That actually came in almost as we were packaging up the final product! But it is stable and, I must say, Apple has done a good job on providing development tools. They just very recently gave us the final piece. The Parasolid modelling kernel (owned by Siemens) was obviously a big one. And of course, started communicating with these vendors of our intentions. With Parasolid at the core, Vectorworks has embedded possibilities in the ‘design to fabricate’ world of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and digital fabrication.ĪEC Magazine: Could you explain the effort required to get Vectorworks 2022 on Apple Silicon only eight months after Apple’s launch?īiplab Sarkar: We identified which components were our dependencies very early on. This always makes it great having conversations about ‘under the bonnet’ developments, as well as hearing about the efforts to push developers such as Siemens to better understand the needs and wants of the AEC market, in terms of geometry. Vectorworks ‘C’ level team are very technical and CEO, Biplab Sarkar, was formerly the company’s CTO.
#Vectorworks pro#
The Apple M1 chip powers the new Apple iMac (pictured), Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and MacBook air
#Vectorworks software#
Vectorworks is the first BIM software developer to bring out a true Apple Silicon version.
#Vectorworks code#
It really isn’t as easy as you would think and getting all the component developers to have their code ported for new operating systems is akin to herding cats. To achieve the rapid development of Vectorworks on Apple Silicon would have required a major effort across multiple contributing software companies all developing discrete components native to the new Apple ARM processors. While you may think that a software developer could do all this work in-house, the reality of modern software development is that many sub-components of the software are developed by niche providers and are licensed, such as the Siemens Parasolid solid modelling kernel. Vectorworks is the first BIM software developer to bring out a true Apple Silicon version, both supporting native CPU (ARM) and native GPU (Metal). In this cycle, Vectorworks has performed the Herculean task of updating Windows and Apple Mac versions, while totally reworking the Mac variant to natively support Apple’s ‘system on a chip’ M1 Silicon.
To achieve this there has been a lot of ‘under the hood’ development work over the years from a very capable software development team keeping Vectorworks available on both Apple Mac and Windows platforms. While Graphisoft and Allplan are big in Europe, Vectorworks has always been the strong Nemetschek BIM brand in the US.Īrchicad, from its inception, was all about the 3D model, from which to derive 2D drawings Vectorworks has had a more traditional, evolutionary development journey from 2D draughting to 3D BIM functionality.
Each firm retains distinct management, different cultures and sales networks. It owns three BIM modelling companies – Graphisoft (Archicad), Allplan and Vectorworks – which compete against each other, as well as the rest of the market. Nemetschek is an anomaly in the AEC space. With the launch of Vectorworks 2022, Martyn Day caught up with company CEO Biplab Sarkar and CTO Steve Johnson to get their take on a range of issues, from Apple Silicon to the cloud.
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