Vectorworks Architect

Vectorworks® Architect allows architects and interior designers to take advantage of many new feature and functions. With Vectorworks Architect, you can handle all phases of a building’s design:  quickly drawing the first idea or sketch, easily developing the design, creating compelling presentations, and documenting construction plans, all while visualizing the design in 2D or 3D.

Vectorworks® Architect allows architects and interior designers to take advantage of many new feature and functions. With Vectorworks Architect, you can handle all phases of a building’s design:  quickly drawing the first idea or sketch, easily developing the design, creating compelling presentations, and documenting construction plans, all while visualizing the design in 2D or 3D.

Flexible:
Enjoy the Freedom to Design the Way You Want
With the Vectorworks Architect program, you’re not limited to a prescribed workflow, so you have the freedom to work the way you want to work. Incorporate your existing approach to design to make the best use of the skills you already have in-house. Collaborate seamlessly with co-workers and colleagues with other software applications.

Going Beyond the Building
Make the entire design stand out. Architecture is more than just the building. With the Vectorworks Architect program, you can design anything—graphics, interior details, hardware, furniture, fittings, or whatever you can imagine—without having to learn or use additional applications.

Efficient Workgroup Capabilities
Break up complex projects. Whether you’re a sole practitioner collaborating with other professionals or a large firm dividing work among different members of the team, workgroup referencing provides a flexible way to split even the most complicated project into manageable pieces.

Easy File Translation
Get on the cutting edge of digital practice, and move your building models fluidly between design, analysis, and construction packages with Vectorworks’ IFC 2x3 translator. Import and export AutoCAD® 2011 (and earlier) files. Send out drawing sets as multi-page PDFs.

Supporting Sustainable Building
When your goal is sustainability, the Vectorworks Architect application is an indispensible tool. You can maximise materials and minimize energy expenditure with our built-in spreadsheets that calculate building performance through programming analysis (with parametric Space objects), detailed material take-offs, and lighting requirements. You can conduct sun studies with the solar animation command. And you can export data-rich building models using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) 2x3 interoperability standard used by energy simulation, material take-off and costing, and 4D construction sequencing applications. With such comprehensive data, you’ll answer the “how many” and “how much” very early in the process, and ensure a smaller carbon footprint.

Google Friendly
Import concept models from SketchUp® and access thousands of models from Google’s 3D Warehouse. Export 3D models to Google Earth®.

Endless Digital Images
Make your work even more compelling and easier to communicate with digital imagery. Import scans, digital photos, or web images. Import or export a wide array of image files, including Illustrator® EPS and native Photoshop® PSD files. Also, export your design for inclusion into your firm’s marketing materials or website.

Cutting Edge 3D
See it in 3D. Send models to CAD/CAM machines, CNC routers, and other 3D printers. The Vectorworks Architect package supports a number of standard 3D file formats, including Parasolid X_T, IGS, SAT, KML, STL, and 3DS.

Versatile:
Create, Model, and Present with One Application
Move easily between tasks. From design concepts to construction documentation and every design phase in between, the Vectorworks Architect product marries precision drafting and flexible modelling with state-of-the-art technology.
Create, model, and present easily and precisely with one application. With Vectorworks Architect software, you can do it all. The program boasts a comprehensive set of design tools to support your entire practice.

Powerful Conceptualisation
Find your inspiration and start drawing. Or if you would like, import hand sketches, pictures of the site, and even documents from other applications. Invoke ideas in 2D, and explore them in 3D with freeform models.

Innovative Building Information Modelling (BIM)
Whether you’re streamlining costs, analysing materials, increasing your energy efficiency, or just creating sophisticated designs, Vectorworks Architect’s powerful BIM tools work hard for you. You can implement them at any phase, and they feature the smooth collaboration, focus on design, advanced documentation, and intelligent tools that Vectorworks software is known for. With innovative and leading parametric technologies at its core, the Vectorworks Architect product has brought the most powerful tools for design to the BIM process. Our program ensures you the best possible platform for making the change to BIM easy. It uses the world’s most robust 3D modelling engine, Parasolid, to tackle the simplest to the most complex of models. And the 2D Dimensional Constraint Manager (DCM) ensures a solid foundation for associating objects, so you can adopt BIM without having to “re-invent” your firm’s workflow. With a BIM workflow, you can work faster while reducing drawing errors. Cutting-edge capabilities link plans, elevations, sections, perspectives, reports, and even rendered views, so a change to one updates the others. Query the model for information at any time, and using the IFC standard, move your building models to a growing selection of validation, analysis, and construction applications.

Superior 2D
Produce high-quality construction documents with ease. The Vectorworks Architect application offers precision drafting tools, intelligent objects for building, detailing, MEP, furniture, millwork, machine parts, annotations, and thousands of free symbols from leading building product companies. A database enables you to store, manage, and recall notes. The Issue Manager keeps track of what, when, and to whom files were issued, and it automatically dates your title blocks. Batch print drawing sets or export them as multi-page PDFs at full or reduced sizes.

Automatic Analysis and Reporting
Stop counting items in your drawings. Automatic data tracking does the tedious work for you—built-in worksheets continually keep tabs. Use the framing module to effortlessly create framing models, plans, and elevations, as well as framing takeoffs for floors, walls, and roofs. Take advantage of 3D wall components and IFC-compatible slabs that produce dynamic and accurate wall sections and material estimates. The application goes further than automated schedules and materials takeoffs. It provides a user-defined, quick, and accurate way to assign custom data to any object and create unique reports. And, take advantage of our Solar Animation feature to conduct solar studies.

Unique Presentations
Define and communicate your signature look with our advanced, high-end technology that’s famous for helping our users achieve beautiful, graphically rich presentations. Tap into our largelibraries of entourage and unlimited palettes of colours. Your style is not limited by “cookie-cutter” looks. Add gradients, tile and image fills, stipples, and hatching. Easily import digital images and graphics. Use our exclusive sketch rendering technology to change hard-lined drawings into soft, hand-sketched illustrations. Unique page layout capabilities make it simple to arrange presentation boards.

Renderworks
If you think that RenderworksTM looked good before—wait until you see this! We’ve teamed with the award-winning CINEMA 4D render engine to provide dramatic speed and quality gains that are integrated right into your application, so you won’t waste time importing or exporting the model as the design changes. You’ll have deft control of texture mapping and more intuitive shader options to create photorealistic or artistic renderings like never before. And, you’ll really move with speed increases that are five to seven times faster for global illumination renders!

Intuitive:
Work The Way You Think
Easy-to-use Interface and Drafting Tools
Do what you like to do best—design. You won’t waste time getting up to speed because the Vectorworks Architect software’s simple, customizable interface and what-you-see-is-what-you-get display make it easier to learn and use than standard CAD applications. No matter what you’re switching from, the Vectorworks Architect application interface will be familiar. Vectorworks’ SmartCursor™ technology replaces manual drafting tools, so even inexperienced CAD users can make the switch easily.

Tailored for Your Success
Work in tandem with the application. Vectorworks Architect is designed to think the way you think. In addition to designing with lines, arcs, and circles, you can design with walls, doors, windows, roofs, and slabs. The building objects are easy to edit and display in both 2D and 3D views. And with our scripting language, VectorScript, you can program everything from simple scripts that automate routine tasks to full-blown commercial applications.