VW9.5.1/ VW8.5.1 comparisons

[Jim Holmes]

I have recently upgraded to 9.51 and have (so far ) been disappointed with it when compared with VW 8.5.1. I do not run VW Architect and the loss of AEC and the 2D AEC tool palate is a shame. I have also found editing 3D walls created in VW 8.5.1 impossible.. They have frozen & the layer has to be deleted. The programme is also significantly slower to run. I have reverted to using VW8.5.1.

Was VW8.5.1the zenith--- Please tell me I am wrong

[CreativeConners]

OK, you're wrong

But seriously, I think you'll find vw9.5 is really a good improvement, though not as great as the progression from 7 to 8. I'm a mechanical designer so I was disappointed to find the mechanical workspace gone from 9.5. However, the tools are still in there, you just need to recreate your palette using the workspace editor. I suspect this is the same with the AEC tools (there's a bunch of AEC tools and menu commands in the Workspace Editor).

Some of the highlights:

1. Boomerang mode- hit the space bar and you can zoom and pan in the middle of any command. For me this has been a real boon.

2. The 3d toolset has taken another step forward. The 3d power pack has some key features like rounding and skinning. Though, it's worth saying that snapping in 3d is still a drag.

3. The parametric tools are real nice like the new bolt, structural steel, bearing, spring, etc.

4. Scaling prints down in the print dialog is handy when clients want all the drawings faxed to them.

5. Compose and decompose polyline/polygon. This is a great tool if you ever deal with curves. You can now draw lines, arcs, and splines to create an intricate shape and then use the compose tool to convert all the objects into one polyline. Kind of like the old "Combine into surface", but it works. Where I work, a lot of the shapes have to be exported as closed polylines to be read by our CNC equipment so this tool has saved us tons of time.

6. Accuracy is greatly improved, you can now convert between unit systems to your heart's content. And if you scale objects several times, they stay accurate. Also you can now set the dimesions to display measurements in decimal if the object isn't an exact fraction. So if an object is 4'-2.502", it reads exactly that without rounding to 4'-2 1/2", which makes it easy to find small drafting errors.

It is a shame that every release seems to run slower than the last. My old Centris 660 ran MiniCAD5 at top speed, but version6 marked the end for that machine. Alas, this seems to be the trend in all software, as the programs progress and gain functionality and sport slicker interfaces they get slower.

When 9.0 came out the we had a lot of printing problems and we were constantly switching between 9 and 8 just to get drawings printed. But most of the bugs are squashed, and many of the VW8 bugs are gone (i.e. all of the wacky things that would happen when clipping curves). In fact, VW8 now only exists on one machine.

Give it a week before you give up on it.

[TiTaNiuM sAMuRai]

I hate VW 8.5.2.

I hate VW 9.5.2.

However, I'm greatly relieved that 9.5.2 came along; it fixed many issues I had with 8.5.2 and introduced only a few new bugs.