Hello guys. Old user of Visual Arq back in 2016. I really disliked how slow it was then but since BIM is up and coming and more frequently used, I have contemplated getting my own license again.
Can someone tell me if they feel like VA has improved since 2016 or am i gonna lag out just as bad as Revit all over again (the reason I dropped VA because I felt that I’d rather have the lag in a separate program than Rhino)
P.S. I hate Revit…
Hi @aeaechan96 The public version of VisualARQ in 2016 was VisualARQ 1. We are just about to publish VisualARQ 3. I couldn’t list here the large number of new features, changes and improvements we have implemented since then. But if it helps, you can check the what’s new pages of VisualARQ 2 and VisualARQ 3 to get an idea of the most important new features:
I’ve been using Visarq since around that time. The lag is dramatically better since then. At that point you were dependent on a lot of plan cuts and other items that bloated the file and slowed everything down. Since then they’ve transitioned to live section cuts that reduce the weight and speed everything up. Rhino 7 and 8 are more powerful too, but I think are a little slower than 6. A lot of your lag probably depends on how complicated your model is and how often you work in a rendered/arctic view rather than wireframe or shaded. My models tend to be in the range of 100-200mb with very little lag. So much so that my meetings with clients usually involve just moving through the model.
VA3 is a big improvement from VA2, but there are still some beta kinks getting ironed out.
A big difference between VA and Revit is that the people writing the software actually read the forum. It’s super common to find an issue in Revit that people have been complaining about on forums since 2010. There are still issues in VA but they get addressed much more quickly and the developers are more open about the process.
Longstanding major issues are reflected ceiling plans (fixed in Rhino8/VA3) and dropped dimensions when dimensioning on sheets (a known issue that I understand is somewhere in the works). The dimensioning issue is annoying and requires more review time, but it’s not as bad as Revit where it just informs you it will be deleting all 500 or your dimensions whether you like it or not.
Hi there! I read those articles and they provide a lot of insight, thank you! May I know if we are able to try VA3 without a VA2 license and/or if one buys VA2 now, would it be RH8 compatible, etc. This is as I’ve a few projects from clients that utilize IFC files/a lot of companies utilizing Tekla, Revit etc. and I feel like VA might be a big help in integrating our work into the final product.
Furthermore, as one who’s used Revit before (although I greatly dislike the lag/no backward and forward compatabilities) I do enjoy very much the ability to make schedules in a BIM manner of cadding than how my company does it using text dots and manual counting (I feel like a caveman when doing up tables that can be easily done in a BIM workflow) so I was wondering if that’s a thing in VA.
TIA btw, I think I might buy/try VA soon.
Hi @aeaechan96 we are close to releasing VisualARQ 3. In that moment you will have 90 days to try it, regardless if you tried VisualARQ 2 in the past. If you purchase VisualARQ 2 now, you will get the upgrade to VisualARQ 3 for free (and will be able to use the Beta version before the final version ships).
VisualARQ 3 brings important improvements for schedules/quantity take-offs.You can see most of them in this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/Iw529J-rNnU?si=YumkvO5mFfKRr-fv