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Vectorworks 2016


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Perhaps (following Altivec's post) that the next release a year from now should just deal with the everyday stuff that many have been posting on here on the forums.

There is cool stuff in this latest release, and it will help many with their grand creations, but there is stuff like Altivec is getting at that is far more basic and needed to make all that cool stuff worth it. Like it has been stated, there are features in other software that has been there for some time and it is possible to get them.

A part of me thinks I shouldn't be so negative just after getting the latest release. Being thankful is a big part of my life. But this is also a forum for pushing boundaries, sharing ideas, advancing our work and getting that work done. I don't know if other software out there has got it as good as we do (Forum wise) with Vectorworks. Forget the bling, bling and make the core rock solid.

Back to work.

Cheers

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Altivec: Sorry, I was going by this line:

It just appears VW and me are not going in the same direction and after over 20 years, its time for us to go our separate ways. I truly appreciate you running these boards and I thought that I at least owed you my thoughts.

I don't WANT you gone, I just took that as goodbye.

It isnt that consideration isnt given, but we have to take usage of the software into consideration as well. For instance, the "intention" of Renderworks has always been to provide a built-in solution for renderwing within the drafting program itself, something that required multiple packages all over the place for a long time. Our goal is to be able to do many things fairly well, and a lot of the time, that comes at the price of not being able to do everything as well as everyone else who are normally focused on one or two aspects of design.

But even here on the forums, this is not representative of our entire user base. We have huge numbers of users in Japan, China and various other countries that do not visit these forums because of the language barrier and they make requests directly as well through other means. We have users who never render in 3D ever. We have users like you that are focused on excellent realistic renderings and then others recently who posted about the Stair tool in particular being the area that they wanted the most focus on.

If we didn't implement a specific feature, it doesn't mean we saw the request and threw it away. Any request is considered and judged and held against the risk/reward of other features of varying complexities to implement and all of that is then compared to the resources we have available. There is no simple answer to "Why is the thing I asked for not in the software yet?" or I would absolutely give it to you.

I can answer How, and SOMETIMES When if its already on the map. Most of my job is explaining How a feature works/workflow should be done, but the Why of development is out of my range.

I wish you could see the internal discussions here of what features are going to make it in and what aren't. There are dozens (approaching now, hundreds, lots of hiring recently) of extremely passionate people here that push for advancements in every direction. No matter which we choose, some people will be extremely happy and some will be left feeling ignored. I hate that you and others here are in the feeling ignored camp, but please know that you are never forgotten and that you have champions you will probably never meet, due to the nature of working at any large company.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

It is my sincere hope that with the advent of the way more organic types of shapes that you can now create without spending hours on NURBS editing, that more attention can be given to texturing such surface, which is where Renderworks hurts the most for me at the moment. Now that creating smooth flowing shapes is easier, more users may rally around wanting Renderworks to be able to texture them.

It IS possible to map per surface at least in some way, as we do it in the background for OBJ and SKP import that includes textures. You'll notice that one of the mapping options for those is "Imported" which maintains surface-specific mappings of textures for each surface or 3D polygon that is imported. I want to bring that control directly to the user for geometry that they created, rather than making them round trip it into another package that can already do it.

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I asked a while back to expose the uv map for imported and hopefully it can be done sometime in the future.

For now the best/cheapest workflow on the mac is to round-trip to SketchUp (in other words free).

Here is an image of a simple pillow created in VW and the textured and placed back into VW. The only issue was the collada export which left a hole in the mesh which I had to fix in Sketchup.

Edited by barkest
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Thanks guys for the tips of exporting/importing in to SketchUp. I never thought of that as a work around and will try it out. But that right there is what’s sad about this and proves my point… People that paid for a professional rendering module need to export their objects into a free noob program to do basic texturing. How can that not be embarrassing to whoever heads the renderworks (not vectorworks) department. This is the equivalent of not having a line tool in fundamentals.

My sentiments exactly. We have never been more in agreement on a topic.

