Surface Pro / Surface Book?

[Tom Klaber]

I think you are right and that design and architecture ride the coat tails of gamers.  The gaming PC market has got interesting with the new GPU releases.  There are true desktop replacements available now with laptops with (almost) full desktop GPUs in super slim packages.  Blade and EVGA both make really nice machines that do not look like a 1990s version of a spaceship.  MSI used to be in that category, but their refresh came with more traditional gamey designs.  MSI has a workstation line, but that comes with GeForce  Quadro rather than GTX cards - which @JimWtells me are not as good.  

Edited September 7, 2016 by Tom Klaber

[PVA - Admin]

^ To clarify, The Nvidia GeForce GT/GTX series are recommended but the Quadro series are not.

Same on the AMD side with Radeon and the R7/R9 series being recommended, but the FirePro, not.

[Art V]

Yes, GeForce graphics cards are ok for office and 2D cad use, but for good performance you'll need a GTX card as these are aimed at gamers who need power.
If you don't want to pay big bucks for a powerful nVidia Quadro card then a GTX x50 or higher is the way to go.

Especially because there are no Quadro drivers for Vectorworks as far as I know the ROI on a Quadro card gets a bit lower than you would like, so a GTX card would be the better choice for now. If you are using other software for which Quadro drivers are available then you could still get one.

[PVA - Admin]

Also as of 2017 the graphics card will DIRECTLY affect 2D as well as 3D, with the advent of VGM Top/Plan.

We are also going to alter our system reqs to ensure users understand they should have a dedicated graphics card from now on. I'll be posting those requirements as soon as I can actually, I think they've been finalized.

[Tom Klaber]

I am assuming the new gen Pascal cards are well suited.  Any reason not to go with a 1060 or 1070?

[PVA - Admin]

No reason at all, they're both fantastic choices for Vectorworks and very reasonably priced.

[Jonathan Pickup]

I'm disappointed with the updates to the apple computers. I was looking at Alienware the other day, it has a powerful i7 and loads of RAM. it's not pretty or light...

[Tom Klaber]

@Jonathan Pickup- Check out the Razer Blade.  Light and pretty.  

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

[Art V]

13 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

Any reason not to go with a 1060 or 1070?

If you are going to get new graphics cards, the nVidia 10 series is said to be noticeably more powerful than the nVidia 9 series for the same last two digits. I.e. a 1070 is noticeably faster than a 970, even a 1060 should outperform a 970 whereas in the past this difference would be smaller between e.g. a 860 and a 960.

[PVA - Admin]

I could go either way as to whether I think Apple will really bring the noise with the next MacBook Pro update, which as mentioned earlier is usually announced in October. If they go for REAL graphics cards in addition to any touch-UI buttons along the keyboard, and don't just make it .55mm slimmer than the current model, they have a chance.

The iMac and Mac Pro lines are almost worse, since they're full desktops where you shouldn't have to compromise on space for full fat hardware choices. However, with the more recent advent of external GPU docks becoming available at a not-completely-redonkulous price, Apple may very well want to go that direction, keeping their machines extremely light and thin and offering hardcore GPU options in the form of a dock.

[Art V]

5 minutes ago, Jonathan Pickup said:

I'm disappointed with the updates to the apple computers. I was looking at Alienware the other day, it has a powerful i7 and loads of RAM. it's not pretty or light...

At least it would live up to the moniker of "mean machine" 

[PVA - Admin]

The Razer Blade does look good aesthetically, but let's be completely fair... that's because it just copy/pasted what a MacBook Pro looks like

[Tom Klaber]

4 minutes ago, JimW said:

The Razer Blade does look good aesthetically, but let's be completely fair... that's because it just copy/pasted what a MacBook Pro looks like

Macs are nothing if not pretty.  All I have ever wanted was the Industrial Design of Apple with the open competitive market and OS of PC/Windows with the power of an Alienware, at the price point of Lenovo...Razer did it - though I want a 17" version. 

Will VW have do do anything special to support the upcoming touch bar on the Mac Book pro? 

[PVA - Admin]

Not a clue! I suspect however, unless they go full steam and introduce such a bar into the standard Mac keyboards as well, it will just fall to the wayside as a gimmick. Or, if it's just a touchscreen that dumbly replace the play/pause/volume/brightness controls and allows no customization by developers then we won't care about it at all.

If they DON'T fail at it, and the entire Mac lineup has access to such a keyboard and it allows for programmable buttons and icons, then it might be an extremely useful UI tool and might be something worth us getting into. 

[PVA - Admin]

Also, the team here gives me a hard time on occasion for my videos being too fast... they clearly haven't seen this. Check your volume before playing.

That's some seriously compressed info, I think it's designed to be taken intravenously.

[gester]

On 6 września 2016 at 10:47 PM, Tom Klaber said:

VW on iOS? You are nuts.

..........

Ipad and Ipad Pros are never going to have the power to run real programs - instead - get thinner and priority software and cloud access.  

I would not want VW engineers to waste a single day on trying to port VW over to iOS.

