Jeff Prince

I'm of the same option, having done both. A house is generally composed of standardized materials and rectilinear shapes that aren't difficult to describe with pencil and paper. Doing an interior van fit out is difficult, like yachts or aircraft where the only relatively flat surface is the floor. That being said, where there is will, there is a way. I usually just mock up my interior builds with cardboard and use those as patterns to cut out the pieces needed by hand. The only time I would bother doing a model and CNC is if I was intending on manufacturing at some quantity or using an exotic material. I guess if you don't have rudimentary carpentry skills, a CNC might seem like a good idea. When I was learning Vectorworks, I modeled my existing home for educational purposes because I had nothing better to do. Fortunately, there is always better things to be doing these days 🙂 Here are some of my "overcamping" rigs through the years.

I hope Vectorworks looks beyond UK conventions when fixing these tools and considers the copious information shared on this forum about the needs for existing tree documentation around the world. The US has widely adopted standards in this regard.

Seems like a lot of time and money to invest in just two projects. You may not become proficient enough in the software to hit your deadlines. If I were in your position, I would just use paper and pen or sketchup to come up with conceptual models and then hire out finished drawings with an expert. It would save you time and money, perhaps help you avoid costly mistakes too. There are lots of talented architects and CAD people in Eastern Europe willing to put in a lot of work for a very reasonable fee, probably less than you would spend on software, definitely less if you value your time. A simple CAD program like BricsCAD or similar would be more than sufficient for your project and easier to learn. Plus, cutting out cabinets and such is largely a 2d process once you break down your 3D assembly.

its similar to the US where we use nominal dimensions to describe general situations and materials. I agree with Jonathan on his room explanation, that has been my experience too. You don’t want to be saying or labeling a room as “4567 mm x 8463 mm”. It would be 4600mm x 8500mm, or 460 cm x 850 cm if centimeter (centis) is the local convention. Where we get highly specific and go to the actual 1.0mm is in structural systems, details, and assembly drawings. It gets interesting when combining Western hemisphere products with metric ones in because the buildups need to be carefully considered to end up where you want finished dimensions to be round in local units. Precast items like block, pavers, and curbs in a metric country are typically produced in metric dimensions. Same with locally fabricated metalworks such as handrails, fencing, and screens, though sometimes the raw material like tubing would be imperial. When I had lumber on projects, it comes in imperial units. But then finished carpentry items and veneers came in metric 🙂 I look forward to a day when we just use metric for everything.

architecture is typically drawn to 1.0 mm precision. In the USA, we dimension federal architectural projects in mm (really, the feds are metric). Site design is typically done in meters (0.000 m). Some places like architecture dimensioned in cm, so verify what your client needs. As a landscape architect, I have to produce drawings in metric all the time in both mm and m ( site vs playground equipment for instance).

only works on vector based PDFs, ie created from cad or illustration programs. Raster based PDFs don’t have anything to snap to.

If the AutoCAD drawing is georeferenced correctly AND you know where the origin is supposed to be AND how it is orientated... then it will actually come into a NEW Vectorworks correctly in both 2025 and 2026 when you ACTIVATE "this drawing contains georeferenced geometry"... even when using a geographically rotated North and/or a rotated UCS in AutoCAD. I think you may be experiencing a coincidence where the AutoCAD file's origin is at the same place as your georeferenced VWX file, though that would be an odd coincidence. The best workflow seems to depend on starting a new VWX file without any georeferencing activated. Then, when you import the DWG it will set things correctly if you use the settings: In the advanced import settings, the "align with internal origin" will be automatically selected, the other options locked out. In the GIS settings, select "use the following coordinate system", which comes from the DWG. Check the "set the document's coordinate system to match. This will result in a correctly placed DWG, even with a rotated north and rotated UCS in AutoCAD. Your VWX file will then match the AutoCAD georeferecing and your Geoimage tool in VWX along with coordinate system will function correctly. The UCS isn't handled optimally, as the Vectorworks coordinate system does not rotate to match the AutoCAD UCS, which then requires the use of rotated plan view to get something similar, but different. I guess it's all part of Vectorworks legacy 2D/3D behavior regarding 2D coordinates and the screen. The problem with importing a dwg into an existing VWX drawing is many fold, especially if it contains a rotated view and/or rotated UCS. It would be nice if the software vendors provided clear instructions on how to set documents up properly AND how to share them between different platforms. Mistakes in this area are costly, the subtle differences in VWX coordinate system management are pretty difficult for people to wrap their heads around and small variations can be impossible to visually see. GIS data can be especially problematic if it is transformed incorrectly.

AI comparisons and marketing copy, typically a waste of time to read, this being no exception.

it has been reported a bunch. There appears to be no incentive to fix this 7 years running!

These are the problems. It doesn’t matter how fancy your computer is, it can still be a source of conflict. If you can’t take the time to find out what you are doing wrong…

Your experience is not typical, so maybe it’s on your end. It sounds like you have several unrelated issues going on (hardware and workflow) It’s hard to know what the issues are on based on the description provided. Maybe try to reproduce one issue in a new drawing and see what triggers the behavior, then bring forward that one issue here and folks will help. Lather, rinse, repeat until all the issues are resolved.

Have you tried design layer referencing?

Disagree. Some tools need refinement, but the whole thing should not be made like Solidworks! I never really liked a lot of Sketchup’s behaviors in terms of face editing.

I guess you didn’t read my entire post….

The problem with this software and many like it, is it has not been optimized to take advantage of all the power the latest machines offer AND many processes just take a long time due to the way they were programmed. you sometimes don’t see any gain running certain operations on fast vs slow hardware, site models being one of the best examples. Many of my site edits take 1/2 the time on the last intel based iMac compared to the latest high performance thinkpad. It has been this way for many years. it seems like all legacy software suffers this fate. Too much time spent on introducing “new” features and not enough fixing and optimizing the existing toolsets. That’s one reason upstarts seem to be more nimble than legacy products. For this and other reasons, it seems like there is rarely an actual advantage to buying bleeding edge hardware. A benchmark might look fast, but actual day to day operations will reveal the truth.