VWX 2022 Buggy?

[trashcan]

I am crashing constantly with VWX 2022 and it's driving me nuts. Using SP1. Scale objects is a frequent offender. 

 

Anyone else seeing this? Driving me batty. 

[E|FA]

Using SP1.1:  I'm not seeing many crashes (though I have had 2 today trying to set up customized Door Hardware in my User Folder), but it feels very sluggish and laggy.  For instance, any time I do anything with a window or door inserted into a wall it takes at least 10 seconds.  I suspect this has to do with implementing component wrapping, but I'm working on a small sample file, so VW shouldn't have to try so hard.  I'll try to note if there are other actions that cause crashes or lagging.

[trashcan]

yeah things are just taking forever, or crashing. really slow. I wonder if this an intel vs M1 thing. I'm using intel and it's real slow with vwx 2022. 

[E|FA]

I hope it's not an Intel thing.  I'm hoping to hang on to this Mac for a couple more years.  I've been looking at the new Apple hardware, and if I was to spend the money to get one (and a monitor to replace the 27" iMac retina display), I still wouldn't know which features are most important to keep VW working fast for as long as possible.  Where is the money for upgrading from the base spec best used:  RAM, CPU, GPU, drive space?   Maxing them all out in order to future-proof gets very expensive, very fast.

 

 @JuanP do you have any updates on these posts, and whether these are known software issues that will be resolved in an upcoming SP?

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2022-system-requirements-r849/

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/tech-bulletins/apple-macos-12-monterey-compatibility-r848/

https://www.vectorworks.net/support/quality-tested-hardware

 

It would also be nice if a VW engineer would take over & update these posts:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/tech-bulletins/user-success-hardware-benchmark-results-r699/

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/faqs/what-hardware-does-what-upgrading-your-hardware-for-vectorworks-r752/

 

[Tom W.]

I have had zero crashes as far as I can remember since moving to VW2022 but as I've mentioned elsewhere several times, things are very slow... I hope it's not an Intel thing too. I have seen no mention of this being a factor so be good for someone who knows about these things to say so. In previous VW versions it was the memory pressure that slowed things down whereas in VW2022 it feels like the CPU load is frequently rocketing, if that's connected...

 

I am not using component wrapping yet on doors/windows but it definitely feels like VW struggles every time I select a door/wall/window/etc + try + do anything. Plus zooming/rotating in Shaded. Having to switch to Wireframe to avoid delays

[line-weight]

I have an M1 mac but haven't dared to move any projects to 2022 yet (apart from anything else, on first viewing there were obvious issues with shaded view and I'm not going to start using it until those are sorted).

 

But if anyone wanted to post a file with some actions that reliably produce sluggish behaviour I would be happy to test it out on my M1 and report back.

[Kevin McAllister]

I have one project I've moved over to VW2022. I've seen some anomalies (mostly graphics related) that opening and closing VW solves. I usually start with the expectation that there will be something with any file brought forward from an older version or that has elements in it that have been brought forward through a few different versions. I'm not sure I'd move any further projects over at this point. I may start a clean project though.

 

I'm not sure enough testing happens with moving older files forward even though its a common workflow.

 

Kevin

 

[Tom W.]

Existing projects I started in VW2021 I am continuing to work on in VW2021. But I started one new project in VW2022 + it displays noticeably laggier behaviour than I'd have expected for a similar type/size of project in previous versions. And indeed when I export it back to VW2021 it behaves normally there.

[E|FA]

6 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Plus zooming/rotating in Shaded. Having to switch to Wireframe to avoid delays

I'm not seeing this issue in Shaded.  It does occasionally switch to Wireframe on its own, which is annoying, but would also happen in 2021.  

[Tom W.]

1 minute ago, E|FA said:

I'm not seeing this issue in Shaded.  It does occasionally switch to Wireframe on its own, which is annoying, but would also happen in 2021.  

Things were fine until the model reached a certain size, then it started struggling. The file is 270MB so quite big but by no means enormous, and like I say nothing that would be an issue in VW2021. I have Walls with 13 + 15 components + I may have imagined it but it felt like once I introduced these into the model things started slowing down...

 

Other files - simpler, smaller ones where I'm just trying stuff out: creating styles or symbols - are fine.

