Intelligent Interior Design with Space Objects

In the early phases of an interior design project, you might ask yourself, “How can we arrange these spaces to meet the needs of our client while staying organized, compliant, and inspired?”

Each interior design project begins with a layout, and while basic 2D rectangles and notes might suffice for early-stage concepts, Vectorworks Architect offers a far more powerful solution: Space objects.

A Space object is a smart, information-rich element in Vectorworks Architect that represents any area of a design, from rooms to corridors, open zones, and more.

You’ll find the Space tool within the Building Shell toolset, which gives you an efficient way to model and manage interior areas from early planning through final documentation.

Importantly, Space objects are purpose-built for your interior design workflows. You can work with them in 2D or 3D, add custom data, visualize attributes like usage type or finish materials with data visualization, and easily report information in worksheets and data tags on drawings.

Spaces let you visualize the layout of a project before committing to your design elements. You can plan room arrangements, test circulation paths, and present layout options to clients using clear, color-coded diagrams that communicate intent.

Each Space object holds rich data about its function. You can include custom data fields if needed, helping make sure that all project information stays tied to the space it describes.

Spaces support customizable data tags. Whether it’s a basic room name and area or detailed finish notes and dimensions, you decide what to show on your drawings.

All the information in your Space objects can be easily reported in worksheets — from area summaries and occupancy loads to furniture inventories and room finish schedules. As your design evolves, your reports update automatically.

Spaces pair seamlessly with data visualization to turn raw information into visual patterns. Use color coding to differentiate zones by privacy level, usage type, or finish status, offering instant insight during presentations or reviews.

Once you feel comfortable with Space objects in your interior design workflow, you can experiment with their flexibility further by adding 3D volumes, custom data fields, detailed finish specs, and more.

You can even style Space objects for consistency across projects through Space Styles in your Resource Manager.

Whether you’re working across multiple projects or simply standardizing your workflows, you can help yourself out by saving Space Styles into your templates. This will help you easily reuse finishes, area targets, and more.

Plus, you can use instance overrides to maintain consistency while adding custom data like job titles for individual office occupants or specific finish palettes.

For more on Space objects, check out this free webinar from Vectorworks University. In “Spaces — Your Multifunctional BIM Tool,” Neil Barman, Vectorworks’ senior architect product specialist examines real-use cases for architectural and interior design workflows that leverage the power of spaces.