Vectorworks Development

[Tom Klaber]

There will be some changes to walls but I have not seen anything extremely dramatic so far. There are far more changes planned for the architectural objects that insert into walls such as Windows/Doors this time around.

Excellent.

Anything on stairs?

[PVA - Admin]

Excellent.

Anything on stairs?

Not "Stairs were rebuilt and everything is now perfect in every way for everyone" YET, but there is work being done on them to improve error handling and to make the feedback useful. I can not get more specific yet.

[Tom Klaber]

Not "Stairs were rebuilt and everything is now perfect in every way for everyone" YET

[PVA - Admin]

RIGHT? (Also I need to watch that movie again)

In all fairness, a lot of the language used by marketing and management to try and be diplomatic can often just get confusing. I switch back and forth between the different sets of definitions depending on who I'm talking to. For instance when i'm speaking to users, "Broken" means that the feature does not do what is expected, but when speaking to engineers "Broken" means the feature does not adhere to the original task documentation outline. This is one of the main reasons that there are arguments on whether something should be filed as a Feature Request or Bug.

When I'm speaking to you folks directly, my "Yet" means "Something we absolutely need to do but hasn't been done so far."

[ida]

My perfect stair, in section viewport. :cool:

[zoomer]

Repairing non solid geometry creation for Architectural Objects like Stairs, Windows,

Slabs, Floors and also Extrudes would help me a lot too.

BTW,

the nice Escalator Tool would be much more useful without the many holes in

geometry too.

[cberg]

Extrudes with hatches and fills would be useful. I know you can turn things into floors and pilasters etc, or make them hybrid objects. But sometimes you just to extrude in hatch or color!

And please please improve the curtainwall tool, or at least integrate the curtainwall functions into an insertable storefront/window type object.

Structural joist shapes in the framing member tool like wide flanges. Get some typical joist sizes so we don't have to manually enter all the dimensions...

http://www.newmill.com/pdfs/steeljoists-sec1.pdf

[cberg]

And how about Composite metal deck in the slab tool.

Metal decking spans in a given direction, and is a very typical form of slab construction.

Wall sections typically need to show the deck in it's direction of span.

Cheers!

[J Lucas]

Wishlist alternative?

I cannot imagine that voting on wishlist items will ever address the multitude of time wasting quirks and gaps that I constantly encounter while using Vectorworks.

Many of these are seemingly minor, simple things, that do not get peoples' attention on the wishlist forum but nonetheless are costly in workaround time.

A recent experience captured this:

I called tech to see if one of these issues (a minor very long standing time waster) had been fixed and maybe I was missing something. The answer was no. To the tech reps' credit, he followed up and said that he had posted the issue on the wishlist and added a +1.

Well, I know very well that this is the type of issue that: 1. when anyone encounters it while working in VW they would see that it obviously needs fixing, and 2. the issue has little or no chance of becoming a priority on a democratically composed list.

What could be the alternative to the wishlist for getting this type of item fixed?

[PVA - Admin]

Well, I know very well that this is the type of issue that: 1. when anyone encounters it while working in VW they would see that it obviously needs fixing, and 2. the issue has little or no chance of becoming a priority on a democratically composed list.

What could be the alternative to the wishlist for getting this type of item fixed?

Me, to an extent.

Part of my assigned duties includes catching odd things like that which fall through the cracks. My tools are limited at the moment but as we roll out upgrades I will have a better system of tracking the "small" stuff that is prone to being forgotten and shuffling them up the ranks in priority. I will also eventually act as a user representative when it comes to "top ___ must-solve issues in Vectorworks" list feedback that we take in currently from distributors.

More automated systems are being developed as well, the Analytics detailed above are a huge part of that, letting us pull instances where users touch a tool once then never again, see tools that cause crashing regularly, things like that.

It's way more detailed than that but I haven't finished my coffee yet.

[J Lucas]

This is very encouraging.

Any initial idea how you will compose and evaluate a list of small, odd items that fall through the cracks?

I have a list of 30+, some I have seen on the Wishlist or Needle and Mortar, some not.

Early on I tried adding items to the Wishlist, but when nothing was done about them I stopped. I need to know that my time is being used wisely before I invest it.

[PVA - Admin]

This is very encouraging.

Any initial idea how you will compose and evaluate a list of small, odd items that fall through the cracks?

I have a list of 30+, some I have seen on the Wishlist or Needle and Mortar, some not.

Early on I tried adding items to the Wishlist, but when nothing was done about them I stopped. I need to know that my time is being used wisely before I invest it.

