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Website: http://www.vectorworks.net/2018/ |
Vectorworks® Architect
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
 | SIMPLIFY YOUR PROCESS Unlike other software, Vectorworks has the flexibility to support your entire project from beginning to end, or anywhere in the process — from conceptual design, to fully coordinated BIM models, to construction documents. It’s the versatile solution you need to pull everything together and increase your efficiency. |
 | IMAGINE IT. DESIGN IT. DOCUMENT IT. 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.
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 | 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. |
More Information >
New in 2018
 | Creative BIM Modeling With Vectorworks, you can go beyond BIM parameters and presets and freely sketch, model, and document your design ideas. |
 | Collaboration Collaboration and communication are key to the success of any project. Vectorworks makes it easy to team up with others in the design and construction process. |
 | Communicate Your Ideas With Vectorworks, you have best-in-class and easy-to-use technology for sharing your vision with anyone, anywhere. |
Student Portal
For The Student Or Instructor Who Needs It All Whether your specialty is architecture, landscape, or entertainment design, Vectorworks Designer 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 With Vectorworks Architect, you'll enjoy the robust capabilities of BIM, great documentation, and intelligent tools while maintaining your creative freedom to design in 2D or 3D. |
 | Vectorworks Landmark Vectorworks Landmark offers landscape-specific tools and superior 2D and 3D design capabilities to help you create a better built environment. |
 | Vectorworks Spotlight Whether you design lighting, scenery, sets, events, theatrical productions, or exhibits, Vectorworks Spotlight will help make your next production memorable. |
 | Vectorworks Fundamentals With superior 2D and 3D capabilities, Vectorworks Fundamentals is an intuitive, easy-to-use modeling and documentation platform to produce complex drawings. |
Renderworks® With the power of the CINEMA 4D render engine, Renderworks provides a vast array of high-quality presentation techniques. | |
System Recommendations
The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2018. 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 10.12 / Mac OS X 10.10 / Mac OS X 10.11 | Windows 10 (64-bit) Windows 8 (64-bit) Windows 8.1 (64-bit) Windows 7 SP 1 (64-bit) |
General Requirements | Macintosh | Windows |
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 | 64-bit Intel Core i5 (or AMD equivalent) or better | |
RAM | 4GB or more | |
Graphics Card | OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 1GB of VRAM or more Some integrated graphics cards such as Intel Iris graphics are acceptable for simple models/drawings, but a dedicated graphics card is preferable. Vectorworks with Vision requires a dedicated graphics card, preferably released in the past three years. | |
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 | 64-bit Intel Core i7 (or AMD equivalent) clocked at 3GHz or better | |
RAM | 16GB-32GB or more | |
Graphics Card | A dedicated OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 4GB of VRAM or more Vectorworks with Vision requires a dedicated graphics card, preferably released in the past three years. | |
Display Resolution: | 1920 x 1080 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. 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 | 64-bit Intel Core i5 (or AMD equivalent) clocked at 2GHz or better | |
RAM | 8GB-16GB or more | |
Graphics Card | A dedicated OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 2GB-4GB of VRAM or more Vectorworks with Vision requires a dedicated graphics card, preferably released in the past three years. Using multiple view panes with different visibilities in all panes requires a graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large files. | |
Display Resolution: | 1920 x 1080 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. 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). | |
LAN Sharing | 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). This method of sharing works best with small teams or small projects. It is not recommended for large teams or large projects. | |
Hard Drive | Storing large project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. | |
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 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. 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.
Vision Prob> requires a dedicated OpenGL 3.0 compatible graphics card preferably released in the past three years. We do not recommend any integrated Intel video chipset. While Vision may run under these environments, we do not support them due to their lack of performance and speed.
For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations for Vectorworks 2018, 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 Vectorworks 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, a Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) network is required for a fast and fluid experience.
Project sharing using cloud-based storages requires a high-speed internet connection (50Mbit/s or above). This method of sharing works best with small teams or small projects. It is not recommended for large teams or large projects. Although project sharing requires high-speed network connections in general, 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).
Resources
Download a trial of Vectorworks: http://www.vectorworks.net/trial/
Download a student version of Vectorworks: https://student.myvectorworks.net
Buy now: http://www.mmhk.com/en/contact
Case Studies: http://www.vectorworks.net/en/case-studies
Gallery: http://www.vectorworks.cn/en/gallery/
