msclark

I thought I should address these points, in case anyone is following this thread in the interest of software comparison. I've quoted his post below and will address each point in parentheses below his points. I find that many of these comparison posts are hampered by comparisons made by people that might not know how to use the software they are referring too, as is the case with Ariel's post. BY the same token, mr. iagea is expressing frustrations that may largely go away as he learns the software but I would generally agree with him. I use all of the adobe products, sketchup, all of the major cad platforms except microstation, maya, 3d studio, artlantis, etc. and I have found Vectorworks to have one of the poorest organizations of toolsets and workflows out there. Anyhow, on with the "frustrations". In conclusion to this extremely long post, Most of his points above have to do with drafting, which I think Vworks is generally quite good at. However, if you are interested in a tight and detailed BIM model and a fully integrated set of drawings, I maintain that there is no real comparison, and the drafting that I do to flesh out the drawing set I have had no problems accomplishing in Revit and in many ways, I have even come to prefer it because of the parametrics.

true, the price is it's strong point - and it does have the ability to do a lot of things, it's just that most of them don't work together that well, relatively speaking.

Mainly 11, then 12 for a bit. - I'm quite used to Revit now and the integration between 2d and 3d views is awesome. Until you experience having every view be a "live" modeling view and they all are instantly updated and able to be simultaneously worked in, Vworks might not seem that bad, but now that I'm back to viewports, and section line instances, and updating, and stacking layers, etc, it's just ridiculous how much more functional Revit, or Archicad for that matter, is. So, while I know Vectorworks works, I think they need to put a lot more work into making it work a lot better - I keep hoping that since they bough Archicad, they could just combine all the best features from both and we'd be set. Then I could stop having to restart my mac in boot camp to work in Revit. Until then, after several projects on each platform, I'm sticking with Revit. Thanks for the offer of assistance but I know how to produce the drawings I need to produce, it's just so much less fun and productive than what I've gotten used to.

I used to use Vectorworks but have been using Archicad and then Revit for the last year. I am doing a little work on an old project in Vworks and have one thing to say - GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!!! I always thought the program was full of holes and goofy methods and it's claim to be BIM was a joke, but now that I know what's out there, and that it actually works intelligently (especially Revit but Archicad too) I can't believe how weak Vectorworks is. I'm not normally interested in flaming software just for jollies but I'm having such a horrible day on Vectorworks, I was motivated to express my angst and frustration to you all. So if you are looking to purchase or upgrade software, do yourself a HUGE favor and buy a BIM package that was actually engineered and designed to be so, not a backward collection of hack tools cobbled together to create the sad mishmash of non-integration that is Vectorworks. Whew... just had to get that off my chest, back to the grind, good luck out there.

thanks, thats what I was looking for!

I changed the center cavity of an existing wall style from 5.5" to 6" and when I replace the wall it extends to infinity both directions, then if I try to move it it seperates into pieces, ie -cavity, outer sheathing etc! If I try to re-join the wall to correct the infinite extension, Vectorworks locks up and has to be restarted! What I really want to say here is why the hell is every release so buggy, do they actually test them? But I should have learned my lesson by now and not upgraded until the maintenance release. Has anyone else experienced this?!

The window schedule does not display the windows in order based on their ID #. I played with the display order by sending some windows and walls to the back, front, etc. and it changes the display order in the window schedule!? Why don't they display in order (W-01, W-02....) by Id # - is there a way to change this in the window schedule? Matt

In 12.5 the value field in the Data pane of the window settings dialouge displays as a very light grey, is anyone else having this problem?

thank you!

I am trying to add fields to my window schedule. I want to use some of the user defined fields but they wont' work by their name, (ie - User Field 1) Here is an example of a field name that is different than the name used for looking up the data on the schedule. The column labled "comments" on the window schedule gets it's info from the field called "notes" in the window data fields. The formula for getting this data in the window schedule is =(Window.WindowDesc). This seems like a huge pain in the butt. If want to get a data field I should be able to put in =(Window.Notes) if that is what the field is called in the data pane of the window settings. So back to my question, if the data field is called "User Field 1", but that does not work in the schedule, what is the REAL name I need to use to get that data field on the schedule. There should at least be a sheet in the manual with all of these codes if Nemetschek has to make them so illogical. If anyone knows the answer to this please help as I really need to get this window schedule done. Thanks, matt

No, this is 12.01 on a G5 Mac.

