 |
Website: http://www.vectorworks.net/2017/ |
Vectorworks Architect Software
Designers choose Vectorworks Architect software because it provides a solution that supports the creative process instead of replacing it. From 2D and 3D to BIM and beyond, Vectorworks Architect delivers a robust suite of capabilities that will enhance your workflows from concept to construction and improve your design process.
Product Overview
 | The Architect's Bim Tool Vectorworks Architect is the industry’s only modeling, drafting, and documentation software built with BIM at the heart of the design process. With Vectorworks Architect, your firm will benefit from best-in-industry building information modeling tools. With the software’s design-oriented BIM capabilities, you will streamline costs, refine construction details, and increase your energy efficiency – all without altering your preferred process. Flexible parametric objects help you create a virtual prototype of your designs, with as much or little detail as needed. Edit and analyze your model while simultaneously generating interactive schedules. |
 | Industry-Leading 3D Solutions
Capture your visions in 3D and design without limitations withVectorworks Architect. Our first-in-industry, cross-platform graphical scripting capabilities offer new ways to explore form and function, while our advanced suite of Parasolid-based solids and NURBS-surface tools provides you with the ability to create any shape and easily transform geometry. In addition, Vectorworks offers you the capability to model complex forms with our subdivision surface modeling built on Pixar’s OpenSubdiv library. With our intuitive interface, you will design in any 2D or 3D view using modes in modeling tools that react intelligently to faces of objects as you move your cursor.
|
 | Multiuser Environment Collaborate and maximize efficiency. Project Sharing enables architects, interior designers, and others to unify their workflows by allowing the project team to work on the same Vectorworks file concurrently. Streamline your journey from simple sketch to final product. |
 | Seamless Interoperability Move your BIM models fluidly among design, analysis, and construction packages with the robust import and export capabilities ofVectorworks Architect. Using industry standard file formats like IFC, you can communicate effectively with consultants and collaborators who may be using Revit or other BIM software. Vectorworks Architect also offers DWG/DXF/DWF and PDF support for the creation and analysis of construction documents. Exchange concept models from Rhino or SketchUp. Support for both the import and export of 3DM, SKP, and COLLADA file formats, as well as OBJ, STL, and 3DS, lets you explore the full range of design options by incorporating information from multiple sources, consolidating data into one place quickly and easily.
|
 | Superior Documentation Vectorworks Architect empowers you to design without constraints. With a broader array of drafting and annotation tools than other BIM applications, you will produce stunning presentations and the highest quality documentation while you design. Use your Vectorworks BIM model as the basis to create and refine custom schedules and construction documents directly from your design, supporting changes you make throughout your iterative design process. |
 | Inspirational Rendering Vectorworks Architect offers solutions to develop compelling client presentations that highlight your skills, build your brand, and grow your business. Featuring best-in-industry 2D and 3D graphics and versatile rendering capabilities in Renderworks® — the rendering application powered by MAXON’s Cinema 4D render engine — you can design, document, and communicate with your customers from a single platform. |
 | Successful Designers More than half a million designers around the world are inspired by the transformative design capabilities of Vectorworks Architect. With intuitive features for working individually or across teams, Vectorworks software becomes an extension of the creative process. Designers choose to use our solutions because they can explore countless design options while creating a comprehensive BIM model and construction documents. |
More Information >
New in 2017
 | Resource Manager Vectorworks software's Resource Manager puts the ability to create, edit, and apply desired resources to your designs at your fingertips. Easily find what you need with powerful search and filtering, attach keyword tags, and access your resources directly from Vectorworks software's parametric tools. |
 | Irrigation Tool Planning for a site’s irrigation involves considerations and calculations related to both its physical features and resource availability. Vectorworks software meets all of these needs with innovative irrigation design tools |
 | Integrated Rendering All Vectorworks software packages include Renderworks, the best-in-industry rendering feature set built on the award-winning Cinema 4D render engine. Renderworks provides the tools necessary to visualize your work throughout the design process while producing clear and accurate illustrations. |
 | The Architect's BIM Tool Vectorworks software provides a purpose-built suite of tools that equip you to create a building information model for documentation and collaboration without inhibiting your preferred design process. Our 2017 features support the future of BIM workflows with IFC4 compatibility, direct Revit import, and project sharing capabilities that allow you to work concurrently on a single file with your entire project team. |
 | Virutal Reality and Webview Easily share your designs with current clients and collaborators using Vectorworks software’s immersive webview and virtual reality features. Generate a link that allows anyone, anywhere, to view your model in 3D on any device. |
System Recommendations
The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2017. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware.
General Requirements | Macintosh | Windows |
Operating System | Mac OS X 10.10 Mac OS X 10.11 | Windows 7 SP 1 (64-bit) Windows 8 (64-bit) Windows 8.1 (64-bit) Windows 10 (64-bit) |
Processor | 64-bit Intel Core i5 (or AMD equivalent) or better | |
RAM* | 4GB minimum 8 GB recommended 8GB – 16GB recommended for large files and complex renderings. | |
Graphics Card** | Vectorworks: | |
Screen Resolution | 1440 x 900 minimum 1920 x 1080 or higher recommended | |
* See the discussion in the Optimizing Performance section below.
** See the discussion in the Graphics Card section below.
Additional Details
Graphics Cards
IMPORTANT – Several Vectorworks features have placed higher demands on graphic hardware. Additionally, the performance and quality of the graphics provided by the Vectorworks Graphics Module depend directly on the speed, memory, and supported extensions of the graphics card. These new features have the potential to provide a very fast and fluid experience if used on capable hardware, or a noticeably slower experience if used on older or incompatible hardware. Graphics cards should support at a minimum OpenGL version 2.1; cards not meeting this recommendation will have limited functionality and poor performance, particularly when rendering in OpenGL mode. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be.
The amount of Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1920x1080 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM. Larger displays should use a modern graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended.OpenGL rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and require at least 1GB, with 2GB of VRAM or more being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of OpenGL shadows and edges, especially in situations where you have any combination of the following:
- many lights
- point lights
- image textures
- anti-aliasing
- high shadow quality
- excessive geometry
and if you have a graphics card with less than 1GB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your graphics card.
We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. The majority of display problems reported to our Technical Support department have been traced to older video drivers.
For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations for Vectorworks 2017, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for "OpenGL".
Remote and Virtual Machines
We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes but you should not expect good performance in these environments, however, especially with interactive screen feedback.
We do support Vectorworks running under Boot Camp on Mac machines. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.
Maintenance Releases
Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step.
Optimizing Performance
For users who work with large files and complex renderings, we recommend running with at least 8GB of RAM. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have a large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used.
Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can reduce this size by opting to not install some of the larger Vectorworks content files.
Project Sharing and Network Bandwidth
The performance of Vectorworks when working on a shared project over the network will depend on the available network bandwidth. If the network bandwidth is insufficient, operations that transfer large amount of data over the network will be slow.
We recommend at minimum a Fast Ethernet (100Mbit/s) network connection. For large projects, Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) networks are highly recommended for a fast and fluid experience. Slower networks can still provide a satisfactory user experience if operations that transfer large amount of data over the network, such as committing changes to the project file or refreshing a local working file, are kept to a minimum.
More Information
For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2017, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for "2017".
Resources
Download a trial of Vectorworks: http://www.vectorworks.net/trial/
Buy now: http://www.mmhk.com/contact
Success Stories: http://www.vectorworks.net/success-stories
Gallery: http://www.vectorworks.net/gallery/
