mclaugh

I wouldn't be overly concerned with anti-aliasing on screen or for powerpoint presentations. Even with anti-aliasing enabled, aliasing is always going to be an issue on video displays compared to printed output due to the physical limitations of the video screen. Look at it this way: a 50" 1080p HDTV has an pixel density equivalent to ~43 pixels per inch (ppi), current model enterprise-class video projectors typically have a pixel density of 72 ppi, while most current computer monitors have a pixel density of 96 ppi. In comparison to that, many cheap laser printer these days print at 600 dpi, and medium-to-high end printers output at 1200-1600 dpi. In regard to the anti-aliasing issue with ATi video cards. the FAQ suggest that the issue is specific to offscreen OpenGL rendering, i.e. rendering to a file or print. That's not likely to be an issue since about the only time you'll want to use OpenGL is for producing previews, but not for high quality renderings. For presentation-quality output, you will want to use a Renderworks rendering mode (Custom Renderworks, Final Quality Renderworks), which will produce much more accurate, much more detailed renders. Also, all the Mac graphics cards mentioned in the article (both ATI and NVidia) are for the previous generation of hardware (pre-Intel Macs), and have been replaced by newer cards, so the issue may have been addressed by now. The current MacBooks (which I REALLY wouldn't recommend) use an integrated Intel GMA 950 processor and the MacBook Pros use the ATi Radeon Mobility X1600. Incidentally, if you DO decide to go with a Mac laptop, check out the refurbished laptops at the online Apple Store, which come with everything included with a new unit, the full one year warranty and are eligible for the AppleCare extended warranty, and are discounted up to 30% vs. a factory-sealed unit. I've bought several refurbs over the past 10 years, and have never had a problem with them.

Pete, Consider yourself very lucky never to have had a problem with your Dell hardware. The firm I work for has purchased 2 Dell Inspirons and an OptiPlex in the past 4 years, and every one of them has had to be replaced at least once under warranty, in addition to having multiple components replaced on each one. Terra, As the de facto tech support person in a small firm that uses both Macs and Windows computers (1 Mac towers, 1 Mac desktop, 2 PowerMacs, 2 Windows desktops, 4 Windows laptops), I spend FAR more time dealing with HW and SW issues on the Windows platform than on Macs. In the past calendar quarter, for example, I spent an average of just over 6 hours per week troubleshooting problems on the Windows side, and a TOTAL of 20 minutes troubleshooting on the Mac side. Those numbers are consistent with what we've seen since we started logging tech support issues in 2004. Since you're starting off as a sole proprietor, one important thing to consider is that whichever platform you end up choosing, YOU WILL END UP BEING THE PRIMARY TECHNICAL SUPPORT PERSON FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Even though most hardware and software companies provide a telephone helpline of some sort, and you can contract out support for major problems: a) you will need to be conversant enough with the ins and outs of your hardware, OS, and software that when you do need to call a company's help line, you can give a precise, detailed description of your problem in order for them to be able to help you; b) YOU will be the one who actually ends up applying the recommended "fix"; and c) you probably can't afford to spend 15 minutes to an hour or more on the phone (much less pay someone to come out and fix it) every time you run into a problem. So one of the factors you should consider is how much time and energy you're prepared to spend learning the ins and outs of administering and maintaining a healthy system and what to do when (not "if"; "when") things go wrong. In general, it takes significantly more knowledge, time, energy, and expertise to administer and maintain a Windows-based system than a Mac system. (I won't go into the details of why that is the case here, but if you're interested, shoot me a pm.) That being said, if you are already comfortable and proficient in Windows XP (there are substantial differences between XP and 95/2000/ME, to the extent that many of the tips and tricks you would have learned in those earlier versions are no longer applicable), I would recommend sticking with Windows; conversely, if you are already comfortable and proficient in OS X, I would recommend sticking with Mac. If you are not proficient on either platform or equally proficient on both, I would recommend going with Mac for its ease of use and less steep learning curve.] Another factor to consider is the total cost of ownership over the life of the computer. We have found that Windows systems have a useful life of 3-4 years, while Macs have a useful life of 5-6 years or more. (The Principals at the firm runs VW 11.5 on the 500MHz G3 Powerbook ("Pismo") that he bought in 2000.) An additional annual cost on the Windows side of the ledger is the cost of antivirus and anti-spyware licenses for each Windows system. (No Mac viruses or trojan horses, and no Mac-specific spyware, as of yet.) So while the initial outlay for the Windows systems was less, the cost of ownership over their useful lives has been significantly higher.

Interesting list, Peter, and, yes, it would be nice if those operations could be speeded up; however, most of the tasks you list are handled by the GPU rather than the CPU, so until Apple supports bridging graphics cards, multithreading VW won't make a difference. (Yes, Dual G5s and Intel Mac support multiple graphics cards, but the GPUs can't be linked for multithreading, and AFAIK, Leopard will not include the ability to bridge graphics cards.)