If I place callouts in the a viewport, but have the notes just on the sheet layer, the notes will randomly expand to a several hundred point text size. I use viewport annotations for all other information but they are a pain in general for keynotes. Another issue - say you have three pages of sections, you want the same keynote legend on every page but if you don't have an instance of every callout on each page, the notes renumber themselves. You have to make sure you copy and paste an instance of every note on to the next sheet layer, even if you don't need them, or the notes will renumber themselves, making different numbers for the same note from sheet to sheet. If you have four section viewports on each sheet, with each one using some of the same notes and some different notes, you have to go in and out of viewports constantly to annotate callouts. Then you have to copy an example of all of the callouts and paste them on the next sheet before you copy and paste the notes on the sheet to ensure they don't renumber themselves. THEN, if you have a viewport of a different scale that uses the same notes, you can't copy into that viewport without reformating and resizing all of the text and leader lines. Since I don't feel like wasting half my day going in and out of viewports picking every callout out of the database for every instance I place, I find it makes much more sense to place the callouts directly on the sheet. That way I can develop my notes database, then quickly option drag callouts over every drawing, reguardless of scale, and not have to waste time going in and out of viewports, which is not a very fast process compared to something like archicad. For some reason, the callouts are resizing their shoulder length and textbox length. This really sucks as the text boxes then cover parts of other drawings, whiting them out, and I have to always drag them all back before I print a drawing. Thanks for the help, I hope we can figure this out, Matt

I have placed key notes on a sheet layer. I place them directly on the sheet because I have had nothing but problems trying to place them in the viewport. The problem is that the key note call out text boxes and leader line lengths keep resizing themselves. If I drag them back to the proper size, they will resize themselves a while later. I can't draw any connections to a drawing command, etc. that I am executing. Any ideas any one? Thanks.

PLEASE FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE ZOOMING AND PANNING SMOOTH - IF AUTODESK CAN DO IT, WHY CAN'T YOU??????!!!! - WE'VE BEEN WAITING SO LONG!!!!!!!

you can't copy/paste viewports from one drawing to another - I assume that most of the drawing information was in viewport annotations? - It is fairly easy to recreate the viewport in the file you want to keep, then copy the annotations out of the viewport in the othe file and paste them into the annotations of the viewport you recreated in the main file.

Yes, this is a major pain - it basiccally means that associative dims are usually useless because you are normally dimensioning to framing. How about putting this in the queue for updates.

There are five choices for the line style of the grid bubble object, is there a way to change what these choices are? There are no short long short dashes, only straight dashes...please tell me I can change this...thanks, matt

It does not seem that you can associate a diminsion to a wall cavity. They only associate when you diminsion to the face of wall. Since most dims are to the framing, most of my dims are non associative! Is there something I'm missing? Thanks

I have also had some of the problems that you are talking about, as well as a general feeling that the Vectorworks window tool could only produce about 1/3 of the window configurations I typically use. I started using the Windoor plugin from OzCad about a month ago and have had much better success. I would reccomend it, and you can download a demo version and see if it will do what you need it to. The only issue with Windoor is that you have to jump through some hoops to get the window schedule working the way you want it to, however they have a good tutorial and once it's done, you won't have to do it again. This is one of those basic areas that seems like it should be foolproof but Vectorworks dropped the ball.

Jonathan, do you mean you can have a seperate lineweight assignment for plans and then for each viewport? That would be the only way to generate proper drawings, and would be great if possible...? Thanks, Matt

Yes, if I use the attribute mapping tool I can move the vectorworks wall texture to line up. It works fine, just means there are more walls to texture map then if I could just map the windoor wall.

when you make a stair "concrete" with the menu in the stair tool, it simply grays out all of the other modifiable settings but does not change the stair to actual concrete construction. It keeps the last settings for the wood or metal stair option, thus looks wrong in elevation and section. Am I missing something or is this a bug? Thanks, Matt

WIndoor enables you to make corner windows - it does this by drawing a wall above and or below the window because vectorworks foes not support corner window braks in thier walls. I wanted to adjust the texture on the windoor wall sections to line up with the vectorworks walls but have resorted to adjusting the textures on the vectorworks walls.

Those control don't exist for windoor objects - I also emailed ozcad and they said that vectorwork's support for texture mapping plugin objects is spotty at best do they are unable to support that function at this time. I have resorted to moving the textures on the adjecent walls with the attribute mapping tool, which works fine, just more to do. Although there are a few issues like this with windoor, the ability to create complex windows and mulled units far surpasses vectorworks window tool. Worth looking at if you do a lot of custom window combinations. Thanks

I forgot the key part of this post - I am using windoor from ozcad, which works great in many ways but I am unable to reposition textures on the windoor wall sections, does anyone have any experience with this?