Nemetschek Vectorworks Inc., has officially unveiled its new Vectorworks 2014 product line which includes Vectorworks Fundamentals 2014, Vectorworks Architect 2014, Vectorworks Landmark 2014, Vectorworks Spotlight 2014, Vectorworks Designer 2014 and Renderworks 2014, an integrated (not standalone) photorealistic rendering solution module for the Vectorworks products.
Patent Pending Technology
“For the 2014 release of Vectorworks software, we have concentrated on customer workflows,” said Dr. Biplab Sarkar, Chief Technology Officer of Nemetschek Vectorworks. “The theme for this release can be summed up as ‘you have told us, and we have listened.’ Two of the new technologies I am most excited about are an innovative new visualization engine with fast interactive rendering, and a new, patent pending X-ray Select technology.” You can see some of these new tools in the YouTube video below.
(see, Architosh, “Details on Vectorworks Graphics Module (VGM) in new Vectorworks 2014,” 13 September 2014).
The Vectorworks 2014 software includes over 130 new improvements and features to bring to users better modeling, BIM management, interoperability, usability, performance and quality. Key new features include:
- Enhanced 3D Modeling via new persistent rendered OpenGL viewport
- Occlusion-based OpenGL capabilities for better controlled selection in 3D viewports
- Enhanced walkthrough tools
- Patent-pending innovative new X-Ray Select mode which allows you to temporarily see occluded objects and select them
- Much faster OpenGL rendering due to new Vectorworks Graphics Module (VGM) OpenGL render pipeline
- Better BIM tools for the space object, improvements to stairs, windows and doors
- Improved Auto-Hybrid object
- Better landscape architecture features like plant shadows, site modeling, working with contours and geo referencing features
- New Direct DWG Xrefs provide option to “shuttle” file technique
- Improved IFC features with support for IFC zones and IFCxml import/export support
- Support for SQLite in ODBC
- An improved Publish Command provides one-stop-shop for exporting and printing construction drawings
- New cropping Bitmap images that are imported
- New Preview Mode for Rotate tool
- New Select by Plane, font preview, format text dialog and simplify polys commands
- Renderworks has new Displacement Mapping to help improve materials like grass, carpet or water
- New additional support for brick shaders
- Many other great new features
Other Major Items
A major new item in Vectorworks 2014 is the new support for the Python scripting language, offering the CAD/BIM platform the scale of the popular Python 3 programming environment, with its thousands of libraries to efficiently develop scripts. This modern, popular scripting language has a large user base of students, academics and professionals around the world and now Vectorworks users can create document scripts, as well as external plug-in parametric objects, tools and commands. This will be a great way for users and third-party developers to create additional specialized solutions on top of Vectorworks 2014.
01 – A patent-pending new X-Ray Select feature offers users Superman eyesight into models within models.
Mavericks Support and iOS 7
Vectorworks 2014 and also Vectorworks 2013 will be ready for Mavericks (OS X v 10.9) when it ships this Fall from Apple. Additionally, there will be support for Vectorworks 2014 in Vectorworks Cloud Services and support for iOS 7 in Vectorworks Nomad. The company says exciting new features and solutions are in the pipeline for Vectorworks Cloud Services and mobile solutions.
The company announced that Vectorworks Cloud Services will add support for popular storage cloud solutions and the Nomad application will support better user interactions for measurement.
Vectorworks 2014 is shipping today for Vectorworks Service Select customers and the company will begin shipping to all other customers on 23 September 2014. Those are English-language versions. That marks the start of the worldwide rollout. Localized versions will be released in the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2014.
For more information visit: www.vectorworks.net