alanmac

Kevin If you still feel you want to try the Windows route you'll find plenty of ways to build a good machine for your purpose, even through PC manufacturers, but you'll need to do some research first. That's the good and bad of PC, so many choices, so much variation. At least you could buy one machine for a good price, hook it up to your current monitor if it has dual inputs and run with it for a while. Discover the joys of a scroll wheel mousing if you hav'n't already. I'd say enjoy the experience but it's not like it's a hobby, we need this stuff to earn our living so it's important it works right - irrespective of which OS you choose to use. Why is it always the next one will be better - the next OS, the next version of the software, the next big technological breakthrough!! Ever seen the Clint Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Whales (think that's the spelling). The remark about it raining comes to mind, if you've seen it you'll know what I mean. Good luck. Alan

Viper X I can understand you not wanting to change now you have a working solution. Why is he messing about, and what exactly has he got to do, and how much extra is the charge over a "normal" file? Maybe he's a straight guy but sounds as if he's taking advantage. My bureau expects to do some small amount of work. But that's stuff like checking file, maybe re-orientating it. What's he got to do if VW's on his machine other than what you'd do printing A4 on your own machine. It's not like sticking a piece of paper in a photocopier and hitting the go button whatever file you take in Autocad or Vectorworks. Sounds like he does not want the custom, price it up and hopes you'll find a cheaper option elsewhere. Alan

Eddie To late, replied. Good luck. If I can be of help in any way , get in touch. all the best Alan

You could in an effort to save your work copy the drawing piece by piece except the cloud into another drawing and test that out to be okay, then ditch the bad file and hope NNA sort the problem out for you at some stage. I've rescued some bad files this way. You've probably already thought of this but in case you hadn't due to frustration !! Good luck

tvetter I only print plans, and certainly at this size, in black and white. I'll throughly check my setting both in 995 and Vectorworks tomorrow to let you know what they are. It's late and I'm cream crackered !! Alan

it's a one way street, VW to Cinema 4D, but you can go down it as many times as needed, in other words change the VW file and export to update the C4D one. Don't know about textures because I've never applied them in VW (not Renderworks) to basic a render for my needs. Use it purely for modeling and plans, elevations etc. Apply textures, lights etc in the render program. If you model anything to add to your scene from within Cinema, keep it out the Vectorworks part in the Object Manager or it will get overwritten on update file time. Some have said Renderworks offers better value, but it's all a question of what level you want to create your final output to. I'm bringing in Cinema to replace Artlantis as my render program because of the greater capabilities of Cinema, which if you have you'll know about. Alan

Viper x As the one I suggested is free, you are not spending the hundreds Adobe costs, and if it works okay, it's a result. If not you've cost yourself about ?8 in UK money. My bureau which mainly prints from Autocad files had no problems. I never changed a setting from the install default and it was fine. [ 11-01-2004, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

Take a look at 995pdf as your on Windows, it's free. Or do a Google search, you'll find plenty. The reason I mention 995pdf is I have it and send pdf files A0 size to my local print bureau.

Hi Kevin tough one to call. I like the way Apples computers look, are put together and the whole ideal of the company. Despite that I've just never been able to convince myself to pay the extra. It's cheaper than it's ever been I know. I recently had my old Dell die on me in the middle of a project. This was old, about 4 years old, one of the earliest Twin Pentium 3's. 733 processors and 512 mbs of rambus. Up until recently I'd been a Studio Manager at a Mac based company. My work machine, a Quicksilver 733 two years old with 768 mb of ram was slower, both running the same version of Vectorworks - old 8.5 (don't ask.) To be honest this only noticed in such operations as hidden line render etc. exporting files to Artlantis. Opening a file was also slightly quicker on PC but not that hugely different to get upset by. So I had to choose. Stay with Windows or go Apple. The Apple machine I wanted, Dual G5 2 Ghz was twice the price, the license changes to all my software around another ?400. For me, in my situation it didn't make sense. The gains are subjective, in my opinion, and did not seem in proportion to the outlay. Over twice the price was not going to give me anywhere near twice the speed. I've always said, and certainly when using 8.5 once in the program it made no difference. A few keystroke changes to remember but the same great program working in either. I never got to use anything higher at work to compare but from what I've read Macs have a problem to get sorted by NNA. I also have rendering to do and this was always much faster on the PC. If you've made the investment in Macs I'd say hang on in their, they've got to sort it, too many people commenting for it to be one machine, rogue problem. Alan P.S. APE Design I've got plug in, works fine although I've not used it much up until now. Really want to use Cinema, it's rendering etc. so much better than what I'm currently using.