[E|FA]

35 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I have Walls with 13 + 15 components + I may have imagined it but it felt like once I introduced these into the model things started slowing down...

I'm still working on a small "mock" file to update my template, so it is a different situation as far as Shading is concerned, and my iMac has less CPU power than yours.  My Walls have up to 6-7 components and are using Component Wrapping.

 

@Matt Panzer Is the engineering team aware of these issues and/or are we imagining things and/or is the slowdown real but not related to the re-engineered walls?  

[P Retondo]

I hope VW takes note.  I am not happy to be paying every year for "improved" software that performs worse than earlier versions.  Still sticking with v2020, even though I own licenses to 2021 and 2022.  Unless someone with user experience can tell me v2022 is at least as fast, I'm going to have to pull the plug on wasting money on future updates.

[Neil Barman]

@trashcanand others, if you are experiencing crashes/instability with Vectorworks 2022, have you contacted technical support?

If not, please do.

Posting here on the forum is totally fine for commiserating with others, but it may not lead to a solution for you and it doesn’t necessarily let us know about an issue that needs fixing. 

Typically crashes & instability relate to

- operating systems

- hardware specs

- bespoke files containing problematic objects

and it would be good for you to be in touch with technical support so they can help determine what is going on for you.

 

For an example of a problematic file, I found that my 2022 SP1.1 choked hard yesterday… but it was on a civil engineer’s DWG imported into a new, blank file. Upon inspection, the DWG was an absolute mess – and most of the mess was 80,000,000 ft from origin. Of course that file was going to be problematic.

 

Aside from that v2022 has been running great for me. I demo and do training sessions on it daily without issue. If you’re having an issue with the software, don’t hesitate to get in touch with technical support so they can sort it out with you. 

 

[trashcan]

@Neil Barman - thanks for weighing in and all due respect - every bug report I've filed or request I've made (which I don't think is that many, but it is a few) has more or less led to nothing or I make the effort to explain the bug and it goes in the memory hole. Could be wrong. Just how it feels. Usually I just figure out a workaround. What is the point of the KNOWN issues forum if it's not for you guys? Does anyone at Vectorworks move bugs from other forums to known issues? It seems like this is a massively useful resource for team Vectorworks. 

 

I will legit will make the project files and make a video to show you guys the problem. So it feels like a wasted effort. I find that it's more useful to take the temp of the users on the forums to see if others are experiencing similar things and then one of you guys tends to take it somewhere... I am down to contribute to that part of the community and I don't draw the "it should just work" line or "we are paying customers" line, but sometimes it feels like you guys don't do enough QA TBH. The community is going to help with work-arounds when I talk about a bug or a problem or workflow issue which in an effort-to-action ratio is considerably lower than logging a bug with you guys. 

 

I, for one, use a ton of AV+Design+Tech programs and the Vectorworks' forums and community is by-and-large the best one (GarageCube is really good too, IMHO). 

 

I recognize the way I use Vectorworks could be problematic, but how many programs are designed with this degree of qualifiers for problems (I.e., "remember not to press tab twice or it'll crash!!"). I can't remember which thread I said this in, but it reminds me of setting up FCP files in the early 00s. That was a special hell-scape of what-not-to-do to aggravate a program. 

 

Your example of the buggy DWG is a great one! You have to know WHAT is causing a crash in VWX, and that can be a lot of effort. Then you have to figure out a work around. You still need that Civil Engineer's data - so are you going to ask them to repair it? Or are you going to redraw it? Can you repair the file yourself? And there are a lot of things that could be causing the crash. Where do you start? Or a messed up plug-in object, or symbol! You have to put the time in to figure out all those problems. If VWX is aware that certain things can cause crashes, perhaps it should warn you after some kind of programmatic audit (I.e. "the DWG you imported has bad geometry and could cause Vectorworks to crash, would you still like to import the file?"). There are other programs that do this kind of thing. 

 

So far here are some of the hiccups I've noticed:

• VWX 2022 crashes consistently when adjusting Plug-In Objects' lights' brightness in the viz panel when you are using certain draw modes. Known bug getting hit w/ SP2 thanks to Josh B
• VWX 2022 crashes often when ungrouping a PDF (so you can steal that hott geometry) and moving around the layers. Can't consistently recreate. 
• VWX 2022 crashes often when moving more "complex" imported objects. Ditto on recreate. 
• VWX 2022 Redshift performance on Mac is absolute trash - it should be called an experimental feature or prompt you with a warning "this might not work in a reasonable amount of time"
• VWX 2022 is a massive CPU vampire. fans going crazy all the time even when just in Shaded or Wireframe. So something is going on there for sure. 

