VW13 worth the wait?

[quigley]

Building Information Modelling.....BIM is about information, and much of the drive for BIM comes from the property developers and managers. BIM is akin to PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) in MCAD. Modelling is but one part of the equation.

VectorWorks is aiming at the design end of BIM, but the critical element is to allow the design end to interface with other aspects such as databases and engineering analysis - hence the IFC plug in.

The key lesson to be learned from MCAD PLM is that it is not just about drawings and presentation - indeed for the system to fully work there have to be compromises over visual standards.

Let's face it, what is more important - a pretty drawing that is approximate or a function document that is correct, and can be utilised from design through to demolition.

Of course drawings are important, and they always will be, but as VW develops the other aspects will come to the fore.

Edited September 17, 2007 by quigley

[altoids]

Call it what you will, VW Architect is sold as BIM that allows architects to generate 2D drawings automatically from their model. Build the model, generate the drawings, augment them as needed. As an architect, I don't care how building managers use BIM - the ones I have met (who seem to have a disproportional amount of influence of the projects we bid for) invariably seem to have failed out of vocational school. Different species.

I care about design, about developing and presenting our ideas, and finally, producing a drawings and a CD set that is clear, accurate and easy to manage. I also care about how good VW is, not only because we use it, because I love telling PC AutoCAD users how great the Mac is, and how cheap/effective/wonderful VW is, or almost is. And it is the almost that is infuriating.

The BIM part of VW that is lacking as far as architecture is concerned, is the lack of simplicity and continuity. Many tools are frustrating to use, incomplete, or added for the comparison list only, and eventually fixed years later. The feature list for VW12 included "circle by 3 points," "live sections", "Class overrides" and a "new arc tool". Repeat that list a few times and allow its full meaning to sink in, that after years of frustration, in 2005 VW finally creates a usable xx tool. In 2002 a friend of mine was working on an 80,000 sq. ft. signature architect building at MIT that was being drawn on VW, but they could not use the wall tool because it would not reliable heal wall intersections, so they used VW as a simple 2D drafter for all 400 sheets in the set.

Too many steps and nested dialog boxes, jumpy screen scrolls and rotates, views that disappear, in 3D and 2D (the scroll wheel on Mac was for the longest time all but useless with VW, but worked fine with other apps) - basic usability that needs radical improvement. Not a BIM deficiency per se, but it might as well be one. For example, the 3D view resetting to wireframe all by itself every time. I know that I can set up a view, but it is a work around, not a feature. A useable BIM package would also have many features that VW is missing or are so buried as to be effectively missing. Automated numbering of sheets, drawings and details, with manual override if wanted. User selectable 3D clipping so I can look at any parts of the model I need to, quickly and effortlessly. Real time 3D. Not zoom/rotate in stuttering steps. Even video games, like Quake and Unreal have what feels like an order of magnitude faster 3D rendering using OpenGL, with shadows, lights, transparency, (and motion and gore and BFG explosions) with complex models. It should be that anywhere drawing information appears, be it text, elevation, 3D or 2D, viewport or design layer, it can be meaningfully edited, with the results immediately visible in all views. Group editing of parts. No guessing where a 3D point might land. Call-outs that are intuitive to place and edit. Have you tried to position a spot light? 3D positioning of object with a mouse is old-hat in the programming world, but VW makes it a tortured process. Not impossible, just unpleasant. Renderworks can produce nice images, if you want to invest the time and energy to make it do so. But why should I? There are dozens of packages out there that are easier to use and produce better images without the effort.

It's not that VW can't do BIM, it just does it poorly. And I suspect that there are many people who use VW who use just a fraction of the 3D stuff, because it is so tedious to use. Watch the video of how to build a 3D massing model, and it hard to believe that this is a feature. Even FormZ's screwy interface is easier to use, and it really can render anything. Yes part of this is a VW user interface problem, but it manifests itself as a software deficiency as whatever the cause, the features are not being used.

And having just installed the 12.5.2 update I am glad to see that my complaint about the ceiling grid has now been fixed, but it still reports the wrong area. Perhaps in 13.5 it will work.

[Christiaan]

You seem to be conflating 3D modelling and 3D parametric modelling with BIM. A mistake I used to make too.

[Petri]

I care about design, about developing and presenting our ideas, and finally, producing a drawings and a CD set that is clear, accurate and easy to manage.

I think we all do! But at least yours truly does not subscribe to this:

I don't care how building managers use BIM

I do care and I don't think they all have failed at a vocational school.

