As an interior designer, the story your materials tell should flow effortlessly from lifelike 3D renderings to clear, construction-ready 2D documentation. That’s where Vectorworks Architect and its hybrid drawing environment shine. Its features for texture alignment are designed to streamline both your creative and technical processes, saving time and adding confidence that what you envision is what gets built.
Vectorworks Architect equips you with three powerful features for matching visualization and documentation needs: - Per-Face Texture Mapping - Surface Hatching Synced with Textures - Attribute Mapping Tool
Want to show multiple finishes on a single piece of furniture? Need a statement wall that pops with several materials? Per-Face Texture Mapping gives you complete flexibility.
You can use the texturing tool in Apply to Face mode or simply drag and drop a texture with a shortcut key to apply it to any face of a 3D solid. This approach is perfect for custom joinery, feature walls, and furniture that calls for more than one finish.
A quick tip: when you select a texture in the Object Info palette (OIP), Vectorworks Architect rotates the view to the face you’re mapping. This speeds up precise placement, especially with complex objects. While mapping works at the face level of solid objects, another approach for hybrid objects (like walls) is to assign textures by component. This way, each component has its own texture or hatch and can be overwritten in a similar way as per-face texturing, making it easier to iterate across the entire project.
You can carry the impact created by your 3D work through to your 2D drawings using linked Surface Hatches. These maintain visual fidelity and reduce costly on-site misunderstandings. In the Resource Manager, just edit your texture and assign its corresponding hatch pattern, then make sure Surface Hatches are enabled in Viewport settings.
This connects the dots; your hatch-filled plans and interior elevations now actually match the materials in your renderings. For a smoother construction process, try creating or selecting distinctive hatches for each finish. This helps contractors and clients alike quickly understand your design intention.
It’s not enough for finishes to be present in your construction documentation. They need to look exactly right. The Attribute Mapping tool gives you direct, dynamic control so you can scale, drag, or rotate any applied texture until it aligns perfectly with your vision. Just select the tool from the Basic palette, click on your textured surface, and adjust using the intuitive handles.
This workflow isn’t just for refining stretched or misaligned textures on custom objects. If you change your design later, say, resizing a built-in storage unit, it’s easy to adjust texture alignment so the material’s grain or pattern direction stays consistent. The tool even works on 2D objects that use an image fill, which keeps your renderings and technical drawings polished and professional.
Leveraging all three of these features means you can reduce manual workarounds and stop bouncing between different software for 3D and 2D representations. The result? You spend more time exploring materials and focusing on your clients’ needs, with a lot less time troubleshooting technicalities.
Ultimately, seamless texture alignment means stunning visuals, clearer drawings, and smoother project delivery from concept all the way through construction.
That’s less time worrying about “how,” and more time delighting clients with “wow.”
That’s right. Vectorworks 2026 is here, meaning you can drive your interior designs even further with insightful workflows, advanced Depth Cueing, intuitive Worksheet Slicing, and more.
About Vectorworks
Exceptional design demands exceptional tools - a platform built to deliver absolute creative expression and maximum efficiency. Vectorworks believe your design software should offer the freedom to follow your imagination wherever it may lead you, to seamlessly share your vision at any phase, and to easily interpret the information needed to make the smartest decisions every time.
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Global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks, Inc., is set to launch its most forward-thinking software version yet: Vectorworks 2026. Engineered to elevate every step of the design process, Vectorworks 2026, which builds on the provider’s “design-first” philosophy, is fueled by the evolving needs of designers today and informed by the challenges of tomorrow. This release delivers powerful automation, customizable features, and real-time sustainability intelligence, helping designers transform creative thinking into results that matter most for their business, clients, and our planet.
"At Vectorworks, we believe that creativity should drive business results, not be hindered by software limitations," said Vectorworks CEO Jason Pletcher. "Designers are ambitious, and Vectorworks 2026 offers the tools to transform their big ideas into reality. Our latest version allows designers to work more efficiently, break free from busywork, automate manual processes, and unleash their design freedom, so their best work can move forward."
Focusing on balancing creative exploration and technical accuracy, this release enables designers to streamline documentation, collaborate across disciplines, and meet environmental targets—all within a single, integrated platform, eliminating the headache of transferring files between programs to get work done.
