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My wish: VW2021 to have no new features. Please.


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On 12/7/2018 at 5:27 PM, JMR said:

-Switch to biannual or triannual version cycle. Look at what McNeel does with Rhino, major updates are few and far between and overall quality is great.

 

Me I'd go the other way. Releases every 3-4 months that have only one feature but concentrate on getting that feature right and working cleanly with the programme as a whole. Bring the edges that feature touches up to date.  Keep testers focused on one item so more chance of finding edge cases. Allow customers and our teams to integrate that feature into the workflow given more chance of its usefulness being found.

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On 12/7/2018 at 7:20 AM, Kevin McAllister said:

Until they fix the beta process there will always be bugs that aren't caught.

I suspect the quality is great because they have a much more open development and beta process that many users participate in.

This is a great improvement. But it is super buggy so far. I see all sorts of display issues on sheet layers at the moment.

 

Feature development needs much more input from a wide variety of users. There are just too many different Vectorworks workflows to address in development without it. Then the features need to be tested and there needs to be a process for making improvements and bug fixes based on that testing. Essentially VW2019 is actually VW2020 but with an official process to back it up.

 

Kevin

Kevin; thanks for your comments about both the improvements and the continued bugs. Just saying that the last several days of truly simple 3d Modelling has produced an endless array of display issues and crashes. So much so that I am again pushing projects begun in 2019 back into 2018, just to get work done.

 

Edited by mjm
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With the subscription, Software as a service model, I don't think we need to stick with annual release cycles.

I think that VW should go more "fluid" and just release features and fixes as and where they're ready.  There seems to be a lot of legacy tools that don't get any attention or development any more.

 

I remember when Autodesk bought 3Ds max from Discreet. They ran it for a couple of years, as-is, and then announced a 3 year migration period where there were to be no "new" features, but instead the phased roll out of a workspace improvement program which modernised a very clunky, old user interface.

 

It went down very very well, and users appreciated the modernisation and I didn't hear a single complaint that there were no new features.

 

For me, there's a lot of little tiny things that could be improved. Call-outs, for example could be edited in place, rather than in a new dialogue box. The dimension tool can be revamped to include a lot of features that other programs now offer. There's a lot of dialogue boxes, within dialogue boxes, and not enough intelligent context aware right click menus for speed.

 

I would support a two to three year non-development, but a re-vamp and modernisation of what we have. This process would no doubt clean up a lot of the niggles that are in existing tools as well as aligning how everything works into a slick system. Do we need the unified view option any more? I imagine that near enough everyone works with unified view always on.

 

I'd love to see more it VW go over to GPU processing, as well as better support for multi-core processors and multi-GPUs too. I also love to see more sub-object editablity, down to vertex and edge level. More granular 3D control. While the sub-division mode is awsome, you can't take it onto the next level. The option to have editing groups and symbols across multiple views would be nice... Edit a group in one, and then in the others you have to opt to re-edit the same group.... just little usability options to tweak the workflow.

 

I would come away from annual and perpetual licences and go to the SaaS model with continual development roll-out.... I kind of hate myself for saying that becuase I was very anti-saas when it first became a thing, especially as I had paid for perpetual licences, but MS, Autodesk and Adobe have all got it right and I'm starting to enjoy it.

 

Go to a monthly subscription model.... more affordable, more users, more updates, and crucially, everyone on the same version!!!

Would love to hear everyone elses thoughts, as I know that it's a very contentious issue!!!

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14 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

 

Me I'd go the other way. Releases every 3-4 months that have only one feature but concentrate on getting that feature right and working cleanly with the programme as a whole. Bring the edges that feature touches up to date.  Keep testers focused on one item so more chance of finding edge cases. Allow customers and our teams to integrate that feature into the workflow given more chance of its usefulness being found.

That would work too. Quality is the key. Continuous updates would require a very robust rollback functionality though, since eventually something, for someone, will go wrong despite best efforts of the programmers.

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I was looking at upgrading from VW 2012 to 2019 for some office reasons that I've discussed previously. I did a forum search about the HVAC tools, and users were complaining that they don't work, aren't plug-n-play, connections and intersections don't connect to straight runs, etc....

 

One user in 2017 chimed in....

"Yes, you're correct, those tools were developed as conceptual only."

 

and another:

"I think they are ripe for a serious re-work. Now that the irrigation tool is in place."

 

That's pretty sad, that a tool was left in the user interface, just to demonstrate what's "possible???" So I held off on my upgrade enough through there was a ridiculously good offer last month.

