a fix out as quickly as possible. It looks like all of our efforts will pay off at once. Thanks, Paul C. Pharr CAD Software Manager Nemetschek North America

quote: If you would like we have 2 pages of bugs (all mac) we would be happy to send to you. By all means. Send your report to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net and it will be entered into our bug tracking system. We are actively fixing problems reported against VectorWorks 9. Paul C. Pharr CAD Software Manager Nemetschek North America

We understand that printing is very important functionality and we take the VW9 printing problems experienced by some of our users very seriously. As Robert indicated in an earlier post, printing problems have received close attention during 9.0.1 development. We have fixed what we think is responsible for the PostScript errors seen by VectorWorks 9.0.0 users for VectorWorks 9.0.1. We have also addressed the problem which causes rotated text to fail to print on some Microspot MacPlot drivers. Finally the problem which causes printers to print in lower than optimum resolution has been fixed. While I can't give you a date, version 9.0.1 is nearing release. Thanks! Paul C. Pharr CAD Software Manager Nemetschek North America

quote: Originally posted by doug shaffer: We recently installed VWA9 on a machine in our office that has an ATI Radeon card and have seen the Video Card Woes problem go away. Occasionally (once every couple of hours) the selection handles disappear without warning and for no apparent reason. You'll note that in my original message I categorized the ATI problems as intermittent. This is very typical behavior for intermittent problems. For example, suppose the driver does not initialize some variable they are subsequently observing to determine whether to draw to screen. Then drawing to screen becomes random. You are seeing the randomness of a buggy driver. The very fact that it works in VW 9.0 is random - as we made no change to this code. Paul

This can be considered an "official response" if you like. Here is what we know: The newest video cards shipping with Mac G4s have problems displaying some elements of VectorWorks user interface - notably those drawn using the XOR transfer mode - which causes serious usability problems. NVIDIA GeForce cards exhibit this problem 100% of the time and ATI Radeon cards exhibit intermittent problems. Using 256 colors can avoid the problem, but turning off the 2D Acceleration extension for the video card in question is the best workaround for both video cards. With the NVIDIA card, this problem affects VectorWorks versions 8.0.1 through 9.0.0. With the ATI card, it affects versions 8.0.1 through 8.5.2. This behavior stems from bugs in the 2D acceleration drivers for these cards. We are currently talking to Apple about getting these problems fixed in the drivers. Other software is similarly affected by this class of bugs - for example AppleWorks 6.0. The details of the problem seem to point to an incorrect implementation in the video drivers of XOR transfers when a color pen pattern (PenPixPat) is active in the graphics port. This is a relatively uncommon situation, but one upon which we rely fairly heavily. We are developing a workaround which can avoid these bugs in the video drivers for many if not all of the situations in which our GUI is most affected. We intend to incorporate this change into our next maintenance release of VectorWorks 9. Until then, we recommend keeping your 2D Acceleration extension disabled while using VectorWorks. We have no plans to release an update of VectorWorks 8.x.x. VectorWorks 8.x.x users must run with 2D acceleration disabled and wait for corrected video drivers from Apple, ATI, or NVIDIA. I have every confidence that there will be new drivers for these cards which fully resolve these problems, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that happens as soon as possible. We regret that you have as yet been unable to take advantage of the full speed of these new video cards with VectorWorks. Thanks, Paul C. Pharr CAD Software Manager Nemetschek North America