Vectorworks 2026 encourages design freedom through smarter technology, focusing on optimizing major everyday workflows across multiple industries. Automated Depth Cueing of linework for elevations, sections, and 3D views enhances the legibility of your drawings by manipulating how objects appear based on how far away they are. This allows designers to achieve professional-looking depth and clarity in their drawings instantly, without adjustments, enhancing both the technical and creative aspects of their project work. Additionally, a new intuitive Worksheet interface that allows slicing and linking will provide speedier, complete page layout control of large reports.
The latest version offers designers improved access to emerging technologies that enhance their everyday workflows. Vectorworks Cloud Services now integrates seamlessly with the Vectorworks desktop application, providing a direct connection to the Vectorworks Cloud computing platform. This enhancement enables users to leverage the immense computing power of the Vectorworks Cloud for resource-intensive tasks without needing to leave the desktop application. Customers can stay synchronized, productive, and focused on their projects while taking advantage of the powerful capabilities offered by cloud computing.
Vectorworks is dedicated to continuously increasing the value of its subscriptions. As part of this commitment, Vectorworks 2026 introduces the File Health Checker palette, available exclusively to subscription customers. This new tool helps keep files in optimal condition and ensures that projects run smoothly and efficiently, especially when integrating files from external sources. Additionally, subscription customers will benefit from uninterrupted productivity thanks to Vectorworks Cloud processing for Revit imports. The Cloud manages large Revit file imports from consultants and collaborators in the background, allowing projects to progress smoothly and efficiently.
“Vectorworks 2026 brings thoughtfully refined solutions across all our industry sectors, streamlining routine tasks and allowing your focus to remain on realizing your creative vision,” said Vectorworks Vice President of Product Development Hugues Tsafak. “With enhanced automation and intelligent design documentation capabilities, Vectorworks 2026 helps you work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence—enabling you to deliver outstanding results every time."
The new version also highlights Vectorworks’ commitment to the built environment across architecture and landscape by delivering smarter, more sustainable, and more-connected tools to support informed design decisions and environmental accountability. The new Sustainability Dashboard combines several sustainability-focused tools into a centralized, easy-to-access dashboard with real-time monitoring, tracking, and reporting of your project’s compliance targets, including Embodied Carbon calculations, Biodiversity Net Gain, Urban Greening, and SITES Biomass metrics.
Additionally, improvements to the Massing Model tool allow for the planning of mixed-use buildings with custom floor heights and usage data during early-stage planning for even greater flexibility.
Building on its history of continuous development and a foundation of trusted tools, Vectorworks 2026 emboldens architects to explore new frontiers in design with a software that meets the ever-changing needs of the industry without compromising creativity. With the introduction of the advanced Door and Window Assemblies tool, modeling complex, combined architectural openings is fast, smart, and intuitive. With the addition of this feature, architects will enjoy real-time, interactive editing, flexible layouts, and detailed reporting that enables creative freedom, speed, and construction realism.
For designers in the landscape industry, Vectorworks 2026 focuses on a unified workflow for creative planting plans. This includes a new Plant Style Manager that can instantly build, manage, and customize the Plant Style library with continually expanding content, batch editing, seamless web data import from nursery partners, spreadsheet import, flexible plant placement and editing tools, and a streamlined content structure. This unified system saves you hours, keeps your plant data accurate and project-ready, and lets you focus on creative planting design.
With version 2026, you’ll also be able to create regulation-ready Existing Tree models that integrate effortlessly with your landscape projects. Plus, you can design and edit flexible Grade Objects along with Data Tag labeling for faster, clearer site plans. With input that matches the real-world result every time, you can confidently set Hardscape pathway offsets.
Vectorworks 2026 continues Vectorworks’ ongoing dedication to accelerating entertainment and live event professionals’ workflows with an added emphasis on quality. Designers can unleash their creativity with the new LED Video Wall tool, which streamlines the design and creation of any shape of LED wall, from basic straight to complex curves and three-dimensional forms, at any angle. Complete with intuitive drawing tools and instant reports for fully documented installations, this new tool enables professionals to deliver creative and fully documented installations with ease.
