System Requirements

Windows:

Mac:

Vectorworks 2017 System Requirements

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2017. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware.

Vectorworks 2017 with all libraries installed takes up ~25GB of storage space.

* See the discussion in the Optimizing Performance section below.

** See the discussion in the Graphics Card section below.

Additional Details

Graphics Cards

IMPORTANT – Several Vectorworks features have placed higher demands on graphic hardware. Additionally, the performance and quality of the graphics provided by the Vectorworks Graphics Module depend directly on the speed, memory, and supported extensions of the graphics card. These new features have the potential to provide a very fast and fluid experience if used on capable hardware, or a noticeably slower experience if used on older or incompatible hardware. Graphics cards should support at a minimum OpenGL version 2.1; cards not meeting this recommendation will have limited functionality and poor performance, particularly when rendering in OpenGL mode. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be.

The amount of Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1920×1080 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM.  Larger displays should use a modern graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended.

OpenGL rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and require at least 2GB, with 4GB of VRAM or more being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of OpenGL shadows and edges, especially in situations where you have any combination of the following:
– many lights
– point lights
– image textures
– anti-aliasing
– high shadow quality
– excessive geometry

If you have a graphics card with less than 1GB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your graphics card.

We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. The majority of display problems reported to our Technical Support department have been traced to older video drivers.                                                                                                                                                                    

For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations for Vectorworks 2017, go to the Vectorworks Knowledge base and for more information search for “OpenGL”.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes but you should not expect good performance in these environments, however, especially with interactive screen feedback.

We do support Vectorworks running under Boot Camp on Mac machines. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step.  

Optimizing Performance

For users who work with large files and complex renderings, we recommend running with at least 8GB of RAM. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have a large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used.

Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can reduce this size by opting to not install some of the larger Vectorworks content files.

Project Sharing and Network Bandwidth

The performance of Vectorworks when working on a shared project over the network will depend on the available network bandwidth. If the network bandwidth is insufficient, operations that transfer large amounts of data over the network will be slow.

We recommend at minimum a Fast Ethernet (100Mbit/s) network connection. For large projects, Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) networks are highly recommended for a fast and fluid experience. Slower networks can still provide a satisfactory user experience if operations that transfer large amount of data over the network, such as committing changes to the project file or refreshing a local working file, are kept to a minimum.

More Information

For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2017, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “2017“

Windows:

Mac:

The following are real-world system requirements for running Vectorworks 2016. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware.

* See the discussion in the Optimizing Performance section below. ** See the discussion in the Graphics Card section below.

Additional Details

Graphics Cards

IMPORTANT – Like past releases, Vectorworks 2016 added improvements which placed still higher demands on graphic hardware. The performance and quality of the graphics provided by the new Vectorworks Graphics Module depend directly on the speed, memory, and supported extensions of the graphics card. These new features have the potential to provide a very fast and fluid experience if used on capable hardware, or a noticeably slower experience if used on older or incompatible hardware. Graphic cards should support at a minimum OpenGL version 2.1; cards not meeting this recommendation will have limited functionality and poor performance, particularly when rendering in OpenGL mode. In general, the more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. The amount of Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1920×1080 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM. Larger displays should use a modern graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM, with 4GB or more recommended. OpenGL rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and require at least 1GB, with 2GB of VRAM or more being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of OpenGL shadows and edges, especially in situations where you have any combination of the following:

• many lights
• point lights
• image textures
• anti-aliasing
• high shadow quality
• excessive geometry

and if you have a graphics card with less than 1GB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your graphics card. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. The majority of display problems reported to our Technical Support department have been traced to older video drivers. For the latest information on our graphics card recommendations for Vectorworks 2016 & 2017, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance in these environments, however, especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Boot Camp on Mac machines. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step.

Optimizing Performance

For users who work with large files and complex renderings, we recommend running with at least 8GB of RAM. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have a large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can reduce this size by opting to not install some of the larger Vectorworks content files.

