Jump to content
  • 2

Network Publish


Ben Wingrove

Question

6 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello Ben:

 

This is something that has been asked for for a long time.  What specific renderings do you spend time on?  Do you render viewports?  Hidden line, Renderworks modes?  Which scenario do you use most that should be distributed over the network, that would save you the most time?

 

 

Link to comment
  • 0
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Not sure if you are aware but VSS customers have access to Vectorworks Cloud Services, which will perform Publish using the cloud, so you can offload that work to our network.  We upgraded this to use our own in-house servers and so the render service has a faster turnaround now than previously.  This option is available from the Publish menu/dialog box, under the "Process On:" popup menu.

 

Link to comment
  • 0

It is mainly the viewports in our sheets when we publish a packet, it consists of Hidden line, open GL, and artistic renders but that varies depending on the project.

We have VSS, we did a test between the time on a local and cloud render and found the local was quicker, that was last year though so I may try again.

 

We are in the process of setting up a machine that just deals with our publishing so we can continue working on other drawings whilst it is working its magic.

It would be nice to have an option within the publish menu/dialog box to send the publish to a local network machine in a similar way to sending to the cloud.

 

To be able to harness the power of dormant network machines for the renders would be a nice option, especially on some of the bigger drawings.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
  • 0

Totally agree with @Ben Wingrove , it is far better to use local resources, and we have much more control.

 

We found that we have very little control over VSS turnaround times, and if there are changes or errors we have to resubmit all over again.

 

From our last test of VSS, we also had to pay for 'credits' to use VSS processing power. If we already have that in-house, we don't see the need for this.

 

@Dave Donley if VSS make use of multiple servers to process renders and viewports, then can we assume the technology for 'Render Farm'/'Publish Farm' is for VW already available? When can this be made available to customers?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • 0
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello Amorphous-Julian:

 

AFAIK VSS doesn't have a credits system, you can render as much as you want as a VSS subscriber.  I will check that.  There is a queue involved and I think we do limit how many concurrent tasks you have running, to allow others to also use the system.

 

The function is "Update All Viewports"; for a local network this would involve copying the Vectorworks file to all the computers and having different update different viewports then combine the results.  On the cloud we launch Vectorworks, open your file, update all viewports and publish it, then close the file.

 

Control is a double-edged sword, the render servers for VSS are all running known OSes with known installs and are in a software box that is tightly controlled.  There is a cost to administer a render farm on an intranet, and from experience with project sharing and firewalls and odd network settings we would likely have new classes of bugs where the intranet renderings would fail because of the combinations in some offices.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...