This month our tech support team has given us the best Valentine’s Day gift ever– two new tech tips!

The first one explains some of the lesser known functions of the Unified View mode and how individual options can change the appearance of the model.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The second tech tip demonstrates how to quickly create floors and detailed slabs from existing geometry. Depending on your project, Vectorworks software provides multiple methods of creating floors and slabs.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

One of our favorite scenic and lighting design companies made a big impression at Super Bowl XLVI (46) with its cutting-edge designs. Hired by NBC, Innovative Show Design (ISD) designed both scenic and lighting for areas such as the main broadcast desk (inside Lucas Oil Stadium), the red carpet set (located in the center of the NFL’s commissioners tailgate party), the NBC Sports Talk Remote Set (at the JW Marriott), the premier of “Costas Tonight” (which airs on NBC Sports Network) as well as “Feherty Live” (which airs on the Golf Channel) at the Indianapolis Reparatory Theater, and the remote broadcast studio in the Super Bowl Village.

“The red carpet set was inspired by the architecture in downtown Indianapolis,” explains Chris Runnells and Justin Garrone. “We noticed the abundance of brick styles and linear windows and wanted to incorporate these specific attributes into the set. The brick pattern was custom designed in the Vectorworks program and sent directly to a CNC machine (as an eps file) which cut the shapes perfectly.”

The stunning design of the main broadcast desk included a curved LED panel and a thick plexi glass tabletop. The main desk inclusive of the three-dimensional NBC peacocks on the side of the desk were modeled in CINEMA 4D then sent to the Vectorworks application to create construction drawings.

We thank Chris Runnells (Artistic Director), Justin Garrone (Assoc. Art Director / Lighting Designer), Mark Dowling (Project Manager), and Nate Mitchell (Graphic Supervisor) for sharing their story and can’t wait to see what challenges they take on next!

Since its inception in 1995, Icebreaker has led its competitors in the merino wool industry. With over 3,000 trading partners selling its wares in 43 countries, Icebreaker maintains production facilities around the world to keep them supplied. And the recent economic downturn has not stopped their growth. Bill Powell, production artist, says, “People will always buy quality, and we have a quality product.”

Icebreaker’s mission is sustainability, and the company has won several gold, silver, and bronze awards from the Designers Institute of New Zealand for its innovations in packaging, as well as the design of its TouchLab stores.

Icebreaker had been using Vectorworks Architect software since 2006 intermittently. Bill Vincent, account manager at Megabits, the Vectorworks distributor for New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, met with the Icebreaker team in 2010 to address their wish list. “We gave Vectorworks a list of our issues and problems and they said ‘yes we can do this, that, and that’,” Powell recalls. “They ticked all the boxes—it was a very easy decision to make. We explored other 3D applications, but Vectorworks came out on top each time.”

Powell took a Vectorworks Essentials online training course to get started and then received a series of ten online lessons from Vectorworks trainer and archoncad owner Jonathan Pickup that focused on a live project–designing a TouchLab retail space–so that he could learn and build at the same time.

One of the most powerful things that Powell was able to introduce to his team was the program’s ability to integrate data. The software can replace the costing function of an accounting program by storing cost information in the actual drawing. Merchandise pricing information is linked to the drawing and automatically updates every time the drawing is changed. This capability eliminates the need to go back and forth between a drawing and an accounting program, saving time and ensuring accuracy.

“For us that is huge because we have 3,000 stores where our clothes are sold, and we have our fixtures and fittings in a great deal of them,” explains Powell. “When we send our product to a prospective retailer, we can immediately say we have these four options and if they come back and say we don’t want that particular feature we take it out and it’s immediately recalculated. It saves a ton of time. Traditionally we would go back and redraw it, which is extremely time consuming.”

To read more of Icebreaker’s story, please visit our Case Studies page.

Janine Pattison accepts the BALI Principal Landscape Design Excellence Award Winner for 2011.

Janine Pattison Garden Design won a 2011 Principal Design Excellence Award from the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI). Pattison’s firm was honored for the landscape design of Dairy Farm Lodge in Dorset, U.K.

The judges’ comments praised the innovation of the design: “A show stopping creative approach capturing a cool Provencal feel with a real contemporary twist. Hot olive grove plantings merge with the stunning rolling Dorset landscape beyond. A highly imaginative, cutting edge design approach cleverly capturing the ‘borrowed landscape’, which has been tied back to the property using sweeping wildflower meadows to blur the boundaries and anchor the design well into its surrounds. Stunning hand sculpted sandstone cladding is brought to life at night with creative mood lighting. An impressive lighting scheme adds extra ‘Wow’ to this design.”

The BALI National Landscape Awards have been held annually since 1976, and entries are judged by a panel of award-winning practitioners, educators, and leaders from the landscape profession. Pattison’s firm was recognized in the category for projects with an overall cost of more than £50,000.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have been judged by our profession to have produced the best garden design of 2011,” said Pattison.

