Art V

In a way Autodesk is less and more worse than Adobe. If you currently have a perpetual license with maintenance subscription you can stay on that and when you stop the maintenance subscription you will still have the perpetual license of the then current installed version. That is, as long as Autodesk is still selling that product or offering maintenance subscription. It is (informally) said this will be offered for at least 4 or 5 years from now. But you cannot enroll in this anymore for some products already or when they stop selling their suites. So for now it is less worse in some ways, but that will change as they are thinking of speeding up the change to Desktop subscription as their only offer. Desktop subscription is on average double the cost of maintenance subscription, and will be your only option after 1 Jan. 2016 and when you quit you have no working Autodesk software anymore. Similar to Adobe now. That being said, except for perhaps AutoCAD LT you may not be able to get standalone programs but only suites in the near future. AutoCAD Map will only be available as part of a suite after Jan. 1 2016 and no longer as a standalone program, other AutoCAD versions will follow that path sooner or later. Autodesk also wants to "cloudify"/virtualise their software and what they seem to be thinking of is that you no longer can install the software on your own machine but that you will be downloading an e.g. Citrix instance that hosts the software and you will be working on your files from within that Citrix instance (or other virtual environment). I don't know if you will be able to keep this instance on e.g. your laptop when working out of office without an internet connection and whether you have to redownload it each time (that would not make sense so I assume not for now, but like Adobe it regularly checks the license). Your files should theoretically stay on your own machine but Autodesk seems to promote that you put your files on their servers and claim your intellectual property etc. would still be safe with them. This is basically a no-go for me as I don't have any control over where my or my client's data would be going and that is simply not acceptable. Large companies have the resources to create their own cloud environments but small businesses usually do not have these resources. This means there is an opportunity for Vectorworks and the dwg alternatives to become an alternative for AutoCAD. For Vectorworks this means they should increase their dwg compatibility in some areas where it is lacking to be really useful as a dwg alternative (e.g. import/export of text styles is missing) or they'll not be able to compete seriously with the dwg based alternatives (DraftSight, Briscad, ZWcad etc.).

I agree that snapping in 3D is less than optimal :crazy: There was a wish list request recently for improved 3D snapping so I hope that will be implemented in the next version. That being said, I do use 2D backgrounds (plans/maps) combined with 3D objects to give at least some idea of the surroundings without having to recreate those things in 3D too. For that layer plane is really useful as in screen plane that does not work well by default without turning all objects into 3D objects first.

Screen plane is a remnant from the old version as it was the only plane available. At some point (Vectorworks 12 (not 2012) or later) layer plane got introduced for improving 3D user experience and to allow to use 2D tools/objects in 3D space (if I recall correctly) the old way was then called Screen Plane. Before the introduction of layer plane 2D and 3D were strictly separate. I guess it is still there for compatibility with older versions of Vectorworks (e.g. Minicad 7) which only have "screen plane"

+1 For extending/connecting lines to a line (or object) in a group When it comes to combining lines with other lines in a group, this would need some additional thought... It would be nice if it would also be possible to combine a line from one group with a line in another group. e.g. if I combine a line from one group to a line in another group, would both groups merge into a single group into one or the other group or become a completely new group (e.g. in case there are records attached to a group, or groups are named). It would be nice if there would be an additional option for the combine tool where we could define this. If extending/connecting would work for groups it should work for symbols as well (if it does not already, never tried). Combining with symbols might not be desirable though.

+1 An indicator of Screen would be great in OIP and even drawing window highlight color or selection handle color or something to let me know. I use screen sparingly, but sometimes I forget or fail to convert to layer/3d plane. Then things go wonky in a new view orientation.. -B ++1 Currently I avoid using the Screen plane altogether because of this issue even though it could be useful at times..

+1 However, if a class is used on multiple layers and you have different people working on different layers but need to access the same class for their layer would class checkout interfere with this? Locking layers to prevent access by others is fairly logical, but for classes it would be a bit different. What I am trying to ask is if class checkout is available would it block other people from using that class if they are on a different layer? After all classes are supposed to be used across layers.

