Art V

@JuanP Like @zoomer I'd like to hear if there has been a change in the Quadro cards support by VW since the RTX cards on workstation laptops are now available. Lenovo is still listing it on the ISV lists of some of its workstations that have Quadro RTX card options. GIven that Lenovo is still a serious player in that field I doubt they would be providing completely wrong information. Could you please shed some more light on this? Especially with site modelling with large tin areas or 3D models with lots of polygons etc. Quadro support may have its benefits over GeForce.

Of the apps listed in the ISV section only ArcGIS might be one that would be used on the workstation if I would get one. Since none of my other "heavy duty" programs would benefit from a Quadro I decided to go for a Lenovo Legion 5 instead. It may be a gaming laptop but at least it doesn't look like a gaming laptop and it will be supported for the next 5 years (my current laptop was only supported for two years so no driver updates etc. after that, and less than two years if you bought it a few months after introduction) It's just too bad that the Ryzen 7 version supported RAM is maxed out at 16 GB RAM, so I decided to go for an Intel based one after all.

Took a look at the website and most seem to be Autocad DWG files, if any files were available. You may want to check websites like Grabcad, partcommunity.com and Traceparts for the same items as these often do have multiple 3D formats available for the 3D content on their websites. If the same models are listed there then you may have more luck in getting a usable 3D model. Some manufacturers have their own sections on these and/or similar websites.

Yes, the rest of the hardware may be a factor too for being on the ISV list or not for some app packages, but the (so far) consistent difference between RTX or no RTX Quadro card and VW being listed or not listed just stood out to me. So that is why I got curious. I don't have high hopes for Quadro now being supported by VW but one never knows. 🙂

https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/ThinkPad-P15-Mobile-Workstation/p/22WSP15P5N1 does list VW as the Quadro RTX3060 is an option https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/ThinkPad-P15v-Mobile-Workstation/p/22WSP15P5V1 no Quadro RTX option and VW not listed in the ISV list https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/ThinkPad-P15s/p/22WSP15P5S1 no Quadro RTX option and VW not listed in the ISV list https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/P53/p/22WS2WPWP53 does list VW as the Quadro RTX is the graphics card This is the German Lenovo website, the same applies on the NL website for the laptop models I looked at, i.e. no Quadro RTX option then no VW mentioned (though it is possible there might be an exception somewhere as I didn't look at each and every individual model). There are differences in available models so the websites cannot be compared 1:1 for that.

I know that VW always stated they don't support the Quadro cards with Quadro specific drivers. In this case the ISV list of the manufacturer's website mentioning Vectorworks was only with models having the Quadro RTX3060 cards, Vectorworks was not mentioned on the ISV lists for models with Quadro cards older than the Quadro RTX3xxx series. Which is why I was asking if Vectorworks is now supporting the Quadro cards (with specific Quadro drivers or otherwise getting benefit from things that Quadro cards have over GeForce cards).

An alternative to Keyshot could be SimLab Composer (https://simlab-soft.com/) to combine external sources with VW 3D models. It might take a bit more work than with Keyshot (or not, as I have never used Keyshot) and it is not that expensive compared to Keyshot so perhaps a more viable option if it will be occasionally used. If you are going to use this kind of thing a lot then you may want to test both trial versions to see which one is the better option for you.

Does the website have other file formats for download other than 3D DWG, e.g. STEP, 3DM, 3DS, sldpart? You may have more success with importing those to get a proper 3D object though it does depend on which CAD program was used to create the 3D object in. If it was AutoCAD then it may not be of much use anyway, if it was another program that was used to create the DWG 3D file then one of the other formats may work better. Especially STEP and IGES are worth trying because they are meant for exchange of 3D objects.

When looking at specs of some workstation grade laptops with nVidia Quadro RTX graphics cards I noticed that some models had Vectorworks listed in the ISV list, suggesting that the laptop has been considered approved for use with VW. This usually means support for the Quadro graphics card. Does this mean that Vectorworks does now support the Quadro graphics cards functionalities (e.g. can use the benefits of working with high polygon count models that Quadro cards can handle better than GeForce cards)?