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This is my second VW Update,

so I'm not disappointed, because I did not expect too much.

I'm not happy with 2016 though.

This is again a feature/effect driven update.

To be honest I could live well without ANY of the 2016 features.

Although, a little part of those I welcome.

But the most important problematic areas and weaknesses of VW's

existing tools, that I criticize since the 2014 version,

weren't even touched in the current update.

That problems exist over years doesn't give me much hope that it will

get better in the near future.

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But the most important problematic areas and weaknesses of VW's

existing tools, that I criticize since the 2014 version,

weren't even touched in the current update.

That problems exist over years doesn't give me much hope that it will

get better in the near future.

All we can do is keep telling them what features we need to get fixed, otherwise it will never happen.

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A bit of genuine dismay about the new 2016 features so far here and that some basic drafting tools need properly sorting out. How about if we agree a list of maybe 10 for VW to look at as a matter of priority, I'm referring principally to VW Architect as that is what Minicad was derived for it seems to me so we need it to be true to it's origins. My beef is the stair tool and the folding door tool, also the roof tool. Perhaps between us we can agree a list and put it to VW??

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I agree with Altivec.

I would suggest NemV not spread themselves so thin. Even a huge corporation like Autodesk thinks smart. By this I mean, Revit can also do some presentation work but you don't see Autodesk directing Revit at visualizers. They would rather lead visualizers to 3DS Max because they know 3DS Max is the best tool (in their arsenal) for architectural 3D presentations. They would rather provide a solid connection between Revit and Max. Therefore the Revit team can concentrate on BIM and the 3DS Max team can concentrate on what they do best.

Instead of wasting resources, NemV should stop developing Renderworks, integrate it into architect and make use of what's available to them. Connect the model to Cinema 4D and release ALL control to C4D. C4D is made for presentations and animations so why not take advantage of that? NemV is just doubling up on work.

Maybe if NemV, starts to think smarter, they can be more productive and we the user don't have to wait 10 years for important features. Also, new features won't be half baked eg. Project Sharing. Vw's project sharing will not cut the mustard. Multiple people need to work on any part of the project at the same time even if it means in the same area and same level simultaneously. Instead of doubling up on work (renderworks/c4d) new and old features need to be fully thought through.

Instead of adding new half baked features, there is a ton of work to do on existing commands/tools like the stair tool for example. It needs to be researched on how it's constructed from country to country, what components make up the stair-not only tread and riser but handrails, supports, profiles, etc. 2D outputand user control.

I would say stop being a Jack of all trades, it's time to choose 1.

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I agree with Jershaun as I stated something similar above in this thread.

"Perhaps (following Altivec's post) that the next release a year from now should just deal with the everyday stuff that many have been posting on here on the forums.

There is cool stuff in this latest release, and it will help many with their grand creations, but there is stuff like Altivec is getting at that is far more basic and needed to make all that cool stuff worth it. Like it has been stated, there are features in other software that has been there for some time and it is possible to get them."

Good things come to those who wait, but it seems many have been waiting for some time. Guess we need to keep on pressing.

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I like Cadplan / Andrew's idea. VW should let the users directly decide the next 10 significant upgrades/improvements.

First through a nomination process and then through a vote.

My first nomination is for the ability to see and manipulate the 3d model in at least two viewport views simultaneously.

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Instead of wasting resources, NemV should stop developing Renderworks, integrate it into architect and make use of what's available to them. Connect the model to Cinema 4D and release ALL control to C4D. C4D is made for presentations and animations so why not take advantage of that? NemV is just doubling up on work.

I strongly agree on that.

I do a lot of visualization and therefore use professional tools like Modo and Cinema.

The only reason I bought RW was that is so deep into VW that many important

VW functions do not work without it. F.e. FBX export, DXF Export of Wall Components ....

It isn't that useless to be able to render directly from CAD though.

(If you could get your images out)

But unfortunately the "Send to C4D" is completely broken since 2014 and does

not allow you to simply do all render settings in C4D and refresh your geometry

because it overwrites all work done in C4D.

