Vectorworks has a real problem in regard to urgently needing a PLENTIFUL supply of free, high-quality, useful, up-to-date tutorials! Yes. Every single one of those boxes needs ticking!
Some of the relatively few tutorials put out on You Tube by professional trainers are more an overt introductory advertisement for their further training services, than an ongoing useful tutorial series in their own right.
Vectorworks is a VERY complex program, and it's very easy to get lost. And then very quickly - get STUCK!
The "Help Files" are NO help at all !!!
They have obviously been written by a team of mainly Technical Writers.
Although Technical Writers generally have a good understanding of HOW the program operates, and are able to describe WHAT the program does, they generally (not always, of course) lack the hands-on experience that comes from personally dealing with the Users to ANTICIPATE the problems frustrated beginners get themselves into. And to reflect this empathy helpfully by providing useful, practical advice in their instructions to users who have got themselves into a bind, and DON'T need a mere recitation of what the program does, so much as DO NEED a helpful ANTICIPATION of what their problem could be. And most importantly, a USEFUL mini-tutorial on exactly HOW they can dig themselves out of the mess they got into!
Who is the often the BEST real source - and repository - of WHAT knowledge and tutorial help should be automatically provided to the Users in the Help section of the Vectorworks program??? It's NOT the Technical writers. It's the Training Staff. By far!
Vectorworks employs some really excellent trainers, but there seems to be a SERIOUS internal management disconnect with using their expertise to drive the composition of the Help files! The Help Section should be FILLED with (up-to-date to latest version!) Mini-Tutorials.
A good excellent example of where this is done properly is Autodesk 3DS Max.
I appreciate that Vectorworks University is an attempt to fix this problem. But it is - still - VERY MUCH - an obvious work-in-progress. Too little, too late! The webinars are really good. But - referencing PVA-Jim's YEAR-OLD comment above - there are - a whole year later - still far too few. What happened to the promise of this coming great change, Jim? The rate of adding additional new material is decidedly pedestrian! There need to be LOTS more! And urgently!
For example, as a beginner, I really struggle with understanding how to get a project going from start to finish in Vectorworks. The shear amount of complexity - everywhere - is overwhelming! And the program is constantly fighting the beginner with "gotcha's" at almost every turn.
It's like stepping into the pilot's seat of a modern jet airliner for the first time. And the instructor demands that you have to know everything - in complete detail - BEFORE you can even begin to taxi the plane down the runway.
That's NOT how complex subjects are taught!
The first training focus is to ignore most of the instrument panels, and just do the fewest simple steps to get the engines started, then we taxi down the runway, then I get you in the air (Yay! that's what I came here for!). Now I show you a bit about what the essential flight controls do, then YOU take over for a bit. Then I show you a bit more. Here's how we operate the radio ... and the trim .... and ... And enough for the day. Now we land. And then ... we continue our lessons in this style, gradually introducing you to handling ever-more complexity. And then, one day, you will do this on your own. Confidently!
The point of this analogy is that there needs to be a graduated series of lessons - over the SAME material - of ever-increasing depth and breadth.
I start with a collection of a few reference drawings: a site plan, surveyor's drawing, initial sketch layouts for each floor. I look at the Help files in Vectorworks, and find how to import and resize an individual reference drawing. Great stuff! But there's immediately a show-stopping problem! I haven't got just one drawing. I've got multiple reference drawings! How do I manage these multiple drawings?
Nowhere can I quickly find a solution to my problem. User-friendly program or interface? Not so much, imo, when these simple little gotcha's (which SHOULD have been anticipated by the Help files) catch you right out of the starting gate!
The Help files and tutorials that come with the program are obtuse in showing me how they get allocated to each floor, and how I can easily check out that each floor has the correct reference drawing.
Stories, floors, slabs, and Layers? Total confusion for a beginner! And have I mentioned Classes yet?
It's not enough to merely talk about this stuff. This has to be explained to beginners by way of actual examples in a " real-world" example project.
Vectorworks needs a series of dedicated tutorials of complete end-to end projects. There should be several of these projects, beginning with simple residential projects, alterations to existing houses, then gradually stepping up to more complex examples like multi-story office and residential or hotel buildings.
Better still, would be if Vectorworks opened up a dedicated YouTube tutorial channel, which actively - and swiftly - presented tutorials in response to topics that viewers raised.
Even better, would be if Vectorworks could actively sponsor some really good trainers to provide their own individual - freely available - Tutorial channels on You Tube.
There is real tutorial merit in having a wide variety of different trainers each tackling similar projects (but individually different). What you didn't follow in one lecturer, may be more easily understood from the style of another.
An excellent example in this regard is Robert Mann, an Australian university Architecture lecturer who provides - imho - the very best tutorial material for Archicad. Free, in-depth, Up-to-Date (no lazy padding with out-of-date old-stuff baggage from 2008 or 2014!).
Robert is an excellent teacher, with an engaging personality and style. Even if Archicad is not your scene, just check his channel out to see the full extent of the tutorials presented. Complete projects - from beginning to end! Some in like 20 -30+ individual bite-sized video tutorials! Comprehensive is an understatement! View some of his lectures to see what i mean.
For example, here's the very first lesson (Part 01 of more than 34 parts!) in an example of how to complete a House Project.
Now imagine if Mann, or better still, several trainers as engaging and energetic as he is, each did a similar tutorial in their own personal style for Vectorworks!
Chief Architect is another program that understands the importance of providing a LOT of up-to-date - and really useful - tutorial material. Free too!
It always amazes me how marketing executives with expensive sales and marketing budgets deliberately short-change the company's long-term marketing strategy by being hesitant and reluctant with providing plentiful and useful - and FREE - training material for the program their own business future depends on! Nickel and diming in this area of market strategy is a seriously self-defeating strategy in an ever more competitive market.
Enthusiastically investing in ACTIVELY facilitating the potential market to learn for themselves how good your program is, should be a no-brainer!
Hi All, I'm very much a beginner with Vectorworks, as I'm in the stages of evaluating 3 Bim packages ( including Archicad and Bricscad BIM).
I completely concur with Jonnoxx, to truly understand and get an idea of how a software package works and if its right for you, you need a series of tutorials that take you through an indepth project, showing possible workflows and methodologies.
I can't find this anywhere for Vectorworks, and it makes evaluating the software very difficult and time consuming.
Video Tutorials
in Workflows
Posted
Hi All, I'm very much a beginner with Vectorworks, as I'm in the stages of evaluating 3 Bim packages ( including Archicad and Bricscad BIM).
I completely concur with Jonnoxx, to truly understand and get an idea of how a software package works and if its right for you, you need a series of tutorials that take you through an indepth project, showing possible workflows and methodologies.
I can't find this anywhere for Vectorworks, and it makes evaluating the software very difficult and time consuming.
I think Vectorworks have missed a big trick here!