This most likely means the meshes have lots of points, AutoCAD 3D surface models tends to be triangulated badly (meaning with LOTS of triangulation) upon import into other programs, One option could be as @unearthed mentioned to use AutoCAD or BricsCAD to clean up the drawings. Another option could be to use Rhino, if you have access to it, to import the DWG and clean it up in there and then import the Rhino 3DM file into Vectorworks, I do that from time to time to get cleaner imports than I would have from directly importing a 3D DWG file but results do vary depending on the quality of the 3D model in the DWG file.

Recently I found out that something has changed in Windows 10 after a Windows update on one of those "patch" Tuesdays... forcing the software to use the graphics card instead of the on-CPU graphics no longer works (reliably) from the nVidia control panel, it has to be done through Windows 10 now. 1. Right click on the desktop and choose "Display settings" from the pop-up menu 2. In the dialog scroll all the way down to "Graphics settings" and click on that 3. In the graphics performance preference section make sure the "choose an app to set preference" is set to "Desktop app" 4. Click on browse under that part and select the Vectorworks application 5. Click on the line with the application and it should expand and show two buttons, options and remove 6. Click on the option button and you wil get a dialog window for graphics preference, select High performance and click on save. Now Vectorworks should be using the dedicated graphics card instead of the on-board graphics. Repeat these steps for any other software you want to force using the dedicated graphics card. If you don't have on-board graphics but only a dedicated graphics card then it should automatically use the graphics card. Laptops that have a dedicated graphics card usually have both on-board and a dedicated graphics card and Windows is by default set to automatically select either one (but doesn't always if not rarely do this properly).

What may help, if you have Rhino, is to open the file in Rhino and use its fixing tools to get rid of most or sometimes all of the triangulation mess. You will still have a surface model but it may be a lot cleaner. I have used this to convert triangulated 3D dwg models to 3DS and then import into VW and got a cleaner result than directly importing the dwg files into VW. Of course it depends on the quality of the model as well in how far this detour will be of use, if the triangulated model is really garbage I wouldn't expect too much.

The issue is not with the layer 0 "feature", it is with the user not using it properly. No matter how "intelligent/smart/refined" a CAD system can become it will always be defeated by human stupidity if the the user doesn't want to do things properly. I don't think it is "fair" to downplay a request for a feature just because some or a lot of users are using it incorrectly or in ways they shouldn't do, because there are also users who can use it properly. If I would have to create a symbol for each colour option etc. the number of symbols would explode even though the geometry is the same for each colour variant. Imagine needing 10 symbols, each with 10 colour variants, it would become 100 symbols to create and manage/maintain. With the original request you would need 10 symbols and 10 classes and when a symbol has to change colour you only would have to set it to the proper class instead of having to replace it with another symbol (out of the 99 other ones). Imagine there will be an 11th colour, then instead of creating just one additional class I would have to create 11 new symbols if the feature wouldn't exist. e.g. GIS stuff is one of those things where this feature would be really useful to have. (i.e. VW Landscape)

Unfortunately this is not unique to VW, I see similar behaviour in other software as well if it crashes after palettes have been changed before it could be saved and closed properly. Though I agree it should be possible to solve this except for perhaps crashing immediately after a change was made.

Vectorworks 2018 is no longer getting updates, when 2019 came out there may be one more SP for bug fixing and then support for 2018 stopped. This is common with a lot of commercial software. The only option you have is to upgrade to a more recent version of Vectorworks if you can afford that. I'd go for at least VW2020 but would run a trial version first before buying to find out if it solves your issue.

@Dianne SYou can use this with the Datum point setting (you can set it (in)active and the delay for acquiring the datum point in Tools>Smart Point settings), though this only works within the active drawing, not across multiple drawing files like in AutoCAD.

The scale options seem to be hardcoded into VW so it is probably best to make a wish list request for this.

