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Art V

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Everything posted by Art V

  1. If there is still no way to deactivate an install you will have to contact your local tech support/distributor to let them know you need to install it on a new computer and have the activation of the decommissioned computer released so that you can install it on the new computer.
  2. On the Rhino3D forum the company employee moderaters will file a bug themselves into McNeel's bug tracking system, mention that on the discussion thread and provide a bug tracking number which is also a link to a page with the bug description as they have filed it in their system. If necessary they'll request you to send the problem file if needed. Otoh I can understand why they may ask you to file a bug report yourself if their system asks you for additional details (like I described for my other CAD program) with the option to attach files without either having to post them on the forum or use temporary upload links with the theoretical possibility that it gets attached to the wrong bug report, then it is more efficient to do it that way as things will then get properly registered etc. into their bug tracking system and may provide a more efficient way for follow-up etc. It's just that this extra advantage for follow up seems to be underused by VW, at least for the online bugreporting on the VW website. It is a bit better when done trough the local distributor's website as the local distributor is more likely to do some follow-up.
  3. Yes, but once the employee lets you know it is a bug or whatever that development needs to work on it turns into an informal bug report and it should have follow up. In my case as described with the support system of my current CAD program, the support request will at some point get closed as something that requires deveopment but... I can at any time reopen that ticket to add more information or to ask about the status of the issue and will get a response within a reasonable timeframe. That is something that I've always felt to be a bit missing with the VW online bug report system. There should be a similar option on the forum that should generate a "required" reply from either the person you talked with on the forum or from someone else from VW to inform back to you about the status etc. in case that is possible. Otoh there should also be some system to prevent that option to be "abused" by impatient people causing the developer to be flooded with status update requests.
  4. Not to bash VW people/support, but this is a stark difference with the support from my other CAD program that I am currently using as my main CAD, which does offer subscription as an option next to the perpetual licenses. When I file a support request with my current CAD program (whether it is a bug report or a how to question), I have to indicate which version I am using, the OS and what kind of issue it is, e.g. Bug report, feature request etc., and which functionality it is about (e.g. 2D drafting, 3D modelling, Mechanical, BIM etc.) and the support request will be automatically routed to the right person. In the case of a bug report it will be directed to one of the developers for that kind of issue/functionality (e.g. a BIM issue will be directed to a developer working on the BIM part and not to one involved with general 3D modelling). It may take up to two working days depending on time differences etc. but you will get contacted by an actual developer who will stay in touch until either the issue has been solved if it is something on the user's end or when you will get informed that this needs to be taken up by the developer team to solve. With more major issues it is not uncommon to get an e-mail after a while to let you know the issue has been fixed, or the feature has been implemented and that it will be included in the upcoming update/upgrade (or SP in case of VW). With VW bug filing throughout the website you're more often than not left in the dark if anything will be done, how and when etc. Maybe the above support system is what could be implemented now that they are SaaS only to remediate a lot of the frustation on end users part. Some of it is already there when filing a bug, but the rest feels like it is missing, with the exception of occasionally being contacted by support to provide further info. The local distributor's support is way more like described above but if it needs developer involvement it turns into a black hole where you can only hope that it will be taken up by the developers.
  5. Totally agree with this, this forum really needs someone like Jim Wilson who was basically a single focal contact point between users and VW inc. who you could contact for follow up etc. When he left VW inc. I was wondering if there would be anyone stepping into his (very big) shoes to continue what he did, alas that didn't really happen. No matter how well the current team is trying to respond, as you mentioned it is/feels a bit haphazard and inconsistent for the end users of VW and occasionally it gives more of a can't do than a can do/will try impression. Once you go SaaS you really need a good support framework on the forum showing the company is having at least someone dedicated on fixing issues/answering questions or directing people towards the correction direction to solve it themselves if possible if you want to attract new/potential users, otherwise the comments filled with frustration, disappointment etc. may deter new/potential users from trying VW which would be a shame imho. The other part is good CAD documentation, there was still quite a bit of useful/essential information missing with quite a few topics in the help documentation that would enable people to actually get something achieved instead of a general description of a feature or command but not telling how to actually use it to make it work. This issue is not unique to Vectorworks though, it's the same with a lot of other software where at some point you just get stuck because there is some essential bit of information missing in the documentaion/help files.