However, here at the forefront of technology the main point of BIM is not building managers but construction companies. With all due respect, especially at tendering stage they don't care how pretty one's drawings are: all they, broadly speaking, want is reliable quantity data (the BI-model in IFC-format) and sufficient detail drawings. (To their utter frustration, they also get a specification...)

Notwithstanding, I share many aspects of your frustration. In fact, I am the infamous persona non grata who questions VW's way of doing things and has been questioning it for well over a decade (on CompuServe, the Man Himself occasionally replied!) At one point I even switched to ArchiCAD and, FWIW, may do it again.

Perhaps even would, but I'm not sure if I wish to switch from one set of Frustrating Features to another one. The natives are restless also in Archicadia, despite the fact that Archicadism is an even more established & scriptured cult than Vectorworksism and any questioning of the Dogma there is deemed to be the eighth Deadly Sin.

Edited September 18, 2007 by Petri

[quigley]

I am not arguing that VW has a poor 3D interface - it has. I have used VW since Minicad 3 and to be frank the actual mechanics of the interface for 3D has not changed much since those days.

My background is in product design and engineering - hence my comparison to BIM with MCAD PLM - and it is relevant, as building design is moving in the same digital direction.

VW is aimed at the design end of BIM but BIM is in its infancy in terms of actual on the ground use and actual on the ground understanding - I would estimate that AEC/BIM is about where MCAD and PLM was about 10 years ago....and look how the tools have changed in 10 years.

If you want to see examples of fluid interfaces that are just coming out look at http://www.spaceclaim.com/

The other major issue is that there are no genuine standards for structuring projects to cater for BIM in the longer term so architects and project managers structure things around what they already do - and is this the best long term approach?

The danger for for the fledgling BIM is that somebody like Autodesk comes along with a tool like Revit and wipes the floor because their marketing and user base dominates. If you take the analogy from PLM, those companies that have fully implemented it in digital design, analysis, costing, procurement, maintenance etc - like Boeing - tend to settle on one core system - CATIA v5. The result of this is that the supply chain also settles on CATIA v5.

There are always spaces for specialist products that work with CATIA but they are nothing more than that - niche markets.

The danger for VW is that it gets sidelined into being a niche product aimed at housebuilders or small practises. Nothing wrong with that but for NNA to really make profits they need the big accounts, and without profits you don't get new features or even improvemnets in existing ones.

So, apologies for the ramblings! Getting back on track I would recommend you give 2008 a try as it really does offer a lot of genuine improvements over earlier versions. All I would say is that the trend in product enhancement is very much towards the added value modules like Architect etc. Most of the new features are in those modules.

You cannot really compare games technology to 3D CAD. Games systems are low polygon optimised for rendering "tricks". 3D CAD needs actual surface data. Sure we can learn a few tricks but even if you take an app like SketchUp, which is often held up as being a great OpenGL interface (shadows, textures, clipping etc) as soon as the model gets to even moderate complexity it slows to a crawl on even the highest spec machines.

the 3D MCAD companies invest a lot of energy is optimising OpenGL (or DirectX now) code to speed things along, hence why "proper" 3D certified cards are so expensive.

I have great hopes for VW. This release has seen a totally new 2D interface with rotate plan. Versions 2009 and beyond will hopefully see great strides in a new 3D interface. Once we have that - once people can use the tools that are already there - easily - then we can concentrate on fine tuning the toolset for particular applications.

[quigley]

Perhaps even would, but I'm not sure if I wish to switch from one set of Frustrating Features to another one.

Precisely the point Petri! Over the last 15 years my tiny business has bought and used:

SolidWorks, ThinkDesign, Think ID, VX CADCAM, Ashlar-Vellum Cobalt, FormZ, DesignWave (which became Pro/Desktop), VectorWorks, Graphite, Cinema 4D, SketchUp, and many more I can't even recall now....why...the great Quest for the Ultimate 3D CAD system!

Now I am older and wiser and have an accountant who complains when I decide to spend thousands on software, I have come to the conclusion that:

There is no ultimate system

AND

It is better to use a basic tool with a good interface well than an all singing all dancing tool with a bad interface badly.

[Petri]

You seem to be conflating 3D modelling and 3D parametric modelling with BIM. A mistake I used to make too.

A good point. In the Sill(y) discussion I think someone stated that because VW cannot show sills properly in sections, it is not a BIM-program.

I have in fact made some experiments. I cannot replicate the above inability per se, but it is more than true that the sill details used in the Finnish construction industry cannot be modeled with the NNA McMansion window tool. If I, on the other hand, create a window symbol the way I like, I do get perfect sections.

