Bob at GDA

Fry, So sorry for your troubles. It is clear from the topic that was posted today titled "VectorWorks and Mac OS X Leopard Compatibility Statement" that they do know it now. I agree that they should have sent out a huge warning on this subject. 12.5.2 has to be their largest installed base on the Mac and for them to ignore this is baffling.

Barentsen, I had backed up everything before I installed Leopard and I'm up and running on 10.4.10 again on another drive. Still a pain though having to work with a different drive setup. I wish you luck.

After it refused to launch, it refused to quit also, forcing a hard reset. I've had enough of this. I'm going back to OS X `10.4.10 and waiting until hopefully VW 12 is compatible. To all, if you need VW 12 to be compatible with Leopard I would suggest you voice your opinion here.

Vectorworks 12 now refuses to launch. Will try a restart.

In Renderworks, a very difficult model (190 mb) which had rendered fine before the update to Leopard crashed VW after it.

Berentsen and fry, I have experienced some of your problems as well. Also noticed that when trying to draw a render bitmap box, the feedback outline of the area being drawn is incomplete and sometimes invisible.

This came up under another topic, but because I believe a lot of people are going to be concerned about this I thought it deserved its own topic. Katie, Administrator, posted the following under the topic "Vectorworks and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard": "Leopard is officially supported with VW 2008 only."

If this is the case, I would have to say that I am quite disappointed.

Barentsen, Thanks for the feedback. Please let us know if you hit any bumps in the road. Hope you don't.

You might try convert to polygons on your shape and check to make sure that it is a closed polygon in the info pallete. Good luck.

I would still love to get an answer to the question in the last post. Also, we got an email from Linda Carmody stating that you had worked hard to make VW 2008 compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Has the same effort gone into VW 12.5.2? Thanks for your help.

Thanks Andrew. As I understand it (and I have a high likellyhood of being wrong), 32 bit apps have 4 gigs to work with but 1.5 gigs are reserved for the system. My question is if they are operating in a 64 bit environment, does the 1.5 gig overhead for the system go away leaving you with more to work with? Thanks again for the reply. BD

Since the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is a 64 bit operating system, is it possible that it could free up more memory for use by Vectorworks? Thanks in advance for your help.

Forgot to say a couple of things. My comments above are not related to BIM, just straight 3d modeling. I also wanted to express that I have also found that the PIO's are problematic. I typically use them to start the modeling of an object but end up turning them into symbols or groups to get them modified to what I really need and at that point the BIM aspect is compromised. They are problematic but still useful for what I need.

I am curious to find out what 3d tools people think we are lacking. I have produced quite a few models that range from 5,000 square foot banks to 40 story condo buildings and find that for the most part the tools I need are there. I do wish for a more robust site modeling tool set that would present smoother grading. Tried going the draped suface route with nurbs and it just made my machine laugh at me.

Dave, Thanks for the info. I'll be putting my model on a diet instead of buying more ram. I am using Custom Renderworks for the final rendering. I had the "Always" retain rendering turned on for navigation while in OpenGL mode. This change in preferences was the only thing that was modified and my rendering was able to complete after probably 4 failed attempts. I don't understand why but maybe it just freed up some memory. Thanks again for your help.

Due to Michaels suggestion, I changed my Vectorworks Preferences to "Never" Retain Rendering Model under the 3d pane and the rendering finished without crashing. I would still like to find out how much memory VW can address. I don't want to spend money for more memory if it won't do Vectorworks any good. Thanks again.

Thanks for the suggestion Michael but vp cache was already unchecked and I am not using any viewports in the model.

Can you tell me how much memory Vectorworks can address? I have a model I am trying to render and it crashes after Activity Monitor (Mac) shows it using around 2.5 gigs. The machine has 6 gigs. Thanks in advance for the help. BD