Vectorworks Professional Learning Series

[defjef]

I dont know if this will behelpful.. but I am also a self taught user... I did by the Janis Kent book and I started with VW 7 and am now in VW 8.2 I think. A few years ago I was thinking about VW 10 so I attended a seminar in NYC. What I discovered was that I was already quite familiar with much of the program and what they were teaching about VW10 was very basic and I learned little. Most of the others attending were completely green with the program and maybe even green to CAD and the course was "pitched" toward new users. I left early and decided it was ... for me a waste of money,

When I get a new PC I will also upgrade to the most current version... assuming that it is reviewed as stable. I am doing quite well with 8 and you can hardly miss what you never knew.

My main concerns are moving files back and forth between older and newer versions EASILY and the learning curve for the new "workspace" and set of tools. If the changes are incremental... the later may not require much retraining.

I would like to hear from others who have had to face the leap and how the landing was.

[ThomasMarlar]

Vectorworks users,

My name is Thomas and I am new to Vectorworks. I am using VW 11 and what I know has all been self taught being as I have no experience with any CAD software. I am looking for feedback regarding the Vectorworks Professional Learning Series Tour. Being a new user, I am considering attending one of these seminars, but I want to make sure it is worth while before doing so. Any feedback from users who have attended one of these seminars in the past would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Thomas

[broc croll]

Thomas,

A few years ago I too was trying to decide if the seminars were worth the expense. Everyone has a different situation and a

different requirement for learning. For me, I was working construction 5 days a week and was having difficulty getting focused time to get acquainted with VW. I had already used Janis Kent tutorials and practiced drawing my own house. In short, the seminars provided me an organized overview of the program. It gave me an opportunity to ask a list of questions I had generated, and it provided a different sort of learning environment that helped me to focus. In the end, there is no substitute for making a commitment to a client that you will produce blueprints. That's when learning really happens!

[Peter Huggins]

Hi Thomas,

Hopefully I can clear up some of this for you. As mentioned, the current Fundamentals PLS seminar is for ?green? users and focuses on key concepts that most (if not all) users need to get started and become efficient in the use of VectorWorks. We do see a broad range of user abilities in the classes, and very often receive positive comments from long-time users who were able to correct bad habits and learn methods to improve their productivity. Later on the second day (possibly after Jeffrey left), we focus on some more advanced topics such as layers/classes/viewports, symbols, using parametric objects, and the wall tool.

Through evaluations, we have received a lot of very valuable input from our participants over the last 4 years of teaching this series of seminars. As a result, we're now developing new courses to address the industry series products as well as advanced topics relating to the complete VectorWorks product line. We're also looking at adding some workshops to get users involved in project-based learning sessions as well.

Stay tuned to the NNA website for upcoming announcements regarding these changes.