Live from Vectorworks Design Day in Vancouver Canada

Deep underground in Robson Square

 

Prepping the skating rink at Robson Square, with steps leading up to the Vancouver Art Gallery

 

Keynote Address

Dr Biplab Sarkar, ceo of the Vectorworks company, flew here to Vancouver Canada to give the keynote address at Robson Square. Vectorworks Canada is three years old, and copies the modol of Vectorworks Great Britain.

He gave unusually detailed sales figures, such as selling approximately 20,000 new licenses a year. (I am interpolating off graphs). In Canada, the company has about 140,000 users, with Vectorworks Canada selling around 350 licenses a year and roughly $3 million annually, of which about 2/3 are permanent licenses. He is pleased that 91% of subscribers renew, meaning 9% fall away.

 

CEO Dr Biplab Sarkar giving the keynote

 

What’s New, and What’s Planned for Vectorworks

New to Vectorworks will be continuous updates, with a service pack coming out every other month. The idea is to release features gradually, and not have one huge release. It’ll be interesting to see how it work out, as I am an alpha tester for another CAD vendor, who is having terrible problems trying to implement monthly, automatic updates.

The Future of Vectorworks Web page shows the roadmap, and users can vote on future features. Some of these are fencing, cabinets, viewport styles, materials for doors and windows, and transform elements with the selection tool (like some other CAD programs’ Steering Wheel). See vectorworks.net/en-CA/public-roadmap.

Nomad will take iPhone technology to scan a room in 3D, and then convert it to a 3D Vectorworks models, recognizing walls, floors, windows, doors, furniture, and so on.

A new plug-in converts Vectorworks models to Omniverse viewer from nVidia to collaborate, with the ability to do some editing and material changes. A future release will bring the changes made in Omniverse back to Vectorworks, and eventually live scenes, so that changes are updated in real time.

New features in Vectorworks 2023 include direct editing of doors and windows -- no need to open a dialog box to enter size numbers, although that is still available. Smart elevations can be associated with a story (floor) to easily move floors above or below the elevation.

I wrote more about the new release earlier in WorldCAD Access blog: https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2022/09/whats-happening-with-vectorworks-2023.html.