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A simple guide to gaining back countless lost productive hours


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In the meantime we wait on VW 2015, here are some good tips from a 3D veteran.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/2014/08/29/shut-up-and-get-back-to-creating/

Enjoy the read!

Another argument for software mediocrity and lack of innovation.

We're still very much in the infancy of complex creative software and there will be advances in the future, some significant, that will hugely reduce negative feedback.

This isn't about a change in focus from creatives. Creatives are simply well placed to see the potential of their tools. Office workers banging away on Microsoft Word aren't interested in a better way to produce words on a computer. Creatives are different. They don't accept the world as it is. Actively getting involved in the development of their software helps to mitigate the fact that they're not in control of it.

The amount of time I've lost due to limitations and bugs is an order of magnitude more than the time lost reporting bugs and requesting enhancements. Not only that but you actually learn a lot about a piece of software and potential workarounds by trying to formulate a request to deal with them.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I agree mainly with the last portion of this article. However I DON'T want anyone to shut up. I would prefer people say even more than they do currently.

One of the worst problems we have is not necessarily getting reports and enhancement requests, but detailed ones. Half of my posts here on the forums are clarification that if I hadn't gotten it manually, would have led to engineering either not understanding the problem and thus doing nothing, fixing the wrong part of the problem or "fixing" the problem by making it worse.

A good chunk of the time the reports we get are from users at the peak of anger. So we get something like "THE POLYLINE TOOL LIED TO ME AND NOW I CANT PRINT TO 11x17!!" and have no idea what the heck the problem is.

But bugs happen and bugs make people mad. The fact that people get mad isn't the problem. The key as I see it is to (once some breaths have been taken) sort out exactly what went wrong, why it should have gone differently and how would an average user expect it to behave, all of which involve some back and forth between the reporters and those fixing the problem.

As a semi related rant: The WORST mistake anyone involved in the creation or use software can make is the toxic thought: "This is such an obvious error, I'm sure someone has already reported it and that it will be fixed soon." Never think that. Complain. Yell at me. Bring it to our attention by throwing rocks if you have to. I will confirm that it has or has not been logged/acknowledges/understood/scheduled to be fixed. I would much rather spend hours logging the same bug 15 times than have a bug exist for multiple versions and go unfixed and unnoticed because the 5 discoverers each assumed someone else had filed it.

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Hear! hear!

I've been on this forum for quite a while now and I've never seen it as decent, tranquil and constructive as it is now and without reserve I believe it is 100% due to the presence of Jim.

I strongly believe in the priciple 'credit where credit is due': this forum has been transformed from a place to mainly vent frustrations to a place of intelligent discussion and creative brainstorming, again 100% due to Jims presence! I think this simple fact will benefit VWs and indirectly us as much if not more than anything.

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Jim this is good to know as I often feel like i'm whining when I bring problems or inefficiencies up on this board.

Although, there is one problem that irritates me with the current bug reporting process. I usually enjoy the experience when I bring them up with you via this board or by email. But other times when i'm referred by you or other NV tech's to go report it through my local distributor, I cannot help by sigh in despair. EVERY time I ask a question to my distributor she has absolutely no clue what I am talking about and simply asks me if I could package every piece of info so she could forward to NV Techs. It simply feels like i'm talking to a customer service company in India that has no clue about the product and that the message will get warped up the chain to the right people who can have an effect. So when this happens I usually just abandon my effort to resolve the problem as it's too painful trying to explain a technical issue to someone who is oblivious.

Do you routinely test your distributors tech support knowledge to make sure they are up to date? Perhaps a public rating of them would benefit us in choosing? With the Service Select program are we able to request a change in local distributors if we find a more dynamic one? (In my case I would change for Resolve as they tech video's are great).

Thanks for listening.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Thank you, I try!

There is a great deal of improvement across the board in the upcoming release and I really, really like this one. In case you were wondering, my least favorite version was Vectorworks 2009. Sorry 2009 users dontkillme.

