[CNC_Kid]

mine is HP Omni 100-5155 (x64 Win 7 Home), 8GB RAM, Athlon II X2 260u 1800MHz dual-core. onboard Radeon HD 4270 w/ 256MB ram. a low end HP all-in-one. but this was just for doing trial of the CAD programs. i am not a heavy user of CAD so i dont see why this PC cant work for me. this AMD CPU is ill-performing vs any Intel i7 CPU.

[mmoe]

mine is HP Omni 100-5155 (x64 Win 7 Home), 8GB RAM, Athlon II X2 260u 1800MHz dual-core. onboard Radeon HD 4270 w/ 256MB ram. a low end HP all-in-one. but this was just for doing trial of the CAD programs. i am not a heavy user of CAD so i dont see why this PC cant work for me. this AMD CPU is ill-performing vs any Intel i7 CPU.

There are a couple bits of logic that I think you are using which many new CAD users also mistakenly believe. First, it really doesn't matter if you use the software for 5 minutes a day or 10 hours a day. It will work the same either way. The software doesn't get less stable because you are a heavy user, and in most cases a heavy user actually has less trouble because they are more familiar with the software anyways and don't ask it to do things that it just can't or won't do. Not being a heavy user will not have any effect on whether or not Viacad runs well on your computer. It either will or it won't. If it doesn't, it's likely that most other CAD products will also have problems and it would make more sense to spend money on another more capable computer than another software package. Oddly, most people do it the other way and then complain about the next CAD system that's "buggy".

The other misnomer is that the problem may be that it's "cheap" software, meaning that since it was $99, it doesn't have nearly the requirements that more expensive software has or is poorly coded because it costs less. In fact, Viacad 2d/3d is going to run exactly the same as Shark FX would run on your computer. Shark FX costs $1800. They use the exact same code to do the exact same functions. The only difference aside from price is the number of available features. Otherwise, if you were to create two identical models, one in Viacad and one in Shark using the same tools, both applications will either work or error in exactly the same way because they are for all practical purposes identical in how they interface with Windows and the computer's hardware. It always seems like there are more people having problems with Viacad 2d/3d or even Viacad Pro than there are with Shark FX (recent Windows 8 problems aside, which none of them were meant to run on). What I find to be the common thread is that those who have Shark FX more commonly have capable hardware to go along with it, while those who have Viacad 2d/3d are more commonly using under-powered hardware. Interestingly, the hardware never gets the blame, but it's really the only difference and makes it the logical source of the problems.

I don't mean to make this a "mine is better" type of post, just to give you a realistic view of what you can expect to experience. rfenn's system below is capable of about 12 times as much computations and has a dedicated 1gb video card while yours is shared system ram, not dedicated video ram. As he said earlier, he has not had any significant stability issues. The specs that you list are actually slightly less than those of my laptop, which is 9 years old. I still use it today, and it has Viacad on it. I've replaced the keyboard twice from wearing it out and I've replace the batteries and display ribbon cable a couple times as well, yet it's still working. I've also maxed out the ram and installed Win7 Pro on a SSD. It is possible to run Viacad in a reasonably stable manner on a computer such as yours or my laptop, but you will have to exercise some significant patience. There are some operations that will seem like they have frozen the system, but will just take up to 3 or 4 minutes to finish computing, even if Windows thinks it isn't responding.

I also use Bobcad on my laptop as well as Creo, Bonzai 3d, Draftsight, Estlcam and Meshcam. All of these packages just take an extreme amount of patience to get anywhere with them, but with sufficient video ram and a lot of system ram, you can probably get by without significant stability issues provided you work slow and patient. Also make sure that you have all the latest Windows updates as well as the latest video drivers installed, as they can significantly improve reliability.

[ger21]

Just to add my 2¢.
I've been using 3D CAD and Modeling software for about 20 years now.
The user enjoyment factor has always been proportional to the power of your PC. As time has gone by, this is even more important today than it was in the past.
As PC's get more powerful, software developers try to utilize and take advantage of that power. The end result is that every new version of software tends to run slower than the version before it, on the same PC.
I use AutoCAD. A 10 year old copy of AutoCAD will run faster on todays $400 PC's than it ran on a $4000PC 10 years ago. The current version would be painfully slow.

The good news is that with the power of todays PC's, they can have a longer life. I used to build a new PC every 2 years max. Today I can get 5 years or more out of a high end PC.
I'm about to build a new one that will cost about $2500, but it will last at least the next 5 years, and should outperform any off the shelf consumer PC available in the next few years.

[Bob La Londe]

I run VC 8 on a 2 core 5th or 6th generation old Systemax I bought refurbuished with XP 32 bit from Tiger direct and it wokrs ok. I have issue onlys when I am working with complex 3D stuff with lots of modifications in the history. Its seems to me v7 was about the same. Stable with simple stuff, and less stable the more work you had done. Autosave is your friend. Another thing I found that helped is when I am sure I am at a solid spot in development of a piece of work I stop and save it. Then I close the file and the program and reopen it. I lose the history, but it seems to be stable again for quite a long time. I do mostly 3D in ViaCad with 2D being mostly supplemental to 3D. For straight simple 2D jobs I usually just do them in my CAM software.

