High_Viz

As a round up, newer machine runs Vectorworks 2024 brilliantly. I set up an old license of architect 2016 on my old machine and that older machine is happy running an old license, not sure what I will use that for yet besides a sandbox machine, but it’s an additional tool at my disposal I guess. thanks again for all your help and insight and patience… collaboration saved the day

Hi all, I’m hoping to call upon your collective expertise, I’ve a model of a small house extension, and I’d like to experiment with adding data to building elements like walls, floor and roofs etc. id really like to learn how I can tag a wall type to hold its data, like 60 or 30 minutes fire resistance. I’d also like to record its acoustic properties say 46 or 42dB for example, and a simple way of recording the uvalue of the wall type for some external walls as I build up my specifications. my idea is that I can colour code wall performances using data visualisation… and I’d like to experiment with additional properties I’d tag in wall types such as existing to be retained, existing to be refurbished, existing to be demolished, and new build. anyone know how I’d get started in this, if you can give me a few tips or a link to a tutorial that would be great. I don’t know how to add custom properties to elements, and I’m not sure what I should be looking for… is it record formats? Or object records…? I’m confused. your help and guidance is much appreciated. thanks all

and finally.... I checked the processor capability using the Intel Processor Identification Utility, for legacy processors - under the section on CPU technologies it appears that AVX [Intel Advanced Vector Extensions] are not supported on the CPU, so yes it seems that this old Z600 isnt ever going to be happy running a copy of Vectorworks 2024. Im going to keep the machine operational for some older perpetual software licenses [like older versions of Vectorworks Architects, Sketchup and VRAY etc] but i'm going to focus on the new machine for my current licenses in better workflows moving forwards. The lesson learned is that even though the machine 'on paper' reports sufficient performance to run the Vectorworks application comfortably, the Vectoworks application required a newer CPU processor technology [AVX] than is available in the system CPU chipset - so it might be worth commenting in future somewhere in the minimum specifications for running Vectorworks what the minimum standards of the actual processor might be...? just a thought for those of us with Jurassic Rigs...? Many thanks all for your help - got there in the end. Id never even heard of AVX before this week - every day is a school day 🙂

@Dave Donley I was curious on how my machine runs so I decided to run a few benchmarking applications on my old Z600, i researched a bit into Maxon, and Cinema 4D, and decided to run the Cinema 4D benchmarking software out of interest... Running Cinebench 2024 returns an error [as you suggested] that the CPU in my system does not offer AVX2 instruction support... so im assuming that refers to CPU and not GPU, so no matter what graphics cards are put in this machine, it is the CPU that doesn't actually support the Maxon Plug ins? is that right - feels that this is significant in understanding what's been going on here... Either way thank you for your insight

@Ross Harris @Dave Donley I've been hunting for a suitable new machine today, I'm very likely going to be adapting a decent gaming rig [good balance of performance and cost] - and have sorted a new graphics card as part of that new build - I will try the new card in the Z600 to see if it sorts any of the errors before installing into the new gaming rig - I've got nothing to lose but it might shed some light on whether the graphics card had anything to do with it ... but, none the less its a bit of a relief that a replacement machine is now in hand. Thanks for your help.

I've been hunting for a suitable new machine, I'm adapting an off the shelf gaming rig [good balance of performance and cost] - and have sorted a new graphics card as part of that new build - I will try the new card in the Z600 to see if it sorts any of the errors before installing in the new rig - I've got nothing to lose... and its a bit of a relief that a replacement machine is now in hand.

Looks like I need to find an (affordable) new machine!!

