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to renew or not to renew (that is the question)


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41 minutes ago, barkest said:

 

 

If you include texturing in 3D modelling (which I certainly do) then unless there is UV mapping of some kind then 'more-or-less' the Sub-D tool is dead in the water as is evidenced by the general lack of posts on it (check out the SubD board)

 

 

Based on this recent comment from JimW in another thread, I would not hold your breath for UV mapping in Vw2018:

 

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I also recommend Updating VW as long as you have any Version below VW 2017.

 

There have been Releases in between from time to time where I had said that it is

not so problematic to skip them. But VW 2017 is a must have Release.

:)

 

 

For VW 2018 I'm looking forward to the "leaked" info that there will be improvements in Renderworks.

And wish for a UI and Cleanup in Basic Tools.

Edited by zoomer
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pat totally understand your comments....the upgrade fees are not the problem....it's the usability of the 3d tools which are great but I am always looking for more, my work is on a professional level..... I have been using vw for the past 18 years

and have always upgraded and to know there has always been sufficient improvements to warrant the fees.....all I ask from my suppliers is to let me have some idea of their plans or improvements so i  the client can make a judgement for myself instead of waiting for the updated version only to be ecstatic or disappointed in my decision.......but i thank you for your valued advice so i am just on my way to the hardware store to upgrade my hammer to version 18.....

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It is not going to do you a lot of good for making a decision in the next week, but I have an inkling that VWI is moving to be more open and to share more information about what is planned for the future.

 

The problem is that as soon as any software company makes an announcement of future plans, there is a a percentage of people, often including the press, that treat it as if that plan was set in stone. If for some reason (a hard problem than thought, licensing issues, resource issues, etc.) that feature does not get released exactly as announced, they take a huge beating. Make nearly all software companies hesitant to pre-announce anything that is not 100% guaranteed to be able to ship on time.

 

My gut says that if you have been here for 18 years, you probably want to stay in the fold for 1 more year and see if you like the direction. Remember, the new CEO has only been on the job about 1 year. He is just now getting to the point where he can put his stamp on the company. I am strongly optimistic that things are going the right direction.

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On 2/23/2017 at 2:20 PM, Kevin McAllister said:

tabbed documents on a Mac

Yes we have tabbed documents, YAY! But' to reiterate, we still have truncated file names in the tabs and, given this is the twenty-first century there doesn't appear to me to be any real reason for that, esp when I often find myself working with iterations of a file (this years rep plot, last years, rep plot, base file, etc), the names are indistinguishable from each other. The Mac OS finder does a much better job of this (at least it gets one thing right).

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We get no choice but to renew because its what we teach and the bottom line is the students get jobs based on knowing VW so that is the acid test for us. I would like to introduce C4D into the pipeline as my first dealings with it are positive when I use VW as the front end.

 

Sure VW has lots of shortcomings, which I highlight now and then, but overall I am positive about it and these forums go a long way to filling some of the holes in the software.

 

Any alternative would have the similar issues.

Edited by barkest
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It probably sounds a bit snotty, but the renewal prices are pretty low, even for small businesses, aren't they?  My business has slowed way down, as most have,  and it is more affordable than most packages.  

 

In addition, nearly every software package seems to be going that way to get a constant revenue stream, so VW is not an outlier here.  That they even have discounts for re-upping every 2-3 years is amazing, and if it went away in favor or forcing us (more or less) to upgrade every year, they still would be in the mainstream, I think.

 

I also consider the VW community here.....I figure by paying the upgrade fee each year, I may be keeping the cost of improvements down.  I realize some have become frustrated at the sometimes slow pace of fixes and features, but come on folks, the Wright Brothers didn't come out of the gate with a 777....It took over 200 years to get there.  It is hard to visualize, but how much would reduced constant revenue affect developments that we all crave?

 

If a small firm is struggling to pay a few hundred per license each year, it may have too much of a cost driven mentality, IMHO. Or, perhaps needs to rethink the entire business model.  It's only money, not that expensive, etc.  Affordability is given as a reason by VW that their base has grown from 500K to over 2M users) so many others seem to find value.

 

Short version, I renew each year without thinking too much about it.    And, yes, right after paying that fee, it reminds me I should use the VSS services more often.......

