Annual Upgrade Frustration

[Atlas Mike]

Hi,

This is just a general gripe and rant statement about how annoying it is to upgrade VWX every year.  I've been using VWX daily for over 20 years.  I own a business and pay for 3 Spotlight licenses.  I frequently collaborate with about 5 additional users outside of my business.  We all dread the annual software change.  For about 8 months of the year, we're all on the same version and happy.  Then someone, usually a client outside of our group, starts making files in the next version, so then one person upgrades and the another and we go through this frustrating period where everyone is scattered on different versions and we're doing imports and exports of file types until we're all on the next version.  This wastes so much time, and seems so unnecessary.  You can update features and functions of software without actually making it a new application every year.  I use tons of other apps on my mac that update when needed, but don't become a completely new app that has to be downloaded and installed every year and make all my old files incompatible without changing their file types.  I can open an excel file from 20 years ago and it just opens and closes like no big deal.  I don't have to convert it.

 

This annual software change feels like a marketing gimmick to force users to buy new software to keep up and stay compatible.  But now that you're doing annual licenses, it's really unnecessary.  I agree that your software is valuable, and I'm happy to pay for it annually.  Just stop making it a new application every year.  You're actually pissing off a lot of your customers by doing this.  95% of what makes VWX great was great a long time ago, the features that we most appreciate existed a long time ago.  I know you feel compelled to keep adding things or changing the layout of buttons and tools and windows, but we hate it.  VWX is a tool we use to get our real work done, which actually isn't designing pretty CADs to put on the wall.  We just want to use it as efficiently as possible so we can do our real job.  Having to re-learn it every year with all your changes and "upgrades" isn't helpful.  Many pieces of software have died because they lost track of what made them great and became bloated cumbersome cows to use.  Customers start getting more and more annoyed, find other options, and leave.  

 

Please take these thoughts into consideration.  I'm sure many users feel the same even if they don't vocalize it.  Stop making it a new application every year and just update it as needed.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[rDesign]

This is an old frustration with Vw users, I think until Vw switches to a version-less file format or starts rolling upgrades, this will not change.

 

Users of Revit have the exact same complaints -- Autodesk is also on subscription and releases a new Revit application and file format every year.

 

Suggestion: At the beginning of each project, establish for your team what version of Vw everyone is going to be using, and do not upgrade to the new version unless there is a very compelling reason.

 

Cross-linking to a thread from 2018 requesting the same thing, with a post from former Vw employee JimW (now identified as @PVA - Admin).

 

[Matt Overton]

On 3/16/2025 at 3:38 AM, rDesign said:

This is an old frustration with Vw users, I think until Vw switches to a version-less file format or starts rolling upgrades, this will not change.

 

Users of Revit have the exact same complaints -- Autodesk is also on subscription and releases a new Revit application and file format every year.

 

Suggestion: At the beginning of each project, establish for your team what version of Vw everyone is going to be using, and do not upgrade to the new version unless there is a very compelling reason.

 

Cross-linking to a thread from 2018 requesting the same thing, with a post from former Vw employee JimW (now identified as @PVA - Admin).

 

 

The situation is worse with revit as there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to downgrade the model back if you find it would be better back a year to keep everyone together.

 

I remember having a conversation with a senior VW engineer about versionless files and it was noted as one of the key drivers for .vwx file format.  Seems odd it still isn’t a thing. 

Edited March 16 by Matt Overton

[Matt Panzer]

The problem comes down to most new features requiring a file format change.  This has nothing to do with marketing.  New features require new data and the file format must allow for that new data.  While it may not be convenient, I highly recommend you and your collaborators keep previous versions of Vectorworks on your computer and opening files in their native version unless you all decide to move the file forward.  This is much safer than forward and reverse translating files to different versions every time the file's exchanged.  I get that it's not great to have to do this but it's a fundamental problem with most applications.  As mentioned, Revit cannot even save files back to an older version.

 

That said, maybe there are ways to create version less file formats but that's beyond my expertise.  If it were somehow possible, I'd imagine it would be a huge undertaking to redefine our file format for that.

 

Typical disclaimers apply to my comments. 😉 

[Kevin S]

When I was in private practice, and in the practices I was associated with, we always kept a project in its original software version for the entire duration of the project.

 

Revit was the scariest in this regard, because if someone on the project team opened the file in the wrong version and saved it, you had no recourse.

[Tismacfan.]

Projects sometimes last for years, and it’s not always easy to finish them in the same version you started with. Reasons for this can include new features that are now more efficient in the latest version, a bug in the current version that will no longer be fixed because it’s too old, or purchasing a new Mac where the latest operating system is no longer compatible with the version you were using.

 

A valuable upgrade would be for the development team to go through each tool and command critically, identifying and fixing existing bugs. Too often, a tool works fine in one version but then suddenly behaves unexpectedly in another. I understand that it’s difficult to catch everything, but a bit more attention and a faster resolution process could help reduce a lot of frustration.

[FranAJA]

We have 20 licences from almost 25 years. No one never complained about it changing version. We are used to switch to new version usually in april/june just for new projects and projects where the upgrade is feasible.