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Vectorworks hate forum!


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Uhm! If you read some have actually taken courses, which you would assume has a structure to it, and therefore not a 1 or 2 days trial like you say.

Regardless DWorks, this post was meant to be slightly funny as we are all on this forum trying to make sense of some of the non-sense of Vectorworks usability...and that I beleive is the only reason this forum exists and people like you and me use it. If the program was perfect we indeed would not be here with our virtual support group.

Sooo! Laugh a little at ourselves today. It's healthy.

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One of the ranters on that forum said he's disappointed on how difficult it is to edit 3D polygons. I hardly ever do 3D modeling with polygons, unless it's drawn in 2D, and later used for a floor or roof. And compared to other CAD programs, poly editing in Vectorworks is second to none.

Edited by Bob-H
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This program is for Artists, Entertainers and Presenters try hard as they like they are going to have to do a lot more real work (projects) to gain credibility amongst other consultanting professionals.

LOL....

I believe you are out of line to suggest that only artists will have any use for the program. As a Professional Engineer, the program has provided me the ability to complete REAL projects in a third of the time with better graphic presentation than my counterparts who all are using ACad or MS.

The secret is to fully understand what the program is capable of doing and when a desired task is not included, create your own. If a stock column is not intelligent enough to communicate to other columns that they should move also, then you create a custom one that will behave as you wish. I cannot imagine someone actually moving each piece by hand. You can even go further and have the column calculate its own forces and moments and check if the size and reinforcing is adequate.

The program provides the tools to automate such tasks and all you need is some creativity to make the program work the way you want. Most complaints I read are due to users not understanding the tools provided or trying to work the same way they did with Acad or MS.

By no means do I think the program is perfect, otherwise I would not be creating my own tools, but which program is? No program to date has ever satisfied all the user base 100%.

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We'll you can't really blame them, I regard myself relatively adept at CAD programs (self learned in Bentley, ArchiCAD, Revit, VWs and am trying to forget what I learned in Autocad) have been using VWs since v11.5, I still don't find that I have an effective streamlined workflow in VWs and have new ah-ha experiences almost monthly, steep learning curve perhaps? or has it just become to complicated for its own good?

Edited by Vincent C
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I think you dont have to be an structural concrete engineer to understand the principle of Mcr (Cracking Moment)

Try moving a concrete column and all associated node connections a thousand times.... LOL,youll soon reach the cracking point.

If you believe VWs 3D BIM is taken seriously in the real AEC world.... think again?

This program is for Artists, Entertainers and Presenters try hard as they like they are going to have to do a lot more real work (projects) to gain credibility amongst other consultanting professionals.

I think its a great tool for stitching up projects...but honestly I couldnt put others through the B****** that I go thru to produce WD.IMO Architects/Designers should be telling them exactly that.

These rantings are always fun I have them regularly too :grin:

and I always have to ask "so why are you still using VWs?" :whistle:

Edited by Vincent C
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LOL hey Mate I can script how about you,Care to move/edit a 3D Solid node without cracking ?

Hah, mine is easy, I'm a sucker for the nice GUI (my opinion) and 'flexible' (read practically none existent) workflow.......I don't like others deciding how I should work (except when it comes to my OS(X) of-course :) )

Btw what are these 'nodes' you keep referring to, am I missing something important? Apparently they don't seem to work however I've never noticed them?!

Edited by Vincent C
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Hah, mine is easy, I'm a sucker for the nice GUI (my opinion) and 'flexible' (read practically none existent) workflow.......I don't like others deciding how I should work (except when it comes to my OS(X) of-course :) )

I don't like others deciding how i work either..... but at the same time i want a hassle free guaranteed workflow that just works. Without having all these stresses and aggravations that all the VW bugs and workarounds bring with it.

A workflow that works means more time designing better building, rather than wasting hours/weeks sometimes months (my latest problem!) trying to get the information needed extracted out of VW in a suitable format and actually on time!

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The secret is to fully understand what the program is capable of doing and when a desired task is not included, create your own.

The program provides the tools to automate such tasks and all you need is some creativity to make the program work the way you want. Most complaints I read are due to users not understanding the tools provided or trying to work the same way they did with Acad or MS.

By no means do I think the program is perfect, otherwise I would not be creating my own tools, but which program is? No program to date has ever satisfied all the user base 100%.

Totally true, And it's VW ability to automate it like you wish that made me love the program in the first place, after the GUI.

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I don't like others deciding how i work either..... but at the same time i want a hassle free guaranteed workflow that just works. Without having all these stresses and aggravations that all the VW bugs and workarounds bring with it.

A workflow that works means more time designing better building, rather than wasting hours/weeks sometimes months (my latest problem!) trying to get the information needed extracted out of VW in a suitable format and actually on time!

I wonder if this is not a contradiction in terms at the moment, the way the CAD world looks.....?

How does a hassle free workflow look? Revit? ArchiCAD? for some sure, but try and quickly 'design' something or adapt the workflow and you bog down.

So in the program with a very defined workflow (Revit) drafting goes fast but designing actually takes longer, while in the program with a flexible workflow (VWs) drafting buildings takes longer but designing goes faster.

