Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 Does anyone know of any studies that have tried to put a figure the percentage of Mac-using architects. I'm specifically interested in the UK. Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Author Share Posted October 11, 2007 Or maybe the *number* of VectorWorks and ArchiCAD users in UK? Quote Link to comment
Jason Turley Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 Christiaan, don't know of any studies about this but I was speaking to someone from Computers Unlimited the other day and they estimated that VectorWorks had roughly 20% of the UK CAD market. Not sure what percentage were Mac based though!!! Jason Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Author Share Posted October 11, 2007 Thanks Jason. Based on that we'd be looking at roughly 12% Macs (minus ArchiCAD users), considering VectorWorks is said to have a 60/40 split on Mac/Windows (according to Architosh). Quote Link to comment
Ozzie Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 Christian, Can I just ask you - why do you want to know that? Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Author Share Posted October 11, 2007 Because the Housing Corporation in the UK, which funds affordable housing, has just released a new form for calculating compliance with certain requirements called Housing Quality Indicators. The problem is it's created in Excel with Macros and they don't work smoothly when using Microsoft Office for Mac. The person I spoke basically told me they don't have Macs to test on and they've covered most of the market so go suck eggs. He said I was the only one to ring up and complain so far. I just wanted to get a handle of the actual percentage of consultants who would be interested in having this form work correctly on the Mac. Of course they could have avoided all this if they'd simply developed the form using OpenOffice.org instead. Quote Link to comment
Ozzie Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 Okies, I can hear what you are saying loud and clear Sure Open Office; but they would not go there I thinks Bill is the guy to question Why sell office for a Mac if it does not work Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 The person I spoke basically told me they don't have Macs to test on and they've covered most of the market so go suck eggs. He said I was the only one to ring up and complain so far. Maybe the U.K. has regulations & policies regarding anti-competitive practices by Government bodies. Your local, friendly MP might be able to tell you. If not, ring Mr. European Union. The situation is certainly against the policies adopted by the EU. Surely the Housing Corporation doesn't want to be fined by a billion Euros... Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Author Share Posted October 11, 2007 Good points, thanks Petri. I've started by suggesting they get it working in OpenOffice. If that doesn't work we'll send a formal complaint. And if that doesn't work we'll probably look into your suggestion. Of course we don't want to get in anyone's bad books either. Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 They don't have to work with OpenOffice, they just must enable the use of non-proprietary software. Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 Of course we don't want to get in anyone's bad books either. Sage advise ... in these wonderful U.S. Virgin Islands, aka America's Paradise ... even the slightest comment can and will be used against you by the trusted "Belongers" employed by a bloated, nepotized, racist, and corrupt government. Nobody wants to be labeled a Troublemaker untrustworthy to comply with their fickle rules. The handful of Survivors are those who become masters at Flying Under The Radar . Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 America's Paradise ... untrustworthy to comply with their fickle rules. Sounds just like another Paradise I've heard of. Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 The problem is it's created in Excel with Macros This, BTW, is just bad Excel. Macros may be useful in the user interface, but if the system can't be used without them, the creator does not excel in Excel. Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 11, 2007 Author Share Posted October 11, 2007 That's what I thought. They use it to lock or open certain choices based on previous choices. Here's the document here: http://www.housingcorp.gov.uk/server/show/nav.3881 (download link right at the bottom.) Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 I had no idea that so small fonts exist... Never seen so many stupid pop-ups in my life... "Answer Yes or No. Anything you answer can be used as evidence." Quote Link to comment