+++1 It would be really helpful to see if a submitted bug would show up in your VSS area with its status and also whether it is a confirmed bug, unconfirmed but possibly a bug or actually a feature/"feature" and as such working as (perhaps poorly) designed.

I need some more clarification to understand what exactly your problem is. With Snap Grid off do you mean "Snap TO Grid" in the constraints palette is deselected or the "Snap Grid" display being turned off? If the latter it would still snap to the grid if the Snap to Grid is active in the constraints palette. If it is something else you are referring to could you please clarify a bit more?

Though the idea sounds nice, I have some hesitation about hiding objects in viewports without using classes. It could work if for each viewport with hidden objects it would be possible to generate an overview to see which objects are hidden and then to unhide them individually. Without that I can see confusion arising when people get a Vectorworks document that has e.g. two viewports in which an object is hidden in one and visible in the other. - How would this hidden object show on the design layer, visible or hidden? Because currently editing an object through a viewport basically means editing it on the design layer. - How would people know this object is hidden individually in a viewport? If it would be hidden by class visibility override it would be possible to track this back, but without the option to get a list of hidden objects in a viewport it will not be clear whether it is a bug, error or intention that an object is not visible. - How about compatibility with older Vectorworks versions? (though this issue may solve itself in a few years after introduction) - It may require giving each and every object in Vectorworks an object ID (not sure if that already happens, but maybe Jim can answer this) to keep track of objects to be hidden in one viewport but not the other. This may generate additional overhead in Vectorworks which we may not want. Though I do like Zoomer's suggestion for an option to lock feature to lock classes/layers from accidental editing without having to set the class settings to show/snap to others and not be able to edit all classes but the active one. (I usually do not have layers set to show/snap to other/edit but it may be conventient for layers too at times)

Regarding using Vectorworks on multiple computers without having to deactivate or sign out, try getting a license that uses a dongle. That way you can install on as many machines as you want and can use it only on the machine to which the dongle is connected. Even better... if you have multiple licenses/dongles you can use one and the same install on a machine for multiple people, as long as the dongle license number is registered on that machine and the proper dongle is used. (though the latter seemed to be somewhat broken in a previous version as it did only keep one serial number instead of multiple numbers as in the past, but this may have been repaired) Regarding a subscription model... if that would be the only option and without perpetual license option then I would be strongly opposed to that. Adobe lost me as a customer after they first said that perpetual licenses would still be there and you'd have to upgrade to CS6 in order to be able to upgrade to CS7 and shortly after the upgrade period for CS6 ended they said Creative Cloud was going to be the only option, there would be no CS7 and no more perpetual licenses, not even an option to keep the current version as a perpetual license after you end a CC subscription. I want to be able to open and edit my files in the (near) future without having to be forced to "upgrade" to the then current version which may not even support the "old" version anymore.

Fortunately I don't have these crashes, however since last week another CAD program on Windows started crashing on start-up or open/save a file after a windows update. On another computer it does not do this. It could be that something got messed up during windows update on your system. In the case of Vectorworks you may want to check if all VW program folders are read/write accessible and not read only for some or all of them. This may solve possible access problems. In the past it did solve some crash at startup issues but that was years ago. Edit: just noticed that Dieter's post is from last year, but it may still apply for Iggy re the Vectorworks part.

In the features video of the VW2016 enhanced dwg/dxf import it says "Export Single Layer for Classes with Same Name" as an option. Is this referring to export a design layer and a class that have the same name into a single dwg layer? If yes... I assume that class name assignment will override layer name assignment so that items on that layer with a different class name will still end up in a dwg layer equal to the class name. Is this assumption correct? The video is referring to viewport overrides etc. for viewports on design layers. Not having VW2016 yet to try it out makes it a bit vague for me what this video is trying to say about this option. Has anyone already tried this option? If so could you please let us know what it is supposed to be doing.

