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Project Sharing is a multiuser environment that streamlines project management and execution. It was developed to help Vectorworks users manage projects involving multiple users, fostering effective collaboration and communication within a project team. Project Sharing is a single-file structure providing a mechanism that allows multiple users to work within - and access parts of - a file, simultaneously. In this article, we will show you how to set up a project sharing file and the do’s and don’ts of the project sharing workflow. To make a Project Sharing file: First, start by going to File > Project Sharing within the document you wish to make the .vwxp or Project Sharing File. We recommend having the file already saved in the proper shared location before making it into a project sharing file. (Example: A unique folder in the desired cloud or server. This folder will exist to host the project sharing master file and nothing else) The Project File (the .vwxp file) should be placed on a server or a shared network location that is accessible by all team members. This means that all team members must have full access to the server. They must be able to read, write, rename, delete, create, etc. to the folder on the server or shared network location in which the Project File is kept. This is necessary for when check outs, releases, commits, and refreshes occur. Once you have confirmed this file is saved in its own folder on the cloud or server, you can begin. The first step in the process is to determine which network protocol this file will be shared with. You can choose SMB or AFP, (Do NOT use a mixture of SMB and AFP structures.) We recommend keeping the option “Automatically open a Working File after setup is complete” checked. This will automatically create a working file after completion. A working file is a local copy of a Project File specific to the user who has created it. The Working File is used to add to, subtract from, or modify the Project File. In essence, all modeling and drawing creation is done in a Working File and then is committed back to the Project File. A Working File is designated with the file extension .vwxw. When a Working File is open, the title bar on the file will include WORKING FILE to indicate that you are currently in a Working File (FIGURE 2). The Working File is kept on the hard drive of your local computer. Select “Next >” to proceed to the next step: Here, you will be given the chance to add users to the project file and determine permissions. Management in Project Sharing is done through a robust, permission-based system with options to control access and rights among the design team. Team members are granted specific types of access to either layers (design and sheet layers), or to an object or groups of objects. They can check out those layers or objects, work on them, and then check them back in. Vectorworks communicates the status of the changes being made by project members along the way, keeping the entire team informed during the project. Users can be added by selecting the “Add” button. When you add a user, it will take you to the new user dialog: Here is where you can put in the username (typically resembles the username of the machine being used) and the user’s full name. Choose a color to uniquely identify the user and then choose their permission clearance. Here are the following permission levels: ADMINISTRATIVE The Administrative permission level essentially has no restrictions. This permission is automatically assigned to the person who first creates the Project File. Exclusive to this permission level is the ability to manage the project sharing settings (such as Project File backup policies) and the ability to add, delete, and edit the users on the project. The administrator will also have the ability to do an administrative release if needed. It is highly recommended that there be more than one Administrative user on each project as a backup policy. This can be an office-wide BIM or CAD manager along with the project’s model manager PROJECT The Project permission level is the least restrictive level in the project (aside from Administrative). This includes the ability to change and commit document preferences and settings. Project permission is also required to create, edit, and delete references that are being used. This permission level is also necessary to create and delete classes. LAYERS AND RESOURCES The Layers and Resources permission level is needed to create, edit, and delete resources. This includes, symbols, textures, wall styles, slab styles, etc. Resources that do not require this permission level to create and edit include worksheets, records, scripts, and script palettes. A person with this permission level can also create, edit, and delete dimension standards within the document preferences. LAYERS-UNRESTRICTED Aside from the ability to create, edit, and delete layers, this permission level also allows you to commit saved views back to the Project File allowing others to access these views. This permission level or a higher permission is needed to create, edit, delete, and commit publish sets and batch render jobs. Lower permission levels can access publish sets and batch render jobs but cannot create them or commit them to the Project File. LAYERS-RESTRICTED The Layers-Restricted permission level allows you to create, edit, and delete objects and information on layers that already exist in the Project File. Resources that can be created, edited, and deleted with this permission level include worksheets, scripts, and script palettes. It is important to note that this permission level allows you to create saved views, working planes, and edit any unrestricted document preferences so that you can continue to work in your Working File as you like. These types of changes or additions, however, will not be committed to the Project File. READ ONLY As indicted by the name, the Read Only permission level only allows you to navigate through the file. You can access and view all objects, layers, and information, as well as update out-of-date viewports. You can change layer and class visibility in your Working File but cannot commit these changes. This permission level does allow you to publish drawings and run export commands. If a team member is attempting to complete an operation for which they do not have the proper permission level, a dialog box will appear. This dialog box will inform them of what permission level is required to complete the operation. Select “Next >” to proceed to the next step: In this window, you will be given the chance to determine which layers will be considered “Master layers”. MASTER LAYER A designated, special layer that changes infrequently over the life of a project. A master layer may contain critical information that should not be changed or overwritten. An example of such a layer may be a design layer that holds a project’s structural grid. You can have multiple master layers in a project. Select “Next >” to proceed to the next step: The next window will allow you to determine how the project sharing file will be backed up. Chose the default option to create an automatic backup folder in the same location as the Project File or choose a custom location and save the backup folder in an easy to remember location. Once you have determined the frequency and the number of backups you need, select “Finish”. This will automatically take you to your new “Working File”. You can read any additional information regarding project sharing at the following link: https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=20&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=40 Do’s and Don’ts of Project Sharing: When Creating the Project File Do NOT use a mixture of SMB and AFP structures. You must have full read/write/delete/rename access permissions to the project folder, subfolders, and Project Files. Everyone working on the project must be using the same version of Vectorworks. If your VPN is slow, it will take time for Working Files to Update to Project Files and visa versa. Important Note: Vectorworks does not support using a virtual machine with Project Sharing. Vectorworks Cloud Services If using Cloud Services you must at least be running 2021 Service Pack 4. If using Cloud Services the desktop Cloud app must be running. Access your files through the local folder or the Cloud App. Share files using the correct permissions. Save your Working File to your local hard drive. Dropbox If using Dropbox, the Dropbox app must be up-to-date. Do NOT save your Working File on Dropbox. RULES Do NOT rename the Project File Do NOT move your Project File or rename folders that contain your Project File. Do NOT save your Working file on a server. Do NOT duplicate Project Files or your Working File. Only use one Working File per user. You must remember where you saved you last working file. GENERAL NOTES Nobody can open a Project File after it has been created. A Working File is different than a Project File. File>Save only saves to your Working file. Save and Commit saves changes from your Working File to the Project File. Close and Release releases anything you’ve checked out to your Working File from the Project File. Save and Commit, and Close and Release will take more time to complete over a wireless connection. If a Project Administrator releases someone’s exclusive lock, that user will be unable to commit their changes from their working file. The user will need to create a new Working File, then copy and paste changes from their old ‘unlocked’ Working File to the new Working File. Vectorworks provides an alert when the Administrator tries to release a user’s Working File. Visit the following links to watch video tutorials and learn even more about Project Sharing: COFFEE BREAK - PROJECT SHARING IN VECTORWORKS INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT SHARING: THE MULTIUSER ENVIRONMENT