Full disclosure that in some cases, it's totally possible that VWX is just taking longer and I'm being impatient... but comparatively to the same actions, on the same computer, using VWX 2021, it's noticeably sluggish. 

 

I'm also posting this here because my experience going from 2020 to 2021 was not nearly this whacky. It was a more seamless transition without much fuss. In my experience anyway! 

 

(Also, Neil, not meaning to be prickly here, I appreciate the work you do and the effort you're making!!)

Edited November 20, 2021 by trashcan
sorry Neil

[Matt Panzer]

On 11/19/2021 at 12:13 PM, E|FA said:

On 11/19/2021 at 11:31 AM, Tom W. said:

I have Walls with 13 + 15 components + I may have imagined it but it felt like once I introduced these into the model things started slowing down...

I'm still working on a small "mock" file to update my template, so it is a different situation as far as Shading is concerned, and my iMac has less CPU power than yours.  My Walls have up to 6-7 components and are using Component Wrapping.

 

@Matt Panzer Is the engineering team aware of these issues and/or are we imagining things and/or is the slowdown real but not related to the re-engineered walls?

We are aware of some performance issues with walls.  Most of the issues have to do with the time it takes for walls to create closure profiles and wrapping. You should see some improvement in this area an SP2 and we’re investigating more performance improvements for a later release.

As for general performance of the application related to walls:  The re-engineered walls in 2022 do handle geometry different than in previous versions.  Previous versions did some unconventional things to try to speed working with walls in Top/Plan view.  VW 2022 treats wall 3D geometry the same way it treats other 3D objects in Vectorworks.  This allowed us to remove a lot of special handling code that was the root of a lot of issues.  This means the 3D geometry in walls may have some effect on performance, but I have not noticed any difference myself.  However, wall closure profiles and wrapping does add more complex geometry to the walls and that can also affect performance.

If you do have files that you’re experiencing performance problems with, please do submit them via bugsubmit so we can have a look.

[E|FA]

Thanks for the update.  My take away is that for the time being I should deselect wall closures to speed up performance. I'll report back once I've had a chance to try it out.  If things remain super slow, I'll upload files to tech support.

[Tom W.]

8 hours ago, Matt Panzer said:

We are aware of some performance issues with walls.  Most of the issues have to do with the time it takes for walls to create closure profiles and wrapping.  You should see some improvement in this area an SP2 and we’re investigating more performance improvements for a later release.

‘As for general performance of the application related to walls:  The re-engineered walls in 2022 do handle geometry different than in previous versions.  Previous versions did some unconventional things to try to speed working with walls in Top/Plan view.  VW 2022 treats wall 3D geometry the same way it treats other 3D objects in Vectorworks.  This allowed us to remove a lot of special handling code that was the root of a lot of issues.  This means the 3D geometry in walls may have some effect on performance, but I have not noticed any difference myself.  However, when using wall closure profiles and wrapping does add more geometry to the document and that can also affect performance.

If you do have files that you;re experiencing performance problems, please do submit them via bugsubmit so we can have a look.

 

Thank you @Matt Panzer this is really good to know. And corresponds with my gut feeling that VW2022 is 'looking' at the geometry in my walls differently (+ thinking about it longer!) than VW2021 did. Although I am not using closure profiles/wrapping some of my walls do have a lot going on component-wise + it did feel like VW was stopping longer on these walls + doing lots of computing, which would tally with what your saying?

 

I will contact Tech Support as you + @Neil Barman suggest but Matt would I be able to PM my file for you to look at as well? I have enormous respect for your opinion + commitment to the issues people have here on the Forums would just be interested to know whether you are experiencing the same as me + what you thought about it.

 

On 11/18/2021 at 8:20 PM, trashcan said:

I wonder if this an intel vs M1 thing. I'm using intel and it's real slow with vwx 2022. 

