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The very first thing I noticed was how fast the separate rendering process is. That thing is a godsend – I was whipping off PDFs with split 2D/3D screens in record time to the point where I called over Sophie and Nick (coworkers at Heritage) to take a look at how quick it was.

Second, 2.4 overall seems to be a leaner beast than 2.3 – when using it, it feels quicker. It’s an intangible sense of how fast the program is responding – I really can’t qualify it with any sort of measurable parameter; it’s more like a general feel when moving between functions. Everything seems to flow together in a more responsive manner. I took three drawings that I had worked on at home and brought them into the office to finish them off on my 2.4 RC4 there and, like I said, I was jumping around between functions – calculation dialogue boxes, setting up new article views, setting up new PDFs, rendering, SIFing into Hedberg – that at one point I had to stop and look at the top left of my screen to see what version I was running, just because it was responding so unlike how I'd expect a RC to respond.

Third, I showed Nick and Sophie the whole ”zoom on all objects in 3D” and they were both really excited at that addition. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a huge difference; it just makes our experience of using CET that much better. Like being prompted before deleting an article view – it’s a simple, small thing, but it’s like customer service in a store – little things like that can just make an experience so much nicer and smoother.

 

Just a further comment to that point – as the team lead for planning technology at Heritage, I work closely with several software providers, and the glaring difference between Configura and most other companies is their willingness and desire to fully incorporate their clientele in the development process. I don’t know of any other company that is willing to release a beta version of software to a group of users weeks before the launch in order to gain some practical ’real world’ testing experience. It speaks volumes to Configura’s committment to their clients and other design partners; numerous companies talk a great talk about putting their customer first but Configura backs up that talk with strong action. We truly feel like a partner in the development of the software, and having our voice heard like that builds confidence and loyalty. There’s none of that ’IT attitude’ that tends to come through when dealing with software developers – the group is approachable, humble and understands that incorporating their end users into a consultative process will only create a better, faster, more responsive and complete resource.

Oh, one other major change that I really like: the ’delayed download and install’ of the extensions. When I set up 2.4RC4 at work, I wanted to work in Version. 2.3 at the same time. So, I queued up my extension downloads for 2.4 for 11 p.m. that evening since I knew there would be an extensive list of extensions that I needed for the initial setup, and I didn't want to allocate resources to that task while I had such a busy day. Great feature addition: I came in the next morning, restarted 2.4 and was off to the races.

Overall, good job folks. It’s a winner. I have two projects that I'll be working on over the weekend – one is four floors of privacy wall so that will be an excellent test of the calculation/tagging/SIF functions, and the other is a couple of high-level renders that I’m doing as a personal favour to a friend of mine at an architectural company, so I’m going to really push the rendering function with those.