Project Sharing and Network Bandwidth

The performance of Vectorworks when working on a shared project over the network will depend on the available network bandwidth. If the network bandwidth is insufficient, operations that transfer large amount of data over the network will be slow. We recommend at minimum a Fast Ethernet (100Mbit/s) network connection. For large projects, Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbit/s) networks are highly recommended for a fast and fluid experience. Slower networks can still provide a satisfactory user experience if operations that transfer large amount of data over the network, such as committing changes to the project file or refreshing a local working file, are kept to a minimum.

More Information

For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2016, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “2016”.

Windows:

Mac:

Related Articles

• OS X 10.10 Yosemite compatibility with Vectorworks
• Uninstalling Vectorworks Help
• 64bit Vectorworks FAQ
• Vectorworks Not Launching – Complete Mac OSX Steps
• Windows 8 Tips
• Creating a List of Installed Programs

The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2015. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware.

* See the discussion in the Optimizing Performance section below.

Related Articles

Video Cards

IMPORTANT – Like past releases, Vectorworks 2015 added improvements which placed still higher demands on graphic hardware. The performance and quality of the graphics provided by the new Vectorworks Graphics Module depend directly on the speed, memory, and supported extensions of the graphics card. These new features have the potential to provide a very fast and fluid experience if used on capable hardware, or a noticeably slower experience if used on older or incompatible hardware. Graphic cards should support at a minimum OpenGL version 2.1; cards not meeting this recommendation will have limited functionality and poor performance, particularly when rendering in OpenGL mode.In general, the more powerful your video card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. The amount of Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1920×1080 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 512MB of VRAM. Larger displays, such as displays that are 30” or larger, should use a modern graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM, with 2GB or more recommended. OpenGL rendering of shadows and edges are VRAM-intensive and require at least 512MB, with 2GB of VRAM being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of OpenGL shadows and edges, especially in situations where you have any combination of the following:

• many lights
• point lights
• image textures
• anti-aliasing
• high shadow quality

and if you have a video card with less than 512MB of VRAM, you should consider upgrading your video card. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. The majority of display problems reported to our Technical Support department have been traced to older video drivers. For the latest information on our video card recommendations for Vectorworks 2015, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “OpenGL”.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance in these environments, however, especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Boot Camp on Mac machines. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step.

32-bit / 64-Bit Machines

On the Mac, Vectorworks is a 64-bit application and will run on all supported MacOS versions. On Windows, Vectorworks can be run as either a 32-bit application or as a 64-bit application.

Optimizing Performance

For users who run in a 64-bit environment and work with large files and complex renderings, we recommend running with at least 8GB of RAM. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have a large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can reduce this size by opting to not install some of the larger Vectorworks content files.

More Information

For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2015, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “2015”.

Vectorworks Operating System Compatibility List 2013-10-22

Windows:

Mac:

Related Articles

• Update Cloud Services Desktop and Nomad Apps for Vectorworks 2013 Compatibility
• Vectorworks System Recommendations – Master List – 9-18-2012
• Vectorworks Not Launching – Complete Mac OSX Steps
• Windows 8 Tips
• Creating a List of Installed Programs

The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2014. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors and additional RAM. Important note: For Vectorworks 2014, the minimum OS requirement for Macintosh is OS X 10.6.8.

Individual Product Requirements:

*See the discussion in the Optimizing Performance section below.

Video Cards

IMPORTANT – Vectorworks 2014 added improvements which placed higher demands on graphic hardware. The performance and quality of the graphics provided by the new Vectorworks Graphics Module depend directly on the speed, memory, and supported extensions of the graphics card. These new features have the potential to provide a very fast and fluid experience if used on capable hardware, or a noticeably slower experience if used on older or incompatible hardware. Starting with Vectorworks 2014 graphic cards should support at a minimum OpenGL version 2.1; cards not meeting this recommendation will have limited functionality and poor performance when rendering in OpenGL mode. In summary: The more powerful your graphics card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. The amount of dedicated Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1600×1200 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 256MB of dedicated VRAM. Larger displays, such as displays that are 30” or larger, should use a modern graphics card with at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM, with 1GB or more recommended. If you use OpenGL rendering, Vectorworks 2012, Vectorworks 2013, and Vectorworks 2014 contain significant OpenGL improvements that drastically improve the rendering of shadows. These improvements are VRAM-intensive, however, and require at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM, with 1GB of dedicated VRAM being preferable. If you want to take full advantage of improved OpenGL shadows in Vectorworks 2012, Vectorworks 2013, and Vectorworks 2014, especially in situations where you have any combination of the following:

• many lights
• point lights
• image textures
• anti-aliasing
• high shadow quality
• and if you have a video card with less than 512MB of dedicated VRAM, you should consider upgrading your video card

We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. The majority of display problems reported to our Technical Support department have been traced to older video drivers. For the latest information on our video card recommendations for Vectorworks 2014, see the following Knowledgebase article: http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/1139/ or go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “OpenGL”.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance in these environments, however, especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Bootcamp on Intel Macs. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step. On Windows we recommend against updating QuickTime, primarily because many Windows users are not aware that Vectorworks depends on QuickTime and can possibly change behavior when QuickTime is updated. We have never had problems, however, which were traced back to bugs in newer releases of QuickTime, so updating QuickTime on Windows is not a risky choice.

64 Bit Windows

While Vectorworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we generally recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Vectorworks 2014. While Renderworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we strongly recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Renderworks 2014, as it will take full use of 64 bit addressing.

Optimizing Performance

RAM requirements are usually driven by performance considerations. Large files and especially complex rendering modes consume large amounts of memory. On the Mac the operating system will take advantage of nearly all of the RAM that you have up to 4GB. On Windows the operating system will by default only take advantage of 2GB of RAM, but can be coerced into using up to 3GB. See the following Vectorworks Knowledgebase article for information on how to use up to 3GB of RAM on Windows:http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/663, or go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “3GB”. For users who have 64 bit machines and work with large files and complex renderings, we recommend installing 8GB of RAM to give the rest of your system more RAM breathing space when Vectorworks is approaching the maximum. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have an unexpectedly large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can reduce this size by opting to not install some Vectorworks content files.

Vectorworks Operating System Compatibility List 7th Jan 2013

Windows:

Mac

Vectorworks System Recommendations – Master List 18th Sept 2012

Vectorworks 2012 System Requirements

Vectorworks Operating System Compatibility List August 10th, 2012

Mac

Last Modified: 12/9/2011

The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2012. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors and additional RAM.

For more detailed information for Vectorworks 2012:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2012-system-recommendations-r151/

Additional Details

Video Cards

IMPORTANT – Vectorworks 2009 introduced a completely new document interaction interface which depends on a high bandwidth interface between the CPU and the screen. This has the potential to provide a very fast and fluid screen interface if used on appropriate hardware or a noticeably slower interface if used on the wrong hardware. It is especially important to choose a CPU and video card which are current-generation if you use Vectorworks on a very high resolution 30″ monitor. Some users may be dissatisfied with 30″ monitors when used with older generation processors or video cards. In general, starting with Vectorworks 2009, the more powerful your video card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. Most functional problems have been traced to older video drivers during our testing. Please also note that, while modern GeForce cards on the Mac generally behave pretty well with sufficient VRAM, some users have reported stability and performance problems with older NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and 7300 cards starting with MacOS 10.5.6, even when using the most up-to-date drivers. While some users may experience acceptable performance using these cards, we recommend using a more modern NVIDIA card like the GeForce 8800GT for those users who use NVIDIA cards.
Any video card used with Vectorworks should have a minimum of 512MB dedicated (Non-shared) RAM.

Strict Minimums

The absolute software version requirements in order for Vectorworks to launch are often but not always more relaxed than our recommendations. Vectorworks 2012 requires the following as an absolute minimum: Windows:

• Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1, or later
• QuickTime 7.6.0
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

Macintosh:

• Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
• QuickTime 7.0
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

We do not currently have strict runtime checks of other aspects of the machine configuration such as the processor architecture.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance – especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Bootcamp on Intel Macs. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step. On Windows, we recommend against updating QuickTime primarily because most Windows users are not aware that Vectorworks depends on QuickTime and can possibly change behavior when QuickTime is updated. We have never had problems, however, which were traced back to bugs in newer releases of QuickTime, so updating QuickTime on Windows is not a risky choice.

