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Forget about IFC for second


Christiaan

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Nemetschek, you need to put everything down and sort out the sorry state that is the extraction of traditional 2D data from a 3D model.

I've been banging on about this for more than half a decade and I've been lambasted by one of your employees in the past for suggesting it might be a priority over IFC/3D colloboration.

We're now at the coalface and having to deal with this huge deficiency in Vectorworks. We're now modelling major construction-phase projects in 3D and the hoops we need to jump through to create traditional 2D data, particularly elevations, is ridiculous.

Please understand that we're not all going to jump into full-scale BIM over night. The first step is to give us the ability to model efficiently and extract traditional 2D data from that model (aka DWG). Surely your other customers have been telling you this for years too?

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Nemetschek, you need to put everything down and sort out the sorry state that is the extraction of traditional 2D data from a 3D model.

Please understand that we're not all going to jump into full-scale BIM over night.

I actually consider this an essential part of full scale BIM!

Edited by Vincent C
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I actually consider this an essential part of full scale BIM!

Yes so do I, but that's not Nemetschek's view it seems to me. Their view is that "The primary component of BIM is interoperability, sharing geometry and data with other members of the team, geometry and data that may be parsed according to the needs of the particular end user. IFC is the internationally established and accepted interoperability file format."

This doesn't say they don't think 2D output is a part of BIM but it does point to their priorities.

Either they've neglected traditional 2D output or they think they can leapfrog it. Either way it's an irony for a programme with such good 2D presentation credentials.

2D output (along with building modelling tools) should actually be a priority because that's what we need to work with now.

And how about this from a Nemetschek employee: "I believe the problem lies in YOUR lack of skills, or knowledge, of what you can do with VW as a BIM tool. Instead of admitting your need for more training and knowledge of the tools at hand, you take the cheap, easy route of blaming the tools."

Not an official view but a reflection of Nemetschek culture regarding their customers? If this is the culture it would go a long way toward explaining why IFC has been prioritised over building modelling tools and traditional 2D output.

Edited by Christiaan
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Hmmm.

With regards to training and support, here's my experience with that:

As a set designer I regularly create print graphics that are placed about the set. Due to the nature of contemporary set design, these graphics are often times placed at angles in 3d space that do not line up with an XYZ coordinate system, ie. they are hung in the air, rotated, and not plumb to the ground plane.

My wish has been for a few years now to be able to attach a recordset to 3d planar objects so that I might create a "graphics schedule" which would show the live area of the graphic, and then the live area plus the print bleed of the graphic, along with other notes. These could all be compiled into a worksheet and sent to the print vendor.

I did take a private training course with Nem, and was walked through the process of recordsets and worksheets with a Nem trainer. However when I asked them to help me with the extraction of such data as what I described above, I was told that such extraction was not possible. This is due to the way in which the program extracts the data from a 3d object, length and width (the crucial dimensions I was looking for) being determined by the screen plane dimensions and not the working plane dimensions. One could change the view of model and watch the length and width change in the worksheet.

I did ask other such trainers as Jonathan Pickup, and was told the same thing. Now my graphic schedules are pretty much manually created, which despite being in a program, on a screen, for all intents and purposes may as well be hand lettered on a piece of vellum.

To this day I don't know whether or not such data extraction can be done. I'm sure there is a way to do it via scripting something.

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"And how about this from a Nemetschek employee: "I believe the problem lies in YOUR lack of skills, or knowledge, of what you can do with VW as a BIM tool. Instead of admitting your need for more training and knowledge of the tools at hand, you take the cheap, easy route of blaming the tools.""

Wow. Is this a literal quote?

So did this employee say that you could actually do what you thought you couldn't? And then not direct you to the training?

Talk about taking the cheap easy route!

Actually this comment rings a bell. Was it in a previous post?

Edited by bc
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Nemetschek, you need to put everything down and sort out the sorry state that is the extraction of traditional 2D data from a 3D model.

Please understand that we're not all going to jump into full-scale BIM over night.