 

 

why not? i don't care about the technology, the processing power is improving from year to year, ios will improve, too, to be sufficient for the cad/bim software.

my only concern is the paradigm change in the handling of the cursor with a finger instead of a mouse or a stick. but maybe just the apple pencil is the right direction?

remember: the building site is getting faster and faster, designers can hardly find time to work in their offices, sometimes they are forced to change their drawings (or models, if generating the 2d output) in the office on the building site.  

rob

[PVA - Admin]

It's possible that some day processing power in a mobile device won't be so significantly worse than in a desktop or laptop, but for the time being the best iOS hardware is still far too anemic to handle a software package that requires a dedicated GPU, to say nothing of multiple CPU cores needed for timely renderings.

[Tom Klaber]

2 hours ago, gester said:

why not? i don't care about the technology, the processing power is improving from year to year, ios will improve, too, to be sufficient for the cad/bim software.

my only concern is the paradigm change in the handling of the cursor with a finger instead of a mouse or a stick. but maybe just the apple pencil is the right direction?

remember: the building site is getting faster and faster, designers can hardly find time to work in their offices, sometimes they are forced to change their drawings (or models, if generating the 2d output) in the office on the building site.  

rob

3

The technology is improving year over year, but the paradox of Moore's Law is that the demands on the technology increase at the same rate.  The more processing power - the more the software is going to ask of it.  The surface shows that tablets powerful enough to run the program will exist - but it so far does not seem to be in Apple's plan to make them.   We can talk seriously about this if Apple ever merges iOS and OSX - like Microsoft did with Windows 10.

Besides - the future is going to be less hand held or large desk-sized screens that we manipulate with our fingers and more full VR interfaces where we push and pull volumes - designing and constructing our structures around us.  

 

 

[Art V]

7 hours ago, gester said:

my only concern is the paradigm change in the handling of the cursor with a finger instead of a mouse or a stick. but maybe just the apple pencil is the right direction?

Some DWG based cad software for tablets seems to have that more or less solved, I think it was Gräbert's mobile cad program (Ares commander for the tablet) that had some autozoom etc. to improve precision and selection depending on whether there are other objects close to your finger. If you want I can try to find it.

That being said, tablets and the like are imho only suitable for light drafting and in addition reviewing/commenting/marking-up and making minor corrections for the near future. The screen is just too small to work efficiently. Walking around with a 17" tablet could solve that but doesn't sound too enticing either because it negates the size and weight advantage of tablets.

[Tom Klaber]

Just saw this headline - seems like its happening.  I think Workac uses Vectorworks - at least they used to.

http://architizer.com/blog/superpowers-of-surface-book/

[Kevin McAllister]

On September 8, 2016 at 5:32 AM, JimW said:

It's possible that some day processing power in a mobile device won't be so significantly worse than in a desktop or laptop, but for the time being the best iOS hardware is still far too anemic to handle a software package that requires a dedicated GPU, to say nothing of multiple CPU cores needed for timely renderings.

@JimW I saw this and thought of you - iPhone 7 Speed - Apple mobile technology is apparently already faster than some of the computers people are trying to run Vectorworks on......

Now who will win the horserace - will NV remove the single processor bottlenecks in VW before Apple's mobile processors become powerful enough to run VW 

KM

[PVA - Admin]

Haha, If they had CPU cooling and real GPUs they'd be pretty close to our minimum specs. I suspect most likely Apple will unify their OS sooner than the same hardware are used in both mobile and desktops though.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

I have the Surface Pro 4 i7 16GB RAM 256 GB SSD, and I've tested VW2016 on it. It works great, though some renderings didn't work. I guess for all work, except rendering, this machine will do. The main reason I bought this, is because I wanted to use VW on the go and to show VW stuff to clients, and I was totally happy with my first Pro model. The pen is amazing! I would not recommend any such device as the main VW machine though. Still prefer to assemble my own setup for that.

Edited September 17, 2016 by Dieter @ DWorks

[Tom Klaber]

5 hours ago, Dieter @ DWorks said:

I have the Surface Pro 4 i7 16GB RAM 256 GB SSD, and I've tested VW2016 on it. It works great, though some renderings didn't work. I guess for all work, except rendering, this machine will do. The main reason I bought this, is because I wanted to use VW on the go and to show VW stuff to clients, and I was totally happy with my first Pro model. The pen is amazing! I would not recommend any such device as the main VW machine though. Still prefer to assemble my own setup for that.

 

That is exactly the use case to examine.  There are some nice laptop options out there that can sort of be your on the go or in the field device - but there are always compromises there.  If you could get a desktop - or be find with a HUNKY laptop as your main machine - and then have a the surface as your on the go / in the field device - it seems like the best combo.

The only issue is cost.  Maybe if they can squeeze a 1060 into this year's version - it could be the main workhorse.   We will see.  

[zoomer]

On 8.9.2016 at 0:03 AM, Tom Klaber said:

Macs are nothing if not pretty.  All I have ever wanted was the Industrial Design of Apple with the open competitive market and OS of PC/Windows with the power of an Alienware, at the price point of Lenovo...

 

Beside price and power,

at least if one of Apples devices is applicable, those can be great Windows (Bootcamp) machines.

 

 

On 17.9.2016 at 10:56 AM, Dieter @ DWorks said:

I have the Surface Pro 4 i7 16GB RAM 256 GB SSD, and I've tested VW2016 on it. It works great, though some renderings didn't work. I guess for all work, except rendering, this machine will do. The main reason I bought this, is because I wanted to use VW on the go and to show VW stuff to clients, and I was totally happy with my first Pro model. The pen is amazing!

 

Thanks for sharing your experience.