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Nomad Measuring


Sky

Question

I would like to ditch brining my laptop to construction meetings and just use my 12.9" iPad Pro.

It's been such a time consuming pain to try to figure out Nomad. 

 

I finally got Cloud Publish working, but I still can not measure on the PDF.

It also does not include any snapping points.

I get the error message: Measuring data is unavailable. The measuring will be reported in sheet layer space.

What does that mean? 

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Things get worse.

 

I made a project folder 'Cloud Projects' and designated that as my sync folder for VW Cloud Services. It is on my iCloud Drive. I moved over one project folder 'MHCC' into this.

 

About 5 or 6 hours later, it was replaced with a folder 'MHCC (selective sync conflict)' and most of the files were gone! Luckily I use Time Machine backup and restored everything to the original folder. 

 

Now I am worried about even using Nomad and cloud services from VW. Seem like a total disaster.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello @Sky,

Measurement data and snap points in PDFs are generated by the cloud server when a .vwx file is submitted for PDF generation using the Generate PDF feature on the Vectorworks Cloud Services web portal, desktop app, or Vectorworks Nomad. For example, right click on a .vwx file on cloud.vectorworks.net to see the Generate PDF menu command.

The snap points are available only for Top/Plan viewports and can be used only by the measuring tools in Vectorworks Nomad. Measurements are based on the scale set for the viewport on the sheet layer from which the .pdf page was created.

Unfortunately, PDFs produced by the Publish command do not contain this data.

 

We will investigate the conflict issue you reported and will get back to you. Are you using the Vectorworks Cloud Services desktop app on more than one computer? Typically, a conflict would occur when you make changes to the files/folder structure on one of the machines while one or more files are opened in Vectorworks on the other computer. The conflict file would be available only on the machine that had the file opened. The other files, including the different (older) version of the conflict file, should be available in their new location on both computers, if that location is selected for syncing in the selective sync settings. I hope that helps a little bit while we investigate your issue. 

 

Best regards,

Iskra Nikolova

 

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Hi @inikolova

 

While I appreciate the concept behind Nomad, this solution is still half-baked and user unfriendly. I would really like to see drastic improvements with this platform because it holds a lot of potential.

 

1. I have sheet layers that were used in schematic design or for presentations that I don't want as part of the PDF generated, but have no control over that if the Publish command can not produce snap points and measurement data. This function produces all sheets into PDFs!

 

2. I am only using the Cloud Services desktop app on one computer. But that folder is also part of iCloud Drive. I'm not sure if this caused the problem. To avoid issues in the future, I will make a separate folder and duplicate a copy of the file to make a PDF. A tedious workaround, but I can't have my files compromised by VW Cloud Services. 

 

3. Is there a technical reason that Dropbox and Google Drive are integrated, but iCloud Drive is not?

 

4. I think I read somewhere that I can't do any editing of the PDF or all the snap points and measurement data will be lost - including renaming the file, moving the file location or deleting pages in the file. Is that correct?

Edited by Sky
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi @Sky,

Thank you so much for your feedback! We are actively working to improve Nomad's viewing capabilities - currently in the 3D viewing space, but the 2D is on our radar as well.  

1. Measuring and snapping were one of the first features we added to Nomad. At that time we only had Generate PDF. Later, when we implemented Cloud Publish, the measuring and snapping was not added.

 

2. Generally, we do not recommend placing the local Vectorworks Cloud Services folder within a folder of another cloud storage provider. Our engineers looked at the logs and did not find any signs of conflict file created by Vectorworks Cloud Services. We believe the conflict was generated by another cloud storage provider. I am sorry that you have to use a workaround instead of your preferred way to setting up your file structure. I don't think you should be uncomfortable saving the master copies of your Vectorworks files on Vectorworks Cloud Services though. We have protection mechanisms in place in the event the file gets unintentionally modified or deleted. Each file has version history from where you can restore prior versions. We also have Cloud Trash where all deleted files go. They can be restored to their original location from there.

 

3. Supporting Dropbox and Google Drive integrations were features we had to implement. It is absolutely possible to add other storage providers to this list. We have had many other requests to expand in this area. Currently, we are working on providing support for Shared Drives with Google Drive. iCloud is on our list for other storage providers to add as well. If we had the integration, you would't have tried to add your Vectorworks Cloud Services folder within your iCloud Drive. I hope we can have that in the near future, but I can't offer any solid plans at the moment.

 

4. Yes, if you rename the file, you are breaking the connection between the generated pdf and the metadata file where the snap and measure info is stored, because they are associated by name. That is the main reason why we don't have move/rename feature on our web portal yet. We had efforts to add this feature in the past, but it hasn't materialized yet due to issues that were found during testing. 

 

With the re-engineering effort for the 3D model viewer, we may be able to re-imagine how we do measuring on the mobile devices. At the end, the implementation may look totally different and all of the existing issues could become obsolete. So, at this point we are holding off on improving these areas, until we know what the full possibilities are with the newer technologies.

 

I hope this information is helpful.

 

Best regards,

Iskra Nikolova

 

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