Jump to content

pgym

Member
  • Posts

    71
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by pgym

  1. However, the nationality of the programmers is irrelevant.

    You're right: it's their competence, the absence of which, given the annual demonstration of NV's programming team's inability to out even minimally usable releases (0 for 14 years and counting), and incapable of releasing service packs that don't introduce multiple new bugs for every bug that the SPs supposedly fixed, has been amply demonstrated.

  2. Thing is, based on prior history, it seems to take a year for new versions to become stable.

    At which point Nemetschek promptly abandons them and expects us to fork over another wad of cash for the "privilege" of beta-testing their new bug-infested crash monster.

    I won't be parting with any of my dollars to Nemetschek anytime soon.

    After the disaster that was VW 2013, we decided not to send any more dollars to Nemetschek until they released a STABLE 64-bit version, which, at the rate they're going, will probably be 12-15 years after the rest of the world has moved to 128-bit computing.

  3. I am positive it wont happen before September. Changes like that are massive and not something you can bolt on to an existing software package. Many of the base components are having to be rewritten from scratch.

    Sorry, but that excuse doesn't fly any more.

    OS X added 64-bit support in 2003 and has been fully 64-bit-compliant since 2007, Windows XP added 64-bit support in 2001, and Windows has been 64-bit since Vista (2006), so Nemetschek has had over 10 years to rewrite the base components: more than ample time for even a moderately competent programming team to do the job. (Hell, I'll bet a team of a dozen Baltic, Russian, Indian, or Chinese programmers could pump out a STABLE 64-bit version of 2014 in under a year).

    It's time to piss or get off the pot, Nemetschek: either make it a priority and get it done, or admit you never intended to do it in the first place.

  4. I cannot comment on how VW organise their development. They may well be a complete bunch of disorganised hackers where changing lines of code and reintegrating into other versions is hard, or they may be highly organised professionals like we were at Citi where everything change management is part of the standard process and managing multiple versions and changes was a breeze.

    Or they may be highly organized and managed professionals, who work for a company that is forward-looking and doesn't see a huge financial upside to devote the required resources needed to re-code and support versions of their software that are three years old.

    Given NVM's track record of bungling the initial release of EVERY version going back to at least 2006, their record of SP 1 breaking functions that did work in the initial release, their inability to leverage multi-core processing for anything other than some Renderworks modes, and their on-going unwillingness (or inability) to lay out even a suggested timeline to transition to 64-bit architecture, there is FAR more evidence for IanH's disorganized hackers scenario than for a highly organized, forward-looking professional scenario.

  5. would be nice to see x64 bit version

    Jeff

    A number of earlier posts on VW2014 have been deleted from the thread, including one linking to a Knowledge Base article on 2014 system recommendations which revealed that 2014 will NOT be 64-bit.

    (Anyone want to guess how long before the censors remove this post?)

  6. Had the response been something like: "We are aware of these problems and have assigned a team to take care of it, in addition they are working on an enhancement where annotation is transfered to the original VWs file." I would be much more confident.........

    We never ever discuss unreleased products. I think this is pretty widely known.

    Oh really?

    What do you call the annual pre-release dog-and-pony show hyping all the half-baked new "features"?

    And how do you explain Biplab Sarkar's discussion of VW Cloud Services with Architosh, in March last year, well ahead of its release, particularly the closing paragraph:

    Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., approached Architosh and one other CAD media company to do a feature on the new cloud services offering ahead of their official announcement, planned for 2 April 2012.
  7. Well I don't know too much about clouds or nomads, but I do know that the absolutely last way I would present anything to a client is on an iPad (or Android tablet).

    I think it depends on how you use the tablet.

    I stream Keynotes (Apple's PowerPoint competitor) from my iPad to a pocket LCD projector connected to an AppleTV. That allows me to take notes or look things up on my laptop without having to switch away from the presentation.

    I also like to use Air Display to mirror my laptop screen to iPad when I meet with clients at their home or place of business and hand them iPad so we don't have to crowd around my laptop. It also allows them to watch me make changes to a model and see the results in something close-to-realtime.

    But I sure as hell wouldn't try that in Nomad.

    I agree vector geek, Robert is seriously disconnected with reality. Imagine sitting down beside your client with 10" color print out sheets of even a small residential project...They would definitely ask for a magnifying glass...it would be no different with a 10" tablet.

    Although in Keynote or with Air Display, you can zoom in on any area of interest.

  8. Nomad, being a cloud app, is being updated all the time. It is not on a yearly cycle like Vectorworks versions. One of the things that Nomad does (that your standard cloud PDF-viewer does not) is, it updates all your viewports, and creates the PDF export in the cloud. So you don't have to.

    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.)