I actually consider this an essential part of full scale BIM!

I also consider this an essential part of all non BIM workflows too btw!

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The elevations issue was the killer for us. The BIM model was 5 times the work and the output wasn't even half as good.

We've decided not to wait until September. We've booked a Revit presentation. The practice has been on MCD/VWX since it was founded in 1993 so this is a big move.

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As a new user who just invested in VW I'm hoping NNA are paying VERY VERY close attention to these post as I'm about to give up on VW after this years Service Select contract upgrade if they are not able to make monumental improvements. And I have a feeling many others who use this forum will as well.

Hopefully their listening so I don't have to spend more money on software, then again who cares about the extra money if it means less aggravation and I get to spend more time with my kids due to a better and WELL DOCUMENTED WORKFLOW!

I don't have much hope for NNA though.

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My subscription comes due before the release.

The catch is that we can't know about new features or lack of new features until we've continued with the subscription or have the trust of a beta tester.

So lacking confidence (and steady work currently), and due to my belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with priorities, direction, decision-making, tool and PIO functionality, program glitches and workflow hassles and less-than-stellar help I'm likely to let my subscription of VectorWorksAround lapse.

We'll see.

So +1 for what it's worth.

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Interesting but probably baseless as most of the functionality does work to some degree (albeit limited and a ofttimes frustrating).

Also note that subscription cancellation requires notification 90 days prior to renewal date on contract. This gives me a little over a month to decide. Sort of like losing a vested interest.

Christiaan,

Sorry about the thread hijack...

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And how about this from a Nemetschek employee: "I believe the problem lies in YOUR lack of skills, or knowledge, of what you can do with VW as a BIM tool. Instead of admitting your need for more training and knowledge of the tools at hand, you take the cheap, easy route of blaming the tools."

This confirms my decision to switch to Revit. From a modelling point of view and the 2D representation of that model, there's too much wrong with vw. At least with Revit, I can just concentrate on the model.

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Christiaan,

You've hit on it! The new VectorworksAround Training!

Provided only via Service Select!

Or at least a Webinar...not how to work with the program but how to work around the deficiencies.

Course NNA would never cop to their faults this overtly.

But someone else might.

Edited by bc
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Christiaan,

You've hit on it! The new VectorworksAround Training!

Provided only via Service Select!

Or at least a Webinar...not how to work with the program but how to work around the deficiencies.

Course NNA would never cop to their faults this overtly.

But someone else might.

Imaging the money they can earn with this!

Beats any kind of increase in product price and/or subsequent quality..... :grin:

Edited by Vincent C
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Running before they can walk.

Nobody (except DWorks) is using VW as a BIM modeller, so who needs to share?

Sort out 2D output from 3D so that people can begin to use 3D, then talk about sharing.

I must agree that VW still has many problems related to BIM. The main reason I can work 'completely' BIM, is because I have written a lot of tools and commands to do that. If I took VW out of the box, I can't use it as a full bim modeller, at least not that fast and good as I'm able to do now. Plus there is also a lot of compromising on my part because I couldn't get VW to do it the way I wanted to, so I just searched to find the best way possible, and this for many things.

On the other side, not any program will be able to draw every possible solution in a bim way, so each program must give the user manual control over such things, and VW is really good at this, perhaps too good. The main reason why I stick to VW, even though I got a lot frustrated for the latest version, is because of this control the user can have, and its easy scripting possibilities to make own objects. I also don't want to throw away the years of learning (bim in) VW. I tried Revit for a time, because my current working firm has it, but I really didn't like it that much. Too much like AutoCAD.

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Something is not right if only one person out of all of us has the capability to work 'completely' by BIM, and also has to add their own scripts and adjust work flows to suit.

The sad truth is that a lot of us do not all have the knowledge or time to learn scripting to get BIM to work for us, so will end up moving to package that has tools that are more capable for us to use.

The biggest issue at the moment is extracting the 2D information from the model which you think would have been the first priority.

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