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2024. In some demanding cases, we suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements Operating Systems macOS 14 (Sonoma) macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit 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, and photorealistic rendering) Processor: 3.0+ GHz Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 with eight cores or better Apple M1 Max or higher RAM: 32GB or more Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 Max 32GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily2 or later, 8GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 8GB VRAM or more 64GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 12GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays or a 4K or higher resolution display. 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 4090, AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX). 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-sized projects, complex models/drawings with a medium level of details (such as small commercial projects, mid-size entertainment venues, and residential site modeling) Processor: 2.0+ GHz Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 with six cores or better Apple M1 Pro or higher RAM: 16GB or more Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 Pro 16GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily1 v4 or later, 4GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 4GB VRAM or more 32GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 8GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays or a 4K or higher resolution display. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 4GB or VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g., NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, AMD Radeon RX 6800XT). 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. 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, and small landscaping designs) Processor: Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5, or better Apple M1 or higher RAM: 8GB or more Apple M1 and later Macs share memory for general processing and graphics. We recommend more memory for these systems than for traditional systems where RAM and VRAM are separate. Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 8GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily1 or later, 2GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 2GB VRAM or more 16GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 4GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays or a 4K or higher resolution display. Some integrated graphics cards, such as Intel Iris Plus/Pro/Xe series, are acceptable for 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 4060, AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT). Display Resolution: 1440 x 900 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. Hardware Requirements for Project Sharing Server Operating Systems: Windows Server 2012 or later Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit Note: Installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package for Visual Studio 2017 is required. Some Windows systems will already have this installed. If not yet installed, the installation files can be downloaded from the Microsoft Visual C Downloads page. macOS 14 (Sonoma) macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Note: Project Sharing Server can also be installed on any system that supports Docker, such as Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: A flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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 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. File-based 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. Hard Drive: Storing project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Hardware Requirements for Site Protection Server (network license manager) Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit macOS 14 (Sonoma) macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: 30MB free disk space is required for installation. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. Redshift System Requirements “Redshift by Maxon” render style employs the computer’s GPU and CPU to perform photorealistic rendering. The following system requirements relate specifically to this render style. Redshift will use the computer’s GPU for rendering if it meets the following requirements. If the GPU does not meet the following requirements, only the computer’s CPU will be used to perform Redshift rendering. A message shown in the Edit Render Style resource dialog box denotes when Redshift is available or not available. When Redshift is chosen but not available, Custom Renderworks render style is used instead. Minimum Requirements for Redshift using CPU only macOS: Apple macOS 12 (Monterey) or later Windows: 64-bit Windows 10 macOS M-series: Apple M1 16 GB Windows: 8 GB of RAM Processor with SSE2 support (Pentium 4 or better) macOS Intel: 8 GB of RAM Minimum Requirements for Redshift using GPU macOS M-series: Apple M1 16 GB Windows: 8 GB RAM NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 5.0 or higher (https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus) and 8 GB VRAM macOS Intel: 8 GB RAM AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU or later and 8 GB VRAM See supported AMD GPU list below Single GPU Recommended Requirements for Redshift using GPU macOS M-series: Apple M1 Max 32 GB or better Windows: 16 GB of RAM or more Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or better NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 7.0 or higher (https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus) and 8 GB of VRAM or more macOS Intel: 16 GB of RAM or more AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU or later and 8 GB VRAM or more See supported AMD GPU list below Multiple GPUs macOS: List of supported AMD GPUs for Redshift MacBook Pro Radeon Pro Vega 16/20 Radeon Pro 5500M/5600M iMac Radeon Pro Vega 48 Radeon Pro 5500XT/5700/5700XT iMac Pro Radeon Pro Vega 56/64 MacPro Radeon Pro Vega II / Vega II Duo Radeon Pro W5500X/W5700X Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT Radeon W6800X MPX Thunderbolt eGPUs Radeon RX Vega 56/64 Radeon Pro WX 9100 Radeon VII Radeon RX 5500/5500XT/5600XT/5700/5700XT Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT Radeon W6800X MPX See this document for more information about macOS compatibility of specific GPUs 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 macOS Metal GPUFamily1 and Windows DirectX 11; cards not meeting this recommendation will not work. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and for other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Windows users should install the latest video drivers from their card vendor’s web site, especially for new PCs and after installing Windows OS updates. MacOS users should use the latest stable version of macOS available (non-beta), as macOS includes ongoing fixes for video drivers. From our testing, Metal drivers in old macOS versions may show serious issues on certain specific video hardware; after updating to the latest macOS the same hardware performed well and without issues. Similarly, minor version updates may improve stability; graphics problems seen on certain hardware on macOS 10.15.1 were resolved simply by upgrading to macOS 10.15.7. For these reasons, we recommend using the latest macOS with your system. How to find the macOS Metal version: You can view the graphics hardware information by choosing About This Mac -> System Report… -> Graphics/Displays. On laptops with more than one GPU, the System Report will show the less powerful “integrated” video GPU then the more powerful “discrete” video GPU. Metal compatibility is listed as: “Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4”, meaning this hardware can be described as “GPUFamily1 v4". VRAM: 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. When using multiple displays or high resolution displays, more VRAM are required to keep the same smoothness with the same file. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive in large Vectorworks documents. Rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive. If you want to take full advantage of 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 minimum specifications, you should consider upgrading your graphics card. M-series and Unified Memory: Apple M1 and later Macs share memory for general processing and graphics. We recommend more memory for these systems than for traditional systems where RAM and VRAM are separate. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. Renderworks requires AVX support on AMD and Intel CPUs. Renderworks will not work on older Intel Macs that are missing AVX support, even if macOS 11 is installed on them by bypassing official Apple installers. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering applications which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example: Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- Enscape: https://enscape3d.com/system-requirements/ Twinmotion: https://twinmotionhelp.epicgames.com/s/article/Twinmotion-System-Requirements Omniverse: https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/ Remote and Virtualized Environments Vectorworks runs successfully within remote and virtualized environments. We are confident that offices that wish to operate using virtualization technologies will have success with this option, if the software is given adequate resources comparable to the desktop system requirements listed elsewhere in this document. Offices must develop IT in-house or contract out IT support for their chosen virtualization system. Vectorworks Inc. can only provide general guidance, since many virtualization options exist, and every virtualization technology has its own details realized uniquely for each office. Vectorworks is a graphical application and as such requires high quality graphics support from the virtualization technology chosen. The graphics recommendations listed in the system requirements for desktop operation are a good guide for what is necessary for virtualized GPUs. The virtualized copies of Vectorworks must have sufficient graphical support to operate successfully. High network bandwidth and low network system latency are also critical for acceptable user experience when using Vectorworks in virtualized environments. 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 32GB 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. Several tasks in Vectorworks leverage multiple CPU cores. Faster or slower processor clock speeds also 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below.

Vectorworks, Inc. has released update 3.1 for the Vectorworks 2024 product line. This update includes quality improvements that enhance your everyday experience with Vectorworks 2024. Important Enhancements Fixes the offset distance issue when inserting doors and windows Improves speed when recalculating worksheets with space records Restores launching Vectorworks Cloud Services from the Vectorworks application For a full list of improvements in this update, please visit this page. Installing the Update This update is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2024. To install the update, please select Check for Updates from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). Please submit a support request in the customer portal if you have any technical questions or problems during this process. -------------------------------------------------------- Vectorworks, Inc. has released its third update for the Vectorworks 2024 product line. This update includes the following quality improvements that enhance your everyday experience with Vectorworks 2024. Important Enhancements General Improves general stability. Fixes the dimension, dimension area, and dimension volume parameters in data records for title block borders. Restores Trim tool functionality. Interoperability Supports importing and exporting to Revit version 2024. Optimizes DWG export for landscape area objects. Design Suite and Architect The Tools > Show or Hide Solibri Inside Palette command has been added to the Design Suite and Architect workspaces. Landmark New PlantMaster plugin available in the Install Partner Products palette Users with a PlantMaster subscription can access an extensive plant library to select plants and send them to Vectorworks to populate a planting schedule. Users can then send the schedule back to PlantMaster to create plant reports and presentations with high quality graphics. (After installation, PlantMaster displays in the Window > Palettes > Web Palettes menu.) Spotlight In files created in Vectorworks 2023 and opened in Vectorworks 2024, resolves an issue that caused Vectorworks to close when using the Cable Configuration dialog box to replace a cable. Improves performance when inserting new trusses. Correctly imports bridle part symbols. On Windows, fixes an issue that caused the source column in the equipment list to appear blank. Improved MVR export Vectorworks now exports the following items: Shutter positions and angles Custom lights (exported using glTF geometry) Color names assigned to lighting devices Gobo images GDTF fixture profiles selected from the data folder Position names (even if the lighting positions do not exist) Seating sections Unsupported characters have been removed from exported file names. Project sharing no longer requires you to check out objects when exporting to MVR. Improved GDTF support glTF is supported in GDTF files. For lighting devices, GDTF geometry is shown when the Use GDTF Geometry parameter is selected on the Object Info palette. The web browser displays the correct information when editing a GDTF file. Using SVG files in a GDTF file is now supported. Braceworks On the macOS, restores the Cross Sections pane of the Braceworks Calculation Report dialog box. Vertical and horizontal lines now display correctly in the Braceworks calculation report when the report is generated repeatedly. Restores colored icons in the Braceworks Calculation Overview dialog box. ConnectCAD Resolves scaling issues with circuits and equipment items. Layout rooms no longer delete the location data of equipment items. For a full list of improvements in this update, please visit this page. Installing the Update This update is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2024. To install the update, please select Check for Updates from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). Please submit a support request in the customer portal if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.

