Powerpack 2

[Kaare Baekgaard]

The 3D powerpack has not been updated since its release - which is now more than 10 years ago (!) In CAD terms that is equivalent to the stone age.

All talk about BIM aside, there should still be an artistic soft spot among VW architects to support a request for better modelling features with the next release.

[grant_PD]

I have to wholeheartedly agree with this. Since taking up C4D, I've come to feel almost pity for poor VW and it's rudimentary 3D modeling tools. Yes, the push pull tool was a good step forward and kept the sketchup hounds at bay, but the overall modeling process of VW is still clunky, and often times ends in a failure of the tool to do what you want it to.

[Kevin McAllister]

I think this would be awesome. I use the existing 3D Powerpack tools all the time and while powerful, they certainly could use updating. The comparison to Cinema 4D is a good one. Vectorworks has good solids modelling, but the power of a robust polygon modelling system and a deformer (in the case of VW fillet, chamfer, addition, subtraction) system for solids would be such a great leap forward.

Kevin

(an interim improvement could be a 2-way file exchange system for models between C4D and Vectorworks)

[Benson Shaw]

Agree!

[Jershaun]

Agree as well

[AndiACD]

Yep! Me Toooo! Agree that is . . . . .

But then i've been moaning about VW dragging it's feet on this front for years.

And sorry Kaare, but i still think that while a step in the right direction, the Push/Pull Tool is just too limited for it's own good in what it does or rather, "Doesn't".

[grant_PD]

The push/pull tool saves me only a few moves, which I believe are nullified by the fact that the selection of faces is not accurate enough to be useful, and so I either try and fail to get the right face, or I group the object I'm trying to work with and then work inside of the group.

The demo video of the tool is really inspiring when you watch. Until you think about it and realize that it's just one object in a blank space. But the reality is that when I'm modelling I have TONS of overlapping objects and faces on my screen. A simple fix would be to have the push pull tool use the currently selected face or object as it's parameters.

[Jershaun]

Frankly I don't see any benefits to this so called more powerful modelling engine, parasolid. Add fillets to the model and the push pull falls flat on it's face (pardon the pun). Maybe a tech guy can explain what the new modelling engine does that the old one in vw2008 could not have done.

Also, BIM software like Revit & ArchiCAD can model OR bring in 3D geometry from external sources and they intelligently figure out the 2D representation, even after further manipulation. It's like double work in vw because we have to spend time on the 3D modelling and then spend more time on the 2D representation.

When working with Revit and ArchiCAD, the user gets a sense of software intelligense however when working with vw it feels like holding a childs hand.

[Kaare Baekgaard]

I'm actually pretty happy with the Parasolids engine. It is much more stable than the old one. Yesterday I shelled a very complex object. Prayer was involved because experience tells me, that it cannot be done. But surprisingly the shell came out just fine, which would never have happened with the old engine.

Push/pull is OK too - but it only works on fairly basic geometry.

Viacad has a 99$ modeler in the app-store. It is not suited for complex projects but it does have a lot of modeling tools way, way more advanced than those of VW.

[Monadnoc]

Frankly I don't see any benefits to this so called more powerful modelling engine, parasolid. Add fillets to the model and the push pull falls flat on it's face (pardon the pun). Maybe a tech guy can explain what the new modelling engine does that the old one in vw2008 could not have done.

I was just wondering about the same thing. I was very excited when VW announced the switch and I thought the change would bring noticeable improvements. But just yesterday I was needing a foreground object for a test render of grass fields I was doing. Being a bit of a romantic, I thought a cow skull would suit the mood perfectly. I found one on the web in OBJ format. I brought it into Cinema 4D and it opened in a flash, I was able to rotate it all around, and texture it. Even made three copies to compare three different textures side by side. There was no lag or display issues. The object felt very "light" in C4D. I exported as 3ds (seems a little odd you can't open a C4D file in VW, but that's another issue) and imported it into VW in a new, empty file. You couldn't even work with it, it was so sluggish. If you tried to rotate it, it took 30 seconds to redraw. I tried to convert it to a mesh (I brought it in as polygons) but it said there were too many polygons and pooped out. I tried converting it to nurbs, a solid, basically everything I had a choice of on the menu. But nothing. I tried to give it a plain color fill, and after spinning it's wheels for about 3 minutes, VW crashed. I tried importing again as a mesh to see if that made a difference, but it behaved exactly the same. Including the crashing. It was basically unusable in VW. It was like I went back 15 years when switching from C4D to VW in terms of handling. It reminded me of how MiniCad handled organic shaped models - it couldn't. So what is the difference with the new Parasolid engine? It still feels just as sluggish and "old" as the old one.

I'm not trying to bash VW. Each program has it's strengths and weaknesses. In fact, when it comes to architecture, it's just the opposite. C4D is slow and cumbersome and feels like a program out of the dark ages. I can model a building in VW in about 1/4 the time it would take in C4D. And much better. Although that's more a function of the modeling tools, C4D handles screen redraws just fine. I'm seriously wondering why is the modeling engine in VW so sluggish for organic forms? It doesn't seem to matter which engine they use, VW just drags. Is it the underlying programming?

Monadnoc

Edited October 27, 2011 by Monadnoc

[AndiACD]

I'm seriously wondering why is the modeling engine in VW so sluggish for organic forms? It doesn't seem to matter which engine they use, VW just drags. Is it the underlying programming?Monadnoc

i think the problem is not so much the Parasolid Engine's ability to perform simple tasks, but NV's method of interpreting and implementing it's instructions in VW to the Ps Engine.

i don't wish to knock VW either, but it would appear that full use of Parasolids has joined Multi Processors, Multi Threading and Large Banks of RAM that are some of the issues that may still be shivering out in the cold.

Or is that just me . . . . . . ?