Art V

For internal only use they did develop in-house solutions, hosted on an internal network system which is similar to a cloud solution in a lot of ways. For collaboration with 3rd parties (sometimes companies of similar size in case of joint ventures) it was basically necessary to use commercial software, sometimes mandated by their clients. Some software can be hosted on an in-house cloud and it is only a matter of exchanging data from one in-house cloud to another or if that was not feasible then they would negotiate a separate "common cloud" for just the participants that the software provider would set up on servers separate from their servers used for "ordinary clients" like us. It is one of the reasons that companies like Autodesk are no longer interested in small(er) clients, they are not big enough to be able to afford the costs for their "solutions" that would generate the revenues and profits they are after. Large corporate clients are what they are looking for these days because once they are in they can have a long term relationship that will generate long term revenues.

From what I have read only VW2020 and VW2021 are (officially) supported on M1 running MacOS 11.3. Because I am using Windows I can't test if it does work with older versions of Vectorworks. This article does advise not to upgrade to Big Sur for versions older than VW2020 because they cannot guarantee it will work properly but it also doesn't state it can't work at all. https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/tech-bulletins/apple-macos-110big-sur-compatibility-r825/ If you have a license for VW2017 then you could contact your local VW support office and ask them if they can provide you with a download link for VW2017 and explain why you need it. I had a similar situation years back when switching from the localized language version to the US international English version and they were kind enough to provide the (then) previous US international English version as well as I already was on VSS for the localized version for a few years.

Modify>Convert>Convert to generic solids is the menu option you could try. I don't seem to have a roof object (using Landmark) so can't test it on that one. It may be that the object is not supported for conversion to generic solid but at least you could try to see if it works. If it does then it might be an option to get what you are looking for.

Well.... that depends a bit. If you are a multi-billion dollar company with a legal department to back you up I'm sure you can negotiate some requirements regarding security etc. to take a chance. I know of some very large corporations that have their e-mail system hosted by Microsoft cloud service etc. and that falls basically in the same category regarding data security. Often these companies can also negotiate an in-house cloud system to keep their data safe(r). For us more modest people without those dollars and legal departments the chance of assuring similar data security is far less likely. This is one of the reasons why I am not so keen about 3rd party cloud only hosted services like this when it comes to confidential client data. (Meaning that in order for the software to work properly on documents the documents have to be hosted on the software provider's cloud servers)

Unfortunately it is for North America only at the moment.

Did you try converting the roof to a generic solid and then clip? You will end up with a generic solid object instead of a roof object but this may not be an issue if the main purpose is visualization.

If you are on VSS you can still download older VW versions installer files from your VSS account. The best thing to do if possible is to keep a backup copy of installer files, once the latest service pack came out I download the installer file from my VSS account for backup purposes just in case I may need to install an older version. Some software only have small installer programs that download the install files and then start installing, on Windows you can open the temporary files folder to try catching the install files for backup. Maybe this is possible on Mac as well.

I'm doing options 3 and 4 🙂 Windows' longer shelf life when it comes to software programs is really useful if from time to time you have to use older software that is no longer updated and for which there is no equivalent software that can open the old files. Regardless of what OS you are using at some point you will need to upgrade if you want to keep current with the software. Even the longer shelf life of Windows has become shorter when it comes to Windows versions supported by the most recent versions of software requiring you to update Windows. Fortunately Windows still supports 32-bit programs unlike Apple so most older software will continue to run under Windows 10 but not always anymore. Programs like VirtualBox may help to some extent. Nowadays OS and hardware compatibility is often not a matter of OS changes but of software program changes supporting only the most recent OS version(s) and requiring increasingly more powerful hardware. Despite that I still think that there is too much code bloat because of less efficient code writing and/or code updating after installing updates. E.g. Adobe Acrobat CC on Windows is running some 20 processes in the background where other large software programs are using only 1 or 2 processes. This has to negatively affect your computer's performance when multiple software programs are doing similar things and I have heard from others that e.g. uninstalling Adobe software did improve performance in general. Taking a look at installed software and once in a while do a clean install of the OS and software you really use to remove bloat may help squeezing out another year of use for your system.

Unfortunately not... their use of Macs is equally outdated as the architect's dress code ((mostly) black clothes etc) so it is actually appropriate to show those old Macs. 😁 Not sure why a supposedly creative profession as architecture seems to have basically one overly used "dress code".