  6. It was done retrospectively in the sense that at some point they announced that (older) perpetual licenses would not be reactivated on a new computer anymore or at all from a certain date. A quick search at upFront eZine came up with this article where it is mentioned: https://www.upfrontezine.com/2020/02/upf-1043.html So it basically turned out to be perpetual on the existing computer on which it is currently activated as you stated or on a newer computer if activated before March 2021 implying that after March 2021 (re)activations were no longer possible. There is probably a line somewhere in the EULA that allows Autodesk to change the EULA terms at any time etc. etc. etc. that allows them to get away with this. Anything that works to get their customers on subscription is probably acceptable to Autodesk, if you don't want subscription then they don't want you as customer.
  7. Sorry for the confusion, my memory failed me somewhat with the replacing of blocks. If you use the Drawing Explorere and select multiple blocks to replace with a single one it does indeed not work and works only on a single instance, just tried that out myself. Then I checked an add-on to see if I perhaps used that one and that turned out to be the case. I'm using the ToolPac add-on, with that I can selecty multiple variants of a block and replace it with one single instance, or even select multiple different blocks to replact them with a single other block. In both cases it uses the substibute command from ToolPac to do that. The procedure I described does work for layers and I did manage somehow to replace a few variants with a single variant instance somehow recently without using ToolPac, that may have been a lucky circumstance as I don't recall exactly what I did with that one. ToolPac is unfortunately windows only. The BLOCKREPLACE already exists in V22, though it might be new on V23 on Mac/Linux.
  8. For regular blocks this was already possible before components got introduced. For components the procedure is still as you are used to as that works a bit different from regular blocks.
  9. After seeing the subscription rates it looks like the subscription will be at least double the VSS rate I was paying, not counting possible rate increase in the coming years. I sold my license because for the near future (say 3-4 years) I wasn't expecting to be using VW much if at all so paying for VSS didn't make sense and upgrading might not be possible either if it would be 3 years or more before I would be using it again. So it looks like I will be sticking with my other CAD program and probably not return to VW in the foreseeable future. Competition for VW, at least for my past usage of VW Landmark, is increasing and in some areas even leaving VW behind already so it will be interesting to see how this move will pan out in the future. The dwg based way of working is sometimes a big pita compared to VW's user interface and some of its tools but not worse than the AutoCAD user interface that I was used to before getting into VW so I'll manage. Vectorworks is great software despite some of its flaws, but that applies to other software as well, so I hope that for the small businesses it will remain somewhat affordable and that it won't go the Autodesk way where they basically just aim for corporate clients.
  10. Select all the duplicates (i.e. the ones with a sequantial number or all instances except one) in the Drawing Explorer, then delete them and you should get a dialog where you can select that you want to replace it with another block, then select the one you did not select for deletion to replace the extraneous instances of that block.
  11. If Adobe is an example, just a few months <g>. They said at some point that you had to upgrade to the then latest version of their CS software to be able to continue upgrading to the next perpetual version. Just two months or so after the deadline for upgrading the old CS versions to the latest version they said there would be no new perpetual versions after all, only subscription. Autodesk took a bit longer for killing the perpetual license plus maintaince combinations, approximately 4 years after dropping perpetual licenses. Given that one of the reasons for going subsciption only is that having both perpetual licenses with VSS and subscription is a bit of a burden on the license managing side it is not an unreasonable expectation that VSS will remain for only a few years at the most. Otherwise there is no reason to drop perpetual licenses if VSS would continue to exist for a very long time.
  12. Ask that at the AutoCAD forums, or those who sent that public Revit complaints letter to Autodesk 😁
  13. It may depend on usage scenario, but in general VW has been reasonably stable for me, other than extreme slowness during two major releases. I have other software that has been more stable and then someother that have been less stable than Vectorworks. That being said... there surely are still quite a few things that need improvement, whether it is bug fixing or quality/usability improvement of existing tools.