64 Bit Windows

While Vectorworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we generally recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Vectorworks 2012. While Renderworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we strongly recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Renderworks 2012, as it will take full use of 64 bit addressing. With those recommendations having been made, we have noticed that drivers for 64 bit Windows can be somewhat more problematic than those for the more mainstream 32 bit versions of Windows. Should you choose to run 64 bit Windows you should make sure that you carefully choose your hardware and driver versions to avoid problems.

Optimizing Performance

Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. We choose our recommendation based on our perception of mainstream needs and the current available hardware. RAM requirements are usually driven by performance considerations. Large files and especially complex rendering modes consume large amounts of memory. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have an unexpectedly large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can easily reduce this size by opting to not install some Vectorworks content files.

More Information

For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2012 go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “2012”.

Vectorworks 2011 System Recommendations

For more detailed information for Vectorworks 2011:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2011-system-recommendations-r578/ The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2011. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors and additional RAM. Important note: For Vectorworks 2011, the minimum requirement for the Macintosh is Mac OS 10.5.7 running on an Intel processor.

General Recommendations

Macintosh:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later
Other Software: QuickTime
Processor: Intel Core Duo 2GHz or better
Other Hardware: DVD-ROM drive (dual layer)
Screen Resolution: Recommended: 1280×800 Minimum: 1024×768
Display color depth: 16 bit or higher

Windows:

Operating System: Windows XP SP 3 Windows Vista SP 2 Windows 7
Other Software: QuickTime 7.6 to 7.6.6 (higher versions not recommended)
Processor: Pentium 2GHz or better
Other Hardware: DVD-ROM drive (dual layer)
Screen Resolution: Recommended: 1280×800 Minimum: 1024 x 768
Display color depth: 16 bit or higher

Product Requirements:

Vectorworks Fundamentals: RAM: 1GB Minimum*, 2GB recommended Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Fundamentals plus Renderworks: RAM: 2GB Minimum*, 4GB recommended Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Designer: RAM: 1GB Minimum*, 2GB recommended Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Designer plus Renderworks: RAM: 2GB Minimum*, 4GB recommended Hard drive space: 10GB free

Additional Details

Video Cards

IMPORTANT – Vectorworks 2009 introduced a completely new document interaction interface which depends on a high bandwidth interface between the CPU and the screen. This has the potential to provide a very fast and fluid screen interface if used on appropriate hardware or a noticeably slower interface if used on the wrong hardware. It is especially important to choose a CPU and video card which are current-generation if you use Vectorworks on a very high resolution 30″ monitor. Some users may be dissatisfied with 30″ monitors when used with older generation processors or video cards. In general, starting with Vectorworks 2009, the more powerful your video card is, the better your Vectorworks experience will be. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. Most functional problems have been traced to older video drivers during our testing. Please also note that, while modern GeForce cards on the Mac generally behave pretty well with sufficient VRAM, some users have reported stability and performance problems with older NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and 7300 cards starting with MacOS 10.5.6, even when using the most up-to-date drivers. While some users may experience acceptable performance using these cards, we recommend using a more modern NVIDIA card like the GeForce 8800GT for those users who use NVIDIA cards. For the latest information on our video card recommendations for Vectorworks 2011, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “opengl”.

Strict Minimums

The absolute software version requirements in order for Vectorworks to launch are often but not always more relaxed than our recommendations. Vectorworks 2011 requires the following as an absolute minimum: Windows:

• Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, or later
• QuickTime 7.6.0
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

Macintosh:

• Mac OS X 10.5.0 or later
• QuickTime 7.0
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

We do not currently have strict runtime checks of other aspects of the machine configuration such as the processor architecture.