12/14/2023 - UPDATE 2.1 released Resolves an issue with the Spotlight Cable tool Fixes crashes when updating viewports --------------------------------------------------------- Vectorworks, Inc. has released its second update for the Vectorworks 2024 product line. This update includes the following quality improvements that enhance your everyday experience with Vectorworks 2024. Important Enhancements General Support for Omniverse Live Sessions Vectorworks now provides the ability to collaborate with other Omniverse users in a synchronized live session. With the new Live mode of the Omniverse Connector tool, Omniverse Live Session models update automatically in real time as users change Vectorworks models. The default detail setting for Shaded rendering has been increased to High in all template files. Enscape's real-time 3D visualization capabilities are now available on Mac. Improves the general stability of worksheets. Rendering Fixes issues with the Camera Match Fine Tune View and cameras linked with viewports. Restores the Shadow Catcher shader. Improves Redshift renderings on macOS Sonoma. Resolves issues with lights in the Visualization palette on Windows. In project sharing, resolves an issue with title blocks that changed all sheet layers to be checked out in a new project sharing file. Resolves an issue with the Resource Manager crashing when quitting Vectorworks. Interoperability Enhances IFC support and default Data Manager settings for windows, doors, ramps, grid lines, columns, and pilasters. Adds Data Manager support for IFC project and building story entities. Improves IFC support for custom property sets, referencing, and project sharing. Improves IFC4 export when the model is far away from the origin. Architect, Landmark, and Spotlight New data tags are available for fences. Fence and railing tool worksheets have been added. Architect New catalog of Aristokraft® cabinets is available. Improves door thresholds and window sills at wall closures. Enhances the representation of doors using pocket door configurations and representation of windows with custom sashes. Improves the interactive sizing and handing widgets for doors and windows. Enhances the auto join behavior of the Structural Member tool, along with its representation of custom profile shapes and view in Top/Plan. Improves Wall tool interactivity and joining. Enhances Selection tool performance when dragging inserts in walls. Improves the general stability of railing and cabinet objects. Resolves an issue that caused some walls to disappear unexpectedly. Landmark Improves the stability of site models and site modifiers, site model cut and fill behavior, and the presentation of site model proposed surfaces. Spotlight Improves cable tools stability, cable undo operations, and automatic cable routing. Cable resources can now be accessed when saved in user or workgroup folders. When a hoist is placed on a truss or hanging position, it acquires the position name. The Cable Area tool can be limited to a layer. Double-clicking an item in the component graph selects the item in the drawing. Improves the sort order of wire sizes and connections. Importing MVR now allows for scaled primitive objects. Find and Modify commands, along with worksheets, now update lighting device parameters. Enhances the stability of and information in inventory and equipment lists. Improves worksheets created from inventories. Summary key The summary key no longer allows duplicate objects in its component list. General improvements have been incorporated into summary key geometry and alignments. Allows focusing lighting devices without the Parts record. Vision Adds support for gLTF/glb backed GDTF files. GDTF-based conventional fixtures can be focused and saved in Vision. Built-in webcam used in M-Series MacBook Pro is now supported as a capture device. ConnectCAD Enhances the Create Panel View command workflow: More accurate naming of connectors. Restores the Convert to Unstyled option. Improves updating display tags on new linked sockets. Improves handling of devices with the same name. Improves socket selection from within a panel layout style; lists the sockets of the devices that are linked to the style’s instances and the sockets of the devices of the style’s device type. Better handling of mounting depth for rear mounted equipment. Better handling of nested rooms. Resolves an issue that caused rack frames and equipment items to move outside of the 3D rack when the rack frames and equipment items were selected and moved. For a complete list of improvements in this update, please visit this page. Installing the Update This update is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2024. To install the update, please select Check for Updates from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). Please submit a support request in the customer portal if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2023. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements Operating Systems macOS 14 (Sonoma) macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit 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 Apple M1 Max or higher RAM: 32GB or more Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 Max 32GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily2 or later, 8GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 8GB VRAM or more 64GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 12GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays, or a 4K or higher resolution display. 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-sized projects, complex models/drawings with a 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 M1 Pro or higher RAM: 16GB or more Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 Pro 16GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily1 v4 or later, 4GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 4GB VRAM or more 32GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 8GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays, or a 4K or higher resolution display. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 4GB or VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 series, AMD Radeon RX Vega 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. 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 M1 or higher RAM: 8GB or more Apple M1 and later Macs share memory for general processing and graphics. We recommend more memory for these systems than for traditional systems where RAM and VRAM are separate. Graphics Card: macOS M-series: M1 8GB or higher macOS Intel: Metal GPUFamily1 or later, 2GB VRAM or more Windows: DirectX 11 compatible, 2GB VRAM or more 16GB Unified Memory (M-series) / 4GB VRAM or more is recommended when using multiple displays, or a 4K or higher resolution display. Some integrated graphics cards such as Intel Iris Plus/Pro/Xe 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). Display Resolution: 1440 x 900 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. Hardware Requirements for Project Sharing Server Operating Systems: Windows Server 2012 or later Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit Note: Installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package for Visual Studio 2017 is required. Some Windows systems will already have this installed. If not yet installed, the installation files can be downloaded from the Microsoft Visual C Downloads page. macOS 14 Sonoma macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Note: Project Sharing Server can also be installed on any system that supports Docker such as Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: A flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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 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. File-based 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. Hard Drive: Storing project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Hardware Requirements for Site Protection Server (network license manager) Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit macOS 14 Sonoma macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: 30MB free disk space is required for installation. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. Redshift System Requirements “Redshift by Maxon” render style employs the computer’s GPU and CPU to perform photorealistic rendering. The following system requirements relate specifically to this render style. Redshift will use the computer’s GPU for rendering if it meets the following requirements. If the GPU does not meet the following requirements, only the computer’s CPU will be used to perform Redshift rendering. A message shown in the Edit Render Style resource dialog box denotes when Redshift is available or not available. When Redshift is chosen but not available, Custom Renderworks render style is used instead. Minimum Requirements for Redshift using CPU only macOS: Apple macOS 11.5 (Big Sur) or later Windows: 64-bit Windows 10 macOS M-series: Apple M1 16 GB Windows: 8 GB of RAM Processor with SSE2 support (Pentium 4 or better) macOS Intel: 8 GB of RAM Minimum Requirements for Redshift using GPU macOS M-series: Apple M1 16 GB Windows: 8 GB RAM NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 5.0 or higher (https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus) and 8 GB VRAM macOS Intel: 8 GB RAM AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU or later and 8 GB VRAM See supported AMD GPU list below Single GPU Recommended Requirements for Redshift using GPU macOS M-series: Apple M1 Max 32 GB or better Windows: 16 GB of RAM or more Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or better NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 7.0 or higher (https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus) and 8 GB of VRAM or more macOS Intel: 16 GB of RAM or more AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU or later and 8 GB VRAM or more See supported AMD GPU list below Multiple GPUs macOS: List of supported AMD GPUs for Redshift MacBook Pro Radeon Pro Vega 16/20 Radeon Pro 5500M/5600M iMac Radeon Pro Vega 48 Radeon Pro 5500XT/5700/5700XT iMac Pro Radeon Pro Vega 56/64 MacPro Radeon Pro Vega II / Vega II Duo Radeon Pro W5500X/W5700X Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT Radeon W6800X MPX Thunderbolt eGPUs Radeon RX Vega 56/64 Radeon Pro WX 9100 Radeon VII Radeon RX 5500/5500XT/5600XT/5700/5700XT Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT Radeon W6800X MPX See this document for more information about macOS compatibility of specific GPUs 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 macOS Metal GPUFamily1 and Windows DirectX 11; cards not meeting this recommendation will not work. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and for other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Windows users should install the latest video drivers from their card vendor’s web site, especially for new PCs and after installing Windows OS updates. MacOS users should use the latest stable version of macOS available (non-beta), as macOS includes ongoing fixes for video drivers. From our testing, Metal drivers in old macOS versions may show serious issues on certain specific video hardware; after updating to the latest macOS the same hardware performed well and without issues. Similarly, minor version updates may improve stability; graphics problems seen on certain hardware on macOS 10.15.1 were resolved simply by upgrading to macOS 10.15.7. For these reasons we recommend using the latest macOS with your system. How to find macOS Metal version: You can view the graphics hardware information by choosing About This Mac -> System Report… -> Graphics/Displays. On laptops with more than one GPU, the System Report will show the less powerful “integrated” video GPU then the more powerful “discrete” video GPU. Metal compatibility is listed as: “Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4”, meaning this hardware can be described as “GPUFamily1 v4". VRAM: 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. When using multiple displays or high resolution displays, more VRAM are required to keep the same smoothness with the same file. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive in large Vectorworks documents. Rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive. If you want to take full advantage of 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 minimum specifications, you should consider upgrading your graphics card. M-series and Unified Memory: Apple M1 and later Macs share memory for general processing and graphics. We recommend more memory for these systems than for traditional systems where RAM and VRAM are separate. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. Renderworks requires AVX support on AMD and Intel CPUs. Renderworks will not work on older Intel Macs that are missing AVX support, even if macOS 11 is installed on them by bypassing official Apple installers. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering applications which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example: Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- Enscape:https://enscape3d.com/system-requirements/ Twinmotion:https://twinmotionhelp.epicgames.com/s/article/Twinmotion-System-Requirements Omniverse:https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/ Remote and Virtualized Environments Vectorworks runs successfully within remote and virtualized environments. We are confident that offices that wish to operate using virtualization technologies will have success with this option, if the software is given adequate resources comparable to the desktop system requirements listed elsewhere in this document. Offices must develop IT in-house or contract out IT support for their chosen virtualization system. Vectorworks Inc. can only provide general guidance, since many virtualization options exist, and every virtualization technology has its own details realized uniquely for each office. Vectorworks is a graphical application and as such requires high quality graphics support from the virtualization technology chosen. The graphics recommendations listed in the system requirements for desktop operation are a good guide for what is necessary for virtualized GPUs. The virtualized copies of Vectorworks must have sufficient graphical support to operate successfully. High network bandwidth and low network system latency are also critical for acceptable user experience when using Vectorworks in virtualized environments. 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 32GB 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. Several tasks in Vectorworks leverage multiple CPU cores. Faster or slower processor clock speeds also 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below.

