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We need TONS of video tutorials!


MarcU

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Hello Vectorworks

Vectorworks is getting more and more powerfull - I am happy about this. Marionette is only one of many great new features. VectorScript / Python programming also and Database and tables are another highlight in terms of little and large BIMing.

But I see a great problem: it is extremly difficult to get started and educated in these things and get insight into workflows. In other words: Vectorworks is a highly developped software, but most people only know how to use absolut basic functions. In my eyes, there is a great lack in education and learning possibilities. For example here in europe (switzerland) I do hardly know any landscape archtitecture collegues who use the plant tools! Databases and tables: nobody.

Also third-party applications (scripts, plugins) are extremely rare and hard to find on the net. Many of them very old and useless. The community of programmers is small and geeky and give you the impression about script programming: I will never learn this and even if yes, it will be useless because it takes too much time.

Look at Autocad LISP, Autocad Dynamo (almost the same as Marionette), Grasshopper for Rhino or Sketchup Ruby scripts: a huge humming community of programmers and users, thousands of tutorials, videos, plugins, scripts, easy to find on the web. Vectorworks, compared: a frustrating desert.

In my comprehension, nowadays, building up of a strong community with help of good learning resources and platforms for sharing of third party products (see i.e. autodesk app store with literally thousands of third party lisp apps) is absolutely crucial to stay in the market and gain market share.

So please, please, dear Vectorworks developpers and marketing guy's: think of opening a new branche of your company which only produces high quality tutorial videos!

What do others think about this?

Thank you and cheers from sunny Switzerland

Markus

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I completely agree 1,000%.

There is a dedicated forum section on Training Topic Requests and there are only four request threads in the past year; Maybe Vectorworks, Inc. got the impression based on the lack of enthusiasm, that more training videos & materials are not needed. It's completely the opposite.

It's also doesn't look very good when almost one month after the release of Vw2016 there are still no training materials or videos for any of the new hyped features (Energos, Project Sharing, Subdivison Surfaces, and Marionette).

Marionette: it's great for Vectorworks to share a .vwx file with the completed Marionette node structure, but it would be so much more informative if a video was produced that showed step-by-step the thought process and methodology behind making it, alongside the file with the completed Marionette object.

I made a request for this just recently: Marionette Step-by-step Training Videos on YouTube

In a related thread asking What happened to the webinars?, JimW's reply was encouraging. But still, we haven't seen any new training material coming from Vectorworks, Inc.

Edited by rDesign
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+1000% here too

Going to gripe a little bit here, there is a substantial market out there beyond architects but it seems Vectorworks is not seeing this or not willing to see this.

Apart from functionality/compatibility improvements that will be needed in some areas the by far biggest hurdle is probably lack of training materials. Whatever is there is quite limited in numbers and not always easy to find/get.

I know, quality is more important than quantity but if if it is not easy to find/get/buy (at reasonable prices) even the best quality training material is useless.

Edited by Art V
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+100000%

Thank You!

Just made a post in the Landmark forum. I love that VW recognizes the growing LA profession as a legitimate market unto itself with a need for its own set of dedicated site tools.

However, US LA firms are going to be VERY reluctant to even try VW if there are not very good, modern, and relevent tutorials available upon evaluation.

We need to see a REAL project workflow start to finish, not bits and pieces and on a realistic project, not just a few walls and sidewalks in space. I love the direction of the Fundamentals GSG using the skatepark as an example, though it could be a more modern example. I also like that the VWA GSG uses a hand sketch to start which is how most modern LA's and Architects start a project.

VW, in my humble opinion is missing a HUGE market share due to simply not having great tutorials and learning resources available!

N

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+1

Yes! Lots of tutorials. The topic list should be very granular and search should understand the question (I can see an object, why can I select it? Where did my site model go? How should I use classes? . . .). Tutorials can come from users as well as from the mother ship training programs.

This forum produces (mostly) text equivalent of tutorials and it is amazingly helpful to so many users. If video screen capture made smaller files and could be loaded directly here, and the forum search were up to the task (we need to implement some kind of tag/key word system), this forum would turn into an even more super awesome tutorial resource.

