Vectorworks Cloud Services: Architosh has the story!

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Details and Behind the Scenes

The new Vectoroworks Nomad application is a native Apple iOS app, ideally for your iPad. True to Flaherty’s remarks last year Nomad turns your iPad into a cloud-based CAD device with basic markup, measurement, emailing (collaboration) and printing capability. (see image 06 below)

06 - Here is an image of Vectorworks Nomad app running on iPad.

Over time Dr. Biplab Sarkar said the Nomad application will evolve and take on capabilities which users seem more necessary. I asked Dr. Sarkar to explain where the initiative for Vectorworks Cloud Services came from. He explained that it was a mixture of evolving technology in the overall computing industry, strategy and customer interests.

“We don’t feel that the desktop is going away in the CAD industry,” said Dr. Sarkar. “We see it being complimented by mobile and the cloud.” “A lot of complex functionality can move away from the desktop applications and into cloud-based applications.”

Nemetschek’s cloud-based solution today will be running on Amazon’s EC2 platform. EC2 stands for “elastic compute cloud” and Dr. Sarkar explained that it can run many many instances of Vectorworks simultaneously.

Initially, Vectorworks Cloud Services will be available just in North America (US and Canada) but will expand out to specific areas in Europe later this year. The continued goal will be to have cloud services offered globally. Users must be subscription users as noted earlier and each user will get 1 GB of cloud storage for free. Additional storage and 3D viewport cloud-based rendering are available for additional fees.

Closing Comments

Vectorworks Cloud Services looks very promising and, as Dr. Biplab Sarkar told us, establishes a future platform for the company to expand on. The “cloud” is going to be a growing critical piece of the enterprise landscape in AEC and CAD industries and there is no escaping that.

Vectorworks Nomad also follows up on Sean Flaherty’s views that the iPad is a “cloud computing device”, meaning that its essential unique value only comes to light when used in conjunction with the cloud. For this company, mobile (smartphone and tablet) and the cloud are seen as a unit.

Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., approached Architosh and one other CAD media company to do a feature on the new cloud services offering ahead of their official announcement, planned for 2 April 2012. We look forward to expanding on our coverage in the week ahead and sharing more details. Readers are welcome to discuss this announcement in our Architosh Facebook and LinkedIn Group social sites.

To learn more about Nemetschek Vectorworks, go here.