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2022. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements Operating Systems macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) 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 M1 or higher 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 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. 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 Apple M1 Max or higher 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-sized projects, complex models/drawings with a 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 M1 Pro or higher 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. Hardware Requirements for Project Sharing Server Operating Systems: Windows Server 2012 or later Windows 11 Windows 10 64-bit Note: Installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package for Visual Studio 2017 is required. Some Windows systems will already have this installed. If not yet installed, the installation files can be downloaded from the Microsoft Visual C Downloads page. macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Note: Project Sharing Server can also be installed on any system that supports Docker such as Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: A flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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. File-based 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. Hard Drive: Storing project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Hardware Requirements for Site Protection Server (network license manager) Operating Systems: macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS 12 (Monterey) macOS 11 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later Windows 10 64-bit Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: 30MB free disk space is required for installation. Case-sensitive file system volumes are not supported. Redshift System Requirements Redshift by Maxon rendering employs the GPU to efficiently perform ray tracing. Redshift has the following specific system requirements. Redshift on Windows: Windows 10 required Minimum: 8GB of system memory. Processor with SSE2 support (Pentium4 or better). NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 5.0 or higher and 8GB VRAM or more. Single GPU. Recommended: 16GB of system memory or more. Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or higher. NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 7.0 or higher and 10GB of VRAM or more. We recommend an NVIDIA Quadro, Titan or GeForce RTX GPU for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Multiple GPUs. Please see here to determine if your NVIDIA GPU supports compute capability 5.0 or higher. Redshift on Mac: macOS 11.3 or later required. Minimum: 8GB of system memory (16GB minimum for M1). Apple M1 16GB or AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU with 8GB VRAM or more. Single GPU. Recommended: 16GB of system memory or more. Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or higher. Apple M1 16GB or AMD "Navi" or "Vega" GPU with 8GB VRAM or more. Multiple GPUs. List of supported AMD GPUs for macOS 11.3+ MacBook Pro Radeon Pro Vega 16/20 Radeon Pro 5500M/5600M iMac Radeon Pro Vega 48 Radeon Pro 5500XT/5700/5700XT iMac Pro Radeon Pro Vega 56/64 MacPro Radeon Pro Vega II / Vega II Duo Radeon Pro W5500X/W5700X Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT Thunderbolt eGPUs Radeon RX Vega 56/64 Radeon Pro WX 9100 Radeon VII Radeon RX 5500/5500XT/5600XT/5700/5700XT Radeon RX 6800/6800XT/6900XT See this document for more information about macOS compatibility of specific GPUs 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 macOS Metal GPUFamily1 and Windows DirectX 11; cards not meeting this recommendation will not work. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Windows users should install the latest video drivers from their card vendor’s website, especially for new PCs, and after installing Windows OS updates. macOS users should use the latest stable version of macOS available (non-beta), as macOS includes ongoing fixes for video drivers. From our testing, Metal drivers in old macOS versions may show serious issues on certain specific video hardware; after updating to the latest macOS the same hardware performed well and without issues. Similarly, minor version updates may improve stability; graphics problems seen on certain hardware on macOS 10.15.1 were resolved simply by upgrading to macOS 10.15.7. For these reasons we recommend using the latest macOS with your system. Regarding macOS 10.14 (Mojave): Vectorworks 2022 uses Metal for graphics processing. In our testing, macOS 10.14 video drivers on certain hardware showed multiple serious problems with Metal processing. Therefore, Vectorworks system requirements require at least macOS 10.15. We expect this requirement will help users avoid serious issues with Metal graphics in Vectorworks 2022. Mac: You can view the graphics hardware information by choosing About This Mac -> System Report… -> Graphics/Displays. On laptops with more than one GPU, the System Report will show the less powerful “integrated” video GPU then the more powerful “discrete” video GPU. Metal compatibility is listed as: “Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4”, meaning this hardware can be described as “GPUFamily1 v4". 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 2GB of VRAM. Larger displays should use a modern graphics card with at least 3GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended. Rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and requires at least 2GB, with 4GB of VRAM or more being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of 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 2GB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your graphics card. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and for other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering engines which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example see Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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 16GB 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. Several tasks in Vectorworks leverage multiple CPU cores. Faster or slower processor clock speeds also have a predictable impact on Vectorwork's 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 a 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. Vectorworks Cloud Services and/or Dropbox are the preferred cloud-based sharing solutions for project sharing. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below.

