SIMPLIFY YOUR PROCESS 

Explore the possibilities of BIM and beyond while benefiting from the freedom to design in 2D or 3D with a‭ suite of intuitive, flexible tools that encourage you to create and explore any form.‬‬

BIM software isn’t exactly known for promoting creative expression. But Vectorworks is different. We allow you to freely sketch, model, and document your design ideas with precision drafting capabilities and the most flexible 3D modeling engine available, powered by SIEMENS Parasolid. So you’re not limited by presets and strict parameters — you have the flexibility you need to design anything you can imagine.

MAXIMIZE THE I IN BIM

Getting the most out of the “I” in Building Information Modeling is essential for optimizing your designs. Vectorworks makes it easy to quantify and analyze information as early as the schematic design phase so you can make smart decisions. Run “what if” scenarios and automate schedules, calculate costs, analyze energy efficiency to maximize each design element.

WORK WITH ANYONE 

Vectorworks allows you to easily collaborate and share files with colleagues, consultants, and clients. We offer the most default import/export capabilities available, as well as support for openBIM and IFC, and direct links with Revit®, SketchUp®, Rhino®, Photoshop®, and Cinema4D.

WIN MORE WORK 

With an extensive suite of drawing, illustration, and rendering tools, Vectorworks allows you to produce remarkable line drawings and stunning 3D presentations so you’ll impress even the toughest of clients. You can even create an immersive presentation experience with cutting-edge technology like virtual and augmented reality and rendered panoramas.
 

YOU’RE IN GOOD COMPANY. 

Discover how respected firms, design innovators, and award-winning architects around the world use Vectorworks.
 

UI MODERNIZATION

The updated and modernized user interface makes working in Vectorworks more efficient and easier to customize. The reorganized View and Mode bars bring a wide range of tools to the forefront, so you can decide how to organize and have everything you need right where you need it. And Dark Mode is now available on both Windows and Mac.

SHADED RENDERING SHADOWS AND CAMERA EFFECTS

Create higher levels of realism earlier in your design process with improvements to Shaded rendering. Take advantage of unlimited shadow casting in real-time processing to assess your designs more confidently on the fly and quickly determine lighting, camera, and material setup so you can create better visuals more quickly.

GENERAL

The shaded options dialog now includes direct access to lighting controls, like ambient and environmental lighting, and Renderworks background controls.

CAMERA SETTINGS

Access all new camera settings that allow you to define depth of field, exposure, and the ability to add bloom for camera-like effects on your shaded render views.

FASTER RENDERED SECTION GENERATION

Creating rendered sections and navigating your sectioned or clipped model will now be faster than ever before with re-engineered section viewport with Renderworks. You'll get faster and more reliable processing of a model's visible geometry and more efficient creation of section viewports, speeding up your workflow and optimizing your design process.

SHADED RENDERING SHADOWS AND CAMERA EFFECTS

Create higher levels of realism earlier in your design process with improvements to Shaded rendering. Take advantage of unlimited shadow casting in real-time processing to assess your designs more confidently on the fly and quickly determine lighting, camera, and material setup so you can create better visuals more quickly.

SITE AND PLAN

Create custom styles that let you change scale or class and layer visibility so you can change from client-facing drawings to more detailed construction plans quickly and easily.

SECTION AND ELEVATION

Quickly generate presentations from your section viewports by changing class visibilities, cut plane attributes, and visibilities at the cut plane and beyond.

3D “PERSPECTIVES”

Easily interchange different rendering modes, foreground and background rendering settings, and image effects. You can also save your data visualization settings as Viewport Styles for faster application.

PROJECT SHARING+

Project Sharing has been rebuilt in Vectorworks 2024 to better ensure project data and geometry is the most current in a project file. Project Sharing+ tracks every change, every time, giving you one less thing to check in your quality assurance process and substantially improved stability regardless of the size of your team or project.

3D DRAGGER VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS

Experience more freedom when transforming your models. The new 3D Dragger will always appear in front of the selected objects for easy access, and contextual handles for translation, rotation, and scale provide comprehensive and intuitive ways to transform selected objects without disruptions. Additional modes like snap-free, planar, and auxiliary rotation options give you the control you need to make your modeling process smoother.

EXCEL REFERENCING

Experience better connectivity to external project data stored in Excel files. With the new Microsoft Excel referencing capabilities, you'll be able to create a new reference in Vectorworks, meaning you can opt for automatic updates to referenced files. Additionally, you can make changes in Vectorworks and push the data back to Excel.

DWG IMPORT/EXPORT OPTIMIZATION

Eliminate tedious file cleanup with the optimization of DWG import/export capabilities. You'll also save time with a simplified file structure during import that also includes graphic overrides of layer and class settings. Even better, DWG and DXF file export use viewport settings to reduce duplicated data and maintain optimized file sizes.

AI VISUALIZER

Combine the strength of Vectorworks with the speed of AI image generation powered by Stable Diffusion. Directly available within the Vectorworks interface, this experimental feature uses Vectorworks Cloud Services for a zero-install, uninterrupted workflow to quickly ideate illustrative concepts or create refined images using your Vectorworks models at any stage of design.

VECTORWORKS ODYSSEY — VIEWER FOR META QUEST

Explore your designs with Vectorworks Odyssey, a virtual reality viewer app created for Meta Quest 2 headsets and beyond. Experience models in immersive VR with bird's-eye view and walkthrough modes. Gain better context for quick and thorough feedback, including cycling through design options with access to design layer visibilities.