This year it was very seat-of-the-pants in getting more information flowing between users here and engineering, (since really I just sort of started posting here in my extra time with no real plan than to explain OS compatibility,) but a better flow has come out of it in the past months and I think things will start to improve at a faster pace as time goes on.

Keep the criticism coming. As the article states, workarounds are acceptable for a short stint, but I want to start turning them into fixes that are released as quickly as possible.

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  • 2 weeks later...
But bugs happen and bugs make people mad. The fact that people get mad isn't the problem. The key as I see it is to (once some breaths have been taken) sort out exactly what went wrong, why it should have gone differently and how would an average user expect it to behave, all of which involve some back and forth between the reporters and those fixing the problem.

"All of which involve some back and forth..." I think this is the problem with the official Bug Submit procedure. Along with being a bit tedious in having to submit files and descriptive e-mails separately, it's pretty much stated that very likely there will be no "back and forth" (don't call us, we'll call you...). But here, just a few exchanges with Jim and, voila, one's bug is both understood AND submitted!

Thanks, Jim, for transforming this forum, in this, and so many other ways!!

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Jim this is good to know as I often feel like i'm whining when I bring problems or inefficiencies up on this board.

Although, there is one problem that irritates me with the current bug reporting process. I usually enjoy the experience when I bring them up with you via this board or by email. But other times when i'm referred by you or other NV tech's to go report it through my local distributor, I cannot help by sigh in despair. EVERY time I ask a question to my distributor she has absolutely no clue what I am talking about and simply asks me if I could package every piece of info so she could forward to NV Techs. It simply feels like i'm talking to a customer service company in India that has no clue about the product and that the message will get warped up the chain to the right people who can have an effect. So when this happens I usually just abandon my effort to resolve the problem as it's too painful trying to explain a technical issue to someone who is oblivious.

Do you routinely test your distributors tech support knowledge to make sure they are up to date? Perhaps a public rating of them would benefit us in choosing? With the Service Select program are we able to request a change in local distributors if we find a more dynamic one? (In my case I would change for Resolve as they tech video's are great).

Thanks for listening.

Part of the problem here is that distributors only have access to the bugs they have been filing themselves, on their behalf or on behalf of their users. They can't see what other bugs have been filed by other parties, including NVW (bugs, improvement proposals, new feature requests - the lot). Nor can they see if any headway has been made on the items that are not their own, and if its solution will be rolled out in the next service pack. That doesn't mean your particular distributor doesn't have a problem of her or his own (I can't judge), but that specific limitation does hamper their ability to service you. Once that hurdle will be out of the way, it would be easier to evaluate.

Until then, we rely on the enthusiasm and dedication of people like Jim to overcome these hurdles :-)

Edited by BaRa
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
Part of the problem here is that distributors only have access to the bugs they have been filing themselves, on their behalf or on behalf of their users. They can't see what other bugs have been filed by other parties, including NVW (bugs, improvement proposals, new feature requests - the lot). Nor can they see if any headway has been made on the items that are not their own, and if its solution will be rolled out in the next service pack. That doesn't mean your particular distributor doesn't have a problem of her or his own (I can't judge), but that specific limitation does hamper their ability to service you. Once that hurdle will be out of the way, it would be easier to evaluate.

Until then, we rely on the enthusiasm and dedication of people like Jim to overcome these hurdles :-)

Completely agreed. There is also a snag in the way cases are handled, "Bug" vs "Feature Request"

Often times, a user will use a feature, see something they feel the tool "Should" have had, file it as a bug and then engineering reviews it and sees that that functionality was not part of the scope of the tool in the first place. It will then be marked Works as Designed.

At this point, it would need to be filed as a wishlist item instead. (Which irritates some but is understandable.) However, the issue arises that users are not able to see that their submitted cases have been marked in this fashion, so they have no idea it needs to be filed in that manner. A more automated way of pushing cases from bugs to wishlist items if they are marked Works as Designed may be the solution, but it still requires some filtering.

For now thats where I come in. But I do see it as an inherent problem with the feedback process and am working to resolve it in a more elegant and automated manner.

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