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2020. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements: Operating Systems: macOS 11.1 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) * * Not supported by Vision Windows 10 64-bit Windows 8.1 64-bit Windows 8 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 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: 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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: 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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 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 a 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 3.0 compatible graphics card supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension, 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering engines which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example see Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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 not to 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 a 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below. Project File Size Network Bandwidth (download/upload) Commit/Refresh Data Transfer Time 100 MB 50Mbit/s ~20s 100Mbit/s ~10s 1Gbit/s ~1s 500 MB 50Mbit/s ~100s 100Mbit/s ~50s 1Gbit/s ~5s 1GB 50Mbit/s ~200s 100Mbit/s ~100s 1Gbit/s ~10s

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2021. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements Operating Systems macOS 12.1 (Monterey) macOS 11.1 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) 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 processors are supported under Rosetta 2 emulation RAM: 8GB or more Graphics Card: OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 2GB of VRAM or more 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. Case sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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: A dedicated OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 8GB of VRAM or more 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 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 RAM: 16GB or more Graphics Card: A dedicated OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card with 3GB of VRAM or more Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 compatible graphics card with 4GB or 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 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. Hardware Requirements for Project Sharing Server Operating System: Windows Server 2012 or later Windows 10 64-bit Note: Users installing the Project Sharing Server on a Windows machine will need to install vc_redist.x64.exe for Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads macOS 11.1 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Note: Project Sharing Server can also be installed on any system that supports Docker such as Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: A flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Case sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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 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. File-based 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing. Hard Drive: Storing project files on flash storage (SSD) is recommended. Hardware Requirements for Site Protection Server (network license manager) Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later Windows 10 64-bit macOS 11.1 (Big Sur) macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) Processor: 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo or better Apple's M1 Chip RAM: 4GB or more Hard Drive: 30MB free disk space is required for installation. Case sensitive file system volumes are not supported. 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 not work. 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 2GB of VRAM. Larger displays should use a modern graphics card with at least 3GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended. OpenGL rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB, with 4GB 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 2GB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your graphics card. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 4.1 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and for other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering engines which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example see Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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 16GB 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. Several tasks in Vectorworks leverage multiple CPU cores. Faster or slower processor clock speeds also 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below. Project File Size Network Bandwidth (download/upload) Commit/Refresh Data Transfer Time 100 MB 50Mbit/s ~20s 100Mbit/s ~10s 1Gbit/s ~1s 500 MB 50Mbit/s ~100s 100Mbit/s ~50s 1Gbit/s ~5s 1GB 50Mbit/s ~200s 100Mbit/s ~100s 1Gbit/s ~10s

This article contains a number of frequently asked questions and answers in regards to Vectorworks 2016's new Project Sharing feature. If you do not find the information you are looking for below, please feel free to contact us directly HERE. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can I still use layer and resource referencing? When you share project files and use referencing, keep in mind the following rules: -Project files can be referenced into other project files and regular Vectorworks files; resources referenced from the file cannot be modified. -Regular Vectorworks files can be referenced into project files. For example, a symbol library can be referenced into a project file; resources referenced from the file can be modified. -Working files cannot be referenced into any other files; they are temporary files that can be deleted at any time. -Place the reference file in a location accessible by the project file and all users working on the project. -Relative reference paths are relative to the location of the project file, and the referenced file must be on the same volume as the project file. What if I need to leave the network that the project is on? Can I still work on the project? Yes, Project Sharing includes a Work Offline mode in case you need to take a laptop on a trip or you temporarily lose access to the network containing the project file. When in this mode, changes will ONLY be saved to the working file directly and any layers you have checked out will not be available to other users until you reconnect to the project and release them. If Vectorworks detects a loss of connection to the server, it will prompt you to begin working in offline mode. What if I want to see who made certain changes to a project? The History feature within the Project Sharing dialog will let you search not only for users, but by specific layers to either focus on ALL of a specific user’s changes, or to focus on which users made a change to a particular layer. Since you can add comments when checking out layers, editing layers or releasing layers, you can also search this comment history, so including useful keywords in the comment is advised. What should I do if my working file has become corrupted or I can no longer commit to the project file? 1. Do a Save A Copy As (Not just "Save As") of the working file and turn it into a regular VW file. 2. Have the administrator force release the layers that were checked out. 3. Delete your working file (you should have your changes in the "saved as" regular VW file). 4. Create a new working file from the project file. 5. Check out the necessary layers 6. Copy and paste the changed elements from the regular VW file to the new working file. Can I see changes made by other users live, in real-time? Not yet. Currently only after another user Commits changes to the project and you Refresh your working file will you see their new changes. Can a user with Fundamentals use Project Sharing? No, Project Sharing is only available in Architect, Landmark, Spotlight or Designer. Can I convert a Project file back to a regular Vectorworks file? Yes and no. You cannot “convert” a project back into a regular Vectorworks document, but you CAN use File > Save a Copy As (Not just "Save As") in order to create a non-project version of the working file, which from then on will function just like a regular Vectorworks file. The original project can then simply be archived or removed at your discretion. NOTE: Make sure that when using Save a Copy As, you then select the VWX file format to save as, not the default VWXW format: Can I store the project file on cloud storage? Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive? Yes, you can put project files (.vwxp) in Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box folders. NOTE: When using Google Drive, keep in mind that Project Sharing is only compatible with "Drive File Stream" if you are using Vectorworks 2020. It will still work with "Backup and Sync" on previous versions. Can I change the permissions for users that currently have layers checked out? Yes, but you should ALWAYS make sure that a user releases their layers and commits any changes before their permissions are altered to prevent a situation where a user is attempting to commit a change in an area they no longer have access to. Can I have more than one working file at once? Yes, but the Layers you checked out are restricted to the working file you checked them out in. A user cannot check out a layer in Working File 1 and then modify that layer in Working File 2. How is my user name determined? This is your computer's login name. If you attempt to access a Project file from more than one computer that you log into with two different login names, you will have to be added to the project file twice, once with each user name. What network permissions are required for users to access the location where a project file resides? Full access. Read, Write, Rename, Delete, Create, etc. Vectorworks uses a “safe save” technique for saving files, in which the previous version of the destination file is maintained until the last possible moment, to avoid potential file damage during save, such as by a hardware or network failure. To support this in a networked environment, permissions must be correctly set to handle the required file operations. In particular, the following two conditions must be fulfilled: 1) The user must have permission to delete files in the destination folder. This is usually the case when the user has write access to the folder. However, some network server configurations using fine-grained control (e.g. with Access Control Lists) may need to be specifically configured to allow this, by assigning “delete_child” permission to the folder. See (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201416) for more information. 2) Files created in the destination folder must inherit the permissions of the folder itself. Server installations that use Access Control Lists may need to ensure that “file_inherit” permission is set on the destination folder. (Note: On OSX Server, ACLs may need to be explicitly enabled. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203574 ) What are the system requirements for using Project Sharing? In addition to the normal Vectorworks System Requirements We recommend 1Gbps network connection to the Project file, but 100Mbps will normally suffice. 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, Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) networks are highly recommended for a fast and fluid experience. Slower networks can still provide a satisfactory user experience if operations that transfer large amount of data over the network, such as committing changes to the project file or refreshing a local working file, are kept to a minimum. With OSX 10.9, Apple has made SMB the default protocol for connecting to network shares, moving away from the previous standard, AFP. We have observed some issues with SMB on OSX that cause permissions to be set incorrectly. If you experience problems with saving to a network share, attempt to connect via AFP to see if that solves the problem. From Finder, select Go->Connect To Server. Enter the prefix “afp:” prior to your share address. For example, “afp://myserver.address.net”. How should I start using cloud storage? Best practice: Move your VWX file into the cloud folder and then convert to a Project File. Second best is to move (*not* copy) your PF to the cloud folder. Once the project is there, leave it there, and never make any copies. Bad practice: Making copies, renaming, working on the file outside of Dropbox, or anything else you do in Finder/Explorer.

