bugs bugs bugs

[Joe Newell]

Vectorworks is full of them

My latest struggle is to produce an animated walk thru. I have generated a floor plan in a drawing set up using AEC drawing setup . I have generated a perspective and set the views along the path, I have edited the path and run a preview in the path editor. I then go back to the animation dialog box and click on preview and Vectorworks crashes with a type 12 error.

There is nothing complicated about this drawing it is simple walls with a few plugin doors. I have a sun light source and an ambient light, that's all. I have shadows turned on. But the thing is it crashes regardless of whether I try a fully rendered animation or a hidden line or a wire frame. Crash crash crash

This program is as buggy as Renfield

Any suggestions

I am on 8.5.2

Thanks

[Matthew Giampapa]

Joe,

All I can say is that you should send in a copy of the file to bug_submit@nemteschek.net so we can see where the problems are and correct them.

There are a large number of bugs in version 8 that have been corrected in 9.X, but the program will probably never be entirely bug free. I can tell you that 8.5.2 will not get any less buggy the longer you use it.

Since we haven't sold a copy of version 8 for more than a year and a half now, it is really considered to be a dead product at this point. No new development will be going into the 8.X series in the future.

Matthew GiampapaNNA Technical Support

[Joe Newell]

Doesn't answer my question of course.

As for dead products I am afraid I can't relate.

As an Architect I am responsible for my products for the next 20 years or so. Effectively for ever.

It really bugs me to get a response like... It's a dead product after 1 1/2 years we don't worry about that anymore.

Time Software developers took some responsibility for their products for a change

And answer the question please...if you can.

Thanks

[Matthew Giampapa]

I did answer Joe, I said that we would have to see this instance of the problem in order to fix it. You should send a copy of the file to bug_submit@nemtschek.net so we can see what we can do about the problem.

While there may be nothing complicated about the problem to you. There must be something wrong. Unfortunately we are not magicians. In order to fix the problem we have to reproduce it.

Since I don't see any obvious problems with the pathing tools in the program, and your description of the problem does not include steps needed to reproduce the crash, what other conclusion can I draw?

My point about using the old version is this. If we find out what is the problem, there is no way we can fix it's root cause in a version that is no longer being maintained. For all I know, the problem you are experiencing is already fixed in the current program.

While that may not sound particularly fair, with the exception of open source software there are not many other options. I'm sure it is quite possible to engineer a perfect piece of software that will anticipate every conceivable data set, but in order to do so it would raise the development costs astronomically. VectorWorks fits a relatively low cost area of the CAD market and is incredibly versatile given it's cost.

Matthew GiampapaNNA Technical Support

[ 06-08-2002: Message edited by: Matthew Giampapa ]

[Joe Newell]

You are right, giovanni, I am talking about the views / sheets. By path tool I meant the dialog box where you select the different views.

Path as opposed to the "swing around the origin" style of animation.

Also, What is the correct bug-submit e-mail. I tried the one posted here and it didn't work. I can't find it anywhere on the website

Thanks

[Matthew Giampapa]

My mistake, I had it confused with the VectorScript email. (vs_support@nemetschek.net)

The correct email is "bugsubmit@nemetschek.net" without the underscore.

Matthew GiampapaNNA Technical Support

[Davide]

Which path tool? You just set views wherever you need; unfortunately , that I know, there is no path tool in the sense that you can draw a polyline and set the camera height etc and let it follow it. Am I missing something?

[Joe Newell]

Right sorry, I missed that bit.

I have sent it

Thanks

[Peter Huggins]

Hi Joe,

We experienced a problem similar to this in VW8.5. It ended up that an object very far away from the drawing origin was causing the problem. I suspect this is not your problem (as VW9 has a totally different mathematical model), but you may want to test for it.

HTH.