My copy is officially outdated 🙂 but I agree that it would be nice to have the ISO compliant hatches within VW. Something you could try is to download the ISO guidelines for submitting drawings for ISO standards, they do contain samples of hatching and linetypes. Some documentation can be found on this page https://www.iso.org/drafting-standards.html This file (from the above linked page) has some examples of hatches and linetypes etc. though it is AutoCAD centric. https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/Open/21480807 If this link does not work then use the general link above and go for the "DRG Directives" link on that page.

@Mau This is one of the things where Windows has an advantage over MacOS, old software often can run on newer Windows versions for much longer than Mac software can run on newer MacOS versions, or said otherwise newer versions of Windows often still support software released for Windows versions from years ago. I have software from the 1990's that could still run on Windows 10 if I would want to. That being said... newer software versions don't always run on older Windows versions anymore, e.g. Windows 7 is sometimes no longer supported by newer software versions, only Windows 8 and 10 are supported in such cases, whereas others (mostly 32-bit versions of software) may still run on Windows Vista or Windows XP. As @Christiaan mentioned, your software should dictate the OS updating schedule, not the other way around, unless you really need to run the latest software version and if that would then require updating your OS. VW's support policy is actually quite fair, as there are plenty of other companies which drop support for any previous version on launch date of the newest release (except for major security fixes, if at all), and if they don't do that they often only support the current and previous release only. If compatibility with the latest OS version is important while running older software releases then Windows might be a better option for you than MacOS, otherwise your only option is to refrain from updating the OS until it is feasible to do so with the software you use.

There is always a bit of delay between functionality implementation and then writing the help/documentation on those functions because final implementation may be too close to release to have the tutorials etc. completed at release date. But it should be possible to do this for things which are known well ahead of time before release date and it would be nice if those things would be available and the things only finalize at the last minute could follow within let's say 4 weeks or so. With all the customer success people showing up at companies (not just Vectorworks) it seems to me that this would be one area to stand out compared to the competition by having training/explanation materials ready at launch or very shortly after launch as that is crucial for customers to quickly adopt the new tools in a proper way instead of griping about how confusing the new stuff is or that it can't be used/is broken (while it may be working as designed) etc. I have software for which "<product name> Bibles" etc. come out relatively soon after release, though there are also software products where it takes longer. For Vectorworks there are very few if any third party books available so it is even more important that Vectorworks makes such (extensive/thorough) documentation available themselves in a timely manner. (Being somewhat redundant here, I know 🙂 )

Interesting to see there is a cat asylum on water. Wonder what the cats would think of that. 🙀😺

Did you activate Vectorworks first? Since you are on a Mac it might be in a different location, but the VW preferences should be in the Tools menu (they are in the Tools menu on Windows)

Upon reading back I can see where that impression came from, because just push-pulling (without modifier key alt/option) does only create another solid which has to be subtracted (or one has to start over again using the alt/option key or your shown method). What I meant to say was what became a bit more clear during the discussion, that just push-pulling (the circle) into an extrusion without having to do anything else now automatically creates a hole (or cut-out if you don't go through the whole object) and that is the improvement I've been waiting for as my other CAD software has this for quite a while.

Go to the tools menu and select vectorworks preferences. Select the Sessions tab and on the right site there is a button "Serial Numbers" Click on Serial Numbers and you should get the following dialog Click on Add and you should be able to add your new serial number, and with remove you can remove the old serial number if you want/need. After making the updates click on "Done" and you may have to restart Vectorworks for the new serial number to become active depending on what license you have.

Yes, but that is draw circle, extruding the circle, draw another circle, switch to the push-pull tool, select sub-face mode, select 2nd circle, select extrusion, push-pull circle inward. This is four additional steps compared to draw circle, extrude, draw another circle and push-pull inward. For a once in a while operation this may be fine, but if you have to do this often then it really adds up, even if you have to select the sub-face mode once for the push-pull tool because you are not using it for other things it still means substantial additional time when you have to do quite a few of these push-pulls because of it still being three additional steps. So the new behaviour is way more efficient timewise.