 

@line-weight very kindly took a look at my file + he experienced some lagginess in VW2022 compared to VW2021 but not as much as me it doesn't sound like. So perhaps things are better on M1 compared to Intel. Again be great if someone at VW could investigate + confirm. I will contact Tech Support now...

 

18 hours ago, Neil Barman said:

- bespoke files containing problematic objects

and it would be good for you to be in touch with technical support so they can help determine what is going on for you.

 

For an example of a problematic file, I found that my 2022 SP1.1 choked hard yesterday… but it was on a civil engineer’s DWG imported into a new, blank file. Upon inspection, the DWG was an absolute mess – and most of the mess was 80,000,000 ft from origin. Of course that file was going to be problematic.

 

In my case, the same file works fine in VW2021 + not fine in VW2022 which indicates it's not file-specific. 

[Matt Panzer]

13 hours ago, E|FA said:

Thanks for the update.  My take away is that for the time being I should deselect wall closures to speed up performance. I'll report back once I've had a chance to try it out.  If things remain super slow, I'll upload files to tech support.

I would say send files either way if you feel the performance is significantly worse than it has been in previous versions.

Actually, go ahead and PM the file to me and include me some example workflows that you feel are slower.

 

 

5 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Thank you @Matt Panzer this is really good to know. And corresponds with my gut feeling that VW2022 is 'looking' at the geometry in my walls differently (+ thinking about it longer!) than VW2021 did. Although I am not using closure profiles/wrapping some of my walls do have a lot going on component-wise + it did feel like VW was stopping longer on these walls + doing lots of computing, which would tally with what your saying?

Right.  It could be.  However, we want to make sure there isn’t anything causing slowdowns that are not expected.

BTW, there were some odd cases that resulted in files size to grow unreasonably large and causing performance issues.  Those cases should be resolved in SP2.

 

5 hours ago, Tom W. said:

I will contact Tech Support as you + @Neil Barman suggest but Matt would I be able to PM my file for you to look at as well? I have enormous respect for your opinion + commitment to the issues people have here on the Forums would just be interested to know whether you are experiencing the same as me + what you thought about it.

Well, how can I say no to that?! 😉

Actually, there are some things I’d like to try in these files so please do PM the file to me.  Please also let me know what specific workflows you feel are affected the most.

[Tom W.]

6 minutes ago, Matt Panzer said:

Well, how can I say no to that?! 😉

Actually, there are some things I’d like to try in these files so please do PM the file to me.  Please also let me know what specific workflows you feel are affected the most.

Excellent thank you messaging you now!

[Neil Barman]

23 hours ago, trashcan said:

Your example of the buggy DWG is a great one! You have to know WHAT is causing a crash in VWX, and that can be a lot of effort. Then you have to figure out a work around. You still need that Civil Engineer's data - so are you going to ask them to repair it? Or are you going to redraw it? Can you repair the file yourself? And there are a lot of things that could be causing the crash. Where do you start? Or a messed up plug-in object, or symbol! You have to put the time in to figure out all those problems. If VWX is aware that certain things can cause crashes, perhaps it should warn you after some kind of programmatic audit (I.e. "the DWG you imported has bad geometry and could cause Vectorworks to crash, would you still like to import the file?"). There are other programs that do this kind of thing. 

While I will let my colleagues address the software engineering side of things, and tech support can update you on the status of any issues you’ve submitted to them, I did want to clarify about the civil engineering file I mentioned…

 

It actually didn’t crash Vectorworks. But it “choked” Vectorworks. This may not be an official technical term, but importing and trying to navigate/use the file effectively made Vectorworks appear unresponsive. I have learned from time in the software that this doesn’t typically mean that Vectorworks is incapable of dealing with the file but rather that it is working extremely hard on the file. I probably could have left Vectorworks to work on the file but right away this was a sign to me that there was something wrong with the file – Vectorworks should not have to work that hard on a well made base drawing arriving by DWG.

 

Instead of getting frustrated with the file and spending my time trying to excavate what I needed from the file, I simply requested a new file, letting the sender know what I had received in the first place so I didn’t get the same thing again. (My guess is that the sender just wasn’t that experienced at exporting files and didn’t check what they had exported before sending it.) A new file was sent and I was able to import it and use it easily.