    Obviously, you've never used Nomad outside the VW test lab, but keep on drinking the Koolade, Robert, keep on drinking the Koolade.

    Nomad is anything but "half-baked."

    You're right: it's 1/8th baked, if that.

  9. but it would be significantly more work to get everything aligned since they would lose the snaps.)

    Exported pdf files from VW are vector based, thus you can snap to them.

    Hmm .... I just exported several files and imported them into a new doc. Some snap, some don't, and some have VPs that snap and other VPs that don't! Wonder what the difference is?

    Oh well, you can always convert the PDFs to raster-based in Photoshop or another raster-based image editor.

  10. Sounds like the symbol was created with no fill. To add a fill:

    1) select an instance of the symbol;

    2) double-click on the symbol or right-click it and select "edit" in the pop-up menu and select "3D geometry";

    3) select the 3d object;

    4) change the fill to solid color (I prefer red or blue for testing purposes)

    At this point, try rendering the symbol (a simple QT render will be sufficient). If it renders fine, change it to white or whatever you want the final, untextured color to be.

    5) apply any texture(s), if applicable;

    6) exit the symbol.

    All instances of the symbol should now have fill and texture.

  11. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "flattened 2D version," I don't understand why you would ever deliver VW files to a client if your concern is to protect your IP. It seems to me that even a 2D VW file would provide enough detail to be used as a base to redraw a useable approximation the original 3D model. It probably wouldn't be worth the effort if the event was a one-off, but it might be worth it they regularly run events in the same venue(s). (Of course, they could import a PDF or image file and trace over it, but it would be significantly more work to get everything aligned since they would lose the snaps.)

    I'm not sure watermarking a layered file is an effective way of protecting IP.

    Removing passwords, digital signatures, and restrictions from PDFs is a pretty trivial exercise: heck, there are free websites that will return an unlocked copy to you in a matter of seconds. (In my other life, I'm a semi-pro musician, and there's nothing more irritating than buying password-protected or locked PDF sheet music that I have to go through 4-5 steps just to open and print out, only to discover a big honking watermark in the middle of the page that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to read.) You can then open the unlocked copy in Acrobat Pro or a layered image editor like Photoshop or Illustrator and strip out the watermark.

    The only way I could see watermarking being effective is if the file is a flattened image file (and even then, someone sufficiently motivated edit out the watermark in an image editor.)

  12. That's weird that the professional version can't open these educational files. Opening educational files used to give the watermark warning. But not opening at all, is this a new thing? I haven't seen this warning before.

    (Not that I normally open or need to open educational files, but it means this list isn't really a help resource for students then.)

    Oh, brilliant.

    So design students spend 3-4 years learning VW and developing a personal library of PIOS, symbols, scripts, templates, and other resources with an eye toward using after graduation, and then get out into the working world and discover that they're all unusable and they have to rebuild them all from scratch.

    Now THERE's a scheme that's guaranteed to build user satisfaction and loyalty.

    You really have to hand it to the VW marketing Einsteins, because when it comes to finding new ways of antagonizing customers, they're far and away the industry leader.

  13. What version of OS X are you running? If you're running 10.7 or 10.8, the Library folder is hidden, so you'll have to unhide it to see the logs.

    Don't know whether turning off error reporting will create the logs, but, FWIW, I have error reporting set to "send nothing" (vw2012/OS X 10.6.8), and there are VW crash logs in my CrashReporter and DiagnosticReports folders.

  14. Usually that's true, however I worked with ArchiCAD for 5 years (versions 11-15)

    And yet, here you are today, working with VW.

    Don't get me wrong: there is A LOT to dislike, and even despise, about VW. Between the annual new bug releases, the unresponsiveness of tech support (don't get me started), and the unhelpfulness of customer service (motto: "Proudly putting the 'cuss' back in customer service since 1985"), we jumped off the upgrade bandwagon years ago: our last upgrade prior to 2012 was VW 12.5, and we'd have stuck with 12.5 if it ran in OS X 10.6+.

    If we were starting out today, there's no way in hell we'd be using VW but we've got 15 years of time, energy, and dollars invested in it. As a small firm paddling furiously to keep our heads above water, we can't afford to put our current projects on hold while we learn a new CAD program well enough to produce documents, or the pain of converting our existing project files to a new format, so we'll hold our noses and stick with it as long as it's minimally adequate for our needs, no matter how green things appear to be in other pastures.

  15. Another one.......

    Call me cynical, but just can't get hyped up over a slick demo video cooked up in a studio for marketing purposes, requiring dozens of takes using a trainer who practice the script for weeks, if not months, ahead of time, and hundreds of hours of post-production to bundle it into a neat, tidy 2 min package.

×
×
  • Create New...