Jump to content

Is the 'Nomad' app still alive and does anyone use it?


Recommended Posts

  • 10 months later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
1 hour ago, E|FA said:

Congratulations & thanks to the VW Nomad development team.

I passed your praise on to the team who worked on this. This was a long project and we are so happy to finally deliver it to you! We hope you enjoy it. This is just version 1 of the new viewer. We will continue to improve it and add more features to it going forward. Please let us know what you wish to see in it next.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I just spent 15 minutes looking at the new version, first on my phone (android) and second on an ipad.

 

It is definitely better than it was.

 

- It seems to be able to cope with one of my regular VWX files just fine - on both devices - didn't seem to be struggling with the size and movement was perfectly fluid (although I notice on the phone it is displaying with less detail, with curves segmented and so on)

- I'd be more likely to use this "for real" on a tablet/ipad than a phone so that's the version that is more important for me

- at first sight seems to have pulled through textures etc reasonably well, so they look pretty similar to what I see in OpenGL on the computer

- it seems it's still not possible to display with edges drawn - or am I missing a setting somewhere? This is a shame as it would make a difference especially for legibility of interior views where some surfaces merge together without edges drawn.

- flyover navigation - it's sort-of usable, but I think it can only ever rotate around the centre of the model, is that right? This means it's OK for an overview of the model but not much good if you want to zoom in on different parts. I think if I gave the ipad to a client in flyover mode, they'd find it frustrating.

- walkthrough navigation is OK - I think I could use it to show someone around a model but I'm not sure I could hand it over to a client. The main thing is that moving the "joystick" to the side translates sideways - but I think most people would expect that moving the joystick to the right would rotate the view to the right. So, you have to rotate yourself as a separate operation.

- looks like saved views from the VWX file are available on the ipad version (but not on android?) and seem quite reliable. This is great, and a big step forwards (I don't think it worked properly previously?)

- quite impressed that the "clip cube" option seems to work pretty well on the android version. But I can't find it in the ipad version?

 

So, overall there is certainly an improvement and I'd now consider using it to take to a meeting on the ipad, although I don't think it's yet at the stage that I could hand over to a client and expect them to be able to look around in an intuitive fashion.

 

Probably the no. 1 improvement for me would be able to show the model with edges drawn.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, line-weight said:

The main thing is that moving the "joystick" to the side translates sideways - but I think most people would expect that moving the joystick to the right would rotate the view to the right. So, you have to rotate yourself as a separate operation.

 

If you tap the button top right the iPhone will use the giros to aim your view according to your camera orientation so you can walk forward and rotate the camera to aim where you are going. This works well imho!

 

I agree with requests for lines, views, clip cubes in walkthrough views please!

Link to comment
43 minutes ago, thecadman said:

If you tap the button top right the iPhone will use the giros to aim your view according to your camera orientation so you can walk forward and rotate the camera to aim where you are going. This works well imho!

 

Tried that, but it doesn't work very well if you are sat at a desk, unless you only want to make very slight changes in direction.

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
30 minutes ago, thecadman said:

So we seem to have some gains and losses!

 

Gains:

  • Layers
  • Clip cubes

Losses

  • Gimbal/gyros can't give you direction as you walk through

Can we get back the navigation by pointing the camera?

Am I missing something?

 

The new viewer brings together web, mobile, and AR into the same implementation with consistent UX and much better performance for more complex models than before.  The various implementations of these apps and features were inconsistent.  The new viewer hits a good number of the most important features; later versions will fill in the important gaps relative to the old viewers.

 

AR is immersive and uses the gyro, for the moment you could try that.  Previous AR viewer could only show small simple models, the new one expands possibilities to much more, and you should be able to walk around in much more developed scenes than in the older AR viewer.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
Just now, line-weight said:

Ok, that's a shame. It is useful, for example, for switching between design options or existing/proposed.

 

I hope it can be brought back at some point.

 

We hear you for sure.  Q: Classes and layers and plan and 3D (and render mode and options) are part of saved views.  Do you have a priority for these?  It is hard for us to include classes and not slow down performance, since classes go across all objects in the model.

 

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Dave Donley said:

 

We hear you for sure.  Q: Classes and layers and plan and 3D (and render mode and options) are part of saved views.  Do you have a priority for these?  It is hard for us to include classes and not slow down performance, since classes go across all objects in the model.

