Bret

Possibly related to this issue - I suspect your thumbnail is zoomed in on a blank area in the bottom corner.

I'm not sure if all of them are on SP6, but mine is, and I'm seeing the issue. The preview pane isn't rendering full views for many details either, as shown in the attached screenshot.

Any update on this? We just pushed out a detail library update to our people and every detail we have is rendering with truncated views like the one I posted about a year ago. We're all on Windows machines, running VW2018 Fundamentals, just to mention it.

Interesting that you use the wall tool as an example - it's the only one we use regularly, limitations aside, and it certainly can make sense for a 2D project. A simple example: we import plans for a residence and want to quickly draw continuous foundations for a raised floor system. We set a default foundation width as the wall thickness, define a custom offset to accommodate alignment with the stemwall, and now we can lay out our foundations easily by point-to-point tracing the exterior of the building (regardless of the designer's drafting style or plan quality). If a footing needs to change thickness, we update it in the object info palette, and it adjusts while maintaining its intersection graphics. This approach saves time versus trying to do the same work with rectangles or polygons, even if we're not using any of the wall's 3D capabilities. Our engineers have been using this workflow since 2000 (VW 8.5), and if we upgrade, it goes away. That's a loss for us, even though we don't use VW for BIM. Regarding your final point, Export to PDF was not a particularly useful addition for anyone already using VW, since 1) professional users were certainly already using one of a number of .pdf print drivers readily available (from Adobe, Bluebeam, pdfFactory, etc.), and 2) batch export was not provided to Fundamentals users, so for someone with another .pdf printer already installed, there's no benefit. Even allowing that some people did benefit from it, nothing was being pulled back from any customer, so there was nothing for anyone to complain about. Being given one tool doesn't mean anyone has to be satisfied when an unrelated tool is taken away.

From the 2019 Fundamentals release feature list, I could see us making use of the Class/Layer filtering, and I'm curious to see how much real-world difference the Multi-core support, graphics updates, and OIP update make for our projects. Still, losing the wall tool would a few regular workflows to change (for slower methods, I'd expect), so I guess we'll just have to evaluate whether the update is worth taking that hit. I'm disappointed that I even have to evaluate a tradeoff like this - it definitely dampens my enthusiasm for the v2019 release.

I can understand seeing it that way from an architect's perspective. However, our structural engineering office has been using VW for production work since v8.5 and has put out thousands of sets of plans in that time, always using the basic/Fundamentals level of the software. Our engineers each do their own drafting - primarily 2D work, so no rendering necessary.

I haven't discussed this broadly with our team yet, but I could see a number of them being unwilling to update (downgrade?) to VW2019 Fundamentals if it means giving up those tools...which could mean we'll be on 2018 for a while. Guess we'll see what happens. While there's an offer to upgrade to an industry series product for free, nobody's excited to have our annual subscription fees jump significantly just to keep using the same options we already have access to. @Kevin McAllister I could imagine some utility to a web-accessible "lite" version of VW, but I shudder to think that Fundamentals would become browser-only.

From an email I received today: With 2019, Fundamentals users are having these tools taken away: Spaces, Doors, Walls, Windows, Columns, Stairs and Ramps. I'm fairly annoyed at these tools being removed (if nothing else, we use walls frequently as a layout tool), but I'm really annoyed by the marketing spin about how it's being done in the name of serving me better. There's no possible upside for Fundamentals users, and I don't like that VW would pretend that there is. The real goal has to be users upgrading to more-expensive packages...nothing else really makes sense to me. Is there something I'm missing? Anyway, if nothing else, I just wanted to register my frustration and give a heads-up to any Fundamentals users who might not be aware of this yet.

@JimW Checking in on this again - this persistency really seems like a bug (or at least something which needs the ability to be turned off). Any way to find out if this has been logged as a bug?

It's been a while without any official response to this one, and this issue definitely hamstrings the Resource browser for us. @JimW, is there a better place for this? Known Issues, perhaps? Any way to find out if it's been logged as a bug? Thanks!

On my machine, I do not see anything in the resource browser preview pane unless I actually have the file open in VW. If the file containing symbols is open, I see a preview. If not, it's entirely blank. Sometimes (not always) those previews are incorrectly scaled and do not show everything in the symbol. See the attached screenshot...note that three of the thumbnails are not shown correctly, but the "Title Block" one actually does encompass the entire symbol. "Set Thumbnail View" is set to Top/Plan, and "Set Thumbnail Render Mode" is set to Wireframe, although it doesn't appear that changing either option makes a difference. Just wondering if there are settings I can change which will fix these or if they're known issues. Anyone know? Thanks.

Here's hoping that this unexpected announcement bodes well for future CAD/modeling interchange: https://www.nemetschek.com/en/presse/press-releases/detail/nemetschek-acquires-leading-us-software-provider-risa-for-structural-engineering-1/

Jim, where might that article be found? I don't see anything in the knowledgebase addressing silent install since VW2016...is that the most recent documentation?

Just to mention it in case it makes a difference, for some reason this is a Design Series-only option... It's a strangely arbitrary thing to omit from Fundamentals, but it doesn't seem to me that the logic as to what's in or out is particularly consistent.

I'm seeing this callout autofill issue with VW2018 Fundamentals as well, and I would very very much like it to be fixed. New callouts should always be made with blank text by default.