Remote and Virtual Machines

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance – especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Bootcamp on Intel Macs. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step. On Windows, we recommend against updating QuickTime primarily because most Windows users are not aware that Vectorworks depends on QuickTime and can possibly change behavior when QuickTime is updated. We have never had problems, however, which were traced back to bugs in newer releases of QuickTime, so updating QuickTime on Windows is not a risky choice.

64 Bit Windows

While Vectorworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we generally recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Vectorworks 2011. While Renderworks is fully supported in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows environments, we strongly recommend using a 64 bit Windows operating system for Renderworks 2011, as it will take full use of 64 bit addressing. With those recommendations having been made, we have noticed that drivers for 64 bit Windows can be somewhat more problematic than those for the more mainstream 32 bit versions of Windows. Should you choose to run 64 bit Windows you should make sure that you carefully choose your hardware and driver versions to avoid problems.

Optimizing Performance

Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. We choose our recommendation based on our perception of mainstream needs and the current available hardware. RAM requirements are usually driven by performance considerations. Large files and especially complex rendering modes consume large amounts of memory. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have an unexpectedly large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can easily reduce this size by opting to not install some Vectorworks content files.

More Information

For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2011 go to http://kbase.vectorworks.net/ and search for “2011”.

For more detailed information for Vectorworks 2010:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2010-system-recommendations-r526/

Vectorworks Operating System Compatibility List

Windows

Mac

Vectorworks 2010 System Requirements

The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2010. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors and additional RAM.

Macintosh:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later Other Software: QuickTime Processor: Intel Core 2GHz or better Other Hardware: DVD-ROM drive (dual layer) Screen Resolution: Recommended: 1280×800, Required: 1024×768 Display color depth: 16 bit or higher

Windows:

Operating System: Windows XP SP 3 Windows Vista SP 2 Other Software: QuickTime 7.6 (higher versions not recommended) Processor: Pentium 2GHz or better Other Hardware: DVD-ROM drive (dual layer) Screen Resolution: Recommended: 1280×800, Required: 1024 x 768 (XGA) Display color depth:16 bit or higher

Product Requirements:

Vectorworks Designer: RAM: 2GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Designer plus Renderworks: RAM: 4GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Design Series: RAM: 2GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Design Series plus Renderworks: RAM: 4GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Fundamentals:
RAM: 2GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Fundamentals plus Renderworks: RAM: 4GB Hard drive space: 10GB free

Package-Specific Minimums:

Vectorworks Designer: RAM: 2GB Hard drive space: 10GB free
Vectorworks Designer plus Renderworks: RAM: 4GB Hard drive space: 10GB free

Vectorworks 2010 requires the following as an absolute minimum:

Windows:*

• Windows XP sp3 or Vista sp2 or later*
• QuickTime 7.2*
• All attached video monitors set to 16 bits per pixel or higher

Macintosh:*

• Mac OS X 10.5 or later*
• QuickTime 7.0*
• All attached video monitors set to 16 bits per pixel or higher

We do not currently have strict runtime checks of other aspects of the machine configuration such as the processor architecture.

Remote and Virtual Machines:

We do not consider remote login environments such as Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and VNC or virtual machine environments such as Parallels and VMware to be appropriate for regular work, so Vectorworks performance in these situations is not of primary concern to us. They may be appropriate for administrative testing or utility purposes, and Vectorworks is fully functional in these environments. You should not expect high performance – especially with interactive screen feedback. We do support Vectorworks running under Bootcamp on Intel Macs. As long as you have appropriate and current drivers for the hardware on your machine, you can expect fast and reliable Vectorworks behavior.

Maintenance Releases:

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step. On Windows, we recommend against updating QuickTime primarily because most Windows users are not aware that Vectorworks depends on QuickTime and can possibly change behavior when QuickTime is updated. We have never had problems, however, which were traced back to bugs in newer releases of QuickTime, so updating QuickTime on Windows is not a risky choice.