 

The most useful for me would be to be able to flip class/layer visibilities. 3d viewpoints would also be useful, with bigger models (so I can quickly get to a particular viewpoint).

 

Although I'd like saved views that could do layer & class visibility, being restricted to layer only would still be better than nothing.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
1 hour ago, Dave Donley said:

 

We hear you for sure.  Q: Classes and layers and plan and 3D (and render mode and options) are part of saved views.  Do you have a priority for these?  It is hard for us to include classes and not slow down performance, since classes go across all objects in the model.

 

Order of priority for me:

1. Viewpoint

2. Plan 

3. Layers (though can handle manually)

4. Classes

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
14 hours ago, line-weight said:

- it seems it's still not possible to display with edges drawn - or am I missing a setting somewhere?

- Edges are under consideration alongisde with many other visual improvements, such as ambient occlusion, for example.

14 hours ago, line-weight said:

flyover navigation - it's sort-of usable, but I think it can only ever rotate around the centre of the model, is that right?

In the old viewer, the center of rotation was fixed and was based on the origin of the .vwx file. 

The center of rotation in the new viewer is determined dynamically, aiming to never be outside the current view. If the tap is over the model, the center of rotation is determined by a ray cast to the nearest object surface. If the click is on an empty region of the scene, the center of rotation is set to the center of the screen at the depth of the last rotation.

 

14 hours ago, line-weight said:

The main thing is that moving the "joystick" to the side translates sideways - but I think most people would expect that moving the joystick to the right would rotate the view to the right.

We can add an setting to rotate the view with the joystick.

 

9 hours ago, thecadman said:

Can we get back the navigation by pointing the camera?

 

This is on our list of features to carry over from the old viewer to the new.

 

Thanks for the discussion about saved view. This is also on our list of future improvements. We think that saving a view within the viewer could also be helpful, and also a way to "play" these views, like an animation, would allow you to just hand over the model to your customer. They would be able to see exactly what you define for them and they wouldn't need to learn how to navigate. 

 

Please keep your suggestions coming! 

 

Best regards,

Iskra Nikolova

  • Like 2
Link to comment
8 hours ago, inikolova said:

- Edges are under consideration alongisde with many other visual improvements, such as ambient occlusion, for example.

In the old viewer, the center of rotation was fixed and was based on the origin of the .vwx file. 

The center of rotation in the new viewer is determined dynamically, aiming to never be outside the current view. If the tap is over the model, the center of rotation is determined by a ray cast to the nearest object surface. If the click is on an empty region of the scene, the center of rotation is set to the center of the screen at the depth of the last rotation.

 

We can add an setting to rotate the view with the joystick.

 

 

This is on our list of features to carry over from the old viewer to the new.

 

Thanks for the discussion about saved view. This is also on our list of future improvements. We think that saving a view within the viewer could also be helpful, and also a way to "play" these views, like an animation, would allow you to just hand over the model to your customer. They would be able to see exactly what you define for them and they wouldn't need to learn how to navigate. 

 

Please keep your suggestions coming! 

 

Best regards,

Iskra Nikolova

 

Thanks for all these replies; it's appreciated and I'll look forward to further improvements.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
13 hours ago, inikolova said:

Please keep your suggestions coming! 

Iskra, you've already seen and responded to my comments in another forum, but just to reiterate them here for others to see:

  1. A light setting that keeps the view of the model in light at all times
  2. Show clipped objects as solids
  3. Ability to share model with pre-defined settings (particularly lighting and shadow)
  4. Shadow Strength as a slider rather than 3 fixed options. I find the darkest too dark and the medium not quite dark enough. (although I appreciate this is an interplay between ambient light and shadow settings)
  5. Tooltips for some of the Settings. For instance, tap on "Dynamic quality" text and get an explanation of what dynamic quality is and why the user might turn it on or leave it off.

Nice-to-haves: The following can be done with the Publish command in VW, but it would be nice to have these capabilities in Nomad and on the web portal too:

  • Ability generate a PDF file for each sheet (as opposed to grouping all sheets into one PDF file)
  • Ability select which sheets are generated as PDFs, rather than the whole file
Edited by Christiaan
  • Like 2
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
Reply to this topic...

×   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...