Vectorworks 2026 / MacOS Tahoe (Metal 4) / iPad

[Ryan Russell]

With the announcement of the latest MacOS, Tahoe, can we expect/anticipate that the forthcoming version of VW will make use of the new rendering technologies, i.e. Metal 4 that will be integrated into the new release that can be used for rendering. Just curious as Apple has really seemed to fully integrate the physical design of the OS model so it is consistent from device to device.

 

Also, is there any plan to ever have something Vectorworks residing on the iPad?

 

[Christiaan]

14 hours ago, Ryan Russell said:

Also, is there any plan to ever have something Vectorworks residing on the iPad?

The new windowing system, menu bars and more accurate pointer in iPadOS 26 is certainly a step in the right direction, but many limitations still apply: 

• Not enough RAM, I think 12 GB is the max an app can access on iPad
• App size limit of 4GB is too small
• The desktop app leans on AppKit, low-level POSIX functions, dlopen-style plug-ins and unrestricted Python, whereas iPadOS only ships UIKit/SwiftUI, forbids runtime‐loaded .dylib files and disallows JIT-compiled scripting–all of which break Vectorworks’ plug-in, Marionette and Python ecosystems.
• UI would need to be rewritten in UIKit/SwiftUI.
• User-installed plug-ins, Python pip modules and most third-party renderers wouldn't work.

• iPad apps live in a sandbox. Access to SMB/NFS shares, network licences and reference files outside the container (common on BIM projects) requires new open-in-place and cloud-drive workflows.

• USB dongles and FlexNet servers aren’t possible; the team would need an Apple-ID-based or subscription licence infrastructure.

• Even with 12 GB per process, complex Redshift or path-tracing jobs can peak higher. They’d have to off-load to a cloud render service or limit scene complexity.

• Long-running renders risk being suspended if the user switches away for too long; iPadOS background execution limits are far stricter than macOS.

• Vectorworks’ Metal renderer ports cleanly, but some VW plug-ins still expect OpenCL/CUDA on macOS and would need re-writes.

[Christiaan]

Some of this I got from ChatGPT, so I'd welcome any corrections if there are errors.

[PenChiselCamera]

Something better than Nomad has to be possible on iPad.

 

The latest iPad Pro hardware is basically a MacBook. Now the OS is getting upgraded to be far more powerful. 
 

Some form of real VW for iPadOS is long overdue. 

[Ryan Russell]

I will again reiterate that Vectorworks, or their parent company Nemetschek, should value inclusion the iPad workflow as a functional addition to the VW toolset.

 

Looking at Sketch or Morpholio Trace, the 'User Case' already exists for why this is important.

Laptop portability has increased as sizes have become more manageable, but the iPad stands alone at the top for lightweight solutions.

 

Let me stress that the iPad solution doesn't need to be the full VW client, but just something to support viewing and modification of buildings onsite.

Rendering and plugins can be saved for the desktop version.

 

An alternative would be to work in partnership with Morpholio Trace, or an outright acquisition?

[E|FA]

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