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi After 9 years of being self employed I find the cost of the vss service to be fairly priced but still has to be paid from somewhere.....it comes out of my pocket.....with respect I don't have a price driven mentality I just have to budget my finances to make sure I stay in business....i think I have a right to ask vectorworks what I am going to receive before I hand over the cash......just a small amount of transparency may be the future ......

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On 2/23/2017 at 1:57 PM, Phil hunt said:

that's a good point kevin...i guess £46.00 a month is not a bad price....just wish i could spread this across 12 months like my adobe subscription....

 

I would love to be able to pay monthly for a program, but I'd want that to go towards full purchase.  I really hate the idea of paying for software, then losing it completely once I stop paying a fee.  At least with VW, even with VSS, if I ever cancel, I still own the last version forever.  With adobe, it's pay or lose it, right?

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On 25/02/2017 at 8:05 AM, Pat Stanford said:

Firstly that so many people are complaining about it. It makes me think that there is room for improvement. Second, it is a relatively new tool, it was only introduced in 2016. Usually it takes more than 1 round of changes to get something that complicated working as well as possible.

 

Same thinking about Subdivision. Close but not there yet.

I think the problem is the curtain wall system shows that the plug-in system just isn't capable of handling complex geometry rich objects without vast improvements. A lot of the newer objects have the same problem. They are just to complex to turf all the calculations and start again. 

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Personally, I don't think it is that the system is not powerful enough. I think it is that the project descriptions are not through enough for as complicated as the objects need to be.

 

The people actually writing the code for the objects are true programmers, not users of VW. They get a description of what the code is supposed to do and then they write code that (should) do that. 90%+ of the time if there are problems with the object it is because the original description given to the programmer was insufficient. And that is not really the person writing the descriptions fault. They have a personal set of experiences and are given a task such as "write a description of exactly how a curtain wall object should function. What are all of the inputs it should take and what should happen when each of those inputs is changed." They do the best they can, but then when the object hits the real world you have thousands of people saying, that is good, but I really need it to do X, Y and Z. And A1, B765, Z1234567. 

 

So the description gets adjusted and the tools and object get adjusted for the next release. And it gets better.

 

Think about a fairly simple task, say, making a scrambled egg. How many steps do you think it would take to describe that in such a way that a mobile robot could enter a kitchen and make that egg?  How many incremental little steps do we normally just skip over.  Did you remember to tell the robot to throw away the shell after cracking the egg into the bowl? Did you remember to tell it to get the bowl out of the cabinet? What about what to use to mix with?  These are all the kinds of tiny details that need to go into every step of the programming description.

 

For something like the curtain wall, I would expect it to run to hundreds of pages. And takes multiple versions to really be fleshed out and usable for more than basic things.

 

If you want to help things get better, submit bug reports and enhancement requests. WITH SPECIFIC DETAILS. "Make the curtain wall tool better" does not help. "Allow the curtain wall tool to show both panes of double paned glazing", is specific enough to be considered useful, but even more detail about what you want would be even better.

 

Sorry for the rant. Just another of my pet projects. Defending the programmers who are doing the best they can with incomplete information. Like we all are. ;-)

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3 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

Sorry for the rant. Just another of my pet projects. Defending the programmers who are doing the best they can with incomplete information. Like we all are. ;-)

 

Hi Pat, 

 

sorry but I have to disagree with this. Far too many years ago I started life as a programmer and was tasked with rewriting the financial systems (the days before we all bought packages). I knew nothing about finance and was assigned a Systems Accountant to help. He sent me on my first financial course and 4 years later I was an Accountant. I completely agree this is extreme but for me the basics apply in that the programmers should be assigned an Architect to translate the requirements. In addition they should, if they are long-term, get to know the software rather than blindly writing code based on a spec. I see part of their job to challenge the spec. This speeds up the whole process and of course improves quality.

 

You are a very good example of this. You can write code, you know the software and you have real world experience. You put forward solutions and even more important you speak our language which, in my experience, far too many programmers do not.

 

Maybe I am far too 'old school', who knows.

