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Skot

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  • Occupation
    Structural Engineer
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    Alameda, CA
  1. Ahhh! So much better! Thanks Mike!!!
  2. Forgot to check email notifications...
  3. I opened a VW10 file from an architect in VW12 and there are hundreds of what look like guide lines crisscrossing the drawing like a full screen cursor, only they are fixed, they don't move and I can't select them. No, not grid lines, these are dashed and seem to have some relation to objects in the drawing. When I try to force select, I get an error message that there is nothing to force select at the mouse click point?!? It doesn't matter how close I zoom in. If I open the file in VW10, there are no lines??? Anyone ever heard of this? Is there a way to make them go away? Thanks, Skot
  4. Mike nailed it. I don't know about most people posting on this thread, but our office is small and we don't have the luxury of "exploring the new possibilities". Our jobs live or die by a few hours of profit margin. Even this thread is taking me away from working and sometimes gives me pause to reply to these messages. I do it because I know that there are other users out there who could benefit from the outcome of this discussion. I'd like to see one of two things come from this: 1- NNA creates VW Lite, VW 2D, or VW Fast 2- NNA supplies a vastly improved reference on how to use the software with hugely improved search capabilities. Has anyone actually tired to use the Help files with VW 12? What a joke!!! What I am seeing from this discussion is encouraging and I appreciate all who have constructively participated in it. I just hope that Nemetschek is reading and taking notes!!!
  5. I'm still trying to see how a 3D model of a house/small commercial building can possibly be a cost effective way to create drawings. From what I can tell, the holy-grail of VW is the viewport and all the wonderful ways you can manipulate it's output to create drawing sets. That said, I get 2D drawings (if I'm lucky they're even VW dwg files) from the architects I work with and then turn those into engineering drawings that match. How in the world can it possibly be cost effective for me to take someone else's 2D dwg, turn that into a 3D viewport and spit out the 2D views I need? And why would I even want to to do that? This is what I mean when I say that it's folly for NNA to expect me to completely change my whole workflow because they didn't listen to what people are doing with the software. Sure it's great to have a powerful 3D tool that's easy to use, but why would I buy a D-9 Caterpiller tractor to dig ditches? And what would people do if the local hardware upgraded all their shovels and hand tools to Bobcat accessories? That's how I'm starting to feel!
  6. I still have yet to see how veiwports can be a useful tool for what we do. Every demo of viewports that I have seen is done from a 3D model, already prepared ahead of time. We are strictly 2D in my office. I hear everybody raving about viewports being the end-all, be-all, but I just don't get it.
  7. No worries George, I didn't feel that I was being attacked, not by you anyway! When I use 12 on the Powerbook, at a clients office for instance, I don't take a mouse with me so I'm using the trackpad and scroll bars. I can pan with my desktop while using the mousewheel. But even using the scroll bars on my desktop is very slow, as described previously. Having mentioned this thread to one of the guys here, he reminded me that there is another annoying and all too frequent event with both 10 and 12. Grabbing a handle is much more difficult and double clicking on a line or a box (inadvertent double clicking or not) always launches a completely useless dialog box telling the user that "The selected object has no edit behavior"!?!? This is beginning to feel like piling on now.
  8. Peter, I made several inquiries of the sales folks about the ideal platform before we bought new computers. I was told in no uncertain terms that they didn't recommend hardware. They told me about minimum requirements. When I asked them about the eMacs in particular, I was told that those machines were more than adequate. I also got the G5, just to have an extra fast workstation. I don't see an appreciable difference between how fast VW 12 runs on that machine from the eMacs. We went from VW 10 to 12 on the Powerbook. Very comfortable with OS X, but 10 was also less than complete. I didn't notice as much of a slowdown with 10. George, Unfortunately, the end user isn't the only person who has a say in this discussion. I must be able to read files from other people. That means very limited options, surely you realize that. As far as scrolling, it takes almost a second per screen refresh or something like 10 seconds to scroll across a whole drawing depending on how zoomed in I am. I certainly never said that I felt cheated, but definitely mislead. Demanding a full refund doesn't fix the problem. It only exasperates it.
