Get Connected with Vectorworks Cloud Services

Is your workflow feeling disconnected? 

In this article, you’ll learn how Vectorworks Cloud Services can help you process your drawings, stay connected, collaborate with your team, and show clients interactive presentations, all while never disrupting your project’s development.

Before we dive into the core capabilities and features of Vectorworks Cloud Services, let’s look at what Cloud Services is and how it can elevate your workflow. 

Vectorworks Cloud Services is a powerful cloud platform that elevates your projects, streamlines your workflows, and integrates seamlessly with your Vectorworks desktop app. It allows you to collaborate with internal and external team members, offload time-consuming file-processing tasks, access mobile 3D scanning technologies, and create interactive, immersive presentations to secure client buy-in faster. 

With Cloud Services, your files remain connected through an ecosystem of Vectorworks applications: Vectorworks, the VCS desktop app, Nomad, Odyssey, and the Vectorworks Cloud Services web portal. With such interconnectivity, you can push projects forward and ensure that everything stays up to date so you can focus on creating and presenting impactful work.

With the desktop app, you can monitor file processing, create file processing tasks, and manage file syncing status.

With Vectorworks Nomad, you’re able to access, view, and comment on 3D models, PDF drawings, presentation boards, and VR presentations.

You can also use Nomad to manage tasks, process scans to 3D models, and measure spaces.

With Vectorworks Cloud Services, you have access to every functionality of Cloud Services. Think of the portal as the glue for your cloud-based, collaborative workflows. Through this portal, you can manage file sharing, create shareable links, and much more.

Now, let’s take a look at exactly how Vectorworks Cloud Services can keep your workflow connected like never before.

One of the major time-savers of Vectorworks Cloud Services is its cloud-based rendering and model processing. With this, you can offload tasks like generating sheet sets, creating photorealistic renderings, and processing models for Vectorworks Odyssey. You can also perform batch rendering, generate panoramas, calculate solar animations, and process path movies, helping clients and collaborators visualize projects in stunning detail.

Entrusting the processing of your renders to Vectorworks Cloud Services frees up your machine and lets you move on to other projects.

Cloud Services also offers helpful workflows and processes like Revit exports, PDF generation, and VGX 3D model creation. By automating these repetitive tasks, designers gain more time to focus on creative work.

Additionally, the power of Vectorworks Cloud Services processes images made with the AI Visualizer. This allows you to explore design variations without needing to switch tools.

Click here to learn more about Vectorworks’ AI Visualizer.

As we mentioned briefly in the above “Mobile App” section, the Vectorworks Nomad app can also improve your everyday workflows. Among its many features is Photogrammetry, which converts photos to 3D, allowing designers to easily transform images into detailed 3D models. 

If you use Apple iOS products with LiDAR technology and the Nomad app, the Room Plan feature takes reality capture to new heights. With just a few taps on your iPhone or iPad, you can scan entire rooms. No more fumbling with tape measures or expensive laser equipment—simply point, scan, and capture the space around you.

Cloud-based presentations can be tailor-made for your clients, helping them better understand your design vision.

Once your files have successfully exported to the cloud, you can start a new presentation by creating either boards or tours using your panoramas. Boards are flat presentations that allow you to pin different media formats to them. Tours, on the other hand, are 360-degree walkthroughs made by linking together your panoramic images.

Tours allow your clients to feel as though they’re in your design. They’re also useful if a client is struggling to connect with your plans, drawings, or still renders. Giving an immersive view of a project will allow for a greater emotional connection to your design.

The last benefit of Cloud Services that we’ll discuss in this article is one of the most important: real-time collaboration.

With the new Cloud Document Reviewer, you and your external collaborators will have an effective way to mark up and comment on your projects regardless of where you are. It unlocks the ability to share, view, and do so on your Vectorworks documents from anywhere at any time on any web browser. And it doesn’t require an additional installation of Vectorworks.

You can then bring comments seamlessly back into your active Vectorworks files, pushing your projects forward.

Project Sharing, on the other hand, aids in your collaboration efforts with your internal team. Supported by the Vectorworks Cloud, Project Sharing lets you and your team turn any existing or new Vectorworks document into a shared file by pressing the Project Sharing command in the File menu.

Click here to learn more about Project Sharing on Vectorworks University.

When collaborating, Cloud Services also serves as a reliable backup storage solution, providing version control and protecting critical files from data loss. Its compatibility with Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive makes it easy for you to integrate Cloud Services into your existing storage ecosystems. 

Vectorworks annual subscription customers and VSS members get 100 GB of cloud storage, as well, meaning you don’t have to worry about using personal storage.