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VW2015 - is it not laggy?


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Hi,

 

Thinking of investing in a s/h copy of VW2015 from the trading pages here.
Can people confirm it's "lag free" in it's operation? Panning and zooming. With background maps

Compared to the new versions that have reports of laggy operation.
 

Cheers,

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Beside possible bugs and glitches,

each new version of VW had improvements in their graphic engine

to accelerate all kind Design Layer, Sheet Layer, Viewports, ...

graphics by making use of the GPU.

I think it started at least with VW 2014 in 3D View.

 

So newer VW versions should not be slower but faster and less laggy.

At least for larger files and if your hardware is within VW's recommended

Hardware Specs.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is, that on Mac, older versions of VW will also

only run on (3) older macOS versions, which are not supported on newer

Mac Hardware either.

 

I think there may be valid reasons to look for older VW licences,

like price, because of old OS or hardware, App complexity and such.

But I don't think it makes much sense in terms of expecting better graphics

performance or quality.

 

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The drawing view is handled by OpenGL on GPU.

Wireframe and OpenGL.

Some of the older Modes like Hidden Line or Shaded

may be still CPU only and not very multi-threaded.

 

AFAIK,

when you set your VW Preferences Display from Best Performance

down to Performance & Compatibility, it will switch newest GPU

acceleration OFF, down to previous VW version.

(Which may be useful in earlier SPs of VW when you have display and

visibility problems)

If you switch it down to Compatibility, it will switch off any GPU

acceleration and run Software by CPU only.

 

I am not really sure where the problems in these threads really happened

and what task was really effected.

I work mostly 3D only and haven't had serious problems with graphic lags

since a few years, with current hardware, even with larger Projects.

For me VW always was on the faster and reliable side of 3D OpenGL vs

alternative Apps.

Large Files may have some annoying initial GPU loading times but after

work really smooth for me.

But in CAD and 3D Apps there are often still bottlenecks, but most about

data handling when selecting or editing in crowded files.

 

There were some 2D lags in Viewports and on Sheet Layers that were

accelerated lately in more recent VW versions.

I just would doubt that the same Project would run smoother in much

older VW versions. My Projects just got more demanding over time.

 

 

And there are also lots of reasons why a larger file may be hard to handle

or where to accelerate.

Could be better usage of Symbols for repeated objects, avoiding exploded

line styles and hatches from imports, avoiding Meshes or lose 3D Faces

vs Solids, dumping Add/Subtract Solids to generic Solids to avoid

no more necessary modeling history and all such things.

Closing other Apps like Browsers to not exceed the available RAM and risk

slower swapping to SSD or even HDDs.

And VW recommends a fast dedicated GPU with reasonably amount of VRAM

and does not like slower integrated Intel GPU on CPU.

 

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While there are always a few people who have issues with their specific setups and that are often difficult to track down, in general, 99+% of the users of VW are not seeing the issues that are being discussed in these types of posts.

 

Pure guess on my part, but my gut tells me that about 50% of the people who make posts like this are helped either here on the forum or directly by Tech support. About 40% (of the very small starting number) choose to give up on VW and move on to something else. The other 10% find a way to deal with the issues without ever fixing them.

 

And it is interesting to me that you are asking about the speed of a 6 year old version of the software. VW2021 was just released. If you do choose to go with VW2015, the amount of help you are going to get here on the forum will be limited. There are a lot of people here who have started in the last 5 years and never ran 2015. There are even more people who have used 6 versions in between and don't remember and probably don't have a way to test any problem you are seeing.

 

Unless you have one of the following situations, you will be much happier with a newer (preferably newest) version.

 

1.  You have a very old computer that you can't upgrade that you must run VW on and are only going to be an intermittent and light user.

2.  You already have a copy of VW2015 (and a computer it will run on) and don't want to spend any money.

3.  You have someone who is offering you a great deal (maybe $100) for a copy of VW2015 and some version of 1 and 2 also apply.

4.  You really don't need to work in VW, but just want something to use for hobby drawings for your own use and don't really care about performance.

 

All opinions above are my persons opinions and are not intended to represent my position as a volunteer moderator of the forum.

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I beg to differ a bit here... that the majority of users did not experience this issue could very well be because they weren't doing work/using functionality that caused the issue to occur.

For e.g. Spotlight users it may not have been an issue at all for all I know, because I don't know what part of VW was causing the issue. If it was some code of functionality that was only in e.g. Architect and Landscape then Fundamentals/Spotlight users would never be affected.

 

In my case it didn't happen when doing small stuff but when I was working on GIS style projects with quite a bit of info, classes/layers/objects etc. in Landmark then the lag was definitely present when e.g. selecting one object could cause a lag of 10 seconds before I could proceed with e.g. moving that object, then the same lag could also occur when snapping the moved object to another object. Disabling all snapping and selection in other classes/layers would reduce or in some cases eliminate that lag but made working also quite a bit more cumbersome. If something as common as selecting an object or snapping to an object can cause a 10 sec. lag then it indicates a real bug within VW, which unfortunately took quite some time to get fixed. Fortunately it got fixed in VW2019 with one of the later SP's.

 

For the original poster this is definitely an issue he/she can run into given what he/she is planning to do as it is in the area of GIS functionality and I did experience the lag issue with that. VW2015 did not have this specific lag issue and will therefore be faster than e.g. VW2018 where the lag issue was also present but I don't know if it was fixed for that version, or in VW2019 where it finally did get fixed.

 

I do agree it is better to get a more recent version of VW and given the lag issue I would advise to get at least VW2019 in this case if he/she wants to buy a 2nd hand copy as the mentioned specific lag issue was definitely fixed in  that version and does not occur in VW2020/2021.

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16 hours ago, ensta said:

So, has the issues referred to in these posts been resolved?

The phenomena raised are a real concern.

 

Also, it's not totally clear how view of projects are handled, in CPU or GPU.

The issues have been resolved in VW2019 with one of the later SP's. For VW 2018 I don't know if it ever got fixed.

 

VW2015 does not have this issue, and VW2019 had it fixed and it did not occur in VW2020 and so far also not in 2021.

VW2016 didn't have the specific lag issue either if I remember correctly, VW2017 tended to be a bit slower in some ways due to the new VGM being introduced and maybe also having the same lag issue as in VW2018/2019 but not to the extent as in the latter two.

 

So if you want to buy 2nd hand then VW2015/2016 are ok. In your case with GIS related work where the issue did show up I would advise to skip VW2017/VW2018 for 2nd hand just to be on the safe side. VW2019 and VW2020/2021 are ok to get 2nd hand as long as for VW2019 you install the latest SP as well to solve the lag issue in that version.

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