Too late, I'm a former Mac user so have been there done that when it comes to choosing Mac hardware, in those days (before iMac) you had to pay attention to hardware as well if you wanted to make sure you would get the right Mac for your purposes. 😁

In that case the 16GB should be good for a while, it is tempting to get the iMac mini as a 2nd computer next to my Windows setup but given what I have seen/read so far I may end up being a bit disappointed for where I would need it the most. It is just too bad that not all of my software is available for Mac (yet) or I might consider switching back to Mac if pricing would be comparable to a similar Windows setup. Microsoft is being a bit too messy lately with Windows and other updates causing issues.

The following two links may give you some ideas: https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/68263-slope-wall-or-incline-wall/&tab=comments#comment-337423 https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/53275-how-to-model-mansard-roof-and-walls-in-vectorworks/&tab=comments#comment-268869 Doing a search for Mansard will give you more posts about this.

Apparently the new generation M processor is in mass production: https://www.dpreview.com/news/0693452193/report-tmsc-has-started-production-of-apple-s-next-generation-m-series-chipset According to the article the new M-chip Macs should be coming out in the 2nd half of this year and these processors should be more powerful than the current M1. It also mentions there may not be an iMac Pro with the new M-processor..

Those are the specs for high end that have gone up a lot and this is mostly because of some features in 2021 having a significantly higher demand. If you don't need/use those features then you should be ok with the mid level specs. Though it is not just Vectorworks only that is causing the minimum requirements going up, Windows and other software also need increasingly more RAM so my guess is that the requirements are in part also to account for that given the average usage scenario for most users (i.e. having multiple programs open like e.g. e-mail, spreadsheet and VW). What may help in your case is to import the DWG files into empty VW files and then link to those VW files instead, then you should have less overhead with the linked files which may increase performance. (Linking DWG files likely causes more overhead than linking VW files with the same content).

For average use where storage (general RAM) and GPU (video) RAM requirements fall within available total available RAM this is true. There people will benefit from increased speed because the RAM to GPU RAM bottleneck has been removed, this may be enough to offset the need for extra RAM to some extent as well as the M1 having better video codecs than the Mac Pro that is 4 years older technology than the M1. However if you are working with very large files (e.g. like the Photoshop example they mentioned in one of the videos) and also need quite a bit of video ram/GPU power it gets different. With the M1 concept you pick a processor (if possible) with a fixed amount of RAM that is used for both storage and video without an option to upgrade either later on by adding more RAM modules or replacing the GPU with a more powerful one. For office use and most DTP use this may not be much of an issue if one chooses for the option with more RAM, they'll probably be good for a few years. For heavy 3D modelling, large image files (e.g. 10GB+ aerial images for GIS use) etc. then either the storage requirements will eat into graphics performance or the required graphics performance will eat into available ram for files and running programs. Some of this may be alleviated by optimized programming code of the software but as I said above, the trend is that the more powerful hardware gets the less efficiently written the software becomes. Despite the performance benefits for most use cases, this is for me an important issue with regard to fully integrated SOC systems when it comes to working with multiple programs simultaneously (usually two, max 3 in my case) combined with large files (file size of e.g. images or number of objects or both used at the same time). The only option for increasing RAM/GPU RAM to improve performance is then to get a whole new computer. This is something that is also mentioned in the linked articles/videos, it depends on your use case whether the M1 is a viable option or not. The new AMD 5000 series processors were apparently not that far behind according to one of the videos, which is not surprising as they are also quite a bit more modern than the Intel processors from 4 years (or longer) ago so it will be interesting to see what the higher end M1 systems will provide when it comes to memory en CPU power options. Then it will be more clear what the real performance differences will be compared to "old" processor/GPU architecture. For me the M1 concept isn't there yet despite the impressive performance for average use compared to the way more expensive Mac Pro.