However: I do not wish to do so. Even in an average project I may have 500 windows. Why would I want to have every sill, frame, sash, sill, trim, mullion and muntin modeled in 3D, to the tiniest detail? VW is not a computer game, so every 3D-polygon is calculated with floating point accuracy.

Right.

Before wish-listing:

The "hybrid" nature of symbols and PIOs could be taken further. I think we should have

- plan

- elevation(s)

- section(s)

as projection-sensitive 2D-representations.

In permit drawings (elevations especially), I need to show "every sill, frame, sash, sill, trim, mullion and muntin." Not easy, I can tell!

[quigley]

The "hybrid" nature of symbols and PIOs could be taken further. I think we should have

- plan

- elevation(s)

- section(s)

as projection-sensitive 2D-representations.

Totally agree. Hybrid technology is perhaps VW's key asset - so why restrict it to plan? The fact that a PIO cannot recreate exact 3D geometric detail is not relevant if this were the case as the user could simply draw the section or elevation detail they need (like they would in a viewport annotation) and the 3D could be kept simple and restricted to the visible parts for renderings. This in turn would speed up the display as the app was not calculating all the hidden lines for each object.

This way users can utilise manufacturer's details in 2D format without the overhead of recreating them as 3D objects.

[Petri]

This way users can utilise manufacturer's details in 2D format without the overhead of recreating them as 3D objects.

Well, blimey! That too!

[Guest]

You guys have a way on words that amazes me. English is not my mother tongue, thus it is difficult to express what I want to say - but this discussion is brilliant.

Just sincerely hope VW will take note - not in 5 years but in the next MAJOR release - not a 2008 version but a real one.

[Guest]

I've changed the title of this post to more appropriately reflect the discussion.

[altoids]

Katie, can you put the old title in parentheses so people can follow it "BIM (VW 13, worth the wait?)?"

Gaming technology:

It is true that video games use clever techniques to reduce their polygon count, but we're not talking about VW suffering because it is rendering millions of polygons. It suffers because its 3D routines are not optimized for speed.

A straight wall should have 16 polygons, 2 per flat surface. Sometime they are rendered a 4 polygons, but regardless, the 3d world breaks everything down to triangles. A curved wall more, but even a simple model with a few thousand polygons appears to stunt VW, meaning the frame rates are dropping below, say 10 redraws/sec., and this is without lighting, textrue, shadows, or transparency.

Floating point calculations don't slow a modern CPU down. Look at the SPEC_fp and SPEC_INT for any modern CPU (less than about 5 years old). The Power PC consistently had FP values that exceeded its integer times and Intels are similar. More importantly, the video cards do the floating point calculations for 3D. The current ATI Radon 2900 can perform 475 billion floating points op per sec (flops), calculate 47.5 Bilion shaded pixels/sec and process 742 Million triangles/sec. Real world consideration will slow a modern high-end video card down to about 30 million rendered polygons/sec (30 frames /sec x 1 million polygons.), lit, textured, shaded and transparent.

Now, my crusty 3 year old Mac surely doesn't have that sort of graphics card, but even the anemic Intel GMA950 can handle 1 million ploygons/sec, though even this might (sadly) be faster than my Mac's.

But the problem here is VW making its 3D models redraw quickly. I don't need accurate when moving a 3D model on screen, I need fast. When I dimension, I need accurate. SketchUp speed would be fine. Do your SU models move in 3D as slowly as your VW models?

And before I lose my point entirely, it is not at all about the 3D rotate speed, it is about the 3D design effort. SU is held up, not for its speed, though it is better than VW on my machine, but for its easy of use, which translates into power. If VW interface came close to it, I'd settle for stuttering speeds. I'd more than settle, I'd praise it.

Edited September 18, 2007 by altoids

[quigley]

And before I lose my point entirely, it is not at all about the 3D rotate speed, it is about the 3D design effort. about the 3D design effort. SU is held up, not for its speed, though it is better than VW on my machine, but for its easy of use, which translates into power. If VW interface came close to it, I'd settle for stuttering speeds. I'd more than settle, I'd praise it.

Absolutely correct! Get the interface right and the power will follow. Not to mention an exponential increase in VW 3D usage.

The other factor as well is that the file structure needs to be resolved for dealing with single building 3D models. Here in the UK the standard practise is to have one file per sheet and using work group referencing. The default recommended VW practise is to have multiple sheets per file all referencing the model layers.

