Nemetschek North America introduced the fourth product in the VectorWorks Industry Series. Called VectorWorks Mechanical, the software is targeted to designers, drafters and fabricators who want a drafting and 3D visualization tool.
Nemetschek North America director of marketing Dan Monaghan said that the software meets or exceeds the capabilities of rival AutoCAD Mechanical, but is priced more reasonably.
“Our exclusive parametric object technology, powerful CAD tools, unprecedented ease of use and affordability make VectorWorks Mechanical the perfect choice for today’s engineer,” said Monaghan.
VectorWorks Mechanical features various specialized tools used in mechanical drafting and design including a Spring Calculator, Shaft Analysis, Conversion Factor, Solutions of Triangles and Centroid utilities. The application also features simple beam analysis tools, CAM generation and animation, and Geneva mechanism tools. Users can create up to 3-4 million different components using the object generation technology that is included with Mechanical — everything from fasteners and hardware to bearings, gears, sprockets, roller chains and springs.
VectorWorks Mechanical sports an integrated database and spreadsheet functions to help designers and engineers track a project’s cost; parts lists and bills of materials can be dynamically linked to the drawings.
System requirements for VectorWorks Mechanical call for a PowerPC 604e-equipped Macintosh or greater; Mac OS 8.6 or higher; 64MB RAM; 52MB hard drive space (750MB needed for full install); 800×600 resolution with 256 or more colors (Thousands needed for OpenGL rendering); and a CD-ROM drive. The new VectorWorks Industry Series products were announced earlier this month as being Mac OS X compatible, and MacCentral confirmed with Nemetschek North America that VectorWorks Mechanical is also Mac OS X compatible.
New users interested in VectorWorks Mechanical can buy the software for a limited time for an introductory price of US$1,011.50 — the software’s regular price is $1,295. Previous users of VectorWorks products have a separate upgrade path — they can add VectorWorks Mechanical to their setups for a special introductory upgrade price of $250.75, normally $295. Nemetschek North America said those introductory prices are good through the end of the year.
In addition to existing as a standalone application, VectorWorks Mechanical is also offered as a module to existing VectorWorks 9 installations.