  9. We've run VW 12 on the following: Powerbook G4 1.67 w/ 512 MB ram ~ OS X 10.3.9 G5 dual 2 gig ~ OS X 10.4.5 eMac 1.67 ~ OS X 10.4.5
  10. BaRa, We started with MC4 on a PowerMac. That program was great! Is the ability to open other file formats crucial? Yes, absolutely. Is it asking too much for a rapid 2D program? Apparently. When I opened an older 8 file in 12, it more than doubled in size by merely saving it. I know you think 12 is great at zooming, now try scrolling! I don't know about your office, but I don't have time to learn a new software package in the hopes that it will speed up my workflow. My experience so far is that VW 12 is much slower and no one in my office is willing to waste anymore time trying to figure out how to make it go faster, or relearn how to use the software. It almost seems as though Nemetschek failed to do serious usability studies when they put this out, and then they want to charge a bunch of money for training courses! There's some writing on the wall. It may be small print now, but...
  11. VW 2D! Brilliant! I love it! Now what do I need to do to get Nemetschek to read this thread???
  12. Michael, So how do you label a software product that has a huge hard disc footprint, is a ram hog, forces everyone who uses it to change their workflow, isn't backward compatible to it's own previous versions, and runs slower than previous versions even when it's installed on much faster machines?
  13. More like I got sold on the differences, er, features, without full disclosure on the disadvantages. And we do need to be able to open VW 12 files.
  14. I know it's sacrilege to make this statement, but VW 12 is a dog. Hold on there Hoss, hear me out. We are an engineering firm and our drawings are lines and boxes with some shades and fills, nothing more. We have been using VW 8 for years and churning out beautiful drawings, relatively quickly. We don't need a plant tool, a window and door dialog box, collections of tool sets too numerous to understand, etc. VW 8 installed with a couple diskettes, VW 12 took 3 cd's! When I create or open a drawing with VW 12, it takes 3 times as long just to open the file than VW 8 did. Scrolling, zooming, switching between sheets and many other simple functions are demonstrably slower. VW 12 doesn't even save back to 8 so that we can use our current plotter, I have to save back to 10 first, then open it in 10 to save back to 8!?! WTF!!! I know that there's a ton of people who won't be satisfied no matter how many whiz-bang gadgets you pack into a software package, but what about those of us who want to be able to draw quickly and don't want all that overhead? Nemetschek needs to recognize that at some point the software becomes a burden. The focus of my work is not how well I know all the hundreds of tools that the software has, but to generate drawings as quickly as possible. There is only one reason for me to even have the latest version of VW, and that's to open files from architects so I can get started on my work. From my perspective, I just spent about $15,000 to upgrade all my desktop machines, only to see that final work product is MUCH MUCH slower than the old versions of software and hardware that all work fine and are still in use, just for plotting. Can you say "Bait and Switch"? That's the mantra that the guys in my office have been saying for the past few weeks now ~ and I'm the knuckle-head who promoted this upgrade! I'm the only guy still struggling to make VW 12 work, everyone else went back to VW 8. Thanks Nemetschek, for turning me into the office idiot! When will we see VW lite? Something with a way to strip down all those extra tools and return to a simple drafting package?
  15. Andrew seems to have understood my dilemma. We are an all Mac office. We've been using VW8.5 for several years. Our plotter seems to be able only to use AppleTalk and I can't find HP drivers to talk to ethernet for it. So we bought all new iMacs and VW12, on my urgings, so that we could use the new features and be able to open a greater variety of files. So the first problem is that the plotter is AppleTalk, and the second problem is that Nemetschek, in their infinite wisdom, didn't make VW12 backwards compatible enough to export VW8 files that I could at least transfer my drawings from my iMac to my old classic workstation with OS9 and VW8. Is that better? Thanks, Skot [ 02-04-2006, 12:14 AM: Message edited by: Skot ]
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