Vectorworks abandoning perpetual licences

[line-weight]

5 hours ago, MaWi said:

Hi line-weight

 

Can you be more specific about the issues you mentioned? I work in quality management at Vectorworks Switzerland and have never had to advise a customer against Vectorworks 2022. Vectorworks 2023 has only been released for about 2 weeks. But I already have some customers who work with it productively in their daily business.

 

Best regards, Marc

 

I think I have probably mentioned it earlier in this thread, and don't want to bore everyone going on about it, but this is a key problem for me in VW2022:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/87645-vw2022-shaded-view-flickering-hatches-patterns/

I haven't tried VW2023 yet but it appears the same problem exists:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/101453-strange-shaded-mode-artifacts/

 

 

[E|FA]

15 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I think Materials are a really powerful + beneficial addition to the software + for me personally, the fact you can't apply them to Doors or Windows for example makes no difference whatsoever

I understand completely, and I'm glad they are helpful to you.  When I looked into using them it seemed like the additional coordination of Materials, Textures, etc wasn't worth the effort for me.  One of the nice things about VW is that it is so flexible.  My point regarding Materials is that they were 95% of the way there at release, and have not seemed to make it to the finish line over the last couple of years and allow 100% of elements to use Materials.  In terms of development resource priorities, I think they would have been better spent wrapping up Materials before tweaking the color management system.  Others likely have other priorities.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, MaWi said:

In the last years my reports were always read carefully by the developers. In case of ambiguities they asked and always communicated clearly if I misunderstood something.

 

My guess is that your reports, given your formal role, are treated somewhat differently, compared to those coming from regular users. That's only to be expected, but if you want to get a feel for how frustrating it is to get bugs acknowledged and followed up, from the perspective of end users, you could have a read of this thread:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/93660-service-select-support-add-a-ticketing-system/

 

 

[line-weight]

2 hours ago, MaWi said:

I really don't understand how you can make such a negative statement, but I guess your personal experience with limitations is the reason. I would be grateful if you could send me your list of critical bugs

 

There is a category of tools/features within Vectorworks that don't exactly come under the definition of "critical bugs" - I would maybe describe them as "worse than useless". That's because they appear to be functional - after all they are included in the package - sufficiently functional that I might spend half a day trying to learn how to use them, only to get to a certain point where I realise the "limitations" mean that I have just wasted several hours of my time, because the tool is not usable. Not just because I want to try and use it to do some obscure thing, but because even trying to do a quite straightforward thing turns out not to be possible, or to produce a result that is unacceptable.

 

And usually, in the process of trying to learn this thing and eventually find it's no good, I'll find multiple old threads on this forum where others have had the same experience, and eventually given up. Have the problems been reported to Vectorworks? Well, they've certainly been mentioned multiple times on the forums. Have they been reported as bugs or requests? Who knows - because there's no formal way of tracking bugs.

 

If you'd like a prime example of this type of tool, I'd suggest you take a look at "create animation". I'd be interested to know if you've ever looked at it or tried to use it yourself to produce something - something that you'd not be embarrassed to show a client.

[mjm]

9 minutes ago, line-weight said:

 

There is a category of tools/features within Vectorworks that don't exactly come under the definition of "critical bugs" - I would maybe describe them as "worse than useless". That's because they appear to be functional - after all they are included in the package - sufficiently functional that I might spend half a day trying to learn how to use them, only to get to a certain point where I realise the "limitations" mean that I have just wasted several hours of my time, because the tool is not usable. Not just because I want to try and use it to do some obscure thing, but because even trying to do a quite straightforward thing turns out not to be possible, or to produce a result that is unacceptable.

 

And usually, in the process of trying to learn this thing and eventually find it's no good, I'll find multiple old threads on this forum where others have had the same experience, and eventually given up. Have the problems been reported to Vectorworks? Well, they've certainly been mentioned multiple times on the forums. Have they been reported as bugs or requests? Who knows - because there's no formal way of tracking bugs.

