By Scott Weinberg, FASLA, Technology Editor, University of Georgia, Athens

Courtesy of Todd McCurdy, USA

Trying to get a better handle on how VectorWorks sees itself in the CAD market, I had a phone interview with Nemetschek?EUR??,,????'???s Sean Flaherty and Darick Dehart at their Columbia, Md. office in late June.

LASN: When was VectorWorks first released in the market?

SF: It was introduced in 1985. It started out as a MAC 3D modeling program, kind of general purpose. The second release which came out some nine months after the initial release, was the version that introduced our 2D drafting portion. And that was really what made the product take off. VectorWorks, as you probably know, refers to our entire family of products. For your readers the Landmark product is probably the most interesting.

LASN: How much of the CAD market have you captured?

SF: Globally we have about 400,000 customers. Our market is kind of split evenly between the US, Europe and Japan. We have a little over 100,000 in the United States and these are our professional customers. It?EUR??,,????'???s hard to count landscape numbers. If you go with Landscape Architects or landscape designers it is hard to come up with a number. I am not sure we have a handle on where we fit there.

 

Courtesy of GTL Landscape Architects, Germany

LASN: What can VectorWorks do better than AutoCAD?

SF: The top few things we hear repeatedly from our customers is that we are a much better value. The next thing, and this particularly is strong in the landscape area, is our graphic control and capabilities. We have very good color, line weight, freehand kind of capabilities. So we consider ourselves a very good illustration portion of the package. I think a lot of the other CAD programs are plain Jane packages when it comes to drafting. We get a real nice look out of our product. We have a lot of fairly high-end capabilities built in. In general what we find when people are cross-shopping between our Landmark product and plain AutoCad, it becomes no comparison in our minds. You have plants both in graphic format and horticultural needs.

We have typical types of landscape and hardscape things. In Auto-CAD you have to draw these all yourself.

LASN: Are you familiar with Eagle Point software for Landscape Architects?

DD: I don?EUR??,,????'???t know a lot about Eagle Point. I have looked a little at their website and talked with a few people who use the product. Eagle Point seems to have focused on civil engineering and civil design. It seems that they are focusing on larger projects and products than what we focus on. Comparing the two Eagle Points is an AutoCAD add on. I think our biggest advantage is we have an ease-of-use advantage over AutoCAD.

Courtesy of Wolters Partner Architects, German

LASN: In learning a CAD package or switching from one to another, training is an important part. No matter how good your documentation is, a personal trainer is a must. Discuss your training programs.

SF: We have a growing variety of training. The primary forms of training we have now are training CDs, pretty extensive, one CD per product and two for the fundamentals product. They sell very well. We also have classes that are run around the country. These are seminar style classes with anywhere from 10 to 20 students. They?EUR??,,????'???re the second most popular, but obviously we can only hit the major cities with them. Seminar classes can be as long as a week.

The first two days we start out with the fundamentals portion. Then depending on where we are and what classes are offered, you can continue onto 3D and rendering, landscape or any of the other products. Those are run pretty regularly. We have one every month here at the headquarters in Columbia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Beyond that we also offer custom training. You can just call us up and have a trainer come out to your office. This is more popular with some of the larger firms.

Courtesy of Chris Papakirk, USA

LASN: Is it better to have some CAD training or none at all when coming to your training session?

SF: Nothing is better. We use a noun, verb syntax for our commands. You select first and choose the operation second. For years AutoCAD has been the opposite and it is a hard habit to unlearn.

LASN: What do you see as an important addition to your software in the future?

SF: We don?EUR??,,????'???t preannounce. The directions we are looking for are directions we are already in. Our horticultural information is satisfactory but the more of a specialist you are, the more you are going to want your specific types of plants. So we are looking at how we can improve that situation, especially on ways the horticultural people want to search the information. Our terrain modeling engine continues to improve. The speed of just drawing, the ways to get plants into the drawing. We want to be able to do this with less clicks and more speed.

Courtesy of Slater Associates, Inc., USA

LASN: Where does your development occur?

SF: The bulk of developers are in Columbia, with 90 percent of the developers here. We have a small team of five in Bulgaria, but I think we have 45 here.

LASN: Do you solicit ideas from group users or from anyone?

SF: There are so many sources of input. I have been here 20 years and it used to be really hard to get good customer contact. It had to be done by customer contact or in person. Now we have a mailing list, user groups around the world and the direct trade show interaction. The online discussion forums and lists are the most valuable sources of feedback. It is amazing how users are self-organized.

LASN: Is VectorWorks available to schools at reduced rates? AutoCAD does this.

SF: Yes, we do both and do them aggressively. The students get the deepest discounts we offer. We have a variety of school programs.

We are in a lot of the hardware/software bundles that schools require. We?EUR??,,????'???ve got rates from $99 to $199 direct to the students.

LASN: What does the Sketchup plug-in do?

SF: It imports Sketchup files. We actually work very closely with them. Since they have been acquired by Google they have become very tight-lipped. We are working on Google Earth integration. In fact we showed a prototype at the AIA show two weeks ago. We have a variety of things on the drawing boards.

LASN: What are your final thoughts?

SF: What do we do better than AutoCAD? I have been thinking about that. We have an integrated spreadsheet. It basically lets you query the drawings in basic ways. It lets you count up the number of trees and lists them. This is very powerful. It can do a lot of simple estimations so you don?EUR??,,????'???t have to do it on paper.

?EUR??,,????'??So we consider ourselves a very good illustration portion of the package. I think a lot of the other CAD programs are plain Jane packages when it comes to drafting. We get a real nice look out of our product.?EUR??,,????'???EUR??,,????'??+Nemetschek?EUR??,,????'???s Sean Flaherty