NEW items that come across the list I will have a system for tagging directly, for easy parsing and sorting into JIRA (the tracking system our engineers use here to do pretty much everything) with the intent that user wish items get automatically entered into JIRA just by posting a new wishlist thread on the forums, but that Will take a little more work on our end. The new forums will most definitely be up long before that integration is possible if we do end up going that route.

The main issue is gathering older items, really things from the last 5-10 years (though some go back further than that) as it is extremely unlikely that -even with my encouragement- users are going to go back over a decade of wishlist posts and vote on their own items again with regularity, nor should they be expected to.

My main goal is to make the reporting of such things very easy for users. Currently, if someone wanted to even post an image on the board it is a headache of clicks and a popup window, and even then a re-edit of the post so that the image can be embedded in the post itself. This is a nightmare for usability and is its own discouragement to posting even the simplest of explanations of a common problem.

THEN there is the problem you mentioned, where even after years of posting in some cases, users see little evidence of their work and wishlist and bugsubmits just feel like tossing your request as a message in a bottle into a sea of noise and nothing ever comes back. Throwing it over a wall and getting no feedback. This is the much harder issue to address, as it would require work I can not do personally (configuring JIRA to respond to users after the state of a request had changed, as well as when the issue had been merged with another and then resolved, or if it was not something that COULD be resolved which can happen) and would require resources from other departments that I do not have access to yet.

It is my sincere hope that work done here between my department and users will continue to be proven priceless and that more resources and capability will be slated our way as time goes on. Things are honestly looking good.

Sorry if that answer was a bit vague or wishy-washy, the plan is still very much a plan in flux and I hammer away at it and tie up loose ends when possible.

[Kevin McAllister]

I'm curious about analytics. Can you count how many times users have to enter into annotations to renumber the drawing label of an Sheet Layer Elevation Viewport? Its easily the biggest time wasting quirk there is..... :-)

(Unfortunately I don't hold out much hope it will ever be fixed until there's a complete rebuild of the Elevation Viewport system. I'm trying to be patient but its hard when the average theatre drawing sheet has ~15 drawings.)

Kevin

Edited May 9, 2016 by Kevin McAllister

[PVA - Admin]

I'm curious about analytics. Can you count how many times users have to enter into annotations to renumber the drawing label of an Sheet Layer Elevation Viewport? Its easily the biggest time wasting quirk there is..... :-)

(Unfortunately I don't hold out much hope it will ever be fixed until there's a complete rebuild of the Elevation Viewport system.)

Kevin

Yes things like that are one of the major points being tracked. Going in/out/in/out of various UI elements like editing plugins or annotations repeatedly for long periods of time are flagged as areas for study.

For instance, if you used the Polyline tool maybe only once a day, but wish it had a new drawing mode (like the tolerance-value-set fill mode requested recently) Analytics would have no way of knowing that, and that would be a better item for a manual wishlist submission as has been done in the past.

But for something like Cameras and Viewports where a user might be stuck in a loop of duplicating viewports, editing the camera, adjusting it and then exiting the editing mode 30 times in an afternoon or something like that, it would be automatically detected as a sort of "Workflow requires streamlining" incident, and if this happened across enough users (Currently users are sorted into a number of subsets so that Architect users arent overshadowing something that isnt common in architecture but is very common in entertainment/theatre design, etc are still visualized obviously on our end) it would be given more priority, or at least be yet another funneling of information into the overall decision making on features or improvements for new versions.

[Kevin McAllister]

Jim,

Thanks for the info. It sounds pretty cool. Where do users of Designer fall in the mix? I often feel like I'm paying more but NV doesn't know what to do with me. Upgrade deals are always tailored to users of other series. The one Designer specific wish I've made - a complete "all tools" workspace for Designer - is still in the cue. (From my perspective this seems pretty simple - someone sitting down for an afternoon and making a workspace. Obviously it may not be that simple.) I always see Fundamentals users asking for more to be included in Fundamentals. As a Designer user I would like to see a few things tailored to Designer.....

Kevin

[PVA - Admin]

Currently that is covered by what you selected when you registered Vectorworks (the name/company etc for that appears when you install Vectorworks) most recently. This isn't ideal, but the "smarter" way it is handled is to try and figure out what kind of category you fit into most neatly based on your tool use history. For instance if you were all about the Door, Window and Wall tools but didn't touch Plant or Lighting Device, it would probably aim your specific results at Architect related studies.

However, there really isn't a great answer for that. A lot of the development here is mainly assumed to be industry specific, with the main pillars being:

Architecture

Entertainment

Landscape

Rendering

With some crossover like civic engineering or theatre design, as well as numerous other combinations or offshoots. Designer users that ACTUALLY use all 4 of the major modules were assumed to be rare, but one of the first results we saw with analytics was a picture of users spread all across the toolsets as a very common occurrence and I feel that may change the way development is shaped as time passes.