I'm not 100% but i seem to remember something about 24 bit and the need to reduce this for Vectorworks. As I say not sure but give it a try reducing bit to 16 etc.

Even as a Vectorworks Windows user, who has also used Mac for the last two years, I'd say hold on before going PC. It's a costly move to make and I'm sure NNA are aware of the situation and working on it. Hate for you to spend lots of money with a solution around the corner. Maybe it's the speed of change within OSX that companies are struggling with. After all 64 bit processing is on its way and maybe they are working to get that version together knowing the old one has a limited life, after all I don't believe Vectorworks is native OSX as it stands at the moment. Keep on asking the questions, though this site I have reason to believe is not your direct link to NNA Tech Support, it's more a users list with NNA staff contributing when they can. The lack of any response to some important issues are causing concern with loyal users and need to be addressed to ensure they remain such.

As a footnote to this thread I have had dongle problems in sleep mode and according to Tech Support at Aladdin this is nothing to do with them. I have been told how the dongle, the operating system and Vectorworks interacts is down to how Nemetschek write the software to do this. Aladdin involvement stops at providing hardware and a driver to write to. Hope this is sorted soon.

Baz The nudge command allows you to move your selection by small increments using the arrow keys instead of the mouse. To be honest I don't know if this has a preset distance with the option to change, but it seems to move in "real world terms" if you understand me. For example, if I'm veiwing my object on a 1:50 scale drawing at say 300% zoom and I "nudge" it with the arrow key right, it will move say half a millimetre on my screen in the "real world". If I zoom right in close to the object and do the same it will still move half a millimetre in real world terms. Does that make sense. In other words the closer you get the more accurate it is. That's how I see it. CAD of course is a highly accurate tool but not all working disciplines require the same levels of accuracy. We, as you know can draw to .05 of a millimetre,even lower than that, but when you give the drawing to a carpenter with a HB pencil, expanding tape measure and a panel saw somewhere to the nearest millimetre is all you can hope for and to be honest, all in my case that's needed ;~) You'll find it in older version under the move command menu, but I'm sure you know that. Good luck with the upgrades. Alan

I don't think any program is programmed to take advantage of the 64 bit processing in the Macs even the current available version of OSX. Tiger I believe starts the ball rolling. Good old Adobe with Photoshop always seem to get the best out of any version of Apples operating system. Wonder if it will involve much work, hopefully not a complete rewriting of the software. I'll stick on version ten for a while see how things go. Great though the new functions are, I don't want to fork out a load of money to go slower.

Depending on your location you may have to contend with the use of a dongle if you have not already. There are problems I'm experiencing with this which I hope will be sorted soon. I'm only a single license user so it may be different for you, multilicense and with a server etc. I'm on VW10.5 but it's the same dongle for VW11. Whilst I'm know there are many worthwhile improvements in the upgrades this can only judged as worth it in respect to the type of work you do, how you use the program, what hardware your running it on and how you present your work. For example dxf import is much improved but if you never have to use this then its of no interest. That's not to say it's not a welcome or good increased functionality. My view is that whilst a feature improvement such as how the nudge tool now works is great but not if during the upgrade process I am robbed of speed in basic drawing practise by other things not working correctly. Bound to be bugs etc. and Nemetschek seem to get most sorted pretty quickily. Will it increase your workrate and turnover? That may only be answered in retrospect. Is there anything you can't do in the course of your daily work with your current version that upgrading will allow you to do. If the answer is yes then it must be worth it. If it's a no or a maybe then you may decide not to upgrade. Finally I'd check out new licenses. You may well not be able to buy 9.5 additional licenses anymore and the decision to upgrade may be taken out of your hands, with only the option to buy VW11. Still think it's great despite the moans.

So it appears either nobody has a solution to this problem and I'm stuck with a dongle that does not work correctly. Pretty poor result on the part of a company that introduces a measure to ensure no illegal use of software only to penalise it's legal users. No response from Nemetschek at all.

