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VW does the clever stuff but struggles with the basics. (snapping, cutting, panning). With AutoCAD its the other way round. Its best to keep it simple and not try to do all the things that the manual says you can do particularly if you are more than a couple of years behind the curve in hardware.

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Monkey,

As Ray says, it shouldn't crash.

I have basically the same hard- and software setup as you and can't remember more than a couple of crashes for the last 4-5 years. My memory is bad though.

Have you updated all SP and OS?

Do you have any free space on your HD?

Is your graphic card ok? - 256Mb VRAM is recommended.

On the other hand I have had a nightmare with around 12bugs I reported this fall.

About 7 or 8 of them turned out to be real, now listed bugs, the other ones just ...well, stupid me...

So bugs, yes far too many in VW!

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Bonus

i have the latest SP, 256 graphics card, about 100GB free on my hard drive.

I would usually expect VW to crash when doing site models etc but it doesnt. for some strange reason it seems to crash when doing simple things. I have tried to work out exactly what is causing it to crash, but it seems to be different things all the time.

i have probably had about 10 crashes in the last 6 months.

i tend to use high res images in my drawings which may account for some of it, and file sizes tend to above the 20Mb mark.

one things that always crashes my machine is the 'import single DWG/DXF'

i have submitted it as a bug but not heard anything. i can use the normal import option for importing more than 1 DWG. very strange as i have not heard of anyone else coming across this.

i have learnt to deal with the crashes and backup constantly.

i suppose it all depends on what your are doing day in day out.

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I started as an autocad user in college. Most people in the industry I work in use vectorworks probably 75/25 over autocad. It has been a very tricky transition in learning how to do things that I used to be able to do easily in autocad.

I have found though when I am working with autocad users at my little station I have set up they look at vectorworks and say wow you can do that, that would save me so much time.

Here is my list of pros of vectorworks over autocad.

Align and Distribute. Probably the single greatest feature

No Regen. If anyone uses autocad and you are trying to navigate something around something fairly complex you run into the regularly. And vectorworks doesn't have that problem.

The various option in the preferences. Easier to understand and easier to work with. If you are like me and mirror a lot and if you are mirroring something with text the adjust flipped text option is awesome.

Worksheets and record formats are much easier to work with.

All in all they are very similar, just translating it is a little tricky. I think autocad leaves a lot more in it from release to release never entirely streamlining its workflow and you have obsolete commands still in the program. Strictly an opinion, but it creates a clutter of options. There are bugs in vectowroks and autocad. Neither is perfect. I just find the workflow in vectorworks easy to grasp mainly for someone starting from scratch it is simple to understand.

I have also had vectorworks crash semi regularly, maybe once a week. However it is understandable with what I am doing. I often get to the limit of open files and am working on large numbers of porjects at once and they are often complex drawings. I find it happens when I am editing deep solids with lots of additions and subtractions or imbeded symbols.

Matt

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don't take ray too seriously, he is

suspiciously 'pro' VW...

in our workspace VW crashes + burns at least

once a day, while the ACAD types next door

seem to churn on pretty solidly for days or

weeks without the gasp + slap of the mouse

as the drawing dissolves into the aether.

we all have similar hardware + version to

version we crash more than them

that said, we do much cleverer things with

VW, and produce much nicer drawings, much

faster than the ACAD's.

for our scale of architecture VW

is head + shoulders better than ACAD, but

that doesn't mean it isn't cranky as hell...

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VW is relatively bug free for me. Typically i have weird instances occur IN the program rather than catastrophic failure.

I'm a little annoyed with a current glitch where sometimes i am in group view and i zoom in to fix something a little and EVERYTHING outside of the group that i SHOULD be able to see disappears, then i zoom out two "clicks" of my mousewheel and it all appears again. So, it's just minor stuff. Also, i find that if i am working in VW for a long time in one session, the snapping gets a little weird and inaccurate.

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Vecterworks used to crash here a lot, but not anymore. Now it's just once in a month or so.

I found out that the most crashes happens with documents where the user origin is way off the internal origin. Another reason to never change the user origin and always reset it to the internal origin when you get a drawing from someone else.

At home the only crash I have is when I close Vectorworks.

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just thought you would like to know, VW just crashed twice today, once when simply trying to move a revision cloud slightly to the right using nudges, and again when double clicking to edit text that is already there, both on different files.!!!!!!!

surely AutoCAD does not crash when doing things like this.

this is like me falling over when standing still!!!!!!!

