Vectorworks Learning Paths to Guide Your Academic Journey

Learning Paths on Vectorworks University give you a free, structured, and confidence-building resource to bring Vectorworks software into the classroom, whether you’re just getting started or ready to tackle discipline-specific workflows for the architecture, landscape, and entertainment industries.

Designed for both students and professors, a Learning Path lays out clear objectives, curated courses, and step-by-step activities so you can focus less on “where do I begin?” and more on moving from core concepts to real-world workflows.

As you progress, you’ll also be more prepared for Vectorworks Certifications, turning your time on Vectorworks University into a tangible advantage for academic success and future career opportunities.

Learn more about the Lighting Design, Architecture, and Landscape Academic Learning Paths below, and subscribe to the Vectorworks Newsroom at the bottom of this page to make sure you don’t miss the latest Learning Paths.

 

In this Learning Path, you’ll learn how to use Vectorworks Spotlight to draft a professional light plot, add accessories such as top hats, work with data and DMX, and see how lights are focused within the software. You’ll also discover how to prepare your light plot for publishing on a sheet layer and explore presentation techniques and previsualization.

This course is broken into six manageable videos, each about thirty minutes long. The six videos in this Learning Path cover the following:

Getting Started – File Organization and Lighting 101

You’ll learn how to organize your Vectorworks file, work with lighting symbols, and apply tools for numbering, aligning, and positioning lighting devices within your drawing.

Lighting Pipes, Booms, and Schematic Views

This section covers drawing and configuring lighting pipes and booms, working with different fixture types, adding and managing accessories like gobos and top hats, using Find and Modify to update fixture attributes, and interpreting Schematic Views in relation to the 3D model.

Data, DMX, and Numbering

Next, you’ll get a demonstration on using Hanging Positions with auto-numbering, applying Spotlight Numbering for both unit and DMX values, and adjusting numbering when fixtures are added or changed in your plot.

Focusing Lights

In this section, you’ll learn how to adjust fixture orientation, focus Lighting Devices, define focus points, and more.

Worksheets, Documentation, and Data Visualization

You’ll learn how to effectively document and analyze your lighting design using Vectorworks Spotlight’s reporting and visualization tools in this section.

Presentation

In the final section of this Learning Path, you’ll discover the presentation and previsualization techniques in Vectorworks Spotlight.

Be sure to log in to your Vectorworks account before accessing the free learning path.

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE LIGHTING DESIGN ACADEMIC LEARNING PATH.

This Learning Path explores the core elements of Vectorworks Architect and the key design processes that will guide your creative flow. Each section builds your confidence step by step, introducing flexible modeling techniques, presentation tools, and practical examples that connect design theory to real-world practice.

The Learning Path follows three main sections:

Getting Started

This section will help you understand the core file setup and documentation concepts, such as using 2D and 3D top views, organizing design layers and classes, working with sheet layers, and managing shared resources through library files.

Design Workflow Overview

In this section, you’ll learn about developing and refining your architectural models and presentation graphics. Discover how to edit Slabs with openings, control textures on individual faces, create reusable symbols from 2D and 3D geometry, precisely move objects in 3D, and configure Render settings for presentation-quality graphics.

Tutorial: Building a House in Half an Hour

Lastly, the tutorial at the end of this Learning Path will walk you through integrated modeling, visualization, and documentation workflows in Vectorworks Architect. With these features, you’ll learn how to create roofs from walls, use the AI Visualizer to generate conceptual images, coordinate Slabs with exterior walls, and employ viewports and sheet layer settings for clear, scalable printed output.

Be sure to log in to your Vectorworks account before accessing the free learning path.

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE ARCHITECTURE ACADEMIC LEARNING PATH.

This Learning Path explores the core elements of Vectorworks Landmark and the key design processes that will guide your creative flow. Sections in this Learning Path cover drawing setup and scale fundamentals, conceptual site composition, hardscape and planting techniques, as well as annotation and presentation tools.

