JRA-Vectorworks-CAD

Hi Jeremy, Its great to see these teaser video available in the public domain before release to create some excitement for Vectorworks 2025! Please would it be ok if I made a video for my Youtube channel highlighting some of these announced features, and directing users to check out the forum pages, and only discussing whats been announced already in the videos above?

Thanks Martyn, I will give that a go next time.

Thanks Paul, and its certainly interesting to see Vectorworks open up to AI, as an initial step. I am looking board to testing this more when I get the chance.

Please feel free to check out my first video testing the AI Visualizer with some impressive initial results. I look forward to developing some more advanced techniques further and sharing the knowledge. 🌟 Vectorworks AI has landed with the new AI Visualizer built directly into Vectorworks 2024 Update 4. 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.

Thanks @Matt Panzerthat's great to hear its in the pipeline and I am sure lots of suers will have lots of ideas and suggestions.

When I do Vectorworks 3d BIM Training with clients and we work our way up the building, slabs, walls, doors and windows are always well received, and they are impressed. However when we get on to the roof and they start asking about dormers and roof lights, it's always slightly embarrassing to show them how far behind the roof tool is compared to the other main architectural elements. While we are on this topic, why not focus on below ground walls and foundations in the future. Then we really would have all aspects required for BIM modelling, rather than having to use workaround for below ground and the top of buildings. It would be great if this discussion could be developed further and that a plan was made to address these current weak areas. Does anyone else feel this?

I have been hoping for more roof improvements and a parametric roof light tool for years. As this is such a common features of most buildings, I do not understand why is it not being addressed? Why we are on the subject the current Dormer tools are totally ancient and basic and I always have to advise clients to manually model dormers from separate walls, and roof faces and windows. Does anyone actually use the current dormers for anything other than a quick deisgn? I have been using the downspouts, gutters and custom beam plug-ins from AFDesign - Andrea Facchinello and they are excellent, and if developed further with full integration they could be a very good solution. I would love to know what the future plans for really focussing on the roof tool, fascias, gutters, accessories and roof light are?

Thanks for sharing the Render Speed Tests. These are really useful. It would be great if Vectorworks could develop these with a nice simple User interface and package it as a type of "VectorBench" up like Cinebench so it could be used as a cross platform way of testing new hardware. I think it would be a great way to get free marketing for Vectorworks in the AEC community, and also help people understand the benefit in upgrading software and hardware properly. Here's my results on a MacBook M1 Pro with 16GB RAM if anyone is interested.

Congratulations on some great new features and general enhancements in this update.

Thanks Andrew. That helpful

Thanks Andrew. Thats helpful. It's tricky to decide to go for it or wait a bit longer for the new M1X MacBook Pro 16" but that helps.

Thanks for the input. Is it fairly quite to run as I am fed up with the fan noise of my MacBook All day!

I am thinking of buying a refurbed iMac Pro 8-Core 3.2GHz Xeon W (Late 2017) Space Grey with AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 to tide me over until new M1X comes out to replace my MacBook Pro 2016. Please Does anyone else have experience of using Vectorworks and or Twinmotion on this machine, and how does it perform ?

This is a complex debate, and there is no right answer because many of the opinions and suggestions are subjective and personal. However I do think there are a few priorities that everyone can agree on. Having more customisation and a colour or no colour option would really help, and as its already pretty easy to change lots of colours via "interactive appearance settings" this would be a good way forward. I have loved using vectorworks for over 20 year and still really love using the software day to day. The enjoyment factor is very important, and much of this comes down to smooth workflows and snappy performance, that has been getting better and better in resent years. However, there are still some real log jams and awkward workflows, and the desire to address these is critical. I do think that being able to change icon sizes is critical as users get older the buttons can become harder to see particularly on high res 4k and 5k monitors. I do lots of online training and Youtube videos via Zoom and use a 4K BENQ screen I share running at 2560 x 1440 resolution and lots of people say its hard for them to read the icons. Having the ability to have at leat small, medium and large icons would be essential in my view. Finally, every simple day to day process should be analysed to see if a reduction in clicks or dialogues is possible (It will be) and these should be tackled as a priority. For example we have nested classes using the "-" that allow users to turn off a whole group of classes with one click, and also manage them using the hierarchy. Please follow this though and do the same for nested layers! Its so obvious that this would help as you could then group different design options into one group of nest layers and simply turn them on a off with a single click. This would be a huge time saver alone. As well as focussing on the UI, there are still some areas of Vectorworks that are lagging years behind and are embarrassing us. The roof tool, dormers and lack of parametric roof lights being one of my biggest concerns. Every building in the world has some kind of roof, and the roof tool needs a huge overall to make it more function, robust and also user friendly. Why do we not have a single roof and roof face tool (rather than it being hidden in the AEC menu) that work like the slab tool? Finally, please, please, please make the "Shim Gap" settings consistent so they are remembered between sessions rather than imposing a 7mm shim gap ever single time you restart vectorworks. If I had a pound for ever-time I have had to say "beware the shim gap...... Also Bi-folding doors need the same attention that sliders have had, and this has been an active request for at leat 5 years now, and still not been tackled. Finally, I would truly love to be able to drag windows and doors widths and heights directly in plan , 3D and elevation. This is how architects design, and having to punch numbers into a dialogue than repositioning windows and doors does not allow "design flow". I accept that deeper settings need the dialogues, but even right clicking or smart options specifically for doors and windows ( then other parametric in the future) would be a huge bonus as it would be a more modern way of doing things, while leaving the existing workflow for those who are used to it. Finally, I have created and shared my customised and enhanced JRA workspace with hundreds of firms and customers over the years, but the workspace does cannot control all the other aspects like preferences and data bar options etc. It would be really helpful if the workspace could set everything to do with layout and preferences etc. when first loaded ( then let people change this as required) and this would save lots of time when training as everyone would have the cat same screen set up to start with. This would mean that more vectorworks or users could create more customised workspaces that could be downloaded and shared. While we are on this, please make it possible to tick all the options at once in the dropdown quick preferences icon rather than having to come out and back into the dialogue multiple times. What does anyone think about this ideas? I would love to hear your thoughts on the above.