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Please add all basic functionality to Fundamentals


walzo

Question

At my place of work I am limited to using a Fundamentals license, and I'm discovering some pretty surprising limits to it, given that this is a $1600-ish piece of software.

3D modeling, but no section viewports? PDF printing, but no batch PDF printing? Adding two extra clicks to view my classes and layers? Adding two extra clicks every time I want a unified view? Does this make any sense?

I hate to gripe but the logic of VW Fundamentals eludes me. I understand that the more expensive licenses include industry-specific add-ons (eg. theatrical lighting and event planning tools in Spotlight), but why are Fundamentals users crippled in their basic drafting needs? Who is this product for exactly?

Please add some of this basic functionality back into Fundamentals, or do away with it entirely.

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Yes.

Side note: I don't quite see the point of the industry modules concept anyway. If the product were available as either Designer or Fundamentals or ED, could the cost for Designer be reduced enough to sell the same number of units? There must be costs to producing and marketing the separate modules, as well as the development efforts to keep things separate eg the new fingerprinting. Maybe those are significant.

-B

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Ohh Venerable Undomesticated CAD Monkey,

Clearly Benson you've found the sore point here.

And therein lays the dilemma. As separate modules, most software companies see a potential increase in income. Look at C4D, Solidworks, Adobe etc. All have Fully Fledged "Coffee Making" versions which are well out of reach of most, accompanied by fledgling lightweight options that can be added to by purchasing extras to improve the basic capability.

An Archie may well start with one module or another, but find that without Landmark is unable to fully complete his/her task, so has a choice to add another license or crossgrade to Designer, as a result people like Owen may find the lack in Fundamentals the push needed to splash out on Designer. Hardly favourable to most but good for NAG.

A Great product sells itself, you can't buy "word of mouth" publicity, and at a good price all can afford it might be difficult to keep up with demand coz it sells so much more, not to mention the insuing "Support" explosion.

i vote for a cheaper, better quality, more complete "All in One" VW, but i'm not Nemets!

For now we're stuck with what we have! Unfortunately!

Yours sincerely,

Andrew

"Fully Domesticated Muppet"

Edited by AndiACD
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Right as usual, Andrew. The analysis says separate modules produce more profit. I question whether it is the only model for producing more. Sometimes it seems like a divide and conquer strategy is implemented - infection of pro files by ed data, fingerprinting of the modules, features left out of Fundamentals, Machine module dropped. Does this make the user want to upgrade? Apparently in enough cases.

There were a couple years (in the 90's?) when Autodesk and others developed their modules. Vectorworks soon followed. Could it be that a couple decades later an all-in-one option would attractive and profitable amid all the fractured ones? dunno. just musing.

Fortunately for all involved, I am not running a tech company!

If I were a Muppet, I would be a particularly bumbling one.

-B

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The thing is as you rightly point out, modules are just a ploy . . . . . and could it be that the cycle is over?

The BandWagon that all companies jump onto usually has a life span, so when the next NAG, Adobe, Maxon, Autodesk strategist come up with "A Really Exiting and Original New Idea" to make VW, PS, C4D, SW, "Complete, All-Conquering, Afordable packages" that at a good price would make them all a tanker load of cash, they might just lose the "Exclusivity Factor" that price keeps them hanging onto.

Fortunately for all involved, I am not running a tech company!

Me neither. i have enough headaches of my own :)

If I were a Muppet, I would be a particularly bumbling one.

What is it with everyone, that feel obliged to assume that any reference to the Muppets is detremental?

The Muppets HAVE, and always will be, the Singularly Most Intellegent Life Form ever to have graced the surface our little Blue/Green Planet!

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Quote from John Ruskin:

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money ? that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot ? it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Ruskin

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So if we are talking about paying too much ? what a breath of fresh air the other day to see this post

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=165127#Post165127

Additional training resources at what seems to be a reasonable cost especially for Spotlight users

Cost for two weeks if you wish to ?cram? is $35.00

I remember some years back when I was beginning with VW being charged $300.00 plus essentially to learn how to use Sheet Layers

I will when I get time be spending at least the $35.00 to check out some of the 3D modelling tutes

Anyone else had a look ? some feedback would be interesting

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Thanks for all the thoughts guys. It's true, encountering randomly missing features in a fairly expensive product DOES make me want to upgrade, but it also makes me want to gripe. I'm basically locked into VW because of the industry I'm in (entertainment), but I'd certainly explore other options if I were able to.

I hope the CAD industry in general gets a little more of the spark from faster, cheaper, nicely designed, user-friendly software vibe going around other spheres of production software.

Jumping from Illustrator or Lightroom over to any CAD package feels like stepping back in time 25 years, when the user was expected to adapt to the software, rather than the other way around.

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