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2020. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements: Operating Systems: macOS 10.15 (Catalina) Currently in testing see LINK macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) * * Not supported by Vision Windows 10 64-bit Windows 8.1 64-bit Windows 8 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 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: 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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: 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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 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 a 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 supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension 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 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Vision requires a dedicated OpenGL 3.0 compatible graphics card supporting GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension, 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. Vectorworks may be used in conjunction with real-time rendering engines which have their own demanding hardware requirements. For example see Lumion: https://support.lumion.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003476753-Which-graphics-card-do-you-need- 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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 not to 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 a 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below. Project File Size Network Bandwidth (download/upload) Commit/Refresh Data Transfer Time 100 MB 50Mbit/s ~20s 100Mbit/s ~10s 1Gbit/s ~1s 500 MB 50Mbit/s ~100s 100Mbit/s ~50s 1Gbit/s ~5s 1GB 50Mbit/s ~200s 100Mbit/s ~100s 1Gbit/s ~10s

Project Sharing is a multiuser environment the streamlines project management and execution. It was developed to help Vectorworks users manage projects involving multiple users, fostering effective collaboration and communication within a project team. Project Sharing is a single-file structure providing a mechanism that allows multiple users to work within - and access parts of - a file, simultaneously. This type of multiuser environment offers all team members the opportunity to act together - sharing their knowledge and expertise to the overall design and documentation of the project. It allows for the entire team to think of a project holistically. More importantly, a multiuser environment means a single source of information that can be used for automation and quality checking in drawing production and data extraction - one of the greatest benefits of BIM. This workflow guide introduces the user to the basics of Project Sharing setup, configuration, and use:

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2019. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described in these hardware profiles. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. General Requirements: Operating Systems: macOS 10.15 (Catalina) macOS 10.14 (Mojave) macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) Windows 10 64-bit Windows 8.1 64-bit Windows 8 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 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: 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 with 2GB of VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 series, AMD Radeon RX 400 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: 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 with 8GB of VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 series, AMD Radeon Vega series). 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 with 4GB or VRAM or more, preferably released in the past three years (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or 1060 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, 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Vision 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. We recommend gaming cards over workstation cards for Vision due to the higher clock speed. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations and for other hardware recommendations, go to the Quality-Tested Hardware page. 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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. You can expect significant speed improvements when using Dropbox with LAN sync enabled. It is the preferred cloud-based sharing solution for project sharing and is highly recommended for project teams on the same Local Area Network. 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below. Project File Size Network Bandwidth (download/upload) Commit/Refresh Data Transfer Time 100 MB 50Mbit/s ~20s 100Mbit/s ~10s 1Gbit/s ~1s 500 MB 50Mbit/s ~100s 100Mbit/s ~50s 1Gbit/s ~5s 1GB 50Mbit/s ~200s 100Mbit/s ~100s 1Gbit/s ~10s

SMB on Mac OS has been a moving target, but it is getting better. It is more mature with Mac OS 10.10, 10.11 and beyond. NOTE: AFP is now deprecated as of 10.13. You should only use SMB. Some background information on SMB SMB is Microsoft’s proprietary network file sharing protocol. Most versions of OS X prior to 10.7 relied on an open-source implementation of SMB called Samba for accessing Windows file shares and sharing files with Windows clients. When the licensing terms for Samba changed, Apple had to develop their own SMB implementation. Apple has been struggling with it and it is still not as stable as it should be. Possible Issues with Project Sharing We have not seen any issues with SMB on Windows clients, but have seen issues saving from Windows SMB to Mac OS X 10.11, these issues are not present when saving to 10.10 or 10.12. On Mac OS X, we have seen ACL permissions problems with SMB2 and SMB3 with certain versions of OS X (early 10.9.x). We have not seen the same issues with AFP or SMB1 (“CIFS” protocol prefix). Many SMB issues are related to a mix of SMB protocols between clients. SMB3 (now the default for Mac OS 10.10) could have problems when interworking with machines that don’t have full support for SMB3. Much better results can be expected when all machines were on the same SMB protocol version. We have seen problems mixing AFP and SMB clients for the same share For Project Sharing, our recommendation is: Use SMB for both Mac and Windows. Use the latest version of macOS. Use the same SMB version that works well for all clients. Use the newest OS X version. SMB has version negotiation, so servers can be set to negotiate only up to SMB2 if there are machines that don’t fully support SMB3. Never mix AFP and SMB access to a share. Following these recommendations should provide a better experience. We are all hopeful that Apple will improve the stability of its SMB protocol at a faster pace now that they have made it the default protocol for Mac OS.

In the attached PDF, we cover both some common questions about Project Sharing, as well as a number of suggested workflows and practices for its use. Introduction_to_Project_Sharing_2017.pdf

The attached document below is an introduction to Project Sharing, along with this video series, provides an explanation of proper use and workflow suggestions.

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: Operating System: macOS 10.14 macOS 10.13 macOS 10.12 Mac OS X 10.11 Mac OS X 10.10 Windows 10 (64-bit) Windows 8 (64-bit) Windows 8.1 (64-bit) Windows 7 SP1 (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: 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. 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: 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 least1GB 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. Using Multiple View Panes with different visibilities in all panes can be VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB of VRAM, with 3GB or more recommended for large Vectorworks documents. 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. In general, a recent graphics card running the latest drivers is preferable to an old high-end graphics card running outdated drivers. Vision Pro 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. 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, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high 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). Examples of data transfer times during commit and refresh operations for different bandwidths and project file sizes are shown in the chart below:

MiniCad 1 Mac 1985 3D editor, hidden-surface rendering, 27 geometric primitives, perspective views, bitmap render editing environment MiniCad 2 Mac 1986 2D editor, 15 layers, PICT support, unlimited zoom, multi-page support, text input with Mac fonts, bitmap objects, 8 dash styles, symbol library, dimensions MiniCad 3 Mac 1987 multi-document editing, text rotation, pen and fill patterns, snap and display grid, free object rotation, double-line tool, clip/add/intersect surfaces, fillets, movable origin, layer colors, trim menu command MiniCad 4 Mac 1988 fly-out tools, text editing at any zoom, double-line polygons, double-line joins, new arc creation modes, general speed increase MiniCad+ 1 Mac 1988 array duplication, MiniPascal, integrated spreadsheet, symbol folders, spline tool, integrated 2D/3D editing environment, Worksheet, 256 color support MiniCad+ 2 Mac 1989 DXF translation, EPS export, fully rotatable text, vector hatching, click-click drawing mode, constraint palette, mirror tool, floating tool palettes, combine into surface MiniCad+ 3 Mac 1991 2D smart cursor, records and formats, data palette, database rows in new worksheet palette, query language for MiniPascal and worksheet, new dimensioning tools MiniCad+ 4 Mac 1993 wall object, floor and roof objects, walkthrough tool, flyover tool, 3D smart cursor, tolerance dimensioning, user dash styles, section generation, hybrid object environment, mode bar, message bar MiniCAD 5 Mac 1994 chamfer tool, user definable scales and units, smarter cursor, polyline object, enter group editing mode, unlimited layers and classes MiniCAD 6 Mac/Windows 1996 object info palette, holes in polygons, export EPSF, ClarisCAD translator, working plane palette, 3D reshape tool, 3D locus object, wireframe and solid editing modes, SDK and plug-in environment, workspace editor, PowerPC-native support MiniCAD 7 Mac/Windows 1997 lights, sun position feature, dashed hidden-line rendering, associative hatching, auto-join walls, wall framer, math support in numeric entry boxes, dual unit dimensioning, column object, rotatable grid, export DWG, 3DMF export MiniCAD VectorWorks 8 Mac/Windows 1999 multiple undo/redo, round wall object, wall styles, complete roof object, context-sensitive menus, tools tips and balloon help, reverse translation, QuickDraw 3D rendering support VectorWorks 8.5 Mac/Windows 1999 introduction of VectorWork Architect, door and window schedules, enhanced wall styles, door and window objects, point plug-in objects, OpenGL rendering (Windows only) VectorWorks 9 Mac/Windows 2001 introduction of complete Industry Series and RenderWorks, floating-point database, associative dimensions, parametric constraints, callout object, NURBS curves, extrude along path, connect/combine tool, path plug-in objects, tapered extrude VectorWorks 9.5 Mac/Windows 2002 OS X-native support, 3D Power Pack (non-manifold solids engine, NURBS surface creation, blend edges, shell solid, stitch and trim surfaces, IGES import/export) VectorWorks 10 Mac/Windows 2002 batch file translation, zoom mouse-wheel support, resource browser, gradient fills, image fills, STL export, faster solids engine, space planning tools, connected walls, seating layout object, export DOE-2 VectorWorks 10.5 Mac/Windows 2003 raster printing, protrusion tool, revolve with rail, perimeter texture mapping for NURBS VectorWorks 11 Mac/Windows 2004 Viewports, context-sensitive help, SAT file translation, 2D OpenGL acceleration, Sheet layers, roof framer, Artistic RenderWorks rendering, multi-processor support, hardscape object, stipple object VectorWorks 11.5 Mac/Windows 2004 default lighting, improved freehand tool, recently used fonts list, vector sketch ( no support planned for OS X 10.5 ) VectorWorks 12 Mac/Windows 2005 Section Viewports, 3DS import, worksheet formatting improvements, DTM object, more flexible tool palettes, Organization dialog, view palette, improved door/window/stair/cabinet objects, .SHP file support, class overrides in viewports VectorWorks 12.5 Mac/Windows 2006 Intel Mac support (Universal Binary), Perspective section viewports, Google Earth export, PDF import, HDRI image support, mesh smoothing VectorWorks 2008 Mac/Windows 2007 Heads-Up Data Display, Rotate-able 2D Views, Intel Mac support (Universal Binary), Design Layer viewports, 2-Way Worksheets, IFC import/export, GSA-compatible Space Objects, Google Earth export, PDF import, AutoCad(r) and SketchUp6 support, HDRI image support, mesh smoothing Vectorworks 2009 Mac/Windows 2008 Integration of Parasolid modeling kernel, Pre-Selection Highlighting, Improved Snapping, Snap Loupe, PDF Snapping Support, Visibility tool, 3D modeling improvements, Parasolid X_T import/export, DXF/DWG 2009 support Vectorworks 2010 Mac/Windows 2009 Making Change Easy. Implementation of easy to use 3D environment, unified views, planar graphics, interactive dimensioning, automatic drawing coordination, wall sculpting, corner windows, DXF/DWG 2010 support, SketchUp 7 support, Decal Texturing, Event Planning Suite, and many usability improvements. Vectorworks 2011 Mac/Windows 2010 Vectorworks 2011 Delivers. Improved 3D Environment, Push/Pull Tool, Extract Planar Objects, New Slab tool, 3D Wall Components, Cinema4D Rendering Engine, New Existing Tree Tool, Improved Focus Point Support, Perfect Preview Text Editing, Scalable Symbols Vectorworks 2012 Mac/Windows 2011 “This release reinforces our position as a leader in 3D technology within the AEC marketplace,” says Dr. Biplab Sarkar, Chief Technology Officer of Nemetschek Vectorworks. “I’m proud of the many improvements our development team has achieved with this version, particularly those related to BIM, GIS, and rendering. Macintosh users will also be happy to know that Vectorworks 2012 software is fully compatible with OS X Lion.” Vectorworks 2013 Mac/Windows 2012 Introduction of Surface Array, Speaker Array, Auto Hybrid Object. Massive navigation graphic and hidden line rendering improvements. Fully Compatible with OSX Mountain Lion. Vectorworks 2014 Mac/Windows 2013 More than 130 improvements, including new BIM tools for architects, increased site design capabilities for landscape architects and designers, and enhancements to lighting devices, documentation, and graphic controls for entertainment designers. Vectorworks 2015 Mac/Windows 2014 Now a 64bit application. Introduction of 3D hatching, artistic edges in render styles, Curtain Walls, the Deform tool and a new Level constraint system. Vectorworks 2016 Mac/Windows 2015 Introduced Subdivision modeling. Introduced Marionette graphical scripting. Rendering improvements: Caustics, Ambient Occlusion, Camera Effects. Introduced Project Sharing. Vectorworks 2017 Mac/Windows 2016 Rebuilt the Resource Browser from scratch as Resource Manager. Vectorworks Graphics Module upgrade, allowing Top/Plan views as well as 3D to utilize GPU resources instead of CPU. Revit Import. Introduction of Web View.