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I know it is very frustrating when things like this happen, but most of the other users are not seeing this kind of problem. It makes me think that is is a problem in your system. Could be hardware or software, or it could be a corrupted file.

Where did these two files come from? Where they both started from the same template?

Can you repeat the crashes? If so, make sure you send the files (along with your complete hardware specifications) to tech support.

If there really is a bug, they want to fix it. If it is in your system, they (and I) want to help you figure out what it is.

Pat

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It is possible almost to crash VW easily

In a complex drawing when using the Paint Bucket Polygon tool to fill an area I always save first and then use the tool

I am used to that now - the positive about VW for me is mostly it is predicatable and rarely now do I lose work

That tool though when it works as it mostly does saves heaps of time on large projects - for me when it fails really it is not a bug - rather just one of those things

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Curious. I think I have complex drawings (10 MB at least.) I use the Paint Bucket Polygon all the time. No crashes to write home about.

BTW: I actually do mean that this is really, really curious! Obviously there is some fundamental unpredictability: this OS and that CPU (or vice versa), so much RAM of that kind or not that much RAM of this kind, use of trackpad or use of mouse, smoking tobacco or not chewing gum while using VW... The medicin-man will always have an explanation: check your video card driver. I have spoken.

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VW2008 went for about 6 months on my system with no crashes. That is great stability! I restart at least daily and repair permissions weekly.

Most of my crashes are while editing or nudging in groups and/or zoomed in.

Recently, a 30MB VW file started crashing ("unexpectedly quit") with increasing frequency, about every 20 or 30 clicks at the end. I duplicated the file and have been working crash free on the copy for several days. Cause was corruption? or fragmentation? Dunno, don't care. It's fixed now.

-B

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i do repair permissions on a weekly basis, the most common crash i have is when clipping complex shapes, and i have learned to save before doing these kinds of operations, but its when VW decides to pack up when doing a common task like nudging something that it sends me insane.

my system is setup exactly the same as everyone else in our office, some people suffer crashes and some dont. i know that files can be corrupt and copying to a new one can sort things out, but this is a right royal pain the the arse when deadlines are tight, and so are budgets in this bloody credit crunch time we live in now, so i dont want to have to waste time copying files across all the time.

i rarely had a crash with 12.5.3, and have tried going back to it, but i miss the functionality of 2008.

from reading comments about 2009, i am staying well away until they have at least completed 2-3 versions with the new parasolids kernal, and wiped out all the bugs which have been present since 2008 (i can see from current posts that the screen flicker issue still hasent been sorted out yet!!)

i learn to deal with VW and its quirks, but this doesnt mean it doesnt piss me off a lot. my mac has almost been literally thrown out the window on more than one occasion.

one day i hope this will all be gone....... haha never

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Curious. I think I have complex drawings (10 MB at least.) I use the Paint Bucket Polygon all the time. No crashes to write home about.

BTW: I actually do mean that this is really, really curious! Obviously there is some fundamental unpredictability: this OS and that CPU (or vice versa), so much RAM of that kind or not that much RAM of this kind, use of trackpad or use of mouse, smoking tobacco or not chewing gum while using VW... The medicin-man will always have an explanation: check your video card driver. I have spoken.

Maybe - 12.5 was far worse - 2008 better again, Vista (just shudder in my boots to mention that) with 2008 better again and 2009 best so far

I does not happen that often but still enough I have developed the habit of Saving prior to using it just to be on the safe side

Another in 2009 - Place a plant in your User Plants Library and make sure it has Not ticked in the OIP Enable Tag Shoulder Line -Open a new file - use that plant tick in the OIP Enable Tag Shoulder Line and export it back to your User Folder - and Replace the original when the dialogue comes up - for me boom crasho

In 2008 - I have a file which is 31 houses - 19 A1 Sheet Layers and lots of Plants - recently I had to go back to that file using 2008 to make some revisions - every time I opened it the Plant Geometry had disappeared - tags still there but no geometry and I have to run a regenerate plants script to bring it back - I lived with this problem right through 2008 and it is still there as far as I know

If you like I can You Send It to you The file though is 91 MB

The one in 2009 the Paint Bucket Tool crashed - just tried it again and it did not crash - on the weekend though it cashed every time through restart reboot etc

Sometimes happens - sometimes not - mostly fine

And my video card driver is always up to date - I do admit though this machine is a little old

I need some sound advice - should I get a Mac?

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