Well... if Renderworks would be part of the package so that we would not get charged for it... it still needs development which costs money. Guess what will happen, the price of Vectorworks with Renderworks as non-paid part of the package will probably increase with what we are paying now for Renderworks. It would be better if the C4D connector plugin would be a paid option for those who do not want Renderworks because they are using C4D almost exclusively for renderings. Then the rest of us can still have the option of buying Renderworks if they don't want to use C4D or not buy it at all if they don't need 3D rendering.

I completely disagree with this. ^^ VW should do what they can to improve the VW / C4D workflow, but I would stop using Vw tomorrow if they ever dropped Renderworks and instead expected me to buy Cinema4D just to get renderings. A license of either REVIT or ArchiCad would be less expensive than having to buy both Vectorworks Architect and Cinema 4D. It's completely fine if that's your preferred workflow, but that is not the case for the rest of us. Nor should it have to be. I totally agree with your disagreement and line of reasoning. One of the reasons I switched to Vectorworks plus Renderworks was that a render in VW/RW took 5 minutes whereas a render of exactly the same thing drawn in AutoCAD took almost an hour. Having to use a 3rd party application would be a waste of time in most cases for basic rendering especially if you cannot be sure you are reliably getting all objects into the 3rd party application or have to (re)apply textures etc. after each transfer.

You do know men are from Mars? :grin: Though I liked the reference to V for Vendetta better, you have to be slightly rebellious to use it in a dwg dominated workplace

In another topic it was mentioned to have more than 100 undo levels. Even with less undo levels it is sometimes a bit cumbersome to have quite a bit of undo's. It would be nice if there would be an undo history palette such as in e.g. Adobe Photoshop where you can select an edit in the palette and then have all other edits after that be undone at once. Or even have the additional option to undo only that one edit and leave the other edits after that untouched.

Assuming you would not have the software to edit these other files (e.g. AutoCAD or other dwg based software for dwg/dxf files) then my guess is that Vectorworks would in that case import the file into a temporary Vectorworks file, make the edits and then export the file again. If the file is a referenced file it opens up all kinds of possible issues regarding placement etc. which is why I prefer to import the files into Vectorworks and then reference to that instead of the original file. When edits are needed then at least I don't have to worry about the fully automatic temporary import/export messing things up, especially if coordinates and units are involved.

Even though I can think of situations where this might be needed (lots of small modifications) having more than 100 undo levels is a bit cumbersome without additional features as having to undo a 100+ times is just not convenient. In that case it would nice to have an undo history palette such as e.g. Adobe Photoshop where you can click on a certain edit and then have everything done after that edit to be undone at once, or even better have only a specific edit/action at some point to be undone (i.e. have the option of doing one or the other).

Yes VW2016 is compatible with Windows 10, even VW2015 works fine on Windows 10 on my computer.

It looks normal on an Android tablet using Android 5.1.1 in two different browsers. It looks like it might be a browser related issue, whether there is an OS component involved as well on iOS in combination with your browsers that causes this I don't know.

+1

No problems with Firefox on Windows here. I'll try a tablet later today.

Jim, this link generates the following message " There was a problem looking up this post in our database." Could you please check if there is a problem with the link.

Yes, I get that dialog too when ungrouping, but I do recall that there is also a first time dialog when when changing classes but I could be mistaken with the copy/paste between drawings. Because I set everything to by class by default I and disable the warning for ungrouping I get this dialog so rarely I'm not sure about all possible situations when this dialog shows up. Maybe we could have an option in the preferences where you opt to get this dialog upon changing classes asking if you want to use the class settings or keep the manual settings. For people like us who almost always use the by class settings for the attributes this might be useful. Jim, perhaps something new for the 2017 wish list? Or do you want a break for a day?

Yes, I see what you mean when using the OIP the classes do not scroll, nor do the layers in the dropdown menu in the OIP. This is really cumbersome when you have a lot of classes and/or layers. So it seems the issue is at least not Windows version dependent but solely within Vectorworks for Windows itself.