VW Cloud Services workflow needs to be streamlined

[Kevin McAllister]

There are various wishes about this already but I thought I would bring together various thoughts into one thread. Every year I give the VW Cloud workflow a try to see if it would help my productivity. Every year I come to the same conclusion - not yet. Here are the issues I see when trying to use it in my own workflow and some thoughts about solving them -

 

1. The main reason I'd like to use the VW Cloud workflow is to render viewports. Offloading this task onto the cloud makes sense if it saves me time and allows me to work on something else. Unfortunately if the VW Cloud doesn't give me back a VW file containing rendered viewports it doesn't save me any time. The viewports in my VW file still need to be rendered for checking and to do annotations and dimensions. In practice this means I still have my machine tied up and using VW Cloud services saves me no time. The best solution here would be for the VW Cloud to save back a VW file with rendered viewports. I'm sure there's a concern about writing over a user's file so ideally the cloud would save a backup copy and then overwrite the original file. It needs to overwrite the original file or the whole process creates an ongoing file management issue.
2. VW Cloud services is clunky. So many different interfaces - from within VW, from the Menu bar icon and through the web portal. All of these interfaces work in different ways and much of it is unnecessary. Please unify and simplify the interfaces. There are also too many "are you sure" type of dialogs for a process that's inherently non-destructive.
3. The sync and PDF generation process needs too much management. My workflow, like many others in the entertainment industry, moves quickly. Syncing and initiating the PDF generation needs to be able to be linked. Much of it could be replaced with a new save command - Save, Sync and PDF. Having to initiate it manually after waiting for the file to sync isn't efficient and the time based options for automating the PDF process only make sense in a slow process.
4. There needs to be a way to control the naming of the PDF. The VW Cloud currently uses the same name as the source file. At a minimum it should be able to append a date to the file. Ideally I would also be able to define a path.

 

Overall there is potential with VW Cloud Services but it needs to be much lower maintenance to be an every day tool.

 

Kevin

 

[Matt Overton]

Also just for fun ....delete the cloud services app from your computer (if only for a week). Notice how much better Vectorworks runs generally.

Yes, cloud services needs improvement.

[Christiaan]

Great list Kevin. The 1st item means cloud services is still just a curiosity for us.

[rgcn]

I would also like to see cloud service allow for rendered views to be generated as a image file such as a jpeg rather than a PDF. 

 

Rob

[Simon Allan]

Great list Kevin.

 

In regards point 1, I currently only use it to render my sheet layer VPs and I usually just want PDFs so all is good there...when it works!

If I understand you correctly, you would like the cloud to render your design layer VPs whilst you are working on the drawing? If so, I think this would be very valuable and would make my day so much more productive! Not sure about saving a rendered file back as I would much prefer to have a sync button (like project sharing) to notify that VPs had been rendered and after a sync they all appeared.

 

I totally agree with all your other points.

I would also like to see the ability to adjust layer and class states when using the web app to view a .VGX file. It would also be helpful to have the ability to save some layer/class "presets" so the viewer could easily switch between them.

[Kevin McAllister]

4 hours ago, Simon Allan said:

If I understand you correctly, you would like the cloud to render your design layer VPs whilst you are working on the drawing? If so, I think this would be very valuable and would make my day so much more productive! Not sure about saving a rendered file back as I would much prefer to have a sync button (like project sharing) to notify that VPs had been rendered and after a sync they all appeared.

 

I'm only using the cloud to render sheet layer viewports (that's mainly what I have). I want the cloud to work on one file so that I can use my local machine to work on another.

 

The sync idea is an interesting one...

 

Kevin

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Kevin McAllister