Compared to what happens in MCAD systems you have the Part file, the assembly file and the drawing file. Where the assembly references the part and the drawings reference the assembly and part. This creates lots of files but it does let the developers build software that can handle assemblies with tens of thousands of parts, and on something like a car or aircraft most those parts will be complex surfaces not prisms.

All the MCAD systems that continue to use a single file for everything approach are falling out of favour - bar none. As you so rightly say - performance is key. I think VW needs to move to this file structure as it develops into a mature BIM design product. After all how can one file contain a model and associated drawing sheets for an airport terminal for example? The MCAD assembly/part/sheet structure can handle this.

[Guest]

Quigley,

You can do just this with the new referencing technology and support of design layer viewports.

This was one of the main purposes for introduction of the referencing technology and DL VPs

[DSSPRAT]

does anyone know how autocad 2007 imports to vw 2008?

[Guest]

As the moderator, I feel the subject of the thread no longer reflects the "VW 13 worth the wait" subject and am changing it to BIM.

The thread is easy to follow if you use "View most recent posts" or go to the General Discussion thread as it will be towards the top.

Please keep the subject at BIM, unless you want to start a new thread continuing this discussion with an appropriate subject.

[Guest]

DSSPRAT -

VectorWorks 2008 can import up through DWG version 2008, including 2007 formats.

If you'd like to send a test file, I can import it into 2008 and send it back to you as a VW 12 file so you can see what it looks like.

[Cris with no H]

Move by point allows you to move objects by an offset and direction determined by two OTHER points in the drawing unrelated to the selected objects. In the screenshot, I've moved (and duplicated) the circles by the same distance as between the two locus points by using Move By Points. This is indeed a new capability we haven't quite had before.

Cris Dopher

[quigley]

Yes thats true Katie but the methodologies promoted by NNA are very much a single model file, and multiple drawings in one file. Many of the commands are built around this - eg - Batch print. Unless the sheets are referenced into the active document these commands don't handle the one file one sheet structure.

I am very pleased with the new referencing in 2008 and I think 2009 and beyond will bring more in this area for 3D work, hopefully. The key will be the ability to bring in references that don't add to the overhead of the file (they call this lightweight assemblies in SolidWorks for example).

I know Jeffrey is working on another project example using referencing, so hopefully this will show what can be done with 2008 now.

[Petri]

Quigley,

The choice oh the promoted methodology is, in my interpretation, based on two factors:

- the largest single user type (ie. U.S. Architects doing residential work

- the uniqueness of the capability.

We got Workgroup Referencing only in VW 9, didn't we? Or was it 8.5? Whatever... Even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorworks does not seem to have documented this momentuous event.

While to me, the Earth Moved and Gods Rejoiced, it is a powerful technology that requires a degree of consideration and, for us old farts, retooling.

For several years (since 1999?), we have had more or less decent tools for multiple-file modeling.

Many of the commands are built around this - eg - Batch print. Unless the sheets are referenced into the active document these commands don't handle the one file one sheet structure.

True. At least for the time being, we do not have Projects, as they do in the Church of ArchiCAD. FBoW, we may have more flexibility.

[Guest]

Quigley,

I think in small firms, and up until 2008, that has been the suggested workflow.

But, with larger firms purchasing VectorWorks, and the introduction of the workgroup referencing technology, I think it's appropriate to use the workflow you are suggeting. In my opinion, the larger firms have to use this route to be productive.

What's nice about the workgroup reference in 2008 is the shuttle file holding all the references does not get bloated as the references are not "written" to the file, as references had in the past. This eliminates bloated files, which was historically a workgroup referencing concern.

[Jershaun]

Petri:

Please see below:

What I'm looking for it something like this (see below) but obviously not as detailed. Why I did this detail, was to show you how a Typical cross section though a building in South Africa is done.

Quigley:

I think that's a different approach that could have possibilities. I would accept if one can have a hybrid PIO that has a seperate plan view, sectiion view and maybe an elevation view... provided, that I can control the infill colours of all elements within the PIO because at present, I can't even control elements in 2D Plan view.

Edited September 20, 2007 by Shaun

[mike m oz]

A newish user asked yesterday why elements in VectorWorks don't have options which can be set for their appearance in the three different types of 2D representation (plan, section and elevation) as well as their appearance in 3D rendered views.

[Petri]

Petri:

Please see below:

'fraid the links don't work.

[Jershaun]

Hi Petri

I've updated the images. Sorry for this type of image posting but the other one didn't work.

Thanks,