 

So, though it would be great to have Vectorworks alert me that I had been sent an unnecessarily complicated file, in this case I could just tell that I shouldn’t bother struggling with this one. A “distant early warning” system for other known or easily-identifiable problematic objects would be great though. If you would like to contribute to such a system possibly being created, please submit a description of how you imagine the system working, and especially what you would expect it to identify, in the Wishlist section of the Forum. I can guarantee it won’t be built tomorrow, but feedback from users does contribute to development when work is done on features and enhancements.

[trashcan]

@Neil Barman thanks for thorough answer here. I'm active on the wishlist forum as well and that isn't going that great either. I love this idea of the distant warning system. Would be helpful, I'm sure - for both users and for analytics for you guys, too. 

 

I think you are absolutely right re: choking. Often the crash is probably VWX working hard and I'm impatient, but that's my point exactly, there are so many things that in previous versions it didn't choke or didn't choke as hard (and as evidenced by some contributors above). 

 

The onus of tech support shouldn't be on the consumer, and I'm afraid to say, that with VWX, it often is. I've never received an update on a bug after going through the submit process other than that it's being looked into. And then radio silence. Forever. Maybe that's a change that can be made on their side of things...

 

Trying to be constructive and honest here! 

 

How did you figure out what component of the DWG was the culprit? Sounds like some kind of bad-export, but how did you figure out it was the distance thing? When I've had buggy exports before I've usually had to diagnose it myself and then go back to my colleagues. Sometimes "bad export" isn't enough info, you know? 

 

I've imported DWGs in the past that have taken many many minutes so it being slow isn't a massive surprise to me. The progress bar is helpful for diagnosis, is that how you figured it out? 

 

 

[P Retondo]

Really encouraging exchange of information and perspectives between experienced users and conscientious VW insiders!

 

I haven’t submitted a bug report in at least a year.  My feedback has been that the effort “seems” to go down a black hole.  Maybe VW gets too many reports to do this, but it would work better if reporters received at least two notifications, one upon initial analysis (bug confirmed/not confirmed, already reported, working on it, etc.), and another at the time of resolution.

[trashcan]

@P Retondo 🎆 absolutely agree

[line-weight]

4 hours ago, P Retondo said:

 another at the time of resolution.

 

This kind of relies on the time to resolution being of roughly the same order of magnitude as a human lifespan.

[line-weight]

21 hours ago, Matt Panzer said:

We are aware of some performance issues with walls.  Most of the issues have to do with the time it takes for walls to create closure profiles and wrapping. You should see some improvement in this area an SP2 and we’re investigating more performance improvements for a later release.

 

 

On a more positive note ... this kind of comment/feedback is enormously welcome.

 

When something is broken or buggy in a new version of VW, this is annoying and disappointing, and certainly leads to some resentment about having just paid quite a large amount of money for something that hasn't been properly tested ... but all of this can be pretty much forgiven if we get some kind of info along the lines of "we know this is a problem and we hope to have improved/fixed it by XXX".

 

That's because, if it's some kind of issue that's critical to your workflow, then it's quite a big deal to know whether anyone's actually taking it seriously, and also when there might be a solution. Rather than the black hole of silence.

 

There's an issue with VW2022 that I found almost immediately on first try of it, which because of the way I work, makes it sufficiently unusable for me that there's no way I'd switch to it from VW2021. But, there was a comment (again from @Matt Panzer I think) that basically let me know it was recognised, and that it would hopefully be solved by SP2. The result of that is that I can just set VW2022 aside until SP2 appears at which point, hopefully, it might be usable for me, or at least "on balance not worse than VW2021". This is pretty helpful in my planning for things like when I attempt a switchover, whether I start setting up new projects in anticipation of things that will be possible in VW2022, and so on.

 

In contrast there are several longstanding issues where something was half-acknowledged say 5 years ago, maybe even some bug was submitted, and all there is, is a wall of silence. Even having paid for VW2022, it would be better to hear "yeah we probably won't fix that until VW2023" than just to have it left hanging with no resolution and no indication that it's being worked on.

 

In certain cases, knowing something probably just will never get fixed, would let me know that in fact instead of waiting for VW to sort it, I would be better off changing my workflow and just not trying to use that thing (a decision I end up making anyway, quite often).

Edited November 21, 2021 by line-weight

[E|FA]

@line-weight Very well said & I agree completely.