dhruv

can someone tell me what is the file extension of the installer of the exchange plug in. I had requested my brother to order the plug in the states and he has been trying to e-mail me the installer. he is on a PC and i am on a mac. The file does not have a extension and is showing up as a unix executable. I added the .app and .pkg extensions to it but in both cases it failed. when i add .app the shows up as a classis application. can someone help me out here.

Nemetschek should make a benchmarking utility for Vectorworks so that users can compare performance of various machines available on the market and wisely make there buying decisions. Correct me if i am wrong. I read some where that only raytracing in VW is multiproc. aware. ofcourse it is rendering which takes most of the time. But i would like to know what are the other processor intensive tasks in VW. I guess panning and zooming would be taken care of by the GPU. Boolean and other 3D operations could be CPU intensive, but most of us rarely have very complex geometry anyway. I was also wondering that, the days of higher Ghz on a single CPU are over and chip companys will hence forth start cramming more proc. cores in a single processor. So it is about time that CAD companies made their applications multiproc aware.

thanks dgtlboy. I had sort of given up on any response to my post, but the images you sent say it all. Is it also possible to do a final quality renderworks rendering? Also it would be great if nemetshek, could come up with a concept of 3D dimensions, then we could have dimensioning in isomertic and 3D perspective views as well. that would be great for making construction details, and 3D working perspectives.

i haven't had the chance to use VW12 but gathering from the update features list, it seems that VW now has true 3D sections capabilty. Can someone post some renderings. This really sounds exiting

Could we have some bench marks from NNA about performance of renderworks on the new Intel Macs

From what i read on their website, Cinema 4D seems to be the best option for VW users. But again it quite an expensive option. Going for CD4 would set you back by more than $2000. Basically you are paying for so many features of CD4 which you do not need. But yes if you really want, it seems to be the only solution right now. I also came across the render drive and the pure PCI card. http://www.art-render.com/. Basically this has some propriety chips which are designed to run only raytracing algorithms, thereby giving a 10x performance for rendering as compared to the mainstream processors. But it works for Maya only as far as mac users are concerned. And on the PC side also the only addition is MAX. Nemetschek or, lightworks for that matter could talk to them and work something out.

Though netwrok rendering would be great, but VW uses lightworks rendering engine which itself is not designed for multiple CPUs, so i guess putting in this feature isn't in Nemetschek's hands anyway. I did checked out the details of apple remote desktop on the net. And from the documentation it seems that you can control another mac from your machine. so to begin with Nemetshek could sell independant licenses for renderworks, to work with the "vectorworks viewer application". And they can also link the model being view in the viewer to the main application running on a different computer ,so that any changes made in the model can reflect in the viewer. In my opinion this could be a good stop gap arrangement, which would enable a single user to offload rendering to another machine, without investing in a complete vw+renderworks license. Could we also have people sharing their experiences with other rendering application with VW. And if some of those are network capable. I know strata is. But these days the vw-strata export is very sad.

xgrid sound very promising. The only problem is that applications need to to be modified to be able to make use of this technology. I only hope nemetschek can optimize VW for it, becuase that will really be the solution to my requirement.

Actually, i had finished modelling a residential complex and then i needed about 8-10 views of the same. Of which i made a slide show in iphoto. The point is not so much about speed. The idea is to off load rendering job to another processor while one can do other work on the main machine.

I have been using VW and Renderworks primarily on a powerbook fo the last couple of years. Many times when i have many views of the same model to render. I put the rendering up on my imac G4. Recently i was traveling to another country and where i needed to make a presentation. The average render time was 15 Mins. During that time i did not do any thing on the powerbook to conserve CPU cycles. This set me thinking. What if i buy a couple of mac mins (primarily for their size) and apple's remote desktop(so that i do not have to attach displays) and make a small network on the GO. The other option is that i could go for a 1U apple xserve with dual G5s. The only problem is that renderwroks does not support network rendering...has anyone tried some thing like this. If not renderworks, which other rendering apps would be advisable for such a setup.

It is rather dissapointing that Live 3D sections are not there in VW12. They make a execellent communication tool. So far i had been remodelling specific areas in my design to so that they look like 3D cut away sections. Had nemetschek implemented this, VW12 would have been a very serious competitor to ArchiCAD.

It seems the HP has finally released OS X drivers for its non PS (postscript) range of Plotters. More info at https://www.designjet.hp.com/firmware_fileinfo.html?fw_local_id=1684&new_product=500&pageseq=683799. I am downloading the drivers right now..will post my experience. I request other owners of designjet 500 to do the same. thank you

go to system pref. in the "keyboard and mouse pref" ...go to "keyboard shortcuts" and turn the keyboard short cut for the dock 'off" i am not sure if one can change the keyboard short cut

don't even think about the designjet 120...it is seemingly no recommended for CAD...as it will not print black on plain paper, in normal mode...i bought it...and now HP is letting me exchange with the designjet 500...

Yes thats exactly what i am saying. You cannot print black on plain paper in normal mode. Normal HP printers are print great black even in draft mode, but you don't even get a good balck in the best mode. Printing on coated paper is execellent. The designjet 100 should not have that problem. You should check with HP tech support before purchasing. in any case the Designjet 120 does not support tracing paper.

i am using the same printer, rather not using it. Though it is working fine in all other respects, i am printing on it from both vectoworks 9.5 and 10.5. But it is unable to print good black on plain paper in normal mode. The HP tech support told me that this printer is incapable of printing black on plain paper. They say that this priter is not for CAD but for graphics use and is recommended to be used with on;y coated paper. Is someone else experiencing the same thing?

How do vectorworks symbols, translate to cinema 4d. As symbols? or do they loose that information? Has anyone performed any tests comparing rendering times between renderworks and cinema 4d.