If I could offer one piece of advice. As you've used another CAD program before, possibly Autocad, I've seen several posts in other forums where the general conclusion is that you cause problems and steepen the learning curve if you try to work the way that program does but in Vectorworks. Whilst having CAD experience will help you knowing what each tool etc. is for, try to work the "Vectorworks way" is the advice given. I'm told once mastered it's much easier and more intuitive than other offerings. I was fortunate, tinkered with cad a little but researched what was best for my work and came up with Vectorworks. Not really clever, just lucky I guess. good luck and enjoy Alan

Katie As your answering questions on dongle issues would you please consider replying to my post in the General discussion area. Posted yesterday but no response to date from you folks. Thanks in advance Alan [ 10-26-2004, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

From the sound of it you'll be more interested in the Architect version of Vectorworks rather than the plain version. Maybe ask questions in that section, although I'd have thought you'd find your answers to these questions in NNA site under that version listing features capabilities etc. There are many Architects who subscribe and are active on these lists and I'm sure will be only to willing to help. Good luck

quote: Originally posted by Kaare Baekgaard: Sofia don't listen to long discussions about different alternatives. It is really quite simple: For a value-for-money solution only Vectorworks with Renderworks will do. It is not the most fanciful solution, but it is FAST, reliable, easy to use and more than good enough for your needs. (I am not a salesman for Nemetchek :-) Tell me do you have first hand experience of the programs you are telling her to ignore? All the solutions mentioned will also import dxf files, with the Autocad user in mind. Can Renderworks import dxf or dwg files?

I've searched the list and come up with dongle problems but these seem to refer to Mac or multi license issues so forgive me if this has been covered before. I have a new computer, running Windows XP with SP1 only and installed Vectorworks 10.5 with the drivers etc given on the install disk when I purchased it. Everything works fine except if I put the computer in sleep mode whilst away from it I get a message saying something like the dongle does not match my serial number and closes Vectorworks. It restarts fine, sees the dongle etc. So can I cure this, is it a Vectorworks or Windows problem. Never happened on my old machine running Windows 2000 Pro. I do have my old copy of 8.5 installed as well due to needing this for old files and connection to Artlantis, so I hope the solution is not to remove this old copy. It is so old it's none dongled anyway.

Thanks Jonathan. Funnily enough I just did a wider search in the list and found somebody's post mentioning it. Thanks anyway for your quick response. I don't use VW for architecture so was wondering if your manual would contain a lot of information not really relevant to me? Thanks again Alan [ 10-23-2004, 01:42 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

I'm finally using 10.5 much more after using 8.5. for ages. That aside, I can't find, what I regarded as useful and a much used tool - nudge. I can't find it anywhere, has it been deleted from the toolset?

I agree with squirelboy71 in looking at Sketch Up. I must admit I overlooked that one, but have a client who uses it and loves it. It has it limitations, what program doesn't, but this may be ideal for your needs. I was tending to think more along the lines that you already had everything created in Vectorworks and was looking to render this. I've never used Sketch Up but have heard so many good things about it. So yes I would not argue with squirrelboy71's recommendation to look at it as well. You won't get the possible level of render obtainable from the other programs from what I've seen, but what it does produce(and its not bad at all!!) may be just what you need. A full working demo available which I think is restricted by time in the program rather than features. good luck Alan

Three programs to look at. Nemetschek's own Renderworks, Artlantis by Abvent and Cinema 4D from Maxon. All provide a plug in for export direct to each program. I've never used Renderworks. Artlantis will also import dxf files so you can import Autocad stuff as well, but with the Vectorworks route you can also update VW files and do the same to the Artlantis file without loss of materials, light settings etc. It's very easy to use. About a day to learn the controls. It is only a rendering and animation program. I have heard it's superior to Renderworks in it's results but having never used Renderworks I can't confirm it. They also do CD's containing extra textures to load into Artlantis. The big difference with Cinema is that it's also a modeling program as well. Also the lighting rendering etc. is far superior and many more controls and features than Artlantis, that's not to say Artlantis is bad. You can get the basic module of Cinema at a reasonable price, adding other features if you need them. One such module is Sketch and Toon which will give your renders a variety of looks including watercolour, marker, sketched etc. Both have web sites with galleries showing samples of work done and demo programs are available. Demos will not include plug in as they are, like most demo copies, save/export disabled. Also both, like Vectorworks, work on both Mac and PC if that's an issue. If you purchase either of the above remember to order the "for Vectorworks" version to ensure the additional plug in is in the package. All the best Alan [ 10-22-2004, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]