Thank you both @Dave Donley and @Ross Harris very useful insight into hardware in my set up, I'm guessing that it's finally dawning on me that it might be a processor issue, not just a graphics card issue, that might be behind the performance issues here. A response on the HP forum was to try a newer graphics card like an Nvidia RTX 4000, but that card alone is about £3-400, and I could buy a new (and very capable) machine for about three times that amount... I guess i am not going regret the performance gains of buying a new contemporary machine (besides affording the cost), but it is quite possible (maybe very likely) I might regret spending a chunk of money on a new graphics card if the problem continues to persist!! I guess now I have a bit more information on hardware I can see in what ways my machine is old, and I might be able to find a use for it as a general needs PC in the office, so it's not all lost. If I can afford a new machine then I realise that's what I should be doing, and as a second hardware investment I might upgrade the graphics card on the Z600 down the line with a decent second hand card, see what happens... Right... I'd better look for a new machine I think!!

I've asked this on the HP forum just today @Pat Stanford, not sure of how to contact Maxon? Feedback on the HP forum was that the graphics card performance of the Nvidia Quadro K4200 is a bit 'underwhelming' when compared to current graphic card performance... My motherboard graohics card slot is a PCIe x16 v2.0, so if anyone on here or on HP forums might know if in theory it might be possible to fit a PCIe x16 v4.0 in that slot - if it is possible to upgrade the graphic card performance that might be the answer

Hi @Pat Stanford yes i did that, all 5GB of it!! 😃 Still have the same errors with plug ins... I am wondering is my graphics card [or processors] too old to be able to load the extensions? like it cant recognise them? I'm clutching at straws really here... help!!

and.... fresh install.... and its reporting the same plug in errors... hmmm

Thank you @rDesign and @JuanP for your ideas and help I spoke to Vectorworks technical support today - they suggested deleting the two offending plug ins, and then running repair, then trying to launch VWX... I did as per the instructions but still get the same error even after the repair ... so you both get top points for a good idea 😃 shame its not worked [yet]!! The next piece of advice was to uninstall and reinstall a fresh version... which I am doing now...

oh that's a shame @jcogdell id reviewed the minimum spec, and surpassed those quite easily in terms of machine performance - the machine is OLD yes, granted, but still a powerful machine, I had thought its still powerful enough to run Vectorworks comfortably according to the published hardware requirements guide... unless of course, am I missing something? Is there something not in the specification sheet that I've not considered? just be useful to know when replacing my machine and I'd value your opinion as to why my machine won't run Vectorworks [besides its old!]. The following is the specification taken from the installation page of Vectorworks 2024, and my admittedly old machine does meet all the requirements for a lesser level, and even meets the Mid level profile - Unless I'm missing something here? I don't think the machine spec is the issue here, perhaps... I spoke to Technical Support today whom confirmed that my machine will run Vectorworks 2024 for type of medium and small residential projects I frequently tend to be working on... Mid-level Profile: For medium-sized projects, complex models/drawings with a medium level of details (such as small commercial projects, mid-size entertainment venues, and residential site modeling) Processor: 2.0+ GHz Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 with six cores or better Meets requirements: HP Z600 Has 2.93 GHz XEON eight cores RAM: 16GB or more Meets requirements: HPZ600 has 48GB of RAM Graphics Card: Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 4GB VRAM or more Meets requirements: Nvidia Quadro K4200 Direct X 12 compatible, 4GB VRAM onboard Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher Meets requirements: Display at 1920 x 1080 Hard Disk: 10GB of free disk space is required for the installation. 30GB or more is required for a full installation with all libraries. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. Installing Vectorworks on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Meets requirements: 900GB SSD Installed I'd welcome the clarification on the above if you can tell why you think my machine might not be compatible?

Hi @rDesign thank you for your reply - I have attached another screen grab after dragging the dividers that were obscuring the names of the plug ins... Seems to be 2 plug ins causing the error message... MaxonDocumentBuilder.vlb MaxonRenderDevice.vlb

I noticed that since I've installed Vectorworks 2024 on a fresh install of windows I get the following error when Vectorworks boot up... i need to close this error message before Vectroworks will open up... its annoying, I have no idea what it is [no reference to Maxon found in the KB when I looked...], or if its linked to my screen going black [I've asked for help with the other issue with in another post on the Vectorworks forum]. All help gratefully received!! Thank you!!