 

Stuff like this needs attention.

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21 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

Yup, I've been banging on about getting the window and door tools finished for years. They still haven't reached maturity after all these years.

Hi Christiaan, Is it the case then that Vectorworks 2019 still does not have a custom bifold door tool then?  What about the stair tool, is that any better? We still use the simple stair tool because it's simple but it needs more functionally.

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On 12/17/2018 at 10:45 AM, RussU said:

Go to a monthly subscription model.... more affordable, more users, more updates, and crucially, everyone on the same version!!!

 

<wishfulthinking>

Now that would make a lot of interior designers switch from SU to VW, here in The Netherlands...

</wishfulthinking>

Edited by Jan-Burger TROOST
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Still poor general reliability. I've submitted about 6 crash dumps to bug submit in the last day and a half and experienced way more than that. Having a weird problem where VW sometimes randomly hangs while drawing 2d objects on planes in a 3d view. I had huge problems with generating sections yesterday where I could only get them to work by shifting them around until VW stopped crashing when I hit the update button. Not great.

Edited by Will
corrected grammar / clarity
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9 hours ago, Amorphous said:

 

The Australian distributor actually has a far superior window and door modelling tool called Windoor.

 

Nemetschek should buy it from them and put it into the standard VW version.

 

We concur with this post, and personally would prefer the following simple things fixed over giving us any new features (my list is all about productivity and workflow):

 

- Section Viewports rendering time (snappy renders please, even with 'surface hatches)

- 2D DWG export from 3D models (Usable files, smaller size)

- Titleblock Object (Let multiple users modify different title blocks in Project Share. Any operations on TB is sooooo slow!)

- Stair tool (SO INCREDIBLY SLOW)

- Visibility tool (wait five seconds us to load the tool)

- Slab tool (try reshaping it, SO VERY SLOW)

- Floor tool (in 2019 totally broken, corrupt objects, wrong class appearance, disappearing fills) 

- Grid Tool (appear in 3D, line thickness control!) 

- Space Tool (try reshaping it!) 

- Detail callout Tool (leader line goes crazy when line settings changed. Difficult to reshape geometry but maintain rounded corners) 

- Undo Operations (Really should be so slow it crashes a computer)

Yep totally agree with this list.

Before they upgraded the title blocks I coded my own integrated with my own drawing issue system, issue sheets and automated PDF creation and collation. But we gave up on project sharing because our jobs are to small for it to be worth the hassle, so I don't know how well they would work with that.

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18 hours ago, Amorphous said:

 

The Australian distributor actually has a far superior window and door modelling tool called Windoor.

 

Nemetschek should buy it from them and put it into the standard VW version.

 

Especially as we're not even allowed to buy the add-on for extra, outside of Au/NZ! Why???

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Yes and the snaps that work in some contexts but not others. Why can I snap to intersections, line extensions and tangents when drawing or adjusting a polyline, but not when drawing or adjusting a polyline based object like a road? Likewise when drawing a line in 3d there are way more snaps available when drawing a line than when, say, adjusting a site model object or a wall. Why can't I grab the handle of something and get it to snap to a z axis locked intersection line with the face of a 3D object, but I can do this with a line. It's so confusing.

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On 3/16/2019 at 10:51 AM, jc4d said:

And it is ridiculous that in this era where globalization is here and you can work in any part of the world for anybody your tool is "limited" to an specify region... not good at all. Additionally, I find it really sad and ironic that a CAD/BIM program needs a window tool plugin 🙄.

I’ve thought that for years, sadly Vectorworks doesn’t seem interested in improving the situation.

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guys,  these programs are getting to the point of critical mass where it will require an almost infinite amount of time to fix things...

 

so the solution is to change paradigms...

 

The reason the 1950s roads started to choke was the influx of cars after WW2...they could not handle the increased speed and traffic...

 

So the solution was not to upgrade the existing roads but to build Interstates.

 

Cloud system are the Interstate... all the time spent on yearly releases, hardware issues, OS issues would be gone...that alone would reduce critical mass for VW people

 

then all these VW people who got freed up...could be invited into our files to look at our issues/problems with a push of a button vs us spending time on the tech board...

 

also the whole "don't upgrade till SP2" & "don't upgrade in the middle of a project" thinking would be gone...

 

and @willofmaine who needed to hit a deadline could have invited in some tech help with a simple invitation...

 

 

 

515833639_timemassings.thumb.png.aeb50be5c4715b07e8abf1ff570acc5a.png

 

Edited by digitalcarbon
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