64 Bit Windows:

On the Windows platform, the user must choose whether to run with a 32 bit or 64 bit operating system. Vectorworks runs well and is fully supported in either environment, and we have no known problems in Vectorworks 2010 caused by running under a 64 bit operating system. Having said that, the following are also true:-

• Vectorworks 2009 does not use 64 bit addressing and does not benefit from running in a 64 bit environment.
• Vectorworks does run about 5% slower in a 64 bit environment due to a 32 bit emulation layer.
• We have noticed that drivers for 64 bit Windows are somewhat more problematic than those for the more mainstream 32 bit versions of Windows.

Should you choose to run 64 bit Windows you should make sure you carefully choose your hardware and driver versions to avoid problems.

Optimizing Performance:

Newer processor architectures often bring substantial improvements in performance. Mac Intel CPUs are substantially faster than G5s and we recommend using Intel based Mac hardware in all performance-sensitive applications. Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. We choose our recommendation based on our perception of mainstream needs and the current available hardware.RAM requirements are usually driven by performance considerations. Large files and especially complex rendering modes such as HDRI and radiosity consume large amounts of memory. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have an unexpectedly large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can easily reduce this size by opting to not install some Vectorworks content files.

Video Cards:

IMPORTANT – Vectorworks 2010 has a completely new document interaction interface which depends on a high bandwidth interface between the CPU and the screen. This has the potential to provide a very fast and fluid screen interface if used on appropriate hardware or a noticeably slower interface if used on the wrong hardware. It is especially important to choose a CPU and video card which are current-generation if you use Vectorworks on a very high resolution 30″ monitor. Some users may be dissatisfied with 30″ monitors when used with older generation processors or video cards. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. Most functional problems have been traced to older video drivers during our testing.

Technical Bulletin – Vectorworks 2009 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v.10.6) Stability Concerns

As many of you know, Apple will be releasing Snow Leopard on August 28, 2009. And as many of our customers work on a Mac platform, the release of Snow Leopard naturally brings up questions of compatibility. Understanding that for the majority of our customer base, our software is a key component of their work flow, our CTO, Dr. Biplab Sarkar, does not recommend running Vectorworks 2009 (Service Pack 4 or earlier) on Snow Leopard at this point in time. Dr. Sarkar and his team are already in the process of developing a version of Vectorworks 2009 that will be fully compatible with Snow Leopard and free to all Vectorworks 2009 users. Expect to hear notice of this version availability in early November, 2009. And, if you’re not already subscribed to our monthly e-Dispatch newsletter, please subscribe now so that you’ll get the announcement. http://www.nemetschek.net/community/edisp_subscribe.php For those customers with software versions earlier than Vectorworks 2009, please note we do not have plans to update these older versions to support Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v.10.6). Thank you for your understanding and patience. If you wish to read a more detailed technical explanation of the current stability issues with Snow Leopard, you’ll find that information on our ever-growing Vectorworks Knowledge Base site: (http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/706/Vectorworks++%26+Mac+OS+X+Snow+Leopard+V+10.6). If you wish to be kept abreast of all our latest updates on the Vectorworks Knowledge Base, you can subscribe to the feed of new posts there. Juan Almansa Product Support Manager Nemetschek North America, Inc. For any specific questions, please email techsupport@megabits.co.nz

Vectorworks 2009 System Requirements

For more detailed information for Vectorworks 2009:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2009-system-recommendations-r39/

Last Modified: 22 Sept 2008 We now specify a hardware and software configuration for real-world use. There are notes below discussing tradeoffs which can be expected if users decide to use Vectorworks with other hardware or software configurations. The following are real-world system recommendations for running Vectorworks 2009. In some demanding cases, we would suggest a more capable machine than is described by these recommendations. Likewise, there are some less demanding situations where Vectorworks will perform well on older hardware. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors and additional RAM.