You’ll learn about Vectorworks Landmark’s practical use through the following 10 sections:

Interface and Tools

In this opening section, Eric Gilbey, landscape architect and instructor, tours the Vectorworks working environment. You’ll learn how to set your workspace to Landmark, what each menu does, and how to find answers using the What’s This tool, Vectorworks Help, and AI Assistant.

Gilbey also orients you to the Basic tool palette, the industry-specific tool sets, and the Attributes, Object Info, and Navigation palettes.

The second half of this section offers hands-on practice with general 2D drawing tools, plus editing commands like Reshape, Clip Surface, and more.

Walkthroughs

Section 2 through Section 6 of this Learning Path walk you through the following topics:

• Line Type and Line Widths
• Shapes, Fills, Hatches, and Tiles
• Dimensions, Lettering, and Labeling
• Scale and Title Block
• Base Plan

Form Composition and Concept Plan

Here, you’ll learn how to move from a measured base plan to a conceptual design using form composition — starting with lines of force drawn off existing walls, corners, doorways, windows, and pavement edges to establish meaningful spatial relationships.

Working in the Mohican Memorial Shrine sample file, you’ll extend and offset those lines at regular measured intervals, explore rectilinear, angular, curvilinear, and circular form languages, and see how sight lines and circulation shape better decisions.

You’ll then watch real student concept plans as examples before building your own bubble diagram, using a variety of features to develop planting bed forms.

Finally, you’ll apply Fills, Line Types, Line Weights, and Labels with the Text and Callout tools to communicate your design intent.

Plants and Landscape Areas

In this section, you’ll turn your concept plan into an actual planting design using the Plant and Landscape Area tools in Vectorworks Landmark.

You’ll place trees by selecting Plant Styles from the Resource Library and by building a plant from a generic symbol — editing the style, pulling species data from the plant catalog, and setting size, spacing, and graphic representation for both 2D and 3D.

You’ll also learn how to attach your own image to a plant that has no built-in 3D representation, using an external image file as an image prop. On the landscape area side, you’ll convert shapes into landscape areas with Create Objects from Shapes and the Eyedropper Convert method, work with Library Styles like mulch beds, add and mix plant material with on-center spacing, control randomization of position, rotation, and size, and save your result as a reusable custom landscape area style.

Throughout you’ll work across the upper story, understory, and bed design layers, checking your results in both plan and 3D views, and setting the stage for the hardscape section that follows.

Hardscapes

Next, you’ll go deeper with the Hardscape tool, creating two new hardscapes for the shrine project: a decomposed granite walkway and a river rock reflection pond. 

You’ll browse the hardscape style libraries to find a close starting point, then duplicate and edit the style — adjusting the 2D fill and swapping and rescaling Renderworks textures within the component structure — before converting your polyline shapes into hardscape objects with the eyedropper method. 

Along the way, you’ll manage 3D elevations so your paving breaks above the aerial imagery without creating tripping hazards and use Duplicate Along a Path to ring the pond with boulders scaled and spaced to look natural. 

You’ll finish by importing a bench from the Resource Library, placing it in the reflection space, and setting up a seated perspective view to evaluate the design from a visitor’s point of view.

Viewports, Reports, and Labels

The closing section of this Learning Path will pull your completed design into a finished drawing set using Viewports, Worksheets, and labeling.

You’ll create a cropped viewport on a sheet layer at a set scale, control which layers and classes display, and work inside viewport annotations to add a drawing label, north arrow, and a customized graphic scale bar.

You’ll fill in Title Block sheet data with your name and date, then generate a pre-formatted Plant Schedule with Images report, edit the worksheet to remove unused plant categories, and scale it to fit inside the viewport as a key legend.

From there, you’ll label plants with Data Tags in multiple-object mode and clean up leader lines, add callout tags for existing trees, and set up a standing 3D view with the walkthrough tools to place a rendered perspective viewport on a sheet. You’ll finish by publishing all sheet layers to a single multi-page PDF ready to send to a client or instructor. 

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE LANDSCAPE DESIGN ACADEMIC LEARNING PATH.