The review compares the GTX 285 against the AMD/ATI Radeon 4870 card which is a very fast GPU option for the Mac. Interestingly, the results of these Ars review tests indicate that the GTX 285 may be the card to get if you are very interested in running Windows games on a Mac Pro in a dual-boot situation but if you want the best performance today for professional OpenGL-based 3D Mac programs, the ATI Radeon 4870 is the card to beat. 

Some Brief Details

Ars ran several tests. One test, the OpenGL Extension Viewer test indicate that while the GTX 285 is faster at earlier OpenGL extensions, it poops out compared to the Radeon 4870 card when it reaches OpenGL 2.0 and OpenGL 2.1 — especially with an OpenGL test using GLSL 1.0. This becomes most apparent in the real world app tests for Mudbox 2009 on the Mac. 

For Cinema 4D users, the Radeon 4870 also bested the Nvidia GTX 285 card. But not but a great amount. 

With Maya 2009 the GTX performed slightly better than the Radeon 4870 and it was noteworthy to see that the Radeon 3870 (which is  a year old) really got whooped by the newer 4870 and the GTX 285. Ars says it is because these later cards are much faster at heavier scenes. 

Closing Comments

This Ars review was trying to see if the Nvidia GTX 285 for Mac, which has 1GB of video memory (twice that of the ATI Radeon 4870), would outperform the Radeon cards out there today. The short answer was it did not on the OpenGL-based pro 3D Mac software side. It was the card to get if you want to run Windows games on the Mac Pro under dual boot mode. 

However for professional Mac 3D users the GTX 285 holds no current advantages over the Radeon 4870 due to immature OpenGL drivers that appear to be holding the card back. The card is more future proof because it currently supports the OpenGL 3.0 specification and has lots of CUDA/OpenCL cores. It is also quieter so if noise is a concern for you this might be a factor. 

The review is good and has lots of details and good charts. Go here now to check out the details.

The news was definitely a shot across the bow of CAD industry giant Autodesk and its archrival Bentley. Now the US-based and Germany-backed cross-platform CAD rival, Nemetschek North America, was setting its sights on larger fish and now in position to come at them with superior technology. German industrial giant Siemens was proudly in attendance in Baltimore…to say their world-leading Parasolid geometric modeling kernel was being incorporated into the industry’s first cross-platform BIM tool. 

The Review

This product review is focused on understanding the key benefits of this milestone update to Vectorworks Architect. Admittedly, with so much work involved in getting a new modeling geometry kernel under the hood, this release is not over-flowing with brand new features, as in other past updates. Yet is not without some very compelling new tech — the stuff that can sway a potential adopter to its corner. 

This review is organized around three broad areas:

• Its new “world-class” snapping and selection system
• The impact of the new Parasolid geometry kernel, and…
• Productivity improvements and updated compatibilities features

Part 1: World-class Snapping

Vectorworks has long been known to have good intelligent cursor technology, even back in the MiniCAD days. The SmartCursor, as its been called for quite some time, would provide good visual cursor feedback to the user. In Vectorworks 2008 the company advanced the way selected objects were highlighted by providing a soft orange glow on selected objects that resided on the “active” layer. If they resided on an “inactive” layer they would glow another color. Both colors were customizable by the user.

That was a very good improvement. But it was the tip of the ice-berg!

Now in Vectorworks 2009 Nemetschek North America has pulled out all the stops — with an all new Interactive Appearance Settings. The method in which visual feedback of pre-selection and selection of objects, snaps, and extension lines is fantastic.

In order to demonstrate some of the improvements over the previous version we have two QuickTime movie files below to compare. Before we do that however we will review the new snapping technology as a whole. 

Pre-selection and Selection

A big improvement in Vectorworks 2009 is the new visual highlighting applied to items just prior to “selection.” This is called “pre-selection.” It is fully customizable via the new Interactive Appearance Settings. We have to admit we were overwhelmed when we first saw this new dialog box (see image 01) but it didn’t take too much time to master.

01 - Interactive Appearance Settings.

The Interactive Appearance Settings dialog box lists all the Interface Elements involved in “object selection” and SmartCursor technology settings. Each element can have its own color. Users can customize these settings or leave them in standard default mode. For instance, we changed the SmartCursor – Cue Background color to a light green with a significant degree of transparency. We also made the SmartCursor Cue Text dark blue, which matched the floating data bar text color. Such changes can improve the visibility of cursor interface items. 

We also changed the color of Object Highlighting for “Inactive” Layer objects to purple, as it contrast dramatically from the default orange of “Active” Layer Object Highlighting. We bring this up because in essence, with just a few custom modifications, a Vectorworks 2009 user can now dramatically improve the user interface (UI) from previous versions of the software — making for a notable more enjoyable and productive environment.

3Dconnexion’s 3D mice enable SketchUp 7 users to navigate in 3D more smoothly by tapping the power of several different SketchUp navigation tools at the same time, including Orbit, Pan and Zoom. You can watch a QuickTime movie of it we produced as part of a review here.