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Speed of development?!


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Well it's what you don't see in the video......until now VWs has been a lot better in 3D modelling (or it has been painfully absent in the competition) but the competition (archicad, Revit) have been more accomplished drafting tools for constuction drawings and the likes, and let's be honest VWs has been losing even more ground in that area for many years now.

When I see this video I wonder where the advantage now lies in sticking to VWs as an architect, until now the time saved in early stage designing ie mainly 3D modeling and presentation work has compensated time lost doing work-arounds (eg creating a dedicated layer with a copy of each door and window for scheduling purposes) and double drafting (eg drawing in dead 2D hatches on live elevations) in construction drawing stages. That advantage is disappearing fast and my main hope is that NV gets their priorities right and up to speed so that i avoid needing to invest in something else that will save me money in the end.

Edited by Vincent C
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Make specific requests and I will make sure they are submitted and considered, its the best/only way we can give you what you want and need.

I was almost swayed when I saw some of the demos, until I saw their price tag was double ours.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

That's engineering's first stop actually, primarily for the Architect features. (Christiaan is a priceless source of detailed, well thought-out feature requests.)

I think the main problem recently, the last couple of years actually, is a lot of the features with task IDs you guys don't see in the New Feature videos and images we make for release are under the hood and not immediately obvious.

For instance, in order to go 64bit, we have to rewrite almost EVERY tool and command on Mac in Cocoa, where they were previously written in Carbon. This is extremely important functionally to keep us compatible with the latest Mac OSes, but as far as the user is concerned, nothing changed.

So basically we have put in thousands of programmer-hours of work, that users perceive as no change. Luckily I think with this current and the upcoming release we are either done or nearly done with that conversion, so we will see how fast the features start coming once engineers can be freed up to do way more user-facing tasks.

I'm generally a cynical person in the majority of my personal life, but even I am optimistic about the changes I have seen recently. The instant I can tell you all about them, I will. You all of course will be the final judge of that with the next releases.

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For instance, in order to go 64bit, we have to rewrite almost EVERY tool and command on Mac in Cocoa,......

.........so we will see how fast the features start coming once engineers can be freed up to do way more user-facing tasks.

Well, seeing you're doing a 'rewrite of the program' I hope 'you' take the opportunity to give VWs a proper 'defragmentation' as has been wished for for a long time now.

Half of my(our) frustrations rest in the fact that the program feels like a pile of good but half integrated tools and functions.

The other half of my(my) frustrations lie in the fact that I can't produce 2D drawings from 3D models at a fast enough rate/without jumping through hoops i.e. at this point in time being able to draft most 'normal' situations (e.g. Roofs with a correct plan representation, Elevations with hatches and editable line weights and Window Schedules with correct live views and auto-dimensioning) is the minimum demand.

It sounds promising and I must admit that the latest release did seem to be a more sturdy one with regards to our wishes.

Yes, VWs is cheaper, but I would be prepared to pay a one time extra cost (up to double my VSS subscription) to temporarily hire extra engineers to get the program up to date with the competition to the next release.....within one year.

Edited by Vincent C
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Luckily I think with this current and the upcoming release we are either done or nearly done with that conversion, so we will see how fast the features start coming once engineers can be freed up to do way more user-facing tasks.

Sounds like any real progress on new features won't be made until VW2016...

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I agree. After all the time spent on work arounds and issues in general, it becomes a very expensive software to use. But I think Vectorworks has great potential to be one of the best. It just needs to be "rescued" soon; hopefully completion of such a mission is indeed right around the corner. I'd pay more to see its issues go away; it would be worth it, both financially and when it comes to mitigating daily frustration in its use...

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Don't forget that Vectorworks is multi discipline and by virtue of its price point allows those in other disciplines that don't use it as a main tool access where they would otherwise be priced out. In this circumstance, time wasted on work arounds is negligible compared with finger trouble of irregular users. Happy though if you want to propose that the architect module is raised in price to fix the issues that most others don't care about.

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Let me just add that the reason I started this thread was to show that the competition is filling the gaps they've had in relation to VWs capabilities.

For me the main priority is still to get the tools we have, to work, to work better and to be more synchronized throughout the program, that alone (for me) will bring us back on track and in line with productivity compared to the competition, second priority would be new features that improve 2D output from 3D models and 3rd fancy new features to increase sales......

Edited by Vincent C
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My 2 cents on this is that they need to focus on fixing the tools they have provided, not on releasing new tools that also don't work. I don't want to have to figure out how to write code so that I can use a program built by people who know how to write code.

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My 2 cents on this is that they need to focus on fixing the tools they have provided, not on releasing new tools that also don't work...

I would agree with you if I didn't just happen to finish hatching a heap of elevations in a SLVP........

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I would agree with you if I didn't just happen to finish hatching a heap of elevations in a SLVP........

I would put the ability for hatches to show up on elevations as fixing an existing feature that doesn't work properly. The inability for 3d elevations to show 2d hatching as part of an applied class setting/override or texture is just an epic fail IMHO.

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Putting 2D hatching on 3D elevations is a Vw weakness, as is the viewport Update button. And the competition uses those weaknesses to promote their products. But Vectorworks is very versatile in many areas. I always like to think of it as a Swiss Army knife, and its users complaining that the saw blade is too slow in cutting a 2x4. But a regular saw does not have 20 other useful tools attached to it.

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I always like to think of it as a Swiss Army knife, and its users complaining that the saw blade is too slow in cutting a 2x4. But a regular saw does not have 20 other useful tools attached to it.

True, but Victorinox doesn't market the Swiss Army knife as a carpenters tool if they did you would get the same complaints as NV does when it markets VWs as an Architects tool.......

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