 

If you'd like a prime example of this type of tool, I'd suggest you take a look at "create animation". I'd be interested to know if you've ever looked at it or tried to use it yourself to produce something - something that you'd not be embarrassed to show a client.

thank you

[line-weight]

On 11/4/2022 at 7:15 PM, line-weight said:

If you'd like a prime example of this type of tool, I'd suggest you take a look at "create animation". I'd be interested to know if you've ever looked at it or tried to use it yourself to produce something - something that you'd not be embarrassed to show a client.

 

@MaWi of course you're under no obligation to respond to my queries, but I was curious whether you had looked at the "create animation" tool as I mentioned above.

 

 

[MaWi]

Hi line-weight

 

I know the tool very well, because I'm teaching the students how to create Animations in Vectorworks. 

 

Marc

 

Here is a 20min. Animation Tutorial for students (in German): https://vimeo.com/showcase/9399723/video/687131119

and here the result, after Garage Band & Premiere Pro: 

 

 

[line-weight]

13 hours ago, MaWi said:

Hi line-weight

 

I know the tool very well, because I'm teaching the students how to create Animations in Vectorworks. 

 

Marc

 

Here is a 20min. Animation Tutorial for students (in German): https://vimeo.com/showcase/9399723/video/687131119

and here the result, after Garage Band & Premiere Pro: 

 

 

Thanks - I've watched both videos.

 

In order not to derail this thread, I've quoted & responded to this on another thread:

 

 

 

[Mark Aceto]

On 11/4/2022 at 12:15 PM, line-weight said:

 

There is a category of tools/features within Vectorworks that don't exactly come under the definition of "critical bugs" - I would maybe describe them as "worse than useless". That's because they appear to be functional - after all they are included in the package - sufficiently functional that I might spend half a day trying to learn how to use them, only to get to a certain point where I realise the "limitations" mean that I have just wasted several hours of my time, because the tool is not usable. Not just because I want to try and use it to do some obscure thing, but because even trying to do a quite straightforward thing turns out not to be possible, or to produce a result that is unacceptable.

 

And usually, in the process of trying to learn this thing and eventually find it's no good, I'll find multiple old threads on this forum where others have had the same experience, and eventually given up. Have the problems been reported to Vectorworks? Well, they've certainly been mentioned multiple times on the forums. Have they been reported as bugs or requests? Who knows - because there's no formal way of tracking bugs.

 

If you'd like a prime example of this type of tool, I'd suggest you take a look at "create animation". I'd be interested to know if you've ever looked at it or tried to use it yourself to produce something - something that you'd not be embarrassed to show a client.

 

Although I wouldn't say "worse than useless", I'm all too familiar with this experience. I affectionally call it The Vectorworks Paradox: 2 or 3 tools that either alone or in combination with each other, will get the task 80% complete. But there's no combination of tools or workarounds that will get your deliverable across the finish line (after spending hours learning how to use those tools / workflows).

 

My specific frustration lies with introducing a tool or feature with great promise, and then abandoning it instead of further developing and refining it over the next 3 releases.

 

It sounds like the subscription model is intended to address these frustrations, so we users will certainly be holding the mothership accountable to make good on that promise.

[line-weight]

I have now received the demand for my first compulsory perpetual licence renewal.

 

This year's price is 20% higher than last year's price.

 

Correction - it's not - my mistake.

Edited February 24, 2023 by line-weight

[Jeff Prince]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

I have now received the demand for my first compulsory perpetual licence renewal.

 

This year's price is 20% higher than last year's price.

 

And so it begins…

[JuanP]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

This year's price is 20% higher than last year's price.

@line-weight I checked your account and I don't see an increase in your fees from last year. Please remember that you have a VAT of precisely a 20% - Maybe is that what you are referring to? If this is not the case, please contact our sales team - thanks

[Tom W.]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

I have now received the demand for my first compulsory perpetual licence renewal.

 

This year's price is 20% higher than last year's price.