Professionals can increase their efficiency with more complex and realistic sidearms. A dedicated sidearm object and insertion tool, combined with smart clamp and equipment rigging, saves time and boosts design accuracy. Version 2026 also includes workflow quality improvements to the Bridle, Device Database, Shared Reports, and Showcase features. A new MVR-xchange Protocol eliminates the need for manual file transfers, allowing customers to commit and receive MVR files instantly with any connected application in the same network group, streamlining collaboration and reducing workflow interruptions.
High-calibre presentations and layouts of your interior designs are crucial to winning projects. In a competitive industry, how you communicate your vision can make all the difference when pitching to clients, assembling a portfolio, and collaborating.
In this article, you’ll learn about five features in Vectorworks Architect that improve the quality of your interior design presentation layouts. Vectorworks Architect has all the tools you need within a single design software — there’s no back and forth needed between design software like SketchUp and AutoCAD to other programs like Photoshop, InDesign, etc.
Guides in Vectorworks Architect offer your layouts structure by helping align drawings and text elements for structure and consistency.
Guides allow you to create custom underlay grid types such as baseline, column, modular, manuscript, and composition grids help maintain alignment of your images, text, and technical drawings. These formatting elements ultimately polish up your presentation layouts and guide a client’s attention for better readability.
Importantly, your Guides can also be saved as a part of a template for future presentations, saving time and standardizing the quality of your presentation layouts.
Title blocks in Vectorworks are vital elements placed on sheet layers to automatically display important project details like the project name, drawing title, sheet number, revision history, and company branding.
Use the Title Block Border tool to place a title block on a sheet layer, choosing from pre-made styles or creating a custom design.
Beyond automation, title blocks enhance the professionalism of your presentation and reinforce your brand identity for clients.
Editing images in your layout presentations with the Edit Crop command is another great way to highlight the important elements of your interior designs.
With this feature, you can remove unwanted portions from images, focus attention on specific areas, and prepare your images for more polished presentations.
Within the Edit Crop mode, you’re able to use any closed 2D object to define the crop area — whether it be a rectangle, circle, or polyline.
Image Effects can boost your presentations, as well, helping your design images have greater depth and visual interest without having to leave Vectorworks Architect.
A black and white filter, for example, can create an emotional impact with a dramatic contrast between light and shadow.
Click here to watch a video that dives further into Image Effects.
Lastly, you should consider the use of colour in your presentation layouts. Vectorworks Architect supports CMYK, RGB, HSV, HEX, Pantone, and paint manufacturer colour options — helping you create cohesive color palettes and visual harmony. These colours can be customized to fit any branding, office standard, or personal preference.
There’s also a direct integration with NCS Colour, a Gold Partner in the Vectorworks Partner Network, at your disposal.
NCS+ Pro subscription simplifies your colour selection processes by allowing you to select, find, and fine-tune the selected colour directly in your Vectorworks design environment. You can explore over 2000 colours in the NCS colour library and easily adjust the hue or the nuance of the colour to find the perfect colour for your presentation layouts.
Global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks, Inc., will host its global Design Days again, inviting architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture and design professionals to these worldwide networking and educational events. Customers can connect with peers, explore emerging industry trends, and get a firsthand look at the latest features in Vectorworks 2026, launching September 2025.
“Design Days are about fostering a global community where designers can exchange bold ideas, explore cutting-edge tools, and shape the future of design,” said Vectorworks Senior Product Marketing Director Rubina Siddiqui, Assoc. AIA. “This year, we look forward to highlighting powerful updates and features that help architects, interior designers, and landscape professionals design more sustainably and creatively.”
Along with networking opportunities, attendees will hear success stories from industry peers and gain insights from Vectorworks senior leadership on the future of design and technology, including highlights from the Public Roadmap.
Vectorworks Design Days 2025 schedule: • Design Day London: October 14, 2025 • Design Day Vancouver: October 30, 2025 • Design Day Tokyo: December 5, 2025 (Architecture only) • Design Day Sydney: May 2026
Registration is free for each Design Day event. Prospective attendees can secure their spot through the registration page.
Connect with peers, explore emerging industry trends, and get a firsthand look at the latest features in Vectorworks 2026, launching September 2025.
SBID Members earn 2 x CPD points for attending!
Registration closes 7 October. Only a limited number of tickets are available.