Gotta hand it to Petri: once again, he confirms the accuracy of Jussi's evaluation of him.

Benchmarks! We wanna see benchmarks! Islandmon? Christiaan? Panthony? ANYONE???? I mean, come on, it's been, what, 2.5 hours since those puppies went on sale. Surely SOMEONE has already got one and benchmarked the sucker!

Just a wild guess, but maybe the fact that his e-mail address is dave@nemetschek.net has something to do with it.

Not necessarily. There was a scrolling issue with Mighty Mouse in Illustrator CS (aka, Illustrator 11, code name Pangaea/Sprinkles) using the Apple mouse driver that did not affect other Adobe products or earlier versions of Illustrator, which was fixed by one of the Apple Security Update (that is, the fix was bundled in one of the Security Updates.) Incidentally, have you tried using Mighty Mouse with USB OVerdrive rather than the Apple driver?

Are you sure your information is current? According to the academic FAQ: Maybe it's one of those "localized add-ons" Katie referred to that y'all are paying extra for?

Um ... you might want to look at the quote again, because that's not what NNA claims: [emphasis mine] The quote gives a regional breakdown of NNA's customer base; it does NOT make any claim about NNA's marketshare. The fact that 25% of NNA's customer base is in North America says nothing about the size of the North American marketplace or what percentage of the North American market those customers represent.

Hello???? Peter already gave you the workaround up-thread.

Diamond, Since you mentioned that Julian sent you the plug-ins, I assumed you replaced the 12.5 plugins with the ones Julian sent you. Take the replacement plugins out of the plugins folder and put the original 12.5 plugins back in then proceed with step 2. (When I tried replacing the 12.5 plugins with the ones NNA sent, I stuck the 12.5 plugins in a folder on the desktop so I could swap them back if the replacement plugins didn't solve the problem (which they didn't).)

Diamond, I had the same problem, and after a whole lot of frustration and trial-and-error, here's what worked for me: 1. Reinstall the 12.5 Framing Member Tool plugins 2. Remove the extention ".vwobject" from the file "FramingMember.vwobject." 3. Open (a copy of) the Workspace and remove the Framing Member Tool from the Tools Palette. 4. Save the edited workspace and exit the Workspace Editor. 5. Quit then restart VW. 6. Open the edited workspace in the Workspace Editor and add the Framing Member Tool back to the workspace.

I've imported numerous Sketchup models into 12.5 (Mac) without a problem, however, I upgraded directly from 11.5. Just a guess here, but it's possible that SketchUpReader.framework and SU2VW.framework didn't update properly when you upgraded to 12.5.

1. Add the various texture files to your "Favorites" list in the Resources Browser. 2. Individual lights and their shadow-casting properties can be turned off/on in the Object Info Palette. As an alternative ot FQRW (Final Quality Renderworks), try either Fast Renderworks with Shadows or Custom Renderworks. In Custom RW, adjust the Lighting and Rendering options in Custom Renderworks options (View > Rendering > Custom Renderworks Options). Note that the default settings are the settings for Final Quality Renderworks. Leave it on Ray Traced Shadows, but turn off Transparent Shadows, reduce the sampling quality, and reduce the Recursion level.

I have not experienced these problems with Kingston, Macally, or Microsoft scroll mice or trackballs, only with mighty mouse. I also experience the scroll/zoom problems with mm in Vue 5 Infinite but not with other scroll mice/trackballs, which is why I believe that it's a mighty mouse issue.

Katie, I emailed you a couple of days ago. DId you get it? Thanks.

Maui, VW 11.x exports to VW 8. Assuming you upgraded to 12.5 from 11.x, reinstall 11 and you should be good to go. Katie, Would I be relinquishing the right to future upgrades if I relinquish my rights to 10 and transferred the license to Maui?

Does Renderworks support user-downloadable Lightworks LWA content?

IIRC, RenderWorks uses the LightWorks rendering engine. While the LightWorks engine itself is multithreaded and multi-processor aware, at this point, most of the shaders do not support MT/MP.

I'm using the Architect workspace and have only one serial number installed.

No. This is a fresh install on a test machine. There are no previous versions of VW or documents created in previous versions of VW on the computer.

Hello? Is anyone at Nemetschek looking into this?

Ok, it's been a long week and my synapses are firing in extra-super-duper-slow motion tonight, but I'm not understanding something here. Surely you don't mean you can't export an existing image resource then re-import the image as a texture, do you? Or do you mean that an image resource can't do double duty as a texture?

Check out the open source program Seashore if you're using a Mac. It's based on GIMP and uses the same file format, but doesn't require X11 (so no installation headaches, no alternative GUI paradigm, no funky mouse behavior). It's available in straight PPC and universal binary flavors. Did I mention it's open source = FREE???