I ran V7 on the machine with the onboard video card for a while, but I admit that now I am using a PCI-Express Nvidia dual head card. I did that to free up some memory though. The biggest problem though is that a 32bit OS can not access all the memory I could put on the motherboard.

Anyway, the dual head card is awesome. I often have ViaCad open on one monitor and CamBam open on the other. For complex 3D that will cause memory problems, but for simple stuff its very handy. I also often have a refference document, calculator, or web page open on one screen and CAD or CAM open on the other. My big complaint is that the tool bars don't move when I move ViaCad from one monitor to the other.

[ger21]

Download the demo of Display Fusion. It manages your dual monitors and adds lots of cool features. You can have independent taskbars on each monitor, and move programs between monitors with a single click. It's well worth the small fee they charge.

[CNC_Kid]

so, one thing i noticed today is that there are actually different builds of v8. so, i think this discussion needs to include build #'s.

[mmoe]

so, one thing i noticed today is that there are actually different builds of v8. so, i think this discussion needs to include build #'s.

I just use the standard build 986 that came on the disc I bought. I've also worked on other builds all the way up through the most recent Beta for V9 and in all honesty they work nearly identically in terms of stability issues. I think there is one newer build of V8 than what I use, but I doubt you'll be able to tell any difference between them.

For what it's worth, looks like you can get 2d/3d V8 on Amazon right now for $58.27 as a download. If you then felt the need to upgrade to Pro for another $129, you'd have Pro for a total of $188 or so. If you buy the download from Amazon, just beware that their licensing system doesn't really work very well, which is not Viacad's fault. The normal Viacad licensing system works differently and the Amazon version I think is out of their hands. You can get it to work, but it may give you headaches. If you have a problem, I'd recommend calling support at:

Technical Support Phone :
312-470-1759
800-856-9601

These are the numbers listed in the Punch forums and generally seem to get you to a person better than those on the Punch website.

[Bob La Londe]

I got V8 off Amazon a while back (month or two) and it was a shipped disc in a box with regular commercial packaging. I had no issues with the licensing. Did it on-line as part of the install if I recall. The price was slightly less than their current Amazon offering too. I couldn't pass it up even though 7 was working for me.

[rfenn]

I downloaded from Amazon around Sept 2013 timeframe - I have v8.0.3 Build 1016.

mmoe, you mentioned autosave and I had to hunt down where to set that up. Looks like it is off by default. I personally don't like autosave because I'm pretty meticulous about saving a version off when I'm at a certain point or am planning a major change, so I like to control when that occurs. It looks like there is a Revert option, so probably no problem having autosave on and then being able to Revert instead of jumping out of file and reopening. When I was learning on Bobcad V24, that definitely taught me to save off versions because it would crash and burn on me. After a while, you learn what the risky operations are.

[CNC_Kid]

the Trial version is not build 1016, its a older build.

50% off, use 50OFF coupon code. i bought v8 Pro

anyone know if the Trials of 2d3d(v8) vs Pro(v7) are different? or does trial of 2d3d v8 give all the features of Pro(v8) ???

[mmoe]

I got V8 off Amazon a while back (month or two) and it was a shipped disc in a box with regular commercial packaging. I had no issues with the licensing. Did it on-line as part of the install if I recall. The price was slightly less than their current Amazon offering too. I couldn't pass it up even though 7 was working for me.

When I bought it, I got both the digital version (three of them, one for my laptop and one for each of my kids' laptops) and the boxed version (one local at Fry's where they price matched Amazon). I also got a much better price than it is now, but even at $99 it is well worth the cost. I paid somewhere around $35 each for it when I bought it.

It's the digital version (downloadable from Amazon not Punch) that has a weird licensing system that is not the Punch system. After having problems with it on both of my kids' laptops, the Punch customer service told me to just use the same disc I had got at Fry's and they would allow the same license number to be used on all of them since I had proof that I had purchased that number of licenses. I keep a copy of each purchase with each laptop in one of the case pockets anyways, but I would recommend buying the disc version if you get it on Amazon. Unfortunately, the disc version is usually a little more than the download, so many buy the download and have problems which are unfairly blamed on Viacad when they are Amazon problems.

The only issue with licensing Viacad is that you have to set it to run as an administrator on Windows 7 (probably Vista as well) when you are entering the serial number/registration number or it will ask you to do it again, and again. It needs administrator rights to install the serial number permanently.

[mmoe]

I downloaded from Amazon around Sept 2013 timeframe - I have v8.0.3 Build 1016.

mmoe, you mentioned autosave and I had to hunt down where to set that up. Looks like it is off by default. I personally don't like autosave because I'm pretty meticulous about saving a version off when I'm at a certain point or am planning a major change, so I like to control when that occurs. It looks like there is a Revert option, so probably no problem having autosave on and then being able to Revert instead of jumping out of file and reopening. When I was learning on Bobcad V24, that definitely taught me to save off versions because it would crash and burn on me. After a while, you learn what the risky operations are.

