What has changed for the VectorWorks 2010 product lineup?

Introducing Vectorworks 2010:  Making Change Easy

Nemetschek North America has a tradition of designing flexible, versatile, intuitive, and affordable CAD and BIM solutions. They’ve examined Vectorworks® from front to back, upside down, and inside out, and they're excited to deliver an upgrade that we believe you truly don’t want to miss.

Behold Vectorworks 2010! You’ll notice significant improvements like the unified 3D modeling environment; easy-to-use 2D, Dimensional Constraint Manager (DCM) from Siemens PLM; great new architectural, landscaping, and entertainment design features; new rendering functionality; and many important usability changes, all built upon the Parasolid® modeling core. This is no ordinary year. Change is happening everywhere. With Vectorworks 2010, change is easy.

Improved Modeling

With Vectorworks 2010, Nemetschek is unveiling a significantly more efficient modeling application. A vastly improved 3D environment makes it much easier to create, edit, and visualize your design, while a new foundation for constraints and object association delivers a robust and reliable drawing experience. You’ll find many enhancements, such as: improved working planes, better snapping in 3D views, 2D objects represented as planar graphics, interactive dimension editing, and 3D and hybrid objects with a unified coordinate system, to name just a few.

3D Environment

New Unified 2D/3D Environment (Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design)
Building upon the Parasolid modeling foundation we laid in 2009, Vectorworks 2010 has a new unified view that makes it an ideal 3D modeling environment. When you’re working in unified view, it allows you to select and modify objects on any layer.

Improved 3D Snapping (All Products except Renderworks)
Now more than ever, Vectorworks users are investigating the potential of 3D. As a result, you’ll notice improvements in the overall usability and reliability of 3D snapping. With the 3D cursor and new working plane graphics, you can reliably acquire your snaps, so it’s easier to select, modify, and align your objects in 3D.

New Planar Graphics (All Products except Renderworks)
2D objects can occupy the screen plane as they do now, or they can become planar objects, which exist in 3D space and maintain their relationship to the 3D model.

Associativity

New Dimensional Constraint Manager (All Products except Renderworks)
Make life easier with more reliable parametric constraints. The new and robust Dimensional Constraint Manager provides bi-directional associativity, so you can interactively make edits to either objects or their constraints and have the changes automatically reflected.

Interactive Dimension Editing (All Products except Renderworks)
Great new feature alert: now you can directly edit object geometry by changing its dimension value! Just edit the dimension value and when you press Enter, both the dimension and the associated object automatically update.

Usability

The easier it is to use the software, the easier it is for you to complete your work. So we’ve taken a lot of time to study usability issues and dramatically improve features to make them more intuitive. We’re betting some of our favorites will be your favorites too. There’s a viewport edit crop enhancement, improvements to the Purge command, attribute mapping of associative hatches, a brand new Select Similar tool, dash style improvements, in-place editing of referenced resources, and selection support for object modification tools. 

New Help System

Adobe AIR™ for Online Help (All Products)
The totally redesigned help system now uses Adobe AIR; this eliminates browser issues and includes nifty Web 2.0 features. You’ll enjoy superior search capability, adding web and RSS feed links, and including custom notes to the help topics that will benefit every Vectorworks user in your office.

Drawing Efficiency

New Select Similar Tool (Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design)
Super time-saver alert! The new Select Similar tool enables you to select the objects you need with just one click, regardless of class or layer. You can select all similar objects based on any combination of 27 criteria, define saved settings, and save, load, or delete your selection settings—easier done than said.

Easy Mapping of Associative Hatches (All Products except Renderworks)
Now you’ll have greater control over modifying an object’s associative hatch fill—you can more easily identify the origin, and precisely set the hatch origin, rotation, and scale.

New Global World Coordinates (Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design)
You can choose to display global world coordinates, in addition to screen coordinates, when in rotated plan view, making it simple to accurately align your designs with the global coordinate system. The global and screen coordinates also display in different colors throughout the application for quick identification.

Improved Move by Points Tool (All Products except Renderworks)
When moving objects by a specified offset distance from the reference point, you can now choose whether you’d prefer to click on the object you want to move first and then the reference point, or vice versa. It’s up to you.

New Dimension Options

Simultaneous Dimension Editing (All Products except Renderworks)
You can simultaneously edit single and chain dimensions; the Object Info palette now displays all of the additional parameters available for chain dimensions. You are a model of efficiency.

New Segment Position Control for Linear Dimensions (All Products except Renderworks)
Nemetschek has added a widget to the Object Info palette and Properties dialog box for linear dimensions so you can specify which segment of the dimension (either endpoint or the center point) remains fixed when the dimension is resized.

New Dimension Standard Options (All Products except Renderworks)
You can now quickly select the default dimension standard for your document or specify a new custom dimension standard from a new drop-down menu on the Tool bar. You can also access the Custom Dimension dialog box from the Object Info palette.

Dimension Text Drag Support (All Products except Renderworks)
Previously, you could only drag dimension text parallel to the dimension line. Now, the text for angular dimensions can be moved along the dimension curve and text for all other dimensions can be dragged in any direction, without affecting the dimension line location. So go ahead and drag dimension text in linear, as well as chain dimensions, wherever you desire.

Chain Dimension Text Collision Control (All Products except Renderworks)
With text collision control, you can prevent chain dimension text from overlapping and becoming unreadable—ah, that’s better.

New Arc Length Dimension Tool (All Products except Renderworks)
Now you can dimension any portion of an arc along its circumference.