Edited by Vincent C
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This program is for Artists, Entertainers and Presenters try hard as they like they are going to have to do a lot more real work (projects) to gain credibility amongst other consultanting professionals.

I think its a great tool for stitching up projects...but honestly I couldnt put others through the B****** that I go thru to produce WD.IMO Architects/Designers should be telling them exactly that.

Speaking of cracking moments, I just had one.

With respect, your comments are unfounded, uneducated, and frankly ridiculous. As a small to mid-sized architectural firm using VW2011, we currently have over $80 million worth of projects in various phases on the go. Our drawings are often lauded by clients as some of the clearest and most complete they see, and consultants (be they on AutoCAD or whatever) have zero problems communicating with us.

We do this work on time, well within the budgeted fees, and with a relatively small staff who enjoy using VW on a daily basis. Is VW perfect? Of course not. However in the right hands, it's a powerful tool that you underestimate.

So before you make blanket statements, please do some research.

Sincerely,

--

VectorGeek

Purveyor of Cracking Moments since 1993.

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And the down side is,"that this program becomes a collection of unrelayed and unconnected scripts..."

But it does not have to be that way. For example in my line of work, I created traffic signal pole objects that have devices, such as signal heads, detectors,etc., mounted on the mast arm. If I move or rotate the pole, all the devices attached will move with the pole. If I add more devices to the pole, the device sends a message to the conduits to update its wire count and change its size if the count exceeds the limit.

Such enhancements can be applied to the architectural side also but the problem with any app is that you have programmers that may not know in great detail what the user wants. On the other hand, you have architects that want some feature or have great ideas to make the app better but lack the knowledge to customize it to their liking so the only alternative is to wish list it or complain.

BTW, more than half of the plugins are scripted.

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Well I have to say as a novice VW user (started w/ 2012) coming from autocad and sketchup it's refreshing to actually find people speaking positively of VW in such a strong manner as I am starting to get discouraged with it's learning curve as some call it. It would be much help if NNA would put out their own training material for suggested workflows (mine is residential architecture) instead of relying on third parties to do the work for them, and make it an exhautive volume. If you google other BIM/CAD packages for tutorials their are tons of results but VW has one single for architecture (I have it and it's pretty lame). So this is when the anger rises, the lack of Training resources when trying a just get work done.

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This program is for Artists, Entertainers and Presenters try hard as they like they are going to have to do a lot more real work (projects) to gain credibility amongst other consultanting professionals.

I think its a great tool for stitching up projects...but honestly I couldnt put others through the B****** that I go thru to produce WD.IMO Architects/Designers should be telling them exactly that.

Speaking of cracking moments, I just had one.

With respect, your comments are unfounded, uneducated, and frankly ridiculous. As a small to mid-sized architectural firm using VW2011, we currently have over $80 million worth of projects in various phases on the go. Our drawings are often lauded by clients as some of the clearest and most complete they see, and consultants (be they on AutoCAD or whatever) have zero problems communicating with us.

We do this work on time, well within the budgeted fees, and with a relatively small staff who enjoy using VW on a daily basis. Is VW perfect? Of course not. However in the right hands, it's a powerful tool that you underestimate.

Sure, but try achieving all that with a 3D workflow in Vectorworks.

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This program is for Artists, Entertainers and Presenters try hard as they like they are going to have to do a lot more real work (projects) to gain credibility amongst other consultanting professionals.

I think its a great tool for stitching up projects...but honestly I couldnt put others through the B****** that I go thru to produce WD.IMO Architects/Designers should be telling them exactly that.

Speaking of cracking moments, I just had one.

With respect, your comments are unfounded, uneducated, and frankly ridiculous. As a small to mid-sized architectural firm using VW2011, we currently have over $80 million worth of projects in various phases on the go. Our drawings are often lauded by clients as some of the clearest and most complete they see, and consultants (be they on AutoCAD or whatever) have zero problems communicating with us.

We do this work on time, well within the budgeted fees, and with a relatively small staff who enjoy using VW on a daily basis. Is VW perfect? Of course not. However in the right hands, it's a powerful tool that you underestimate.

Sure, but try achieving all that with a 3D workflow in Vectorworks.

Don't need to Christiaan. Drawings get done, buildings get built, clients are happy, bills get paid, firm is profitable. Why on earth would we try and mess with that formula?

VG

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Although we do produce working 3D models for most projects, this is done as a parallel process and ends once the project transitions from design development into contract docs. Unlike what you may see in your practice, our principal client base is developers. They simply can't wait for 3D models with every last element worked out. They need site yield analyses and suite layouts long before the project gets revved up. To have to think about the 3-dimensional picture at this early stage would cripple our turn-around time, no matter what software package or methodology we used.

Been at this a LONG time mate, and this is the truth - for us anyways.

VG

Edited by VectorGeek
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...but even if you make things that users asked for, they still do not want to pay for it. Why? In the end, it will bring up money for them.

Because there are potential pitfalls:

1. You become dependent on a third party for your workflow.

2. You become dependent on a third party for your upgrade cycle.

3. You have to manually manage the installation and updating of the software across all of your machines.

4. And it can difficult to know if the developer or their product is any good without other people's reviews.

All potentially solved by a built-in third-party plugin store:

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=173701

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