Vectorworks 2021 SP3.1 - UPDATE This service pack includes the following fix: Datasmith Export: Application crashes when exporting in top/plan Vectorworks, Inc. has released its third Service Pack (SP3) for the Vectorworks 2021 product line. This major update includes the following new functionality, improvements, and bug fixes. For a full list of improvements in the 2021 SP3 update, please visit this page. Service Pack Highlights Export your 3D models for use with rendering applications with a new connection to Twinmotion®, Unreal® Engine, and other Epic Games products that support the Datasmith format. Video feature Vectorworks has partnered with Solibri®, collaborating to offer an instant communication channel with Solibri Office and an interactive exchange of IFC metadata and the selection state of objects. Video feature The GDTF Fixture Builder enables customers to update all instances of GDTF lighting devices directly from Vectorworks; an internet connection is not required. In addition, lighting devices and schematic views benefit from several usability improvements. (Vectorworks Spotlight) Video feature Discover improved performance and quality fixes in all areas of the application. Enjoy enhanced folder sharing on the cloud. With the new “Sync and Edit” permission, participants can sync a shared folder to their local desktop computer, enabling workflows that require multiple users to access and edit files stored in a common location. For Vectorworks Design Series users, project sharing and workgroup folders are now supported. Video feature Additional Service Pack New Functionality IFC export: This service pack includes improvements to the base quantities included for IFC export. Common objects, including walls, spaces, roofs, slabs, hardscapes, landscape areas, and columns, now have accurate base quantities assigned by default. This provides better interoperability with software packages that do Quantity Takeoff (QTO) calculations, and 4D and 5D BIM simulations. (Vectorworks Design Series) Viz-key technology: With the integration of viz-key technology, Vision can now connect with any type of grandMA3 lighting control system. (Vectorworks Vision) Circuit number display: This service pack includes a new Number Display parameter, which determines where the number is displayed on circuits. (Vectorworks ConnectCAD) Service Pack Improvements and Fixes We’ve restored the ability to copy viewports from one file to another. Customers can now export web views to temporary storage. Schematic view bug fixes (Vectorworks Spotlight) Critical bug fixes for the Architect and Landmark products Installing the Service Pack This service pack is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2021. To install the service pack, please select Check for Updates from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.

Vectorworks, Inc. has released its third Service Pack (SP3) for the Vectorworks® 2019 product line. This Service Pack includes not only larger than a normal number of performance improvements, but many new features have been made available to users. New Features: Cloud Presentations via Vectorworks Cloud Services: With the new Vectorworks Cloud presentation feature, you can generate presentations of designs with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. This unique presentation capability helps to communicate and connect your design ideas with your clients’ expectations, including interactive 360 rendered panoramas that can be linked together to create a holistic, immersive experience, as well as a shareable web link. All that’s needed is an active Vectorworks Service Select membership and Vectorworks Cloud Services. Lumion LiveSync Plug-in: Perform real-time rendering while making design changes in Vectorworks. The LiveSync plug-in is developed by Lumion and is the first partner plug-in to use a new Vectorworks Graphics Sync (VGS) API, that provides live access to the Vectorworks 3D scene and enables third parties to connect the software to any 3D visualization engine imaginable. Lumion and the LiveSync plug-in are available on the PC (Windows) and for English language users on the Lumion website. MVR Workflow from Spotlight to Vision: Discover a better way to work with My Virtual Rig (MVR). The MVR file format creates a two-way connection between planning, previz and console systems that implement the support needed for a seamless workflow. Further, the MVR format contains the 3D model, texturing, position information and GDTF information from the design in Vectorworks Spotlight. Create a more efficient and connected workflow between design planning and previz, merging the iterative changes of the model between Spotlight and Vision without re-importing and redefining the performance cues each time. To learn more about this announcement, read our press release here. Many of the improvements are focused on the following areas: Section Viewports, macOS Mojave, Spaces and the Scaling of Symbols. The specifics on these topics are listed below: Section Viewport: ● Significant speed increase in switching between sheet layers that contain section viewports ● Corrected a large number of redraw problems related to section and edit views ● Section Lines, Elevation Benchmarks and other associated geometry will appear as expected ● Improved the effectiveness of Merge Cross Sections ● Reduced the high number of checkouts needed when using Data Tags in conjunction with Project Sharing and section viewports ● Significantly increased the reliability of section edit and update functions macOS Mojave: ● Users should no longer encounter freezes when selecting Extrude Along Path and other geometry types ● Quality of Pattern export to PDF improved on macOS 10.14 ● Corrected many dialog boxes and other UI graphical issues ● Increased response speed of keyboard arrow navigation in text fields ● Fonts for Wall Data Tags are controlled now as expected Space: ● Direct control over space and label component visibility has been restored ● Creating Space objects should now occur as fast or faster than in prior versions ● Volume calculations corrected ● Corrected a large number of stability issues related to Space objects ● Significantly increased the speed of many operations related to spaces General: ● Scaling of symbols including multiple types of geometry should now work as expected. This was not a single report but a number of related issues and requests. ● Dragging many resources from one location into the Resource Manager to another should now affect all selected resources as expected Rendering: ● Corrected issue that caused grouped objects under the Render tab to become locked ● Fixed many problems related to the display of Roof Face textures ● OpenGL scaling of Wall textures matches the expected appearance as Renderworks does ● A large number of causes for black viewports and missing geometry have been removed or corrected ● Publish should now update rendered viewports on command ● Corrected many issues that would prevent animation transitions between saved views from playing properly Project Sharing: ● Corrected issues that caused Project Sharing to take longer than it should ● Corrected an instability related to text style conflicts ● Speed improvements in certain slower use cases ● Corrected a problem that would prevent the placing of specific object types in Offline files ● Fixed an issue related to symbol replacement in VWP files Spotlight and Vision: ● Fixed an issue where the Instrument Summary could become inconsistent ● Flipped Symbol Edit Mode should now display instruments properly ● Corrected many instabilities related to Hanging Positions ● Load objects can now be attached as expected in 3D views ● Auto numbering should now increment as expected Landmark: ● Improved the responsiveness of site model sculpting highlighting ● Replacing a Hardscape offers the default Hardscape Content as well as content from within that file Architect: ● Stairs should no longer position loci erroneously ● Some stair dialogs are now showing an indicator for values that cannot be calculated ● Walls that did not convert properly from 2018 and prior versions into 2019 should now do so ● Data Tags no longer rotate along with the rotated plan ● Corrected many issues related to custom IFC presets This Service Pack is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2019. To install the Service Pack, please select "Check for Updates" from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). For a full list of improvements in the 2019 SP3 update, please visit this page. Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.

