jumping from 2008 to 2010 (2d drafting)

[joypog]

Is it me or has zoom noticably slowed down? And all that new cursor functionality just makes it more inaccurate to drag and snap stuff? How do I get the cursor 2010 to act like 2008?

I'm not sure why my boss upgraded, but I think in the name of efficiency I might drop back to 2008 cause slower and more inaccurate are not two things we're looking for in the office....

[Ray Libby]

The video demands of 2010 is much higher than 2008 and as always newer version take more horsepower in general. The price of advancement.

If you posted your computer specs we might be able to help.

[joypog]

Interesting...I've been working on this imac for 2 years and its always been pretty snappy...enough that I've never looked in to the specs.

This is an imac7.1

Intel Core2 Duo, 2.4 ghz

only 1 gig of ram(!)

the gfx card is an ATI Radeon HD2600 w/ 256 gigs of ram.

that's interesting...I had assumed the machine was more powerful than that just cause it did have a little hop to it....

After a day of putzing around with 2010, the only benefit I see so far is that you can gray objects that aren't in a group when you click into it. That is nice enough that I would put up with the slower zooms just for that feature alone.

However, the smartcursor jumping around all over the place other than where my mouse is pointed is driving me absolutely insane. Is there any way to go back to the old way (of 2008)?

[joypog]

hmm do you think if I got rid of my second monitor (only an old 1024x768 lcd) would help speed things up with the zoom?

[Benson Shaw]

By cursor functionality, perhaps you mean those annoying mid points if you hover too long while trying to find the correct snap? There are settings for many of the new and old cursor/snap functions (took me a while to find them). Dbl click any box in the Constraints Palette to launch a dialog box with setting options for each constraint type. I found that increasing the delay time for the smart points and smart edge helped me better accomplish simple drag & snap operations without, for example, invoking the midpoints.

Hope that was relevant.

-B

[joypog]

in 2008 you only had the cursor and then things that popped up if you were snapping to it. Here there is like an alternate crosshair that tracks underneath your cursor and seems to try to find the closest snaps to for you.

Unfortunately these smart cursors are smart for me and never picks the right thing and the other issue is that it seems quite awful about snapping the the closest point. For example, if I wanted to click and drag the a rectangle and snap it to the side of another rectangle....it seems to be darn near impossible to do that unless i'm snapping to a set corner or midpoint.

[Ray Libby]

Have you updated to Service Pack 2?

Not sure if it would help your problems, but more ram would be a good idea. The recommended ram for VW2010 is 2G.

If you put your version of Vectorworks including updates and computer specs including OS version in a signature it would help to keep us from having to search for it. Click on the My Stuff link, Edit Profile.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Ray Libby

[Ray Libby]

Double click on the Snap to Grid button on the Constraints Palette. This will bring up the SmartCursor Settings dialog box. You can set the SmartCursor to do most anything you want.

[joypog]

yup...except to turn it off. I feel like I've tried just about every setting between the preferences and the snap hidden menu and no matter what it acts noticeably different from 2008 and maybe its just the frustrating "getting to know you" period. Its unfortunate that this transition has been much more of a PITA than 12.5 to 2008...=(

and yes I did upgrade to sp2 for starting up today....

[joypog]

btw I do appreciate the suggestions...there's only 3 of us in the office and I'm the cad monkey so I'm swimming on my own. Fortunately things are slow right now so "wasting" time on the internet trying to get this program to work is ok...

I'd appreciate any other thoughts!

[Ray Libby]

I'm not sure if I understand completely what the problem is, I've been using VW2010 for almost a year and I don't remember what VW2008 was like. Snapping has made some great advancements since v2008, maybe it is just a learning curve.

[grant_PD]

are you using a wireless mouse? I've yet to see good tracking on those things....

[joypog]

I'm using a wacom tablet, so maybe there is something wacky there. I'll try the mouse today and I'm going to just try full speed and see if its just an adjustment issue that I'll just get used to after a day of hard work (without fiddling with the settings).

Thanks for the hints, I report back later =)

[joypog]

well I stumbled on a couple settings that somehow made more sense to me today than yesterday so in the end everything worked pretty smoothly while still using my Wacom tablet.

The snaps are still maybe a little more agressive than I'd like, but I now know which settings to tweak I'll do that tomorrow (I didn't want to spend all day today tweaking VW like I did yesterday!)

Thanks again for letting me vent and for all your help!

[Ray Libby]

Glad it worked out!

[newhus]

Joypog, what setting did you change? I have the exact same complaint here. 2010 feels mushy and inaccurate compared to 2008, 12, 10.....

I am squirming in my seat trying to get a couple of rectangles to touch.

Edited June 1, 2010 by newhus

[Ray Libby]

Have you looked at the SmartCursor settings?

[newhus]

I'm going through it now, unchecking and checking boxes. Maybe its the snap area around the cursor...

IMO, a CAD program should be able to snap a couple objects together right out of the box (like VW used to).

After spending a few hours drafting with the Eval version and then realizing everything is wrong (or that I was going crazy), and then spending a couple more hours trying to figure out what the problem is, I think I'll just live with 2008.

Edited June 1, 2010 by newhus

[Jim Smith]

Joypog,

Did I see you have 1G of Ram? I think OS X requires 1 on it's own self, not much left for VW.

:-)

[newhus]

OK, I figured out my problem. 2010 comes with "SmartCursor Settings>Object>Nearest point on edge" unchecked. I'm not sure why this would be the default setting, and IMO the meaning of this option (and the absolute importance of finding it in order to perform CAD) could be made much clearer. It also cripples the venerable "snap to object" constraint.

[Ken]

Joypog and newhus seem to have solved their problems, but I want to jump into this discussion with a related issue (not quite worthy of its own topic). I had also upgraded directly from v2008 to v2010 a couple of months ago and share similar frustrations...

Right now there's still a lack of clean COMBINATION OFFSET SNAPS in v2010. This occurs when turning a corner snapping to an offset using either the Polygon, Double-line Polygon or Wall tool. Tapping the "T" key does NOT bring up the next segment offset as quickly as it did in v2008. As it should. :mad:

This is one of the most frustrating features of v2010 Smart Cursor.