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critical mass...it's not going away.


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I was using iLovePDF the other day and decided to download their new desktop app for macOS. I couldn't compress a PDF for some reason so I went back and use their web-based version and it worked fine, as usual. If their web-based version stops working it'll most likely stop working for everybody, including them, they'll know immediately and they'll fix it right away. But if their desktop version doesn't work on my machine for some reason then I need to contact them before they even know it doesn't work, let alone begin working on the steps needed to fix it.

Edited by Christiaan
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Well I agree...but isn't what you portray in Cloud Cad going to be ruined when we work with others who use different Cloud Cad and those companies try to create walls around their user base?  Unless we have interchangeable file formats for model data, texture data, BIM data, etc it's all just moving the problem to somewhere else.  I don't see AutoDesk playing nice with Nemetschek and vice versa.  

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Cloud is not a "solution" it is just a different set of problems just like automobiles were not a solution to horses.

 

What happens when you are using some edge case use of a tool in a cloud system to do something really useful for you. And then they decide that is not what it is supposed to do and "fix" it. You are stuck because you can't just go back to (or stick with) the older version of the software because there is only one version.

 

What happens when you are in the middle of a project and they change the software and you have to use the "new" version. Many, many people/companies run a version or two of Vectorworks behind just so they can finish a project in the version they started with.

 

Cloud software has just as many bugs as VW or any other off line program. Yes, they may be able to fix a single problem faster, but they still have limitations as to the amount of resources available for fixing and how much time it takes.

 

So quit making it out to seem like cloud will make everything perfect. It won't. It will make it different and we will have to learn different ways of doing things, but there will be just as much unhappiness and gnashing of teeth as there is now. Maybe more.

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Remember, I have 3 years of experience using a cloud cad platform...its been near flawless...

 

What happens is I spend a week or two in this cloud platform,  then switch to desktop cad (this is not a VW issue,  could be Revit etc) and things grind to a halt...

 

The current paradigm is physically not sustainable with the data demands placed on it.  

 

Granted some cloud is terrible...I used O365 and its clunky...

 

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18 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

just a different set of problems

 

That is actually true...

 

The issue is volume of stuff.  at one time people could just have an outhouse in back and it worked fine...

but then we hit a critical mass & you need a septic system...then town sewage plant  

 

Circuit boards became integrated circuits...now we have multi core 

 

If we look at any system, they all have this cycle...a technology hits a critical mass then need to phase into something else.

 

This is a reoccurring cycle & has descended on the AEC industry...this is not about personal likes or dislikes...

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I avoid all and any 'cloud' (what an effing stupid term) services apart from my accounting package - patchy internet (and services get dropped) has made me very wary of all. And BIM seems to have been pushed (to the point of lobbying governments to get it required) when the software is simply not upto it. 

 

Also many companies that seem to think they are the Centre of the universe, when most designers are highly specialised and probably pick-n-mix across a suite of platforms and packages to do what they need to do - like my VW dealer telling me I could do all my GIS in VW - I mean come on, it's nonsense.

 

Increasingly I see open source GIS as an essential (at least for the landscape consultancy workflow), it's becoming very mature, most CAD operations, I can imagine in two years doing most of my work using QGIS and just the occasional work in VW.

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8 hours ago, unearthed said:

Increasingly I see open source GIS as an essential (at least for the landscape consultancy workflow), it's becoming very mature, most CAD operations, I can imagine in two years doing most of my work using QGIS and just the occasional work in VW.

Interesting to read this @unearthed I'm soon to be taking a QGIS course from the Regrarians...http://www.regrarians.org/product/qgis-for-mapping-and-design/

Are you using QGIS on farm scale projects?

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@J. Wallace Yes for farms, large industrial sites, mines and regional. At first I used it mainly for data processing (e.g. tiling / clipping large rasters, making complicated VW viewports ) and regional overviews, useful  a regions has five farms  or a cluster of towns. I had a farm last year  ~5km long and design catchment was ~20Km x ~7km, I got a drone to scan the farm and fed it's 88 tiles (1.2Gb) to QGIS, it loaded in about 10 seconds and I could move around it with zero lag.

 

In NZ we have a free govt. database with ~1800 data types on it; we have law around public-funded data being free. It's my primary initial data source (until/where I need survey data). But some of the data deeds cleaning, like lidars with all returns when you only want ground, subsampling height files, making contours from heightfiles /.dem.. Some of that I do in other tools (mainly CloudCompare) but GQIS is an essential in the pipeline.

 

QGIS is getting a lot of CAD functionality at moment; drawing tools, revision bubbles, hatching is very good, scale bars, styling of polygons, some very snazzy auto labelling tools, and the sheet layout is perfectly usable.

 

There's a lot of integration with scripting languages like python, perl, R... and recently an android/mac/PC mobile mapping tool which you can hook up with GNSS  - a real game changer there. I'd like to hear how you get on with it; I'm self-taught so I only know what I need to know, which is not really enough, but there's good forums and books.

 

 

Edited by unearthed
typos
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On 4/17/2021 at 4:56 PM, Pat Stanford said:

What happens when you are using some edge case use of a tool in a cloud system to do something really useful for you. And then they decide that is not what it is supposed to do and "fix" it. You are stuck because you can't just go back to (or stick with) the older version of the software because there is only one version.

 

You adapt. We do this with Vectorworks. We've converted all our projects to the new version of VW as soon as it comes out for many years now, apart from where we had one with a couple of months until completion (but we could have converted that in hindsight too). A lot of that "adapting" is adapting to bugs, at least until SP3, but that's one area that cloud has it over desktop. Half the effort involved in bugs on desktop is getting the engineer to be able to reproduce your bug. Cloud short circuits this to some degree because everybody is using same platform: the web.

 

Another problem is regressions. Short-circuited by cloud software, again, because they have way more customer data than desktop developers.

 

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What happens when you are in the middle of a project and they change the software and you have to use the "new" version. Many, many people/companies run a version or two of Vectorworks behind just so they can finish a project in the version they started with.

 

Same as above. You adapt. I agree with you that it's a different set of problems but I prefer a culture of adaption and progress. And because this is the norm with cloud you might expect that they'd do these transitions to newness better than desktop, which can rely on telling people not to upgrade. And indeed, that is the case with the likes of Onshape. Upgrades, for instance, are automatic; no farting about with installers and migration. That's another job we don't have to do. And Onshape's kernel can emulate the behaviour of older versions, so that older designs in Onshape can use the code paths they were created with while newer designs can use the newer code paths. I don't know if this is a cloud development per se, but it's something they do because that makes transitions better.

 

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Cloud software has just as many bugs as VW or any other off line program. Yes, they may be able to fix a single problem faster, but they still have limitations as to the amount of resources available for fixing and how much time it takes.

 

I wouldn't underestimate a seemingly small thing such as the ability to fix problems faster. This can add up over time. And so can a culture of progress vs waiting. Nothing is perfect but cloud has progress built into its DNA. How can desktop survive that.

Edited by Christiaan
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