The absolute software version requirements in order for Vectorworks to launch are often but not always more relaxed than our recommendations. Vectorworks 2009 requires the following as an absolute minimum: Windows:

• Windows XP or Vista or later
• QuickTime 7.2
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

Macintosh:

• Mac OS X 10.4.0 or later
• QuickTime 7.0
• All attached video monitors set to 15 bits per pixel or higher

Unless there is a known problem with a maintenance release of the operating system, we recommend the latest maintenance release at the time we ship a new release of Vectorworks as a minimum because that is what we test with. If you have problems with an earlier maintenance release, we will often ask you to update as an initial troubleshooting step. On Windows, we recommend against updating QuickTime primarily because most Windows users are not aware that Vectorworks depends on QuickTime and can possibly change behavior when QuickTime is updated. On the Windows platform, the user must choose whether to run with a 32 bit or 64 bit operating system. Vectorworks runs well and is fully supported in either environment, and we have no known problems in Vectorworks 2009 caused by running under a 64 bit operating system. Having said that, the following are also true:

Vectorworks 2009 does not use 64 bit addressing and does not benefit from running in a 64 bit environment. Vectorworks does run about 5% slower in a 64 bit environment due to a 32 bit emulation layer. We have noticed that drivers for 64 bit Windows are somewhat more problematic than those for the more mainstream 32 bit versions of Windows. Should you choose to run 64 bit Windows you should make sure you carefully choose your hardware and driver versions to avoid problems.

Newer processor architectures often bring substantial improvements in performance. Mac Intel CPUs are substantially faster than G5s and we recommend using Intel based Mac hardware in all performance-sensitive applications. Faster or slower processor clock speeds have a predictable impact on Vectorworks performance. We choose our recommendation based on our perception of mainstream needs and the current available hardware. RAM requirements are usually driven by performance considerations. Large files and especially complex rendering modes such as HDRI and radiosity consume large amounts of memory. When RAM runs out, Vectorworks usually continues to function, but is slowed significantly by the need to access the hard drive to provide virtual memory. Extreme lack of RAM may cause operations to generate errors in cases where given sufficient RAM they would otherwise succeed. Faster hard drives can have an unexpectedly large impact on system performance especially when virtual memory is actively being used. Hard drive size requirements are driven by the total size of Designer with Renderworks including all content files. You can easily reduce this size by opting to not install some Vectorworks content files. IMPORTANT – Vectorworks 2009 has a completely new document interaction interface which depends on a high bandwidth interface between the CPU and the screen. This has the potential to provide a very fast and fluid screen interface if used on appropriate hardware or a noticeably slower interface if used on the wrong hardware. It is especially important to choose a CPU and video card which are current-generation if you use Vectorworks on a very high resolution 30″ monitor. Some users may be dissatisfied with 30″ monitors when used with older generation processors or video cards. We strongly recommend that all users check that their video drivers are current. Most functional problems have been traced to older video drivers during our testing. For the latest information on our video card recommendations for Vectorworks 2009, go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “opengl”. For the latest support information on Vectorworks 2009 go to the Vectorworks Knowledgebase and search for “2009”.

For more detailed information for Vectorworks 2008:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/articles.html/articles/vectorworks-2008-system-requirements-r591/

Vectorworks 2008 System Requirements

Last Modified: 24 Aug 2007 Applies to Vectorworks version: 2008 The following are minimum system requirements to run Vectorworks 2008. In many cases we would recommend a significantly more capable machine than is described by these minimum requirements. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors, additional RAM, and larger screens.

Vectorworks 12.5 System Requirements

Special notes for 12.5.1 (December 21, 2006): Vectorworks 12.5.1 may not have flawless performance with Windows Vista, as Vista was released in 2007, well after the release of 12.5.1.All versions of Vectorworks 12 prior to 12.5.3 are not compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). 12.5.3 is recommended for Mac OS 10.5Last Modified: 15/8/2006 Applies to Vectorworks version: 12.5.0 The following are minimum system requirements to run Vectorworks 12.5. In many cases we would recommend a significantly more capable machine than is described by these minimum requirements. The Vectorworks user experience is always improved by faster processors, additional RAM, and larger screens.

Minimum System Requirements 12.0.x

Last Modified: 16/3/2005 Applies to VW version: 12.0.0 The following are minimum system requirements to run VectorWorks 12.0. In many cases we would recommend a significantly more capable machine than is described by these minimum requirements. The VectorWorks user experience is always improved by faster processors, additional RAM, and larger screens.