Nick_Reid

Ok, so I installed the 11.5 update took a look at the productivity improvements and then started the real work on my existing projects only to find screen redraws slowed to 20% of VW11.0.1. What have you done NNA? This is for a range of projects from office interiors with with fully mapped 3d symbols to multi-unit residential developments. In all cases the VW files are more than 25MB. It feels like I'm trying to work on a 5 year old machine. I can only get reasonable performance if I run it on a P4-3200 with 1.5Gb ram. My normal Athlon XP 2000 - 1Gb is almost unusable and as for my trusty AMD 1700 laptop, forget it. I've had to uninstall the update. For me speed is really becoming an issue with vectorworks and larger data sets. Against either AutoCad or Archicad it runs at a snail's pace. Please Please seriously consider addressing this in the next version update. I love the 2d/3d hybrid environment and you have a fantastic feature set but when I use it's advantages on moderately sized projects it feels like minicad is holding me back.

I meant ' ...... one giant leap for NNA' I still want the feature set in RW. Preferrably Mental Ray but the current Lightworks set would be an infinite improvement. If vectorworks is to be more of a serious contender rather than an also ran then it has to keep up with the big boys. Which means we need much faster handling of large data sets, up to date imaging tools and network rendering. it feels like Allplan is getting in the way.

To paraphrase neil armstrong 'one small step for man.....'

I think we do mike, and I suspect that's because renderworks is something of a budget option. I'd be happy to pay substantially more to have something much better - ie Radiosity and HDRI. I don't know the ArchiCad implimentation but my experience of FormZ is that its best renderings are very slow and times increase exponentially with the number of light sources. C4D is just about the only option but I'd rather have an upgraded version of renderworks. If Avid can incorporate Mental Ray in Softimage foundation for less than ?450 all-in why can't we have it? Its the renderer of choice for all the high-end packages - lightwave, Maya, 3DS, Autodesk Viz and the afoermentioned SoftImage. For ease of use renderworks gets a firm 10/10. But at the top of my VW wish list would come a radically updated version and much faster handling of large data sets/models. Maybe NNA will fix the Glass Accurate' transparency component in the process.

Thanks CipesDesign. I've tried the preset textures but it was when these couldn't produce a realistic effect that I started trying to tweak things. It would be nice to hear from NNA on this subject. The integration of renderworks into the design process through VW11 is superb but many of the details and features now seem a little jaded. I know there are other systems on the market that produce better final results but they are much more complex (read time-consuming and problematic) to use with VW. I'd just like this particular feature to do what it says on the tin.

Can anyone tell me why the renderworks 'Glass Accurate' texture gives a less realistic material than the 'Glass Simple' texture. For some reason changes to the specular, diffuse, ambient settings have no effect on the final result. The mirror setting produces no reflections and the refraction setting is so sensitive that 10mm solid glass is more like 2 metres of water. I can get a more accurate texture by using the 'Glass Simple' model although this is by no means accurate. Refraction is still way of the scale though. I've been trying different settings since VW9 but still can't get it to look remotely like the real thing. Strata Pro 1.75 had a more accurate version 8 years ago!

Can anyone tell me if renderworks is able to take advantage of pro graphics accelerators such as the nVidia Quadra FX range or ATIs FireGL cards? Its time to update my pc since it struggles with VW11 and I'm trying to find out if I should spend resources on processor and memory or figure a red- hot graphics card into the equation.

and it works beautifully. Thankyou for your help. I can now re-grow my hair. Nick Reid

Does anyone know if it is possible to import stipples into a poly line I have already drawn. The way the command is structured at present means I have to draw an area to stipple. I don't seem to be able to import the stipple on a polyline or shape. This same problem also seems to apply to the ceiling, space and paving commands

Does anyone know why some rendered viewports appear with a vertical dislocation or slight difference in vertical scale at the centre. I am trying to produce final quality renderings of elevations and renderworks keeps producing a vertical split dislocation in some views. This is on the PC version of VW11 architect with renderworks and the problem occurs with textured renderings, either OpenGL or Renderworks. It can sometimes be allieviated by changing the viewport crop or rendering on a different sheet layer and then copy/paste to the final artwork layer. I should also add that The PC uses an AMD XP3000 processor and has a GForce 5200 256Mb graphics card. Changing the card does not cure the glitch and it also happens on the Mac Version (G4/533DP/1GB- 10.3.6) Any suggestions would be much appreciated.