Plus, Materials used multiple by Classes, are exported multiple times.

How could you control them in C4D

(beside that, as a one time export, it works quite good, with Cinema only)

But same as the way FBX exports good geometry, all your Class/Layer Order

gets lost and the each single object separate export doesn't work well in 3D Apps.

DXF keeps Class/Layer structure but geometry is bad. Vertex points aren't welded

and you can't weld them later by object when objects are touching.

And the very important Extrudes still have a flipped top face.

As these are used in Tools like Stairs, Windows, Doors and Walls, all these aren't

usable.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm hoping that with the current proposed forum upgrade, which will allow a more integrated likes/voting system for posts, that it will be much easier to extract crowd intent in the future than it is currently. Right now we just use the "+1" system in support of posts and as a way to bump useful wishlist/bug threads, but there isn't any good way of quickly at a glance extracting whatever the most +ed or "Liked" posts are.

It might seem like a small change, but anything that allows more organization and intelligent views of user feedback, desire and intention would benefit feature planning.

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In addition to the proposed 'likes' and voting on posts, the ability to create polls would also be a welcome addition to the new forums. Polls are possible in the current forum (see the FAQ) but it looks like they've been disabled.

One other thing that Vectorworks, Inc could do to help address the annual hue-and-cry that 'Features X-Y-Z were not addressed' would be to email a simple survey to every registered Vectorworks license holder asking:

"What are your Top Five wish-list items / features / improvements for future releases of Vectorworks ?"

  • Put the top two responses into the "pipeline" with a higher priority intending that they will be included in the next version.
  • Email this survey every year right after releasing a new version.

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Jim:

Man I thought I was bad, but now I feel completely vindicated. I suppose bling sells, functional software upgrades to basic tools to make the program work better, not so much. Oh yeah and then there's that whole stability thing....

DEATH TO THE STAIR TOOL!

-J

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm really glad stability improved so much between 2014 and 2015, then once again between 2015 and 2016. I'd like an entire release cycle to be all about stabilization and revamping problematic tools as well, but I also understand that the rest of the world isn't going to hold still and that any sales we make will just make the next release that much better, with greater resources behind it.

Got a little scary there around 2008-2009 (The software AND the economy was pretty weak in that era), but the huge turn things took after that renewed my faith entirely.

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NemV should stop developing Renderworks, integrate it into architect and make use of what's available to them. Connect the model to Cinema 4D and release ALL control to C4D. C4D is made for presentations and animations so why not take advantage of that? NemV is just doubling up on work.

I think one of the selling points of Vectorworks is that it DOES cover all of your bases. I can do my entire workflow in Vectorworks alone, and don't have to buy an additional $3500 program.

Vectorworks makes it cohesive and affordable, even if every component of the program isn't perfect (I agree that there are still things which desperately need attention).

Yes, it should ALSO allow you to smoothly integrate Cinema4D for more advanced rendering capabilities, but to stop developing Renderworks would be a disservice to a lot of users. My opinion as a small, independent designer is that Vectorworks is doing the right thing by developing all aspects of the program.

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btw RW

1.

Is the included Physical Renderengine already the one that make that big

speed bump (since R15 (?))

2.

Do the Materials work with the new Specular Layer System ?

I have Problems that C4D, since introduction of the new Specular Material System

which came with R16, always activates that specular channel, although I mostly

use only the diffuse/color channel in VW.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

2016 is multiple times slower than 2015 on my machine with the same file.

What specifically? This is rendering time or top/plan performance?

Also, make sure to include in your post or your signature your machine specs as I have below. Those will be important since the system requirements for 2016 are higher than for 2015.

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Polls will be back, currently I think only admins/mods can make them but that shouldn't be the case once we get things cleaned up and upgraded.

While we're on the topic of forums, are there plans for integration into external forum viewer apps? I use Tapatalk on my PC/Phone and is very helpful to see updated posts/topics without having to use a browser.

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