ODBC Support - place your vote here!

[Fuge]

Vectorworks really needs the ability to truely communicate with other databases. Exportingor writing text files to be read by another program doesn't cut it.

Third party developers have tried writing plug-ins to exchange data between VectorWorks and other programs that support ODBC, but these solutions just don't work and are not very well supported. I have first hand experience.

So where does that leave users who need this higher end feature that other CAD program already provide?

I believe that NNA does NOT realize the importance of this feature and how important it will become to the future of VW's. Larger firms will never even consider VW's as a solution if data exchange is not part of the products.

NNA bases their future product features two ways. Are enough people asking for the feature and how easy is it to implement.I already know this would take considerable resources to add to VW's, so that means a lot of people need to ask for this feature for it to have a hope in hell.

So, if anyone out there feels they need this feature please speak up and post your two cents. Show NNA there is a need for this feature.

Dave

[Erik Buijs]

I 100% agree with this. You have my voice!

[Mark Chevalier]

I agree also!!!

[Marc Pitman]

This should have been done years ago. Nemetscheck make it happen now!

[MullinRJ]

Count me in. I do most of my major processing on text dumps of VW files. Real database links to drawings would be an incredible step forward. Would VW files have to be open to be accessible to the database engine or would it be possible to query closed files as well? If the latter case were possible, I could envision having library folders/directories of VW files at my beck and call, yielding their contents to my programmatic whims, Muahahahahahahaaaa!!! - One can dream, can't one?

[Petri Sakkinen]

Being a long-standing advocate of ODBC, I certainly support this!

However, even more important for the future would be to have a more generic object database / object structure.

The NNA official line is that STEP is dead, but I don't really see much signs of that. Complex - yes, and therefore takes a long time and a huge effort, but STEP (or something that evolves from it) will be the real future of data exchange.

Today, Google returned 381,000 references to 'STEP ISO STANDARD' query. VectorWorks had 20,500 references...

(STEP, the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data, is a comprehensive ISO standard (ISO 10303) that describes how to represent and exchange digital product information.)

[Davide]

Even PowerCadd can publish with Excel!!

It's gettingt too tought to deal with Vw spreadsheets, automatic yet not flexible enough to manipulate them.

Future is only data display.

Graphically is viewports, numerically is database exchange.

We need it. VW will never be mature without it.

[cmury]

Giovanni has hit the nail on the head!

We need viewports for graphic referencing and ODBC for data exchange.

It's a big step but it's whats needed in an architectural environment

[grantvz]

YES! The combo of Vectorworks with a full scale database would be a fabulous work environ.

[jnr]

The last time I spoke to NNA, the official line was that this would not be implemented because it was a platform specific issue and given NNA'a obsession with parity, wasn't going to change.

Well in the meantime, Vectorworks is about to lose market share when Archicad releases its next version this fall which incorporates many positive features found in Vectorworks. They release on both platforms and have ODBC capability. Even the new InDesign has this and is a dual platform product. So I don't buy the arguement at all. What I do know is that getting information such as specifications on to the sheets is a stupid pain in the xxx. File size goes thru the roof as well. I agree with others, you will never reach your goals as a company until you provide the sophistication that users demand. Design disciplines are using the computer like never before. Users are better trained and therefore demand better software. Get with the program...

[Guest]

OLE is a challenge no doubt, particularily when you want to place an object within a drawing environment that zooms, is floating point based and can rotate.

To clarify somethings:

As far as I can tell ArchiCad does not support OLE in their drawing environment. It seems only their seperate PlotMaker application supports it. In addition right now it is not available on MacOS X. ArchiCad says nothing about ODBC on their web site so I assume they don't support it at all.

InDesign does not support OLE and to get it to use ODBC it seems you need an add-on. I don't use it so I may be mistaken but that is what it looks like from the various sites I saw.

[ 08-22-2002: Message edited by: McBrideNNA ]

[Kevin]

What is ODBC?

[Fuge]

Open Database Connectivity.

A way of passing data between two programs.With it you could connect VectorWorks to a database program.