Video cards and VectorWorks on Mac

[aladino]

I want to understand how much the presence of a more powerful video card then my Radeon 9600 (es. 9800 or a x800) can influence the performances of 2D redrawing with VectorWorks 10.5.1 on my G5 DP 2.3. The problem I've experience is with a particular job where I would have to manage more files of the regional technical map, that turn out particularly heavy (in DWG 4-5 Mb, in VectorWorks 25-30 Mb, and DXF text approximately 100 Mb one). And I will have to work with more than file to the time. I have already tried all software alternatives on Mac

(Archicad/Plotmaker, DCAD, PowerCADD, TurboCADD, Highdesign), and however VectorWorks seems to be the best solution on Mac, but IMO, not enough. If it's worth the pain, I could change the card video, but I do not know how much this will affect the redrawing of 2D files with VectorWorks.

[Roman]

I compared a dual 867 G4 and single 1.25 G4, home and work and my conclusion was the CPU was the bottle neck. The 1.25 was definitely faster, even though they had similar cards. We ugraded a 400 mhz G4 to 1 Ghz and scroll/panning became smooth. Mind you, V11.5 has OpenGL acceleration for zooming/panning so maybe a software and hardware upgrade would help. Of course, lovely Nemetschek offers no demo of their new program, so you're out of luck unless you want to go with their 30 day money back guarantee for testing purposes. What a hassle.

[aladino]

So you think a Radeon x800 (vs Radeon 9600) won't help much redrawing slowness of my 100Mb only 2D file (I composed 6 DWG to one Vectorworks file)?

CPU is G5 2.3, so I think there's no sense talk to upgrade there. Even I hate it, I'm

[aladino]

Excuse me, the paragrphe cut:

I'll sayng I'm thinking to try Autocad on VirtualPC

[APE Design Ctr]

Aladino,

I tried AutoCad on Virtual PC on my Dual 1Gig G4, and it was really slow. Keep in mind that the machine has to try and run 2 operating systems simultaneously. Aside from the slowness, it does run without a glitch. I had 3D Studio running as well on it.

I'm not sure about the video card helping out 2D redraw, but I know that for OpenGL work, the video card is paramount. Rendering speeds are based solely on processor speed, as they dont use the video card at all.

I would try and be patient if you can. There are many people on this forum that complain about the speed of vectorworks. You are going to be more frustrated on AC with VPC. Hopefully it will be fixed soon in version 12.

PS I also noticed that in this slow file, you have imported a few DWGs. I have found that DWGs are brutal on Vectorworks in slowness. Try it in DXF and see if there is a dif.

[aladino]

Unfortunatly I can't have other then this DWG that are governative files. On Autocad I can say I hate it, but on a old laptop (Celeron 1.2/512ram/ATI M6/Win98) and Autocad 2000LT, this file result far quicker then Vectorworks 10.5 or 11 on my G5 (fit to object will take aprox. 18 seconds and evry pan is a pain). Autocad on celeron have similar 1st redrawing times, but after that the drwing will pan and scroll much smoother. I think to try autocad on VPC and hope it will be not to much smoother then Vectorworks (I won't go back to Autocad, that I left more then ten years ago), but I must make the try.

[aladino]

OK. I've done the try. Autocad 2000 LT is more then usable under VPC 7 (Win2000) on my G5, pan and zoom are quicker then VectorWorks on OS X, mostly with one ore two files. But if I try to work with all six files, Autocad become unstable (I got two crash), and much less responsive. Pan and zoom of smal portion are anyway faster then Vectorworks.

But I've discoverd a workaround that seems to incres greatly VectorWorks redesign: add and use Autocad fonts (Simplex.ttf, Romans.ttf and txt.ttf)! They will be automaticly be choosen as equivalent autocad .shx replacement (you find them in windows font folder, if you have Autocad installed), and redrawing become twice as fast as previusly. And vectorworks file decrise in dimension too! They are not a beauty, but I think I can accept this compromise. ;-)

[DDDesign]

Jeff, I can do real time Open GL flyarounds in plain VW11.5.1 (Have you done the update?) I still think that 10.5 was faster but it's hard to believe that the Mechanical version would behave differently in this respect.

[Jeff Kreines]

Aladino writes:

"I want to understand how much the presence of a more powerful video card then my Radeon 9600 (es. 9800 or a x800) can influence the performances of 2D redrawing with VectorWorks 10.5.1 on my G5 DP 2.3."

I recently upgraded to 11.5 (from 10.5) Mechanical, which I run on a G5 2 gig dual processor machine. I find it's painfully slow -- for example, if I render to Open GL, I can no longer do a real time flyaround -- it re-renders every time I move the cursor. It used to be very good, now it's so slow I'm stuck in wireframe all the time.

What happened? Seems like someone screwed up some nicely optimized code when they tried to "fix" things.

Do I need to abandon the Mac (which I've used since '84) for SolidWorks?

Please fix this!