IOS NOMAD ROOM PLAN

Using Apple’s Room Plan framework, the Room Plan feature in Vectorworks Nomad quickly and easily creates accurate 3D models directly from the iOS app. Scan multiple rooms and seamlessly combine them into a single model. Benefit from support for round and slanted walls, saving you time as you survey existing building conditions.

For The Student Or Instructor Who Needs It All

Whether your specialty is architecture, landscape, or entertainment design, Vectorworks Design Suite software gives you the freedom to create without having to use additional applications. The program provides a competitive edge by offering a large set of design tools in a single, intuitive interface. Draft, model, and present with Vectorworks Designer—the ultimate solution for the professional who needs it all.

VECTORWORKS ARCHITECT

The versatility to support your project at every stage — easily transition from massing models to BIM models to construction documents. Our design-centric BIM workflow brings everything together and increases your efficiency

VECTORWORKS LANDMARK

With intelligent objects, powerful databases, and flexible documentation features, Landmark streamlines 2D and 3D landscape workflows. It’s the only comprehensive BIM software made specifically for landscape architects and designers.

VECTORWORKS SPOTLIGHT

The professional design platform that sets the standard for the entertainment industry. Choose from a huge library of lighting, audio, video, scenic, and rigging manufacturer content to create light plots and automate paperwork to meet tight deadlines.

VECTORWORKS FUNDAMENTALS

Freely sketch, model, and document your design ideas with precision drafting capabilities and the most flexible 3D modeling engine available, powered by SIEMENS Parasolid. You’re not limited by presets and strict parameters — you have the flexibility you need to design anything you can imagine.

General Requirements

Macintosh

Windows

 Operating System

macOS 12 (Monterey)

macOS 11 (Big Sur)

 Windows 11

 Windows 10 (64-bit)

 Minimum Hardware Profile

 Entry-level Profile

 For small projects, simple models/drawings with a low level of detail, simple renderings (such as, small residential projects, small theaters, small landscaping design)

 Processor

Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5, or better
Apple M series

 RAM

 8GB or more

 Graphics Card

2GB VRAM or more, macOS: Metal GPUFamily1 or later, Windows: DirectX 11 compatible

Some integrated graphics cards such as Intel Iris Plus/Pro graphics and AMD Radeon RX Vega series are acceptable for very simple models/drawings, but a dedicated graphics card is preferable.

Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 2GB of VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 series, AMD Radeon RX 500 series).

Using multiple view panes with different visibilities in all panes requires a graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM.

 Display Resolution:

 1440 x 900 or higher

 Hard Disk:

 10GB free disk space is required for the installation. 30GB or more is required for a full installation with all libraries.

 Recommended Hardware Profiles

 High-end Profile

 For large projects, complex and very detailed models/drawings, complex renderings (such as large BIM projects, large entertainment venues, commercial sites, GIS, high end landscaping design, photorealistic rendering)

 Processor

3.0+ GHz Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 with eight cores, or better

 RAM

 32GB or more

 Graphics Card

8GB VRAM or more, macOS: Metal GPUFamily2 or later, Windows: DirectX 11 compatible

Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 8GB of VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 TI series, AMD Radeon RX 5000 series).

 Display Resolution:

 1920 x 1080 or higher

 Hard Disk:

10GB of free disk space is required for the installation. 30GB or more is required for a full installation with all libraries.

Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported.

Installing Vectorworks on flash storage (SSD) is recommended.

 Mid-level Profile

For medium-size projects, complex models/drawings with medium level of details (such as small commercial projects, mid-size entertainment venues, residential site modeling)

 Processor

2.0+ GHz Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 with six cores, or better

Apple M series

 RAM

 16GB or more

 Graphics Card

3GB VRAM or more, macOS: Metal GPUFamily1 v4 or later, Windows: DirectX 11 compatible

Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 4GB of VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 series, AMD Radeon RX Vega series).

Using multiple view panes with different visibilities in all panes requires a graphics card with at least 3GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended for large files.

 Display Resolution:

 1920 x 1080 or higher

 Hard Disk:

10GB of free disk space is required for the installation. 30GB or more is required for a full installation with all libraries.

Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported.

Installing Vectorworks on flash storage (SSD) is recommended.

Network Requirements for Project Sharing

 Project sharing requires high-speed network connections. As the network bandwidth increases, so does project sharing performance. Slower network speeds can still provide a satisfactory user experience if you minimize operations that transfer large amounts of data over the network (such as committing changes to the project file or refreshing a local working file).

Server-based LAN Sharing:

Minimum: A Fast Ethernet (100Mbit/s) network connection with minimum of 50Mbit/s on upload.

Recommended: A Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) network connection is required for large projects.

Firewalls should allow network ports used by the Project Sharing Server. The default port is 22001. It is configurable during installation.

The network must support HTTP 1.1 standard.

Server-based LAN Sharing is the recommended method of sharing for teams on the same LAN.

Minimum: A Fast Ethernet (100Mbit/s) network connection

Recommended: A Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) network connection is required for large projects.

 Cloud Sharing

Project sharing using cloud-based storage requires a high-speed internet connection (50Mbit/s or above).

 Hard Drive

 Storing large project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended.