Jump to content

NorCalLights

Member
  • Posts

    17
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by NorCalLights

  1. Hi Jim,

    Thanks for being so involved in this conversation.

    Add my vote to spending development energy toward speeding up the 2D operations and display by any means necessary. I have really appreciated those improvements over the last three releases, and I'm excited to hear that future releases may harness the greater hardware capabilities of the new Mac Pro (and the increasingly powerful graphics cards in all computers).

    As a lighting designer, I spend the vast majority of my time in Top/Plan. So while improvements to the rendering engine are welcome, it's really the improvements to 2D operations and display that add up to an increase in my productivity.

    Cheers,

    ~Paul

  2. Imagine working up to the last minute to make some changes to a project, then just posting your Vectorworks file to the cloud, and when you get to your client's office to make the presentation, everything is ready and you just present on your iPad (or Android tablet.)

    Hi Robert,

    Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. We really do appreciate when there are responses from folks at Nemetschek.

    Unfortunately, I have to disagree with the use-case you've described here. I can't rely on Nomad's cloud rendering at all, so I can't be sure that the file will be ready to view on my iPad when I get to my destination. I've just simply had too many errors, or files that didn't work properly. In addition, I would never show a client something that I haven't proofed in its final form. It's too easy to forget to turn on a class, or screw up a Renderworks setting.

    And so far, I've yet to find an instance where uploading a file to Nomad is faster than just rendering out the viewport myself, exporting the PDF, and opening it in iBooks (or some other PDF viewer).

    The real killer-app for us is to be able to mark up (or, dare I say, edit) actual 2D and 3D drawing files on site, and have those markups sync back to the master file in some way. Nomad doesn't do that. As it stands, Nomad is no better than any other PDF viewer on the market, and in many cases it is less reliable.

  3. I'm honestly curious... I don't think I've ever seen a single response to one of our Wish List posts from someone at Nemetschek. A simple "We agree that would be a great feature to add in the future" or "We understand your frustration and are working on a solution" would really go a long way here.

    I rely on Vectorworks for my entire livelihood, and the silence on these forums makes me feel like we users need NA a whole lot more than they need us. It's a scary, lonely feeling.

  4. Hi Bruce,

    I have tried the sketch option for lines, but that isn't at all what I'm looking for in this instance. I'm trying to get renderings that look as if they were drawn completely with watercolors, paint, or colored charcoal. These were all possible in earlier versions of VW.

    Huge +1 to be able to export images with transparent backgrounds. My current workaround for the lack of artistic rendering options is a heavy dose of Photoshop. Transparent backgrounds would be a huge timesaver.

  5. The Magic Sheet tool is basically useless. I don't know any professional lighting designers who use it. I just draw my own. Even on big shows (400+ channels), I can usually pound one out in about 3 hours.

    Since every designer has his or her own opinions about how a magic sheet should look, there's really no way for Vectorworks to auto-create one.

  6. I vaguely remember some bugs with the Label Legend Manager around VW12. Make sure you've installed all of the updates (if this is a new computer, maybe you're still running the version that came on the CD?). I'm quite certain that the bugs were fixed in an update.

    Hope that helps...

    ~P

  7. Thanks, Michael. That's good to hear at least.

    It's a little silly that my Mac Pro shows no real speed difference in my day-to-day 2D work over my (almost 5-year-old) Macbook Pro.

    Has anyone tried running VW on a solid state drive? Has that made any difference?

    ~P

  8. Josh,

    It's true that the VL500 and VLX are similar, but they are not identical. The VL500 can hang as close as 19", while the VLX needs 21". I know it's not a big difference, but it may matter in some cases.

    The VLX is built on the yoke and base system from the VL3000 series, so I suspect this accounts for the small difference.

    One more point to note, the VL500 with the 120V lamp and the VL500 with the 80V lamp are slightly different sizes also. This might not be immediately apparent looking at the VL website. The VL550 series has done away with the 80V option it seems, so I suspect all of the VL550s are the same size.

    I speak having been burned by these differences once before. I hope this prevents a similar mishap for someone else,

    ~P

  9. Hi everyone,

    Contemplating an upgrade to 2011 here... in the real-world of 2D light plot drafting, have you seen any speed improvements in 2011?

    I'm mostly concerned with refreshing instruments, moving instruments, and display refreshes when panning/zooming around a large light plot. My Mac Pro never shows more than 8% total processor usage (across 8 cores) in VW2010, but refreshing instruments on a large light plot can still take as long as 30 seconds.

    Cheers,

    ~Paul

×
×
  • Create New...