defjef Posted October 16, 2007 Share Posted October 16, 2007 OT, I have not been active on the forums for ages for all sorts of reasons, but one of them as been the meta issue, which I don't see addressed is getting real interoperability between CAD software. There has been an effort to keep chasing ACAD for better imports. It seems to me that this is still not going to give a one to one correspondence of the files. Some things are lost, compromised or "whacky" for lack of a better word. Since ACAD rules it seems that they are marching to the beat of their drum and VW is simply trying to provide an alternative, while giving import and "flawed" import/export capability. Is this ever going to change or get better? Is this capitalism and niche markets at play? Look at the implication of this compartmentalization of skills. How long does it take to be proficient in either of these CAD programs? How many do both equally well? How does one choose which one to invest their time and money in? For a young person who is setting out on a career, which product would you think would be more useful in the market place? Is anyone dealing with the implication, the meta issues here? Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted October 16, 2007 Share Posted October 16, 2007 There has been an effort to keep chasing ACAD for better imports. Indeed. However, one CAD-software company isn't even remotely interested: Autodesk! Their Revit-program can import AutoCAD-files only as 2D-graphics, to be traced over. Quote Link to comment
BLINK Design Posted October 16, 2007 Share Posted October 16, 2007 This is a modern mystery Christian. When I first came to Los Angeles, I decided I would work only for Mac firms using Vectorworks. No source would divulge who these creatures were including Architosh who had just polled the entire US asking the same question. They speculated 20-30% but that figure is high in LA so I think it's high for the US as well...for architects and interiors designs, especially the one brainwashed to beleive that Autocad is the best program in town due to concensual comfort zones. I successfulyl initiated a VW course in a local university which was termianted three years later because the accreditation board said this does not adequately prepare students for the workplace! What? Autocad wins the sheeples choice award yet again! The other stickler in the US is that the US arch registration exams are given on a neutral computer platform that is so much like a PC that it's mind-numbing to call it anything else. The application is like Power Cad and is rather cross-platform. This battle has been raging for years now too so I suspect that at some level Mac users are getting their voices heard, me included. Quote Link to comment
mralistair Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 Christiaan, i'm a bit late to this one but here's my tuppence worth. we are on macs but generally it's the smaller firms that are. we have 1 pc in the corner as we need it to run the NBS spec writer programme, also not available on macs. TBH i think the problem here is office, it should work on a mac and a PC. though they could have tested it. Quote Link to comment
Chris D Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 we have 1 pc in the corner as we need it to run the NBS spec writer programme Us too for the same reason, it's beige and slow and crashes a lot I've tried whining to NBS to do a mac version, but they say point blank: not now, not ever. Quote Link to comment
altoids Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 Apple worldwide market share just rose to 8.1% from 6.2% a year ago, making it the No. 3 vendor with 37% increase in "growth". The times, they are a changing. More here: http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/17/apples-3rd-quarter-2007-u-s-marketshare-up-to-8-1/ Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 19, 2007 Author Share Posted October 19, 2007 (edited) I've tried whining to NBS to do a mac version, but they say point blank: not now, not ever. You'll be glad to know I beg to differ there Chris. They rung up the other day to do one of their satisfaction surveys and as usual we had a moan about no Mac version. But this time, apparently, we got positive noises. Sounds like it might be in the works. Also, I submitted a feature request for them to support multi-column layouts and at A1/A0 sizes of page. If they did this we could then directly reference a PDF export into VectorWorks and have the spec in the same format as our drawings, which some contractors and building control officers prefer. They're stupid not to really. At the moment we too have a PC sitting in the corner for this purpose (and one licence on our secretary's Intel-based iMac), but if they had Mac version we'd likely get a licence for every machine we have. I also submitted feature requests for Mac OS X support (make sure you put it in writing to them as well as on the phone) and ODF (OpenDocument) support. P.S. actually I need to confirm with someone whether it was Promap or NBS who was ringing up! Edited October 19, 2007 by Christiaan Quote Link to comment
gScott Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 christiaan MSoffice macros don't make the jump into Openoffice, if they did i'd be using it in a flash. i have too many excel + word documents with macros that automate faxes, payment certificates etc, and i'm not sure i could remember how they work in order to translate them into Ooffice format. i think i'll remain stuck in office 97 until something compelling forces me to do otherwise.. Quote Link to comment
matto Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 Christian, does your company have an employment agent you deal with regularly. These guys are most likely to have a better understanding of what the employment market is like. So they'd have a good idea of numbers. Matt O Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted October 19, 2007 Author Share Posted October 19, 2007 Yeah, good point Matt, cheers. Quote Link to comment
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