Planted Community is proud to announce a new partnership with global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks to launch Design for Regeneration, an exciting UK-wide student design competition seeking to champion the next generation of regenerative designers.
Undergraduate students from across the country are invited to submit work for the Design for Regeneration competition, which reimagines the built and natural world through regenerative design.
The competition is open to students studying architecture, interior and landscape design, furniture, product and industrial design. The winner will receive a £1,000 cash prize, a one-year subscription to Vectorworks Design Suite, and a two-night stay in Planted’s luxury off-grid cabin at River Cottage, Axminster.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Vectorworks on Design for Regeneration, a competition that will showcase the very best in emerging British design talent,” said Planted co-founder Deborah Spencer. “It provides a vital platform for young creatives to demonstrate how regenerative thinking can shape a healthier, more sustainable future.”
“We are committed to nurturing new approaches that centre nature and sustainability at the heart of design, helping to safeguard the planet for future generations.”
Projects will be judged on creativity, innovation, material choices, aesthetics, and crucially clear regenerative intent. The panel will look for designs that not only minimise harm to natural ecosystems, also actively contribute to their restoration and renewal.
As a leading platform for sustainable design, Planted connects people, businesses, and ideas through events, content and collaborations that promote nature-based solutions and regenerative practices.
Deborah Spencer, whose career began at New Designers held at the Business Design Centre and who later founded the award-winning designjunction before co-founding Planted will lead a distinguished judging panel. The panel includes fellow Planted co-founder and former Sunday Times journalist Sam Peters, biophilic design expert Oliver Heath, and River Cottage CEO Stewart Dodd.
Entries must be submitted by Wednesday 31 July 2025. Finalists will be announced in early September, with winners revealed at the Vectorworks Design Day conference at the Royal College of Physicians in London on Tuesday 14 October 2025.
“At Vectorworks, we believe the future of design lies in regenerative thinking that not only respects but actively restores our natural world,” said Tyler French, Vectorworks Academic Marketing Manager.
“We’re proud to support Design for Regeneration in partnership with Planted, a leading platform for sustainable design that shares our commitment to driving positive change. Together, we aim to empower the next generation of designers with the tools to shape a more regenerative built environment.”
Students can enter by submitting their project via the official competition entry form, available at: www.planted-community.co.uk/vectorworkscompetition
Submissions must include: - A short project description (max 300 words) outlining the regenerative intent - Supporting visuals (drawings, renders, models created in Vectorworks) - A brief biography and course/university details
All entries must be received by midnight on Wednesday 31 July 2025.
We love talking to clients about their vision for a project – the layout, the bespoke pieces, the textures and finish. But what if you could actually see all those things in the space itself? Enter 3D visualisation…
Essentially it’s creating a three-dimensional preview of interior spaces using computer software. It offers a more realistic, detailed, and immersive view of the final design than two-dimensional drawings.
At Lewis Knox we use 3D visualisation tools to help clients get a better understanding of complete scheme designs and also to explore specific bespoke pieces like furniture and joinery to help them explore how they will work.
Some people are great at creating mental pictures, but it can be a challenge for others. 3D visuals can do the hard work for us.
2D drawings and floor plans can be tricky to interpret but in 3D our clients can walk through the space, explore different viewpoints, zoom in on specific details, and really interact with the design.
"When it’s the first large scale project a client has worked on with an interior designer we often find that 3D models make a big difference." - Simon Knox, Founder & Interior Architect
Whether it’s materials, lighting, colours, or furniture, seeing the scheme in 3D gives a more realistic representation and helps clients to explore different elements in the design before committing to them.
At Lewis Knox everything we do is centred around collaboration. 3D visualisation helps us to build a deeper relationship with clients and bring them into the design process. It makes it easier for clients to engage at different stages, to give detailed feedback, and to trust the process.
And when you can see things in detail it leads to better – and faster decision making. Seeing the impact of choices around layout, materials, palette in a 3D visualisation helps to anticipate challenges and mitigates problems down the line.
This is particularly useful when developing bespoke pieces. It’s hard to see in 2D the functionality of a bespoke kitchen for example, but a 3D visualisation allows clients to see how individual pieces fit together and work.