The paid training programs and in house tutorials must be expensive to produce. I wonder if they are hugely profitable for software companies (Vectorworks especially). Would the user tutorials take away from that? Or does a huge library of free tutorials actually attract and keep more users and therefore maybe even cause more paid training signups?

-B

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

This is the plan! As well as the same thinking: The more users that are able to get more out of the application, the better off everyone will be.

The Getting Started Guides will not only be revamped in the coming years to more accurate represent their industries but also to include the most common workflows they currently don't address (Creating a site model from imported survey data is a huge one on the list.) but more videos on every topic will be pushed out through more channels as well as integrating them directly into Vectorworks Help. A lot of progress has happened recently on the forming of a team dedicated to this rather than having it as a sub-function of other departments.

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Thank you Jim!

Its great to see that VW is continuing to make improvements. The more I learn, albeit mostly on my own at this point, the more I see it is a very capable program.

The OZCAD tutorials OZZIE directed me to are a great start in the direction we're most interested in. Thank you OZZIE.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Ideally we will be creating multiple formats all at once.

For instance, when I create a video these days (I've decided its time for a little show and tell!) I start with a script, which ensures I cover all the major points of a particular feature and is a little easier for other coworkers to review than an audio track would be:

[img:center]https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=13869&filename=Screen%20Shot%202016-01-04%20at%203.01.03%20PM.png[/img]

This also means that when presenting the finished project to a distributor, they not only have the english audio of my ramblings, they also have text that can be referenced for translation into other languages. Obviously they cant just dump it into Google Translate and expect things like architectural terms especially to be properly converted, but having both sources makes translation much easier.

The scripts often include images of what i intend to use in the video or at least something close, both so that reviewers get an idea of what I'm planning on doing during the video, but we also include ALL of the screenshots used both in the creation of the script as well as all of the images used in the making of the actual video itself.

[img:center]https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=13870&filename=Screen%20Shot%202016-01-04%20at%203.06.14%20PM.png[/img]

This allows someone to simply take my script and images and quickly create a Help entry or Knowlegdebase article out of the video project, without having to do that much more work to make it look nice and have that multimedia appeal that lots of detailed images can provide.

The file of course also includes any VWX files used in the creation of the video so that the training content can be updated when new user interface elements are introduced, or when the subject of the video receives an update so significant that an older video is no longer valid educationally.

A lot of this stuff is all behind the scenes, but much of it is forward looking with an eye towards eventually having a single content creation center that is able to push content to all of the various places a user might want to find it in a number of formats as well as keeping things up to date.

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Any progress on new training materials and video tutorials?

I received a VSS Newsletter email this morning advertising 'exclusive content', and the only 'new' video tutorial I found was about '3D text effects and Text Along Path', which is not something I would consider a 'new feature'.

Maybe I am not finding them, but I feel we are completely lacking training materials and video tutorials on the new Vw2016 features like Energos and Project Sharing.

Especially Energos, which really has nothing except for an upcoming webinar on July 28th. (I read in this post from May 2016 the development reasons that the documentation is being held back).

I really hope the training and tutorials bottleneck gets cleared soon, as we're now less than three months away from Vw2017. Announcing new features is great, but teaching us how to use them is just as important.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

You aren't finding them because we are not releasing them at the speed we want yet, but we will be.

For instance I have something like 2.5 hours of rendering training content that has to clear some red tape. It's been ready to roll for awhile now but we have to wait for the bureaucracy.

Additionally: The content that comes along with 2017s release I think you will find very pleasing compared to the lack of details in the past few years.

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I have a website with over 2500 videos on it, over 100 manuals, but unfortunately you have to pay for access.

http://learn.archoncad.com

And a nice set of webinars at a well known software vendor.

Thanks for the last 2D to BIM one.

I'm really addicted to those doses of motivating examples of what you can do

with VW when you forget what you can't do :)

BTW,

did you know that you can edit the default levels names ?

(Organization>DesignLayers>Level Types)

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