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Switching to a Mac


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What a load of rubbish

and right back at you

Christiaan - you may just ignore this - but

Look at my specs in my signature

$1700.00 AU incluiding the monitor

what price for a mac

and seriuosly both my fast ASUS laptop and this one rarely crash

VW does though

Windows 7 - best operating system MS has ever come up with

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Christian,

Don't get me wrong. I am what most would call a Mac power user, but that doesn't mean I have to understand programming. I can delete files from folders, move them around, delete preferences etc and generally speaking things don't go AWOL. This was the same in Mac OS 9.

But I worked out very early on, delete an innocent looking .DLL file and it can hurt! I still don't know what they do? :)

I am glad you are seeing some good results on your ASUS. To be fair, I have found VW pretty jumpy on my Mac using certain tools, and doing hidden line renders.

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Arrg! I've come here hoping to get some info on VW. In my current job there is pressure to move from my i7 Win 7 machine with AutoCAd, to a Mac and VW. Then I find this thread. So of course I have to chime in.

I have had windows machines with all the most hated OSs--and never had a problem. I had a laptop with win ME--yes, you heard me, ME. I ran AC 2000 on it (which was not supposed to run on it) and used it for 2 years without AC crashes until I upgraded to XP. My next machine was a Gateway laptop running Vista--yes, that's right Vista. It ran fine, except it definitely was a hog on resources. The machine was slower than it should have been with the config that it was. I ran AC2008 with out problems, other than the occasional video driver restart. (a common problem with that nVidia video chip. Poor driver)

Now in my last two jobs I was the only person in the office on a PC. As usual I was the butt of all the joke--even when my machine never crashed, and the Graphics staff Apples did.(dead logic board, dead hard drives, program lockups, all the common problems) At the end of the project, they still went out and bought me am ipod shuffle "to entice me from the 'dark' side."

So, as some one said above ALL computers crash.

Now, can anyone point me to a good discussion on the practical differences between AC2010 and VW2010. From what I've read, VW does not draw in full scale like AC. But there is a 3d modeling version of VW. This has to be full scale? Right? How do you export to CNC machines if the drawing is in scale? Pardon my ignorance. I'm just trying to research the difference in approach between the programs. I am not asking for a "which is better" discussion.

thanks.

Edited by CalypsoArt
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From what I've read, VW does not draw in full scale like AC. But there is a 3d modeling version of VW. This has to be full scale? Right? How do you export to CNC machines if the drawing is in scale? Pardon my ignorance. I'm just trying to research the difference in approach between the programs. I am not asking for a "which is better" discussion.

What you have read about is the ability to scale the way Design Layers are shown. You are still drawing at full scale (If you want a 1' long line, the data displays show it as 1'. You don't have to "think" through any scaling.)

Think of it as kind of a preset zoom. If you set your layer scale to 1/4", it is like always having a 1:48 zoom built in. You can zoom in tighter or out to see what you want/need to see just like in AC.

The benefit of this is is you know your output needs to fit on a D size sheet at 1/4" scale, you can see it while you are drawing rather than having to fit it in later. Also, since you are drawing at close to the output size, you can see the effect of line weights and text sizes as you draw.

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I've used VW on both PC and Mac, and prefer the PC's sticky pallettes. Why can't it be done on the Mac? Never understood this.

An upside with the sticky pallettes: the drawing window is automatically sized, since it's restricted to the screen area between the pallettes. This is an advantage if you switch to a new monitor, and the aspect ratio changes. Minor issue, though.

Everything else seems to be identical on both platforms making migration, or porting from one to the other, a breeze. I can imagine that workspace refrencing would be unaffected, assuming file structure remains unchanged.

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Guess I'm on my own here, having used VW on both, the sticky PC pallets MAKES ME CRAZY! I like being able to drag the pallets to one screen, & work on another. As I've customized my Basic Pallet, & have hot keys for 90% of my commands I only keep the OIP & the Basic Pallet open, I keep the Resource, & Attributes Pallets minimized. With the Mac if you're like me & keep stuff to a minimum you don't need that sticky ... stuff.

