Vectorworks

Building on the breakthrough release of Vectorworks 2011, Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc have delivered a more robust, faster architectural CAD package, with a focus on BIM for Business. And of course, the benefit of BIM from Vectorworks is that you can still take a much or as little as you need. If you want to draw a simple 2D plan, you can! If you need an IFC 2X3 compliant model, you can. And with Renderworks, you can move from concept to detail within one application. Vectorworks 2012 brings together the power of BIM and GIS within the same application.

Sun Studies and Solar Animation—Heliodon

With this easy-to-use tool, you no longer need to know coordinates or a time zone to position the sunlight on your model. This 2D/3D tool contains attached data including the region and city. You can animate shadows live on your drawing including shadow analysis on walls. You can create QuickTime solar animation movies and“view from sun” animations.

Stories

Stories are a new entity in Vectorworks Architect. A story has an elevation, and other deisgn layers in the model are set to belong to a story. The elevation of Design layers is expressed relative to its Story elevation. As you edit the Story elevation, all Design layers belonging to that Story adjust their elevation by the same amount. Optionally, Design layers with any Story can change up or down, as well. Architectural objects such as walls, columns, slabs, and stairs are "story aware," allowing their top and/or bottom elevations can be linked to the elevation of any Design layer with the same Story or span to any Design layer with an adjacent Story.

IFC Support Update

Vectorworks Architect’s support of the openBIM standard, IFC, allows data and geometry to be input or imported, stored, retrieved, and exported in a much cleaner fashion. With stories created as a standard element within Vectorworks Architect, there is no longer any need to map layers to stories on Export, making the process much more straightforward. Within the model, the  Eyedropper tool now allows for transfer of IFC data to objects while maintaining each object’s unique IFC identifier.

Wall Improvements

Walls in Vectorworks 2012 how have independent controls for top and bottom heights for each wall component. Individual components can be stepped to join with other building geometry. You can quickly achieve joining of walls and wall components no matter what kind of connection you wish to make, including Y-Joins. Have you ever struggled to draw insulation fills? With flexible tile fills, it’s easy to create insulation fills that automatically scale to fit the thickness of a wall component as well as turning in a wall.

Slab Support In Create Joists from Poly

The Create Joists from Poly command now recognises the slab object and can therefore model joists in the appropriate componement make-up of the slab.

Windows and Doors

You can exert greater control over the specific geometry and insertion of windows in Vectorworks 2012. Specifically, you can now offset glass in sashes and offset sashes within jambs of a window object and you can also choose independent configurations for transom muntins. There are independent class controls for components such sills. slabs and lintels.

It’s easier to class the components in doors and windows by specifying your own classing standards for components like sills, slabs, swings, lintels, and overhead door paths.

New Door opening types. When creating doors and windows you can now determine the width by leaf size, unit size, sash opening, or rough opening measurements, making the door tool much more flexible for different design scenarios and geographies.

Licences purchased in the UK will now feature more familiar terminology in a UK localisation. With these new features, you’ll build the exact door you’re envisioning. Use new options to create unequal bi-part leaves and several bi-part and double acting door configurations. Define a door’s threshold to extend into and even beyond the doorjamb. Even define door muntin depths for glass leaves, transoms, and sidelights. Choose from a host of new attributes for doors that also give you additional stylistic controls over line styles and class options. The new “simple opening” configuration for doors and windows lets you draw clean breaks in 2D and properly sized holes in 3D walls without any added geometry. You can now see hinge markers on the interior sides of door and window objects in Vectorworks Architect, for a new simple documentation option.

Stairs

Enjoy a more capable and efficient stair object that can calculate total rise based on the layers to which the stair connects. You’ll also see the 2D representation of the stair on both layers of connection.

We’ve added some easy new features that will make your stair designs even sharper. With a single click, you can now specify class styles for all components of stairs—individual attributes or all attributes—for a fast way to make significant changes to all stairs in your design. Define a stair’s maximum angle through the settings dialog to adhere to any defined codes. But if you desire complete freedom in stair modeling, you can now turn off the Minimum/Maximum settings completely and define stairs exactly the way you want. With our new Create Stair Top Riser and Nosing option you can specify whether or not the top riser and nosing of a stair should be drawn. We’ve updated the fill settings dialogs in stair and space objects to be identical to the options you already know in the Hatch, Tile, Gradient, and Image settings dialogs. We’ve also improved the stair settings to have all the render modes available in the core product listed in the general settings tab. And better feedback messages take the guesswork out of invalid stair configuration values. We provide detailed error messages with easy options to resolve them.

Roof Framer

We’ve increased the overall precision and detailing of roof framing by giving you the ability to specify sizes, elevations, positioning, and the creation method of Ridges and Purlins.

Space Tool

The creation, editing, and storage of space label symbols has been improved. You can now directly create space labels using the space label settings dialog—no need for creating specific space label symbols. Also, you can edit existing space labels to quickly adjust the definitions and attributes of text tags in your label. Page-based symbols are created now, so text will be consistent when you when displayed at different scales. You can easily edit space labels using an intelligent dialog that specifies new definitions and attributes of text tags in your label. You now have greater editing control with auto-bound spaces. We’ve defined them as polyline-based spaces so you have more editing handles and reshaping options.

Notes Manager

Enjoy increased flexibility when creating and placing notes. You can make multiple selections, rotate the callouts, and specify absolute or relative path connections to the active notes database—ideal for shared, server-based notes databases.

DWG Support for Collaboration

Discover the advantages of efficient collaboration. You’ll have better support for image fill export and import, transparencies, and gradient types—plus a new ability to save user defined settings for DXF/DWG export. You can pick and choose the objects you want to export to DXF/DWG—even hatches. You can interface seamlessly with AutoCAD 2012 files and even
import clipped AutoCAD blocks as cropped Design layer viewports or as symbols without cropping. It's simpler to save your defined mappings of DXF/ DWG colours to Vectorworks line weights.

Georeferencing GIS

With Vectorworks 2012, you can georeference your designs with the most accurate information. You can store georeferenced information on each Vectorworks design layer, transform geometry to a different map projection type or georeferenced coordinate system, and enjoy improved Shapefile import and export functions. This vastly improves the ability to work alongside other professionals and consultants on larger projects and coordinate information between you leading to greater accuracy and efficiency.

GIS files such as Shapefiles include a variety of records and data. Vectorworks 2012 includes a very powerful set of options for making modifications to selected objects or an entire drawing based on record values. With this command you can automatically modify the attributes of objects, resize objects, and even create extrudes for objects based on their record value. For example, building plots can be coloured differently based on their area.

Main Image: Courtesy of Kate Cooper, Absolute Architecture, Newbury