  14. This is exactly what Autodesk has been doing to its customers clinging to their perpetual licenses with maintenance. And when that didn't prove too succesfull they also stopped activations of installs on new computers after deactivating on the old computer. Adobe did the same deactivation/activation trick. Novedge will not sell US-market software to outside the US, at least that no longer worked for Bluebeam (I had originally purchased it through them). The same probably applies to Vectorworks.
  15. That is the one advantage it has over desktop software, it is basically a modernized server-client system over the internet. For me I'm still not convinced that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, especially if one does not have always on internet access when trying to work on documents/drawings etc. Plus... you are at the mercy of the software company, if they decide to remove functionality you need you can't revert to on older version that still has that functionality.
  16. When PTC acquired Onshape it hade only 5,000 (approximately) paying customers, so nowhere near VW's userbase. They could have much more resources behind them than VW has on its own as Onshape is part of PTC (of PTC Creo), but then if Nemetschek would put its weight behind VW then it could have much more resources also. Onshape is focused mechanical stuff, not like VW which can be used for other purposes as well though it is not as good for mechanical as a dedicated MCAD program. So in some ways things are simpler/easier for Onshape than for VW.
  17. That is a very big if. Microsoft has been doing this kind of update/upgrade to their OS for years and more often than anyone likes they manage to make a big mess of it at times. Consider that they are way bigger and have way more resources than Vectorworks then my hopes for that to happen are modest. Though it would be great if it would materialize and longstanding bugs etc. would also get fixed.
  18. In theory you are right, but last time I suggested something similar the reply was basically can't do because it might endanger stability, introduce new bugs etc. so (major) new features would have to wait until the yearly release. Apparently this no longer applies? Even though other CAD companies can do this without completely destroying their software. Easier said than done, it will take years before that will be done assuming VW/Nemetschek will even succeed with that endeavor. Autodesk has been trying it for AutoCAD fo over a decade and is still nowhere near a viable cloud version of its AutoCAD offerings. Fusion360 is the only really working cloud CAD they have and that is derived from Inventor which is MCAD. Dassault tried to cloudify Solidworks and failed. Several others also tried and to date haven't been able to come up with something subtstantial that could replace their desktop version. Siemens of NX and Solidedge doesn't even have any intention to bring their desktop CAD to the cloud and only uses it for collaborative things of for e.g. rendering servers. Onshape might look like a good example but it is hardly as successful as anticipated. When PTC (of PTC Creo) aqcuired Onshape it had tens of thousands if not 100,000+ users but only 5,000 paying customers. This all despite investments of hundreds of millions of US dollars. I don't know how well it is doing today but I'm sure it is not even anywhere near Creo's userbase. One of the reasons PTC bought Onshape was because they wanted to go cloud based with Creo as well, however the file formats etc. are very incompatible and analysts seem to think that with the much larger Creo user base that when push comes to shove the underlying technology will be implemented into Creo and then Onshape may be discontinued. Their 2D drafting in the cloud is from Graebert's Kudo. Graebert is now also getting into MCAD and Dassault's DraftSight is based on their Ares Commander used in conjunction with Solidworks. (Onshape was founded by the same people who developed Solidworks btw) so that Kudo based part might get lost for Onshape should the competition really get going. It sounds nice to have it cloud based, but given how tedious the experience has been for Autodesk, Dassault and others and the very very modest succes of Onshape I doubt that a cloudbased Vectorworks would be anywhere near or even successful. They'd probably have more succes going the CATIA way, i.e. Database based instead of file based, that way it would even be a strong vendor lock-in given how hard it is to move from CATIA to something else.