As for power, horse feathers to those who think it's under powered! I've used a Mac Mini for a couple of years (less than $1K CDN) until we upgraded late last year & VW 2009 has been by and large rock solid.

Never say never, we have PC's in the office that I use to run Auto Cad so we can avoid some translation problems, I shudder every time I have to use these things.

But lets face it, these things are tools, some folks use a right handed hammer, some a left handed one.

8-?

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I wonder if that isn't an OS thing - no mac programs I use have docking palettes... (but no other mac application I use is as palette dependent as VW)

The palettes are not consistent in the mac version:

-The Working Plane Palette is not resizable. At all.

And it's not the same width as any other palette.

(And it doesn't scroll with the scroll wheel!!! - all the other palettes scroll in any direction w/ a mouse)

-The Attributes Palette is the only one that has the Mac green button - which gives it exactly 2 sizes. Neither size is the same width as any other palette. There is no drag resizing with this palette.

-The OIP, RB, and Visualization Palettes all have the same minimum width. But the Navigation palette won't get as narrow as the OIP, RB, and VP. So it can't "stack" neatly.

-I really like that the mac version of the palettes (and worksheets) use the old window shade function when double clicking on the header. It makes working with worksheets and stray palettes much easier.

Not a huge deal, but I'd love to see the palettes interface get some love and attention in the next release.

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Yes, the palette tends to be an OS thing, but that is changing, as seen in programs like Logic and iTunes. The reason for this is that floating palettes tend to add a learning curve. Don't get me wrong. In most cases I prefer floating palettes over docking palettes.

A person who is learning a complex package can tend to do things without understanding what they are doing. I have seen a number of times with members of our office, that the have moved a palette, and turned another on, and the palette they just moved is now obscured by the just turned on palette. They go to use the obscured palette and it is now lost to them.

So back to the reasons Apple is trending towards the path of a unified view - this is to assist the many Windows 'switchers' in being able to use the software. Also I think you will also find a common trend that people are using many different software packages these days and expect to be up and running in a short space of time.

If Nemetsheck could address some of the user interface problems here, I think it would make a huge difference, and we could still keep the palettes we know and love.

At the end of the day, what makes a Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad work is that Apple understand interface design more than most. Yes they can get it wrong, but where they do, they tend to improve on mistakes relatively quickly.

So I would say that with the general high standard of CAD apps these days, interface will become the key factor going forward for companies to retain their existing user base, and attract new users (as Sketchup has shown). You can see Vectorworks has shown they understand this as well. Just having things like better snaps and the exit group button, I am sure these make huge difference for users.

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I do not understand this sticky palette issue???? I am still working in Vista with no major problem. I have a 26 & 22" monitor with the OIP and Resource Palettes always open on the 22" and use the Working screen on my large monitor. All of my palettes are movable and I can place them where I want with absolutely no problem. I also have my older laptop (XP)with a 22" monitor that I have with the same configuration for client presentations and it works fine too. Did I miss something important in this conversation?

Maybe ignorance is bliss. I just started on VW about 2 years ago after hand drafting for over 30 years and must say the ability to do revisions and make changes without redrawing an entire plan has made life so much easier.

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As usual I was the butt of all the joke--even when my machine never crashed, and the Graphics staff Apples did.

Well that's the beauty of there still being a choice. I am definitely an adamant Mac man of late, however I don't understand why that automatically would make me and adamant 'anti' PC person, it's strange you're the butt of jokes considering you are probably the most productive/effective?!

Now, can anyone point me to a good discussion on the practical differences between AC2010 and VW2010.

Well that depends very much on what with and how you work...;)

Probably ACs largest Achilles heel, it's one of the few none Mac CAD apps.....

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