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.