Vectorworks, Inc. has released its second Service Pack (SP2) for the Vectorworks® 2020 product line. This Service Pack includes the release of ConnectCAD 2020 for Vectorworks Spotlight and Designer. From simple to complex, ConnectCAD allows AV system designers to lay out signal flows in an easy-to-read format. With ConnectCAD customers can: Create schematic drawings Effortlessly make changes throughout the iterative design process Diagram rack layouts Check for errors Create detailed reports Communicate effectively with onsite installation technicians Learn more about our ConnectCAD release at vectorworks.net/connectcad. Additionally, Vectorworks 2020 SP2 offers multiple fixes and improvements in the following areas: Text: Elevation Benchmark size changes Black text in Mac's dark mode Displaying text incorrectly in ConnectCAD Rack frame and Equipment items Align issue with Stage Deck Labels Text issues when zooming in/out text blocks Design Layers: After editing the source file, referenced Design Layer Viewports fail to show walls in OpenGL/Wireframe Design layer viewports not visible in edit Viewport visibilities menu or reverting back to old setup Unable to edit the text in symbols Structural Member Structural Member Settings Dialog with multiple structural members selected Length for Structural Members joined end to end Changing 3D attributes of multiple structural members Truss Previewing incorrectly Truss Cross object is not drawn when value above 1 inch Lighting devices not moving with rotated trusses via control points Video screen not moving with trusses attached Converting 3D Rotated Truss into a Hanging Position shows nothing in Top/Plan view Fixes a memory leak when zooming in/out, causing Vectorworks to stop or crash Auto-rotating image props in Renderworks modes not displaying correctly IES custom lights not working correctly in Renderworks render mode OpenGL viewports render black on Windows when using JPEG compression preference Numerous stability enhancements in several areas such as Property line, Schematic Views, Multi-View, Group selection, Section Viewports, Keynote and Label legends, and Worksheets Additional fixes and improvements included in SP 2.1 Hardscape Section Viewport alignment causing Vectorworks to freeze IFC export: Nested items exporting on internal origin Plants offset issues when changing the user origin offset Data Tags for doors and spaces are constantly changing and replacing upon reopening files Crash using the origin mode of the Flyover tool Additional fixes and improvements included in SP 2.2 - NEW Project Sharing Opening project files in a viewer application Project file and Working file becomes out of sync Checking out objects sync issues Rotation of hatches in Viewports Keynote Legend showing exceptionally large after making any adjustment Crashes after editing referenced IFC settings Working Plane fails to activate by double-click Vision 2020 SP2 This service pack includes multiple improvements and fixes in the following areas: Improvements in how materials (Textures) are transferred between Vectorworks and Vision via My Virtual Rig (MVR). Improved stability merging .MVR files into .v3s Palette positions are not saved Editing items from the scene graph jumps to the top upon completion This Service Pack is available for all licenses as a downloadable updater. To install the Service Pack, please select "Check for Updates" from the Vectorworks or Vision menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). For a full list of fixes and improvements in the 2020 SP2 updater, please visit THIS PAGE. Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process. Please note this Service Pack is currently available for all non-localized English versions.

Vectorworks, Inc. has released its sixth Service Pack (SP6) for the Vectorworks® 2019 product line. This service pack includes multiple improvements in different areas. Project Sharing Project file being completely blank Editing outdated Title Blocks before refreshing Missing objects in the project file Async issues due to corrupted stairs Data Tags broken associations Fixes to Elevation Benchmark text sizes Fixes to Energos crash when including Roof objects in the calculations Adding IFC4 certification support to Vectorworks 2019 Overall stability improvements in different areas This Service Pack is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2019. To install the Service Pack, please select "Check for Updates" from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). For a full list of improvements in the 2019 SP6 update, please visit this page. Please note this Service Pack is currently available for all non-localized English versions. Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.

Building Information Modeling, or BIM, authoring software, such as Vectorworks®, allows architects and other professionals within the AEC industry to create complex, data-rich 3D models for the purpose of exploring and documenting a design. This continually growing technology also allows for new ways of sharing information among all consultants on a project. As a result, it is essential to establish an agreed-upon method and file format for information exchange between the different disciplines on a team who are each utilizing different software. In some cases, a traditional 2D line drawing exchange, such as a PDF or DWG, is needed to support those who have not entered the 3D realm. Other times, exchange of only geometry in the form of a 3D DWG may be needed for clash detection and as a background for referencing. However, if the file exchange needs to support Building Information Models and the sharing of geometry and data, then the IFC file format should be considered. Download All Project Files

Vectorworks, Inc. has released its first Service Pack (SP1) for the Vectorworks 2021 product line. This Service Pack includes multiple fixes and improvements in the following areas: There are significant improvements and fixes in the following areas: Numerous cosmetic fixes in the Materials user interface Fixed compatibility issues with Lightwright Better support for accessories in the Instrument Summary The ability to create Spaces using the Import Adjacency Matrix Call out issues with Project Sharing Fixed Hoist object insertion issues This Service Pack is available for all licenses as a downloadable updater. To install the Service Pack, please select "Check for Updates" from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). For a full list of fixes and improvements in the 2021 SP1 updater, please visit HERE. Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process. Please note, this Service Pack is currently available for all non-localized English versions.

Vectorworks, Inc. has released Service Pack 4 (SP4) for the Vectorworks® 2020 product line. This service pack includes multiple fixes and improvements in the following areas: DWG import Freezing at reading model space entities Turning Unified View off DWG export Crashing at the end of writing entities and at exporting sheet layers to DWG ConnectCAD Applying text menu settings to equipment object Name text 2D Rack objects support for 54U high racks Terminator tool is no longer missing from ConnectCAD workspace Device Builder not accepting imperial units Object highlighting is improved for the Data Tag tool in section viewports Numerous stability enhancements in areas such as Project Sharing, Hardscape tool, Path Animation and more. This Service Pack is available as a downloadable updater for all U.S. English-based versions of Vectorworks 2020. To install the Service Pack, please select "Check for Updates" from the Vectorworks menu (Mac) or Help menu (Windows). For a full list of improvements in the 2020 SP4 update, please visit this page. Please note this Service Pack is currently available for all non-localized English versions. Contact us at tech@vectorworks.net if you have any technical questions or problems during this process.