Congratulations to Janine Pattison and her team on receiving this honor!

If you are an artist dreaming of the perfect studio, you’ll be happy to know that your vision has become a reality.

The Chadds Ford Artist’s Studio, designed by Moger Mehrhof Architects, won The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Chesapeake Bay Chapter 2011 Citation Award for residential design. This equestrian inspired artist’s studio also won the first place Honor Award, voted by fellow architects.

As explained by the jury, “We appreciate the graceful rotation of this new studio addition from the main house in order to set up natural lighting appropriate for a painting studio. The addition is in harmony with the existing residence. The procession from the home to studio sets up a sophisticated transition to an open, light filled, elegantly detailed studio space.”

Principal Kirby Mehrhof has been an avid Vectorworks user since the early 90s. “Once we do a few paper napkin sketches to establish a design direction, we use Vectorworks to build a schematic model to show the client the massing of the proposed scheme,” says Mehrhof. “We also use the model to quickly generate perspective views that become the basis of our renderings. We then develop the rest of the project on Vectorworks Architect, taking it through construction documents using all the great documenting and detailing features. We save significant amounts of time by making extensive use of automated schedules and reports.”

To view more pictures of this studio, please visit Moger Mehrhof Architects’ website.

We are pleased to announce that Vectorworks firm Bagno Sasso won the Good Design Award 2011 in the category “bath and accessories” for its free-standing bathtub the OCEAN Sailor.

According to Bagno Sasso, “this model is one of the youngest products and is made from unique wood. It also resembles the patterns of a zebra. The individual veneers are cut to the exact millimeter, and with the utmost precision, placed onto a structure. Each tub is crafted by hand, making it utterly unique.”

Dating back to the 1950s, GOOD DESIGN is the world’s largest and most distinguished design competition. Thousands of leading designers from over 50 nations submit their best to the program that honors worldwide design innovation, vision, and sustainability.

To view more projects from this award-winning firm, please visit the website.

An architect visits a job site and notices that a detail is incorrect. This must be quickly communicated to the team so a solution can be proposed.

The design is updated in the cloud, and it can be viewed on a colleague’s mobile phone…

Or by others working on desktops back at the office.

Improved convenience. Greater collaboration. Freedom to make design decisions from any location.

Imagine the possibilities.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Kevin Lee Allen

We’re thrilled to announce the publication of a new Vectorworks training guide: Entertainment and Lighting Design with Vectorworks Spotlight, First Edition. The manual was written by Kevin Lee Allen, an award-winning lighting and scenic designer whose work includes theater, film, television, museums, and corporate environments.

This book explores the use of the Vectorworks Spotlight with Renderworks program for use in the entertainment industries. While the methods and techniques described are applicable to film, television, concerts, exhibits, and themed architecture or interiors, this tutorial focuses on a project that creates lights and a set for the stage, the root of entertainment design. The exercises in the tutorial will teach users the steps to create designs ranging from a simple 3D form to a Broadway-scale production of Romeo and Juliet.

“It is definitely going to be my course textbook for this semester because, despite my students having different needs than entertainment designers, it specifically lists the most important tools, commands, and workflows and talks a little about each one,” said Cris Dopher, Entertainment Designer and Instructor at FIT.

The book will be part of the prize package for this year’s iSquint.net and Stage Directions Student Lighting Design Competition, sponsored by Nemetschek Vectorworks, City Theatrical and Field Template. Allen serves on the competition’s panel of judges.

To learn more about this and other tutorials, please visit the Training Guides page of our website. To read the full press release, please click here.

On January 13 our Japanese distributor, A&A Co., Ltd., set off on a nationwide caravan to introduce the Japanese-language version of Vectorworks 2012.

Our CEO, Sean Flaherty, and our CTO, Biplab Sarkar, were guest presenters at the Tokyo and Fukuoka events and had the opportunity to talk to designers about building information modeling (BIM) and 3D design.

Sean Flaherty stands next to a Vectorworks ad at Ochanomizu Station.

“We have organized Vectorworks practical seminars at our caravan, and the attendees have been impressed by the versatility and 3D aspects of Vectorworks software,” explains Kazuko Uchida, President of A&A.

The nationwide caravan will end on January 28 in Osaka, so be sure to check out these exciting events.

The Specifiers’ Properties information exchange (SPie) is a volunteer research effort aimed at standardizing (using open-BIM standards) and improving the distribution of construction product data. Our very own Robert Anderson participated in the first-round effort as “the geometry guy” which gave him the chance to show off Vectorworks’ excellent general-purpose geometry tools and how they could be used to create IFC-based product data.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Our tech support team has created two new tech tips which are sure to help our users be more efficient with Vectorworks software. The first one covers the basics of the Drape Surface tool, an often underused part of the Vectorworks 3D Power Pack set of commands and tools.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The second tech tip discusses the functionality of the Data Stamp tool and shows how it automates version tracking of exported or printed documents.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.