  19. What kind of image are you referencing? If it is a georeferenced image then you really should try to stick with only one instance of that image and us design layers for each area if you need to draw on multiple parts of that image. That should generate only one image when exporting a set of design layers, though windows might ad a sequence number e.g. (2), (3) instead of overwriting the image to maintain a single image. It is a bit similar to symbol instances, when exporting to DWG it may create a new dwg file for each symbol instance, which is a longstanding issue that could only be fixed by opening the exported DWG file in a dwg based CAD program and then replace all instances of a block/symbol with a single "block" dwg file to get rid of it. Unless they changed it this year with a service pack which I doubt. You could do the same with the referenced image, replace them all by the same single image file. So it depends on Vectorworks to change the way it exports to DWG to solve this. When exporting presentation layers it will often generate an image for each presentation layer or viewport, which may be the cause of your issue if you use design layer viewports to instance the referenced image.
  20. There are quite a few users from outside the US who use the US International version of Vectorworks, that is basically the same version as the regular US version. In the past local distributors could include some libraries with local stuff but as of the past few years it is just the US version without further additions, so you can safely buy a US international license from someone from outside the US and you should be good to go.
  21. Yes it will open VW2013 files There was a serious slowness issue with VW2017/2018 that got mostly resolved in VW2019. For simple(r) drawings it was not noticeable, but for complex drawings there was a greater chance for the issue to occur. Though not everyone was affected it was a real problem for those who were affected including me. Depending on the size of your projects and use of e.g. survey data this may or may not be an issue when getting VW2018. I would suggesst to aim for VW2020 to be on the safe side, also with regard to DWG compatibility as the most recent DWG file format is DWG2018 which may not be supported by VW2018 but will be supported by VW2019 and later. Though ODA has a file converter that you can use to convert DWG2018 files to an older DWG version should you buy VW2018, so the DWG file version support can be solved.
  22. Vectorworks Service Select Subscription seems to be non-transferable, i.e. when I sold my license my distributor told me, amongst other info, that VSS would not be transferred to the buyer when selling a license. So when you buy a license from someone else you should assume that VSS will not be part of the sale because it cannot be transferred, just the license for Vectorworks itself will be transferred.
  23. The answer is a sort of yes and "no".... To clarify the "no" if you would be buying a 2016 license that has been upgraded to 2020 you are not actually buying a 2016 license but a 2020 license. It cannot be sold as a 2016 license because the 2020 upgrade supersedes all previous licenses and it should be sold to you as a 2020 license with the accompanying 2020 serial number. Because the transfer has to be done through the distributor or local VW office they should automatically take care of that. Regarding the yes, once the license has been transferred you can then upgrade the purchased 2020 version to a later VW version and also purchase VSS. However... there are two things to keep in mind: 1. if you want to purchase VSS you most likely will have to upgrade to the latest VW version first before you can purchase VSS. 2. this may depend on country/region... there may be a limit to how many versions back you can upgrade to the latest VW version, e.g. 5 version back or less or more. In general for VW you should be able to upgrade from the last 3 or 4 versions prior to the current version unless things changed recently. (I've been on VSS for years so always upgraded each year and didn't have to check on version limits with regards to upgrading). Contact your local distributor to find out if there is a limit to how many versions back you can upgrade to be sure. I don't expect upgrading from 2020 to 2022 or even 2023 will be a problem. Some software companies have no (practical) limit to previous versions from which you can upgrade and other software companies only allow to upgrade from the previous or two versions back.
  24. Yes that is generally not a problem. For the US International version it should definitely not be a problem if there are no laws prohibiting such a transfer/import, for localized versions it might be a bit different because of support not being available in your country if it is not an official language there (e.g. a German version can be sold and supported in Germany, Austria and Switzerland where it is an official language but support in e.g. Spain or in your case India for a German version might not be available even if you may not have any problem using a German version if you would have a good command of German). The same applies to other languages other than English (which is sold worldwide).
  25. When you sell your license you have to sell the current/most recent version of that license in your possession if it has been on VSS because serial numbers of older versions cannot always be transferred to a new license owner to the best of my knowledge, though it may vary in some countries/regions depending on local distributor's rules but in any case you need to sell the latest upgraded version you have of a particular license and cannot sell an older version and keep the most recent one yourself. You may want to check with your distributor whether they will include older serial numbers in the transfer or not in case a prospective buyer needs an older version than your most recent version.
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