Analytics is very much a tool for smashing old preconceptions of how the software is used on a regular basis by our userbase.

[PVA - Admin]

Also, it lets us make much more informed LARGE decisions as well. For instance, I can now dial up very accurate an quick answers to common questions like: "Do more users work with Vectorworks on Mac or Windows?" In the past, Tech Support reps would probably have answered "About 50/50, maybe a little more common on the Mac side" but then when we see the real results:

We get to eat a little humble pie on our assumption at the same time as we gain a crystal clear picture of this aspect of our installed base. We then can also focus on other areas such as "Which OS versions are worth what percentage of engineering's resources to keep supporting?" and we can consult a chart like this that is updated daily:

Sorry to ramble on but I get excited by charts and graphs. I'm weird.

[zoomer]

As I remember the pie for

Architecture vs Landscape+Entertainment together

looked similar to the Mac/Win pie.

Or the world usage US (imperial) vs Rest of World (metric) cake.

[PVA - Admin]

Those are very important pies as well for allocating engineering time, but also marketing efforts. For instance, just because we have the most users in Module A doesn't mean we should stop working on Module B, it might be that Module B simply wasn't pushed enough in sales and marketing campaigns, or that it wasn't aimed at the right user base.

I really really like having a tool for factually backing up design choices. It simplifies so much as long as you take into account meta facts, such as the analytical fact of: "Mac users update more frequently than windows users." being very heavily influenced by 1) Mac releases more updates than Windows does version-wise. and 2) Mac users HAVE to upgrade to stay with the current version of Vectorworks more often than Windows users do.

As long as you look at the results and apply a bit of savvy to them, they are amazingly powerful.

[zoomer]

just because we have the most users in Module A doesn't mean we should stop working on Module B, it might be that Module B simply wasn't pushed enough in sales and marketing campaigns, or that it wasn't aimed at the right user base.

Of course,

didn't mean VW should discriminate any minorities

(ok, about the imperial thing, ...)

[PVA - Admin]

The Units discussion is a constant headache in video content creation. We get some users that wont even open a tutorial if they SEE a metric unit and the same for other users with Imperial.

Some companies solve this by creating tutorials using both units but... I only have so many years on this earth and doubling the work isn't something ideal. For the majority of new work where units are not important (like explaining how class organization works, for example) I will simply be making them unit-less.

[zoomer]

2x same tutorial ?

I think it is ok to mention both units in one Video.

Like, "now we type in Wall Z value : 8 Feet, that is about 2,44 in real units ...

I'm proud to be the most intolerant member of this forum concerning the wrong units.

But even I did the imperial Architecture Tutorial.

[PVA - Admin]

Added to the original post as well:

Vectorworks 2017 Operating system and Hardware Requirements:

The Hardware reqs are not yet ready, but I wanted to announce that Vectorworks 2017 will NOT be supporting OS X 10.9 as early as I could, so that users would have as much information as possible to influence any hardware purchasing decisions they might make between now and release.

Only OS X 10.11 and 10.10 will be supported, and almost assuredly Vectorworks 2017 will be made compatible with new OSes released within the lifespan of 2017 development as usual.

[Kevin McAllister]

The Units discussion is a constant headache in video content creation. We get some users that wont even open a tutorial if they SEE a metric unit and the same for other users with Imperial.

Some companies solve this by creating tutorials using both units but... I only have so many years on this earth and doubling the work isn't something ideal. For the majority of new work where units are not important (like explaining how class organization works, for example) I will simply be making them unit-less.

Seriously?!? That's crazy.

I've worked in both unit systems fluently for years. I also live in a half converted country where I was taught the metric system until about grade 2 and then never again in my schooling.

In reality everything is based on materials to some degree. The Australian TDs could never show me the metric piece of plywood when I worked on the Olympic ceremonies with them..... I was all ready to design things in 1m by 2m increments.... in the end the stage was built in 4' x 8' modules but gridded off in 1m squares for performers.

Kevin

[PVA - Admin]

The board is generally very accepting of both probably because of its mix of people from all over the globe, even Zoomer's mention of his unit-related statements are extremely mild compared to some of the emails I've gotten.

I get feedback messages on units anonymously on the kbase and from burner email accounts from time to time from all-metric or all-imperial users. Some of them are... heated. I did a video in feet/inches once that I was told was "A testament to the monumental idiocy and laziness prevalent in the world" and that I "should be ashamed of... [my]... delaying the advancement of society as a whole." I am heavily censoring the main body of that comment.

Though comments like that are all a part of building Tech Support-level tungsten carbide armored skin