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Project Sharing - Does this really work in the wild?


Tom Klaber

Question

We gave the project sharing its first test yesterday - and it was a disaster.

 

Some but not all information would be seen after a commit and refresh.  It would not allow editing of certain objects and layers because it claimed for each of us that the other had permission.  Then it would not let us commit because it said the other had taken our permissions away. 

 

Then the really strange things started to happen - all of our general notes disappeared.  All of our title blocks were converted from title block boards to "Parametric Objects" that were no longer editable. 

 

This was a small basic model of a kitchen renovation.  Thank goodness we did not try this on a project of any real size.   I have met with friends at offices who have given it good long test runs - and report that it is a constant stream of errors, crashes, and bugs like the ones here.  Is anybody using this in the real world with success??  If so - if anybody has any ideas about what would be causing our issues - it would be much appreciated. 

 

Thanks,

Tom

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I have previously posted about our project sharing experience in this thread- and at that time we had terrible wait times for 'save and commit', taking up to 4-5minutes per save. That was based on version 2018. 

 

So having updated to VW2019, here are some new insights I'd like to share, @JMR @Tom Klaber

 

  1. FASTER SAVE AND COMMIT TIMES IN 2019
    In 2019, 'save and commit' has dramatically improved (it is now around 1/4 of the speed compared to what we had in VW2018).
     
  2. VIEWPORTS RENDERED DO NOT SYNC BETWEEN MACHINES
    While 'Save and Commit' is no longer a problem in terms of Project Sharing, the main issue of using VW in PS we experience now is that the Viewports rendered on one machine doesn't get updated into the other shared project terminals.
    VW doesn't seem to keep a very good timelog of which viewport on which 'Working File' is the most udpated.
    This is frustrating because we constantly open a file with pages upon pages of blank viewports, and have to render them again. 
     
  3. SLOW AS F**K RENDER TIMES FOR HIDDEN LINE VIEWPORTS
    Having to re-render viewports wouldn't be so much of an issue if it wasn't so very very very very very very very very very very very slow. Simple viewports of an interior can take up to 10-20 minutes to render. 
    And it is difficult to ascertain what could be faster or slower. Four internal elevation of the same room can vary between 1-10 minutes, without different degrees of complexity. 
    I don't know if this problem is unique to Project Sharing, but certainly is very frustrating. It is so frustrating I often wonder why we use Vectorworks in 3D at all.
    (I have reported this in another thread, also in a previous post in this thread, and hope it will get some attention). 

If you're interested. Enclosed is my network read/write speed to the server (500-600MBs), and also my server read/write speeds (1300-2000+ MBs). We have invested a lot of time and money into getting our hardware to this point. We also have the highest-spec Macs out there, so it does disappoint us that the render times for elevations can take so long. (I have previously posted my computer and network specs in this thread, so I won't go through that again)

 

I will post 'item 2' and 'item 3' above as feature requests and share those links in this thread later, hope you can vote them up. 

 

@herbieherb I'm pleased to hear about the successes you are having with PS. I'm interested to know about your Project Sharing experience. Are you part of an architecture office, or do you provide VW support? What type of project size do you work on?
 

 

DiskSpeedTest.png

DiskSpeedTest.png

Edited by Amorphous
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@Amorphous

 

I concur, the commit/refresh times are clearly faster than before, with 2019SP2.

 

As to the interior elevations, it's likely not PS related since we faced the same issue before going into PS with 2019, please see the short thread here:

If your goal is to produce simple hidden line interior elevations with room equipment, furniture etc, the methods mentioned above _may_ help. At least for us they speeded the elevations quite a bit, although they are still slow. However the crashing stopped (mostly).

 

What is curious that when the settings for a viewport are at defaults, one cannot even move a viewport properly without the PC starting to bog down. The same goes for changing a name of the viewport in the OIP.

 

BTW since we are on different operating systems, these things are likely not OS related. Or hardware related.

 

I'm too interested in hearing from _architects'_ practices using PS successfully and reliably on projects with a minimum size of ~2000m2, say on a four-storey apartment building or something of equivalent complexity. Specifically, if they have no major issues; how is their PS and project set up. What are your working methods with PS. Apparently following the VW Help file instructions and having professional architectural CAD experience from 1993 are not enough, so there must be some secret information out there. I want to join that club.

 

 

Edited by JMR
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On 2/24/2019 at 8:39 AM, Amorphous said:

Are you part of an architecture office, or do you provide VW support? What type of project size do you work on?

I'm part of an architecture office. We do mostly residential projects from 1'000 up to 10'000 qm living space. Up to LOD300-400 we work completely in 3D and in almost all work steps we rely on project sharing. Our files have a typical size between 1 and 2GB.

 

On 2/24/2019 at 8:39 AM, Amorphous said:

If you're interested. Enclosed is my network read/write speed to the server (500-600MBs), and also my server read/write speeds (1300-2000+ MBs). We have invested a lot of time and money into getting our hardware to this point. We also have the highest-spec Macs out there, so it does disappoint us that the render times for elevations can take so long. (I have previously posted my computer and network specs in this thread, so I won't go through that again)

Network speed has almost no influence on project sharing. Unfortunately you have invested in the wrong place. The network is only really stressed for a few seconds. What really works is the processor and unfortunately only one core. The only place to make project sharing faster is therefore the single-core speed of the processor. Since Apple devices are compact, they only keep the boost clock relatively short. Therefore they are somewhat slower than comparable hardware in a case suitable for real computing power.

 

17 hours ago, JMR said:

so there must be some secret information out there. I want to join that club.

I haven't come across any classified information yet. We simply tried from the beginning what works and what doesn't. If we had mistakes, we analyzed them. Were it user errors, were it program errors, were it hardware errors?

I already named some of these possible sources of error. What hasn't been mentioned so far is that everyone who works on project-sharing always has to have the same servicepack installed. The individual servicepacks differ a lot in the way projectsharing works. So much so that they are not compatible between the different versions. Before a new servicepack is installed, all changes have to be sent.

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Last Winter we completed a project using project sharing. At first it seemed rather tedious and cumbersome but it is just a different approach to working on files that the team eventually adapted around. 

 

We used dropbox as our file sharer, but the real limiting factor was peoples own internet speeds to push changes and release layers and objects. 

 

There were a few bugs and glitches that we came across, but all solvable. 

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