Fractional Dimension Display (All Products except Renderworks)
Check out the new control in the Units dialog box. It gives you the option of displaying fractional dimension values in one of three smaller, classical fraction styles for all dimension types.

Import and Export Improvements

Vectorworks has always had a commitment to best-in-class interoperability, and with version 2010, your importing and exporting will be smooth sailing. 

Import improvements include: (All Products except Renderworks)

• Improved DXF/DWG reference import support:  xRefs are now imported as referenced design layer viewports (Design Series products) or layer links (Fundamentals).
• DXF/DWG import saved settings:  Nemetschek has added a saved settings capability so you can recall saved sets of import options.
• Import support for AutoCAD® scaled blocks:  AutoCAD scaled blocks are now imported as Vectorworks symbols rather than groups.
• Support for 128 dash styles:  Vectorworks 2010 can hold up to 128 dash styles, so all dash styles will import, and your existing Vectorworks dash styles will not be overwritten.
• Import 2D or 3D view of ADT objects:  When you import files containing ADT objects, you can select whether you want the 2D or 3D view of the imported architectural objects.
• AutoCAD table import support:  Formatted tables are imported as lines and text and maintain their proper attributes—line style, color, line thickness, and size.
• New custom dimension standards:  When DWG dimensions are imported, custom dimension standards corresponding to the AutoCAD file dimension styles are automatically created and applied.
• SketchUp® 7 import support: SketchUp 7 files can be imported in Vectorworks 2010 (Design Series products)

Export improvements include: (All Products except Renderworks)

• DXF/DWG batch export of saved views:  Easily batch export any number of, or all saved views to separate DXF or DWG files.
• DXF/DWG anonymous block export support: Groups can now be exported as either anonymous blocks or named blocks.
• DXF/DWG export of sheet layers as 2D graphics:  When sheet layers are exported, a new option allows viewports, and saved views with 2D and 3D Vectorworks graphics, to be exported as 2D “flat” graphics in AutoCAD model space.
• Improved IFC Export: The architectural symbol content in Vectorworks Architect has been pre-categorized with IFC data, making your IFC exports easy (Architect, Designer).

Enhanced Viewport and Referencing Capabilities

New Viewport Visibility Options (Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design)
Now you’ll enjoy even greater control over the look and feel of the viewports in your design. This preference allows you to apply your non-referenced design layer viewport visibilities to your sheet layer viewports.

Improved File Referencing Capabilities (All Products except Renderworks)
A more intuitive solution: when the program can’t find referenced resources during an update, it will prompt you to break the reference, replace the resource with another available one, or delete the resource entirely.

In-Place Reference Editing (All Products except Renderworks)
Here’s a big time-saver: now you can modify referenced resources in place and in context with the right-click edit option, and even save the changes directly to the referenced file. Use this option for referenced gradients, hatch definitions, record definitions, render backgrounds, symbol definitions, textures, and, for Design Series users, sketch styles and wall styles. This feature will also allow you to modify referenced symbols in context.

Improved Viewport Crop Editing (All Products except Renderworks)
When creating or editing viewport crops, the cropped area that was previously invisible is now visible in either wireframe or light grey. This allows you to snap to objects outside the crop while reshaping or moving the crop object.

Improved Elevation Benchmark (Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design)
Nemetschek has added another parameter to the US-style elevation benchmark so you can extend the crosshair marks a custom distance beyond the marker circle.

New Find Resource Capability (All Products except Renderworks)
Try the handy new Find Resource menu item in the Resource Browser to quickly locate resources within the current document.

Resource Browser View Enhancement (All Products except Renderworks)
It’s a cinch to distinguish between similar resource names, since the Resource Browser now supports up to five lines of text for thumbnail views.

Multi-Processor Support (All Products)
All of the Parasolid-based functionality in Vectorworks 2010 now takes advantage of multiprocessing on the Macintosh.

Drafting Improvements

New Dash Style Capabilities (All Products except Renderworks)
With easy access to the Dash Styles dialog box from the Attributes palette, you can use up to 128 dash styles, reorder your dash styles, and custom name dash styles.

New Purge Capabilities (All Products except Renderworks)
Nemetschek has upgraded the Purge command in Vectorworks 2010 to do the following:

• Purge specific empty symbol folders
• Purge objects outside of the page boundary
• Purge plug-in object symbols and group symbols
• Purge record formats that store plug-in object defaults
• Purge unused dash styles
• Undo and redo purges
• Select and confirm the items to the purged

Improved 2D Reshape Tool (All Products except Renderworks)
Here’s a new trick: when you use the 2D Reshape tool to make a marquee selection and hold the Shift key down, you can select object vertices even when they are over another object.

New Rectangle Modes (All Products except Renderworks)
Drawing precise rectangles just got easier with new rectangle by Center/Corner and Side/Opposite Corner modes.

New Circle Modes (All Products except Renderworks)
Drawing circles just got easier too. With new Circle by Point and Center and Circle by Tangent and Center modes, you’ll create the most precise circles.

New Arc Mode (All Products except Renderworks)
Check out the new Arc by Circumference mode of the Arc tool.

Connect/Combine Tool Support for Multiple Objects (All Products except Renderworks)
We introduced a new mode that lets you extend multiple objects to a single boundary object in just one click. Voilà!

Chamfer by Length Option (All Products except Renderworks)
Now you can precisely define the length of the chamfer line.

Shortcut Support for Modification Tools (All Products except Renderworks)
Now the Rotate, Mirror, Offset, and Move by Points tools don’t require you to pre-select the object you wish to modify.

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