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Regarding a subscription model... if that would be the only option and without perpetual license option then I would be strongly opposed to that.

Adobe lost me as a customer after they first said that perpetual licenses would still be there and you'd have to upgrade to CS6 in order to be able to upgrade to CS7 and shortly after the upgrade period for CS6 ended they said Creative Cloud was going to be the only option, there would be no CS7 and no more perpetual licenses, not even an option to keep the current version as a perpetual license after you end a CC subscription. I want to be able to open and edit my files in the (near) future without having to be forced to "upgrade" to the then current version which may not even support the "old" version anymore.

I completely agree with Art V on the question of subscription model licenses.

Adobe suckered me as well with the tease of buying CS6 now so you can get CS7 later. I'll keep using CS6 until hardware or software prevents it from working. Then I'll be looking for alternative software to replace the Creative Suite, as I am not going back to Adobe.

Autodesk is following Adobe's lead by also dropping perpetual licenses and going subscription-only, and I can tell you none of the Autodesk users that I know are happy about it.

If Vectorworks ever follows this path I will be faced with a very difficult decision.

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Autodesk is following Adobe's lead by also dropping perpetual licenses and going subscription-only, and I can tell you none of the Autodesk users that I know are happy about it.

If Vectorworks ever follows this path I will be faced with a very difficult decision.

In a way Autodesk is less and more worse than Adobe.

If you currently have a perpetual license with maintenance subscription you can stay on that and when you stop the maintenance subscription you will still have the perpetual license of the then current installed version. That is, as long as Autodesk is still selling that product or offering maintenance subscription. It is (informally) said this will be offered for at least 4 or 5 years from now. But you cannot enroll in this anymore for some products already or when they stop selling their suites. So for now it is less worse in some ways, but that will change as they are thinking of speeding up the change to Desktop subscription as their only offer.

Desktop subscription is on average double the cost of maintenance subscription, and will be your only option after 1 Jan. 2016 and when you quit you have no working Autodesk software anymore. Similar to Adobe now.

That being said, except for perhaps AutoCAD LT you may not be able to get standalone programs but only suites in the near future. AutoCAD Map will only be available as part of a suite after Jan. 1 2016 and no longer as a standalone program, other AutoCAD versions will follow that path sooner or later.

Autodesk also wants to "cloudify"/virtualise their software and what they seem to be thinking of is that you no longer can install the software on your own machine but that you will be downloading an e.g. Citrix instance that hosts the software and you will be working on your files from within that Citrix instance (or other virtual environment). I don't know if you will be able to keep this instance on e.g. your laptop when working out of office without an internet connection and whether you have to redownload it each time (that would not make sense so I assume not for now, but like Adobe it regularly checks the license).

Your files should theoretically stay on your own machine but Autodesk seems to promote that you put your files on their servers and claim your intellectual property etc. would still be safe with them.

This is basically a no-go for me as I don't have any control over where my or my client's data would be going and that is simply not acceptable.

Large companies have the resources to create their own cloud environments but small businesses usually do not have these resources. This means there is an opportunity for Vectorworks and the dwg alternatives to become an alternative for AutoCAD.

For Vectorworks this means they should increase their dwg compatibility in some areas where it is lacking to be really useful as a dwg alternative (e.g. import/export of text styles is missing) or they'll not be able to compete seriously with the dwg based alternatives (DraftSight, Briscad, ZWcad etc.).

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Autodesk also wants to "cloudify"/virtualise their software and what they seem to be thinking of is that you no longer can install the software on your own machine but that you will be downloading an e.g. Citrix instance that hosts the software and you will be working on your files from within that Citrix instance (or other virtual environment).

I HATE this concept other than as an option for users that don't have powerful enough hardware, often the case with students or interns etc. Having this as the only option is extremely distasteful to me.

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Sorry if this has been covered, I could not find it anywhere.

One of the changes in Wall Styles is all your favorite files from the Resource Browser show up in the Wall Styles Menu, so it is packed with symbol files that have no relevance to walls. Is there a way to not see those in the Wall Styles list?

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@altoids - Yes, as long as you use "Create Section Viewport" to create your sections and elevations, things are coordinated. This is also true with "Create Detail Viewport" Keep in mind, to get the section (or elevation) markers to show in your PLANS, go to the viewport that created the section (or elevation) and in the OIP near the bottom, choose "Section Line Instances", then under the "Viewports" tab, choose which viewport you want your markers to appear in.

(Just FYI, This is a very good example of why you should name your viewports)

Wes

Yes. You must remember though that to move the viewport from one sheet to another you must select the viewport, and then change the layer from the OIP. If you cut + paste your tag will disappear.

Wishlist - It would be great if you could get a warning if you try and delete or cut a viewport that is linked to a tag. That way you will be notified that the tag has been erased and give you a change to move the viewport the right way.

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Yeah, I can't figure this out either. I imported the grass shaders, created a simple small-ish 3d polygod and started experimenting, but it still just looked like an image fill rather than any sort of realistic 3d grass.

Also, having the grass shader applied as a texture, then trying to edit the grass shader totally crashed my computer. CineRender (or whatever it's called) was freaking out in the background, and I had to quit it separately in Activity Monitor to get my computer working again. It was using 99% of my CPU even without VW open.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
Yeah, I can't figure this out either. I imported the grass shaders, created a simple small-ish 3d polygod and started experimenting, but it still just looked like an image fill rather than any sort of realistic 3d grass.

Also, having the grass shader applied as a texture, then trying to edit the grass shader totally crashed my computer. CineRender (or whatever it's called) was freaking out in the background, and I had to quit it separately in Activity Monitor to get my computer working again. It was using 99% of my CPU even without VW open.

What rendering mode were you using? It should be a Custom Renderworks mode with Grass enabled as described in the Renderworks guide. I think Final Quality Renderworks includes this shader as well.

Try to render the attached example file with preconfigured grass, let me know the results:

[img:center]https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=12981&filename=Screen%20Shot%202015-10-01%20at%2010.11.38%20AM.png[/img]

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Mapping an image as the color of the texture lets you do some cool things, from making more realistic splotchy-colored grass all the way up to team logos emblazoned on a playing field. We had a few demo files like that made up but they didn't make it into the release materials unfortunately.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Its not AS much as displacement mapping but yes there is a significant increase in render time, since it has to generate the geometry during the render.

I recommend keeping it to smaller areas and closeups, if you tried to apply it to a huge field or an entire site model, it would take a long, long time.

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Can I open multiple files in VW 2016 ? Looks like when I open a second file the first closes.

You can switch between documents with the Window menu, but thats only required if you have Palette Docking enabled, if you want the UI the way it worked in prior versions, use Window > Palette Options and uncheck everything there.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
@JimW - on your Koosh ball, does using the grass shader considerably slow down the rendering speed? Is the performance slowdown comparable to what you get when using displacement textures? thanks.

Another note I forgot on this, combining Indirect Lighting and Grass will increase rendering time SIGNIFICANTLY, since it has to calculate all the bounces between each blade of grass, especially if you have wetness enabled and lots of light sources.

Generally you'll use grass outside, so disabling indirect lighting and using ambient occlusion instead often works just fine. Interior renderings rely much more on indirect light.

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