Adding Resources including doors, windows and furniture

Vectorworks comes with a wide range of preset furniture and architectural symbols, most of which are 'hybrid' and so work both on 2D plans and when you view and render in 3D.

The most useful are likely to be 'Residential Furniture' or 'Office Furniture' and also the first 'Architectural Samples' which is where you will find doors, windows and stairs. To use these you need the Resources Browser which you can show or hide by typing Apple-R.

Most of the symbols can be edited and refined - doors and windows can have their size and shape modified to become arched or rounded.

Furniture can be double-clicked to open in an edit window, where elements can be coloured, textured or deleted. To return to the room view choose 'design layer 1' from the drop down menu at top right of your screen which will show the name of the symbol you are editing.

It is usually best to move objects while in 'top/plan' view (Apple-5 is the shortcut), otherwise it is all too easy to move them up or down as well as sideways, so that the room looks haunted by poltergeists. If that happens choose each object and make sure the Z value is set to 0 to place it back on the floor. (A few objects are set to a different base height - the table lamp, shelves and windows are all set to be a metre or more above the floor when their z=0).