A sigh of relief working in VW 2008 (instead of VW 2012)...

[willofmaine]

Thanks to Vectorworks' inability to reliably read its own older file types, I've been forced to continue a project started in VW 12.5 with VW 2008 (who would've guessed VW was only intended for projects of limited duration?...). Anyway, while there are some features of VW 2012 that I miss, working in VW 2008 is a VERY much more pleasant experience.

While I appreciate the layer plane concept of VW 2012, I think its implementation is poor at best. And the near complete ousting of the "screen plane" concept is unfortunate...

Dear Nemetschek: have a look at Sketchup and other similarly easy to use contemporary softwares. While VW is at least 10 times more capable than Sketchup, it's at least an inexcusably 100 times more complex and convoluted to use. It's no wonder threads regarding Revit are so hard to ignore.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm looking straight at a working plane (Top, Top Plan, or any user set plane) or at a Left, Back, Right or Front view, I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PERCEPTION OF THE AXIS PERPENDICULAR TO THE WORKING PLANE!!! (Typically the Z axis, though in a front view it would be the Y axis, etc.). THIS MEANS:

1.) The persistence of 3D dimensions when looking at the working plane is utterly useless and twice as annoying. It doesn't help that the "Snap to Working Plane" option won't persist for more than one dimension, at least in my case. I constantly have to re-activate it to avoid meaningless oblique dimensions in views such as front view.

2.) Objects moved or copied using the snap function (um, pretty much everything moved or copied...) will be relocated not only in the plane parallel to the screen as expected, but they will be relocated along the axis perpendicular to the screen as well... and there's no way to know if or how much until switching views.

3.) Reshaping things such as NURBS curves and 3D polygons can result in renegade vertices down at Z=0 or vertices snapped to other objects far from their intended plane. I've never understood, even in older versions of VW, why with the 3D reshape tool you can constrain to either of the three axes or to the working plane, but NOT to the plane PARALLEL to the SCREEN.

4.) If drawing a planar shape to subtract from another planar shape, it's necessary to remember to first set the working plane for the first shape, or risk getting a warning that they need to be in the same plane...

5.) Working with planar objects between extrudes, EAP's and the main working space can be excruciating; when cut and pasted from one to the other they invariably end up way off in hyperspace at unexpected orientations (which I'm sure are 100% technically correct behaviors in the realm of geometry and computer logic... but at the expense of a meaningful user interface??....).

I hope the next version of VW will be free of "bells and whistles" and instead a complete overhaul of both the user interface and of PIOs. PIOs do a BIM make... how can you claim BIM with two stair tools and exterior window sills the projection of which is set from the inside face of the wall? Cleaned up, I think VW has the potential to be the best. At this point it just seems like it has unrealized potential and that for any reasonably involved project the savings in its purchase price are more than lost during its use.

[Roman]

I just joined the VW 2012 Architect wagon and I have been incredibly frustrated by

1) Clunkier interface

2) Utter confusion with the Screen, Layer, and 3D plane system

3) Lack of improvements for drafting

4) Slow slow slow on latest Mac Intel i7 hardware.

Sketchup is a perfect example of how make things simpler.