If you are mostly using 1 program with not much else running the in the background then 8GB may be sufficient on an M1 mac when the software is M1 architecture native. Otherwise I'd go for 16 GB to be on the safe side if that is the maximum. When using multiple programs simultaneously and/or large complex files and you want to be future proof I'd suggest to aim for 32GB with the option of being able to expand the amount of memory later. As a rule of thumb (though it may change with the ARM processors)... the more powerful the hardware becomes, the sloppier (i.e. less optimized/efficient) the software coding gets. 🙂

This may work for those with good hearing, I know people with (sometimes much) less than good hearing who are simply not able to fully follow what is being said in some (to put it mildly) webinars etc. because the sound quality is not optimal, too loud (or distracting) background music that interferes, or people are speaking not really clear, way too fast or have a heavy accent that is difficult to understand for non-native speakers. Even slowing down speed is not going to help in those cases. This is not specific to only VW video recordings though but applies in general to webinars/video recordings. If I would get 10 USD (or better... 10 euro) for each webinar/recording I have watched (and will be watching) with at least one of the aforementioned or other clarity issues then I might be able to retire a few years early.

I'm currently using VW less than in the past and rarely import PDF's into VW so I have not noticed the issue so far in my case, but it could be that the PDF's I used behaved better or that it is a Mac/Quartz only issue, so I can't say for sure if the original underlying issue ever got solved. By the sound of the problem you have it seems it hasn't been solved yet.

To the best of my knowledge this still hasn't happened.

This lack of progress in the text styling/opentype features support is still making VW less usable or even totally not usable for some kinds of work and have to keep doing it in DWG software. It may not be the most fancy/flashy feature to advertise buying VW but it is an essential feature nonetheless if you want to create quality DTP ready output (i.e. without having to resort to DTP style programs to "professionalize" the looks of your text for what is simple common practice in DTP. It's not like we are asking (La)Tex style stuff for creating complex mathematical or chemical formulas)

Acrobat Pro can do measurements, you have an option to set the scale so that you can have real world distances. Too bad they dropped support for MacOS as I think it is better than Acrobat Pro for those in engineering etc.

Do you have Adobe cloud software installed and are you using fonts from the Adobe cloud? These are installed differently and usually not in your system's fonts folders but still available in your software. At least that is the case for me on my Windows system. You could try to remove the font mapping in VW for the Helvetica fonts and when it asks for a replacement you could point to the correct font.

The viewport is often showing only a part of the actual drawing so my guess would be that is has to (re)load (external?) references to "obtain/read" the actual objects contained in the geometry that have to be exported and are extending beyond the boundaries of the viewport. For e.g. PDF there is no need for that as you only want to show what is within the viewport boundaries. Just a guess.

Just to make sure... are you using the Export or the Publish item from the file menu to export to DWG? The reason I am asking is because I get the impression you might be using the Publish feature to export to DWG and in that case your dialog may look like this If you don't click on the top right pointing arrow after selecting the sheet layer you want to export then it will only publish the PDF. If you do add the sheet layer with this setup by selecting the sheet layer(s) and click on the top right pointing arrow then you should get something like this Then it should create a DWG file as well. Or you can select the sheet in the publish sectin and change the output format into DWG/DXF and then use the options button to make the settings for exporting. If it still exports a PDF then it looks like you may have run into a bug (not likely as more people might have complained about this) or a glitch on your system or VW install. Another possibility that just came to mind, are you perhaps exporting to DWG to replace an existing file? If yes and you type a name it may use the PDF name version of that file and also use the PDF extension despite the file format you have selected being DWG, especially autocomplete/explorer utilities may cause this to happen and then it may save the file with a PDF extension but it actually is a DWG file. If you open the generated PDF after an export, does it open in a PDF viewer or do you get an error message? If the latter you could try changing the PDF extension to DWG and then try to open the file. If it opens in you DWG viewer/CAD program then something is causing the extension to be changed into PDF for some reason. Just guessing for some possible causes that I have ran into in the (distant) past with other software that looked similar to what you are experiencing.

Don't make me regret getting an Intel gaming laptop instead of an M1 Mac for roughly the same price 🤔 Though some of my most used software either has not Mac equivalent or the functionality of the Mac version is less than that of the Windows version (at the moment). So I'd have to think long and hard anyway before returning to a Mac computer. But it looks like the Apple Silicon Macs may have a performance lead over WinTel machines in the near future, though it depends on what AMD will be able to come up with its Ryzen and Threadripper CPU's. Especially with CPU rendering they're beating Intel by quite a margin compared to similar CPU's from Intel. If M1 is even better than that then it is quite impressive.