With Viacad, somehow the autosave also increases the stability of the system in general, so I highly recommend it be set up. You can have it set to do a pretty long interval between autosaves and it still increases stability. It's more about whether it's on or off than the actual saving of the file, even as strange as that may sound. Things that would crash Viacad with autosave off do not crash Viacad once it was turned on. It's funny because the reason I turned autosave on was to mitigate the losses when crashes happened, but after I had done so I did not get the crashes anymore. Either way, it does reduce the chance of loosing data. One of the things that happened before I started using autosave is that a crash would sometimes corrupt the file itself. Autosave fixed that issue as well, so after that the files have never been corrupted by a crash and the crashes are far and few between now. I've only had to use the backup version once in the last 3 months or so, where before using autosave I would have like a backup version dozens of times in the same period.

[mmoe]

the Trial version is not build 1016, its a older build.

50% off, use 50OFF coupon code. i bought v8 Pro

anyone know if the Trials of 2d3d(v8) vs Pro(v7) are different? or does trial of 2d3d v8 give all the features of Pro(v8) ???

I'm not sure, but I think the trial probably only has the level that the product would come with. If you trial the 2d/3d, it probably only has what it would come with. I never did the trial back when I bought it. I had bought my first copy at Fry's for $35, so there just wasn't a whole lot of risk involved. I bought it first thinking that I just needed something with good 2d capabilities since Windows 7 had broken the offset feature on my Turbocad Pro seats, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how well Viacad really works. I quite literally knew it was better than Turbocad Pro for 3d modeling within minutes of using it.

Thanks for the coupon code. I had been thinking of upgrading to Pro for quite a while, but there just aren't that many things in Pro I really can't live without. However, the coupon code works for upgrades as well, so for $65 it seems hard to go wrong there, at least until my wife sees another receipt for something I'm sure she'll think I didn't need.

[CNC_Kid]

if one buys 2d/3d using coupon, and then buys the upgrade with coupon, v8 Pro is just $100. i avoided that hassle but paid an extra $25.

[mmoe]

Here's a quick video showing some of the settings. I like to configure a few extra snap angles, so you can see where that is done. You can add angles for creation of geometry or location of geometry. For some reason, the 1016 build seems to have touble saving these snap angles if you have a lot of them, so I'm finding you have to make some choices. Normally, I like the "alignment angles" to be 0,90,45,-45 and the "creation angles" to be 0,90,45,-45,30,-30,60,-60 so that I have a wide range of options. You don't want too many alignment angles as it can be almost too much to even start an entity, but having a lot of creation angles (those that show up after you start makiing an entity) is usually very useful. I'm finding that in this build I can only have alignment angles of 0 and 90 if I want all those creation angles, so that's how I've set it up. Not that big of a deal, but it is nice to have the 45 angles as well for alignments. If you don't mind loosing the 30 and 60 degree creation angles, you can have the 45's in the alignments, so just looks like some trade offs. I'll be curious to know if others are having the same issue or if this is a hardware specific issue.

Otherwise, I find that having the line weight scaling set to off is better as well as setting the "edge color" to something close to black for both surfaces and solids. Viacad does not display true black (0,0,0) as black, but rather a grey. Same goes for white. If you want a "black" on your screen, define a custom color to be say, 3,3,3, which is for all practical purposes black. Since it is just a notch above true black, Viacad will display it as it was defined and it looks like black. For white, you can set the custom color to 253,253,253 and it will look white.

I also prefer to reverse the zoom direction, but that's a preference thing for sure. Some like it the way it comes. I also like to set the selection fence so that I can catch an entity that is only partially in the window, and leave that set to 80% so that you still need to select most of it. Just works better for me. Also shown is the autosave setup.

Viacad Settings - YouTube

[CNC_Kid]

v8 Pro comes with Alignment of 0;90
and Creation of 45;-45

odd that v8 2d/3d is different

[mmoe]

v8 Pro comes with Alignment of 0;90
and Creation of 45;-45

odd that v8 2d/3d is different

2d/3d comes the same, I just type in the ones I want. It's user configurable. It looks like it may be more about hardware than software though. I had just updated my motherboard a couple weeks ago and I just found that 2d/3d also lost some of those snaps the same as the Pro version has. On my old hardware configuration and on my laptop, this is not the case. It could also be a Windows update that has changed the behavior. My new PC has been updated to the most current, while my old PC lacked some of these updates (as does my laptop, if it ain't broke....).

All you do to add angles is add a comma to the end of what's already there, type the angle number (i.e. 45 or -45), then add another comma to put another number in. The software will add the "degree" sign itself later, so you don't have to worry about that, just the number itself. If you chose 45 degrees, you also have to do -45 degrees or it will only snap to 45 in 2 of the 4 quadrants. You could also do 135 degrees (90 plus 45) instead of -45 and it's the same, up to you.