 

 

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5 hours ago, barkest said:

sorry but I have to disagree with this. Far too many years ago I started life as a programmer and was tasked with rewriting the financial systems (the days before we all bought packages). I knew nothing about finance and was assigned a Systems Accountant to help. He sent me on my first financial course and 4 years later I was an Accountant. I completely agree this is extreme but for me the basics apply in that the programmers should be assigned an Architect to translate the requirements. In addition they should, if they are long-term, get to know the software rather than blindly writing code based on a spec. I see part of their job to challenge the spec. This speeds up the whole process and of course improves quality.

 

I agree this is how it should work. And to a large extent it is how it does work. But to me, a curtain wall is far more complex with much less well defined rules than a finance package. Especially a finance package that you were rewriting so a large part of the system description had been used and tested for years. But it is great that you could do that.

 

To summarize, there are tools/objects now that are not optimum. These tools/objects are sub-optimal either because 1) the underlying system is inadequate or 2) the design process is inadequate.  It is probably some combination of the two. And I see both aspects improving over the next few years.

 

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31 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

To summarize, there are tools/objects now that are not optimum.

 

Nail and head. UV Mapping is a great example and currently is hampered by the mesh being tri's instead of quads.

 

31 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

the design process is inadequate

 

I would not be surprised to see this given a major overhaul quite soon :)

 

Quote

I am strongly optimistic that things are going the right direction.

 

As am I

Edited by barkest
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15 hours ago, Phil hunt said:

Hi After 9 years of being self employed I find the cost of the vss service to be fairly priced but still has to be paid from somewhere.....it comes out of my pocket.....with respect I don't have a price driven mentality I just have to budget my finances to make sure I stay in business....i think I have a right to ask vectorworks what I am going to receive before I hand over the cash......just a small amount of transparency may be the future ......

Phil,

 

Understand where you are coming from.  However, every year, when my annual revenue is still unknown, but presumed to be at least something, I look at general insurance, e and o insurance, and other costs of doing biz, and paying less than $1000 for three new VW licenses per year is one of my smaller investments/cost of doing business items that I pay for "on the come" as it were.    As to transparency and what will we get, I guess we know what we will get for the most part - same GUI, same features, and hopefully, a few new specific upgrades that help us in our field.  Sometimes, we get a product that looks the same, but has some "under the hood" improvements, like the graphics package a few years back.....it seems to me that VW likes the Steve Jobs style reveals for drama, though.  And, lets face it, around here, come August/September, we seem to like the anticipation too!

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I'd like those overlooked intermediate step problems, like how to open the jam jar, to be ironed out internally before releasing the sandwich making tool to users and making it part of marketing material for a new release.

 

"Oh, you want a slice of bread on the top as well as the bottom? Sorry, you can't actually do that with the sandwich tool yet - but we might have fixed it by next year if you're lucky" is not really good enough.

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
1 hour ago, line-weight said:

I'd like those overlooked intermediate step problems, like how to open the jam jar, to be ironed out internally before releasing the sandwich making tool to users and making it part of marketing material for a new release.

 

"Oh, you want a slice of bread on the top as well as the bottom? Sorry, you can't actually do that with the sandwich tool yet - but we might have fixed it by next year if you're lucky" is not really good enough.

 


Significant improvements to initial sandwich integrity and composition are being rolled out internally as we speak.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well took the decision today not to renew my Vss been a hard decision to make but at the ripe old age of 64.....I don't think vw2018 could have offered me any more to my workflow.....I know it's difficult for a software company to disclose any any pre release titbits....I do think vectorworks should look at splitting the cost over a 12 month period for maybe the vss and indeed a new licence as the adobe setup.....maybe more companies would indeed use the upgrade system to there advantage cost.....it's been great fun being part of the forum but I don't know now if I will be able to participate now I am no longer a vss subscriber.......but if not I wish you all well and thanks again for all your help in the past.....cheers phil

Edited by Phil hunt
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2 hours ago, Phil hunt said:

.it's been great fun being part of the forum but I don't know now if I will be able to participate now I am no longer a vss subscriber.......

 

I don't think there's any requirement to be a VSS subscriber to participate in these forums.... I believe they're open to everyone, even non-Vectorworks users.

 

Kevin

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