[Stephen W. Schrader, Jr.]

Our firm is a full-service LA firm – we do everything from single home sites to university campus work to high-performance athletic facilities – and we do it all on Vectorworks.   We frequently share DWG info back and forth with architects and civil engineers – and on those university projects, we go through many, many rounds of swapping data and updating each other, usually without a hitch once the drawing is set up. There are a lot of tools built into Landmark that I have found very useful across a number of project types. Using smart objects and worksheets, we have built workflows that help us through site planning, meeting landscape ordinances, and even LEED credit compliance. I just wish I had known how easy the transition would be after years of AutoCAD.  I tell people that Vectorworks is CAD for people who like to draw. 

[Stephen W. Schrader, Jr.]

I think one point that may be getting overlooked here is that, with the Intel architecture of modern Macs, you can also run Windows either as a separate system or within a virtual machine…IF you need it….so you would really never be limited in the software you could use.  (If that got brought out in the other comments, I’m sorry…there are obviously strong feelings on both sides and I don’t have time to read through all of them.) For the record, our LA office is all Mac (there are 10 workstations and a server) and I can manage all of them when it comes to tech support, because typically things really do just work or they can be resolved fairly quickly.  My own system is one of the early-generation MacBook Pros from 2007, and the only thing I’ve ever done to it is add RAM and lubricate the fans.  And I do have Windows on my machine because there is a web site on which I have to fill out forms and it just won’t work except in Internet Explorer.  No computer is perfectly problem-free.  It all depends on how much you know about them and what repairs (either hardware or software) you are comfortable undertaking yourself.  You might also research the applications you will use because many of them will provide student versions for free or at a significant discount (they may either expire in a year or just be ineligible for upgrading).

[Author]

Posts