 

Do you mean your VSS renewal? I was interested to see what the increase would be this year (mine renews 1st February) + it was only 0.72% higher. The previous year there was no increase at all. So to me this is all very reasonable. But perhaps you're talking about something else.

[line-weight]

Major apologies!

 

Embarrassingly I failed to notice that one was including VAT and one wasn't.

 

So, it hasn't in fact changed.

 

Sorry about that.

[Tom W.]

Hey how come I got charged £6 extra + you didn't??!! 🙂

[zoomer]

3 hours ago, line-weight said:

Major apologies!

 

Embarrassingly I failed to notice that one was including VAT and one wasn't.

 

So, it hasn't in fact changed.

 

 

Well, but it did for me recently at exactly that price pace.

But here it is Computerworks responsibility area ....

 

And it even looks like not everybody else here (if at all)

had price increases 🙂

[shorter]

12 hours ago, Alien said:

 

Hello everyone!

 

I just visited first time VectorWorks webpage with intention of buying lifetime licence. Have been working with AutoCAD for decades (Intel based Macs) but wanted to switch now to VectorWorks since I switched to Apple silicon chip and because of the Spotlight and possibility to pre-do my shows on GrandMA3.

I see there is no use of skipping from AutoCAD to VectorWorks. Thank you but no thank you.

 

p.s. Andrew Anagnost and Biplab Sarkar having brunch(at Maldives) at costs of the end-users. 

p.p.s. I will just go to the venues and spend the time working interactively on the desk.

 

Goodbye.

 

You can buy a secondhand license.  They are perpetual.  Clearly you don't need to up to date technology if you use AutoCAD so buy a 2024 license secondhand and sit on it for the next 8 years.

[_James]

20 hours ago, shorter said:

Clearly you don't need to up to date technology if you use AutoCAD

Zinger!

[line-weight]

So has it been confirmed that perpetual licenses, beyond VW2023, can officially be sold secondhand?

 

There will of course be a finite & ever diminishing number of these out there.

[beanus]

Sketchup here I come

[MaWi]

I really have nothing against SketchUp and have even worked as a certified SketchUp trainer for several years. But Vectorworks really offers so much more functionality that I would never switch back.

[E|FA]

8 hours ago, line-weight said:

So has it been confirmed that perpetual licenses, beyond VW2023, can officially be sold secondhand?

 

There will of course be a finite & ever diminishing number of these out there.

I haven't seen any change to policy in 2024 but might have missed it.  My understanding is that perpetual licenses can be sold, but Service Select can't be transferred with them so there is no upgrade path available.  In order to upgrade one would need to switch to a subscription.

[Pat Stanford]

My understanding is the same as @E|FA's.

 

So if you currently have a license and want to be able to upgrade it at some point in the future you need to keep you Service Select contract. If you let Service Select lapse, you will have a perpetual but not upgradeable license for whatever your last version was. This license will run fine until a hardware or OS upgrade makes it so that version of VW will not operate.

 

While dropping Service Select may save you some money in the short run, I can see it being a very expensive hit at some point in the future.  If you hardware dies or is stolen and you have to get new hardware that requires a new OS that is not compatible with your version of VW then you will have to add VW into the costs of recovery.

[line-weight]

If one could know (and we can't) that there would be a reliable supply of second hand licences well into the future then a viable strategy might be to buy a secondhand perpetual licence every 2 or 3 years, skipping 2-3 versions ahead at each stage. And you could choose to buy these such that they were already at their final SP release for each version.

 

It will be interesting to see what the going price tends to be, for a secondhand copy of VW, now. Due the fact that you can no longer use it as a step along an upgrade path, it ought to be rather lower than it was a few years ago.

[zoomer]

16 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

While dropping Service Select may save you some money in the short run, I can see it being a very expensive hit at some point in the future.

 

As long as VSS conditions stay agreeable and you want to stay with VW,

everyone should keep VSS running.

When things change, there may be alternatives too.