3D bridges the gap between expectation and reality. When everyone has a detailed and realistic understanding of every aspect of the design – and from every angle – there are no surprises when the project starts to take shape.
"We’re working on a large-scale residential project at the moment and while the clients loved the scheme in 2D it was on a different level in 3D. She was so happy to see her dream dressing room in three dimensions that there were almost tears!" - Simon Knox, Founder & Interior Architect
We’re always looking for new ways to be creative and to collaborate with clients – and that includes AI. There is definitely potential in the future for AI to play a role in creating 3D visualisations, but the technology isn’t there yet. While from an initial concept perspective we do use Midjourney to explore initial ideas and trends with clients when it comes to architectural accuracy there are too many handrails flying into walls and disappearing staircases in current software.
Got a project you want to discuss? Interested to see your vision in 3D? We’d love to hear from you. Call us at the studio on 01829 271585 or drop us an email: [email protected].
About Lewis Knox
A dynamic interior design studio providing bespoke architectural and interior design services. More than 30 years experience in the luxury residential sector.
CAD blocks — known as “symbols” in Vectorworks Architect — play a crucial role in modern interior design workflows, providing reusable, pre-drawn elements that streamline the design process. These standardised components help you maintain consistency, improve efficiency, and reduce repetitive work.
Continue reading to explore the significance of CAD blocks, their role in BIM workflows, and how you can maximise their potential through symbols.
CAD blocks are pre-drawn objects in design software that provide 2D and/or 3D representations of design elements such as furniture, appliances, and more.
CAD blocks streamline the drafting process by saving time and eliminating repetitive drawing tasks, allowing you to focus on creativity and problem-solving. They also promote organisation and standardisation, helping ensure consistency across projects while reducing the likelihood of errors such as misaligned furniture layouts, inconsistent fixture placements, or incorrect scale proportions. Additionally, CAD blocks provide flexibility through customisation to suit specific project needs, whether by adjusting dimensions, materials, or configurations. This adaptability makes CAD blocks useful for maintaining precision and design intent throughout interior design projects.
Symbols in Vectorworks Architect are classified into the following: - 2D symbols - Used for plan graphics and schematics. - 3D symbols - Used for modelling and visualisation. - Hybrid symbols - Combine both 2D and 3D components for better BIM integration.
A key feature that enhances your efficiency with symbols is the Generate 2D from 3D command, which automatically creates plan graphics from 3D models, saving time and providing better control over symbol detail. With greater control over detail, you then have more options for different graphic outputs at different scale drawings.
Concerning graphics, you can also take advantage of various graphic tools, such as drop shadows, gradients, and custom pen attributes, to enhance the visualization and presentation quality of your symbols. You can also import images as a resource, which can be attached to your symbols to customise and enhance your branding.
Additional data can correspond with your Vectorworks symbols via an attached Record Format. Within these, you can specify things like what department in the store a piece of furniture may be in, the manufacturer, and more.
By maintaining a well-organised and properly scaled symbol library, you’ll have consistency across projects and enriched, imported CAD blocks with additional data, improving their functionality within a BIM environment.
You can build bespoke custom symbols from scratch in Vectorworks Architect or simply choose from a rich library of pre-built symbols from recognised brands like Knoll, Geiger, and Herman Miller. Then, using the Resource Manager, you can improve your BIM workflow by adding relevant information to items such as doors, cabinets, and chairs, ensuring they comply with industry standards.
Brands like Starbucks EMEA leverage symbols to standardise their design processes and accelerate workflows. By creating a well-organised library of reusable symbols, they can design consistently across their retail spaces worldwide. Watch the full customer story.
Join AI and design experts Luis M. Ruiz, senior Vectorworks Architect product specialist; Benjamin Guler, partner and CTO at EvolveLAB Veras; and Joey Swerdlin director at Morpholio, to explore how the integration of BIM software and AI-powered visualisation apps are revolutionising the way interior designers conceptualise and visualise their projects.
Ruiz, Guler, and Swerdlin will also guide you through the seamless integration of these cutting-edge tools, offering practical insights and hands-on demonstrations to enhance your design workflow. From creating intricate 3D models to crafting captivating mood boards, you'll learn how to transform your ideas into stunning visual representations with precision and efficiency.
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