Create multiple design options with Vectorworks' new AI Visualizer

@Vectorworks: New AI Visualizer

Vectorworks’ new AI Visualizer, released as part of the 2024 Update 4, allows you to quickly create multiple iterations of your initial design concept to explore ideas and share different options with clients

As Kesoon Chance, senior industry specialist – interior architecture, explains, “Iterative Design is what happens when the ideas are flowing, and even if communication with your client is efficient, there isn’t a project existing or in planning that hasn’t gone through changes — it’s what’s needed to get the best possible collaboration with the designer and client.”

Vectorworks’ new AI Visualizer allows you to quickly produce an image based on a Vectorworks file and/or text prompts and begin creating different permutations of your project. With these options, you can explore ideas of your own. You can prompt it to explore or suggest different color combinations or shapes. Or you can generate an image that helps your clients realise something they didn’t even know they wanted.

You can also use the feature to create detailed visualizations of a drawing. These capabilities make it a perfect tool for ideating concepts and creating presentations.

The AI Visualizer is available directly in the Vectorworks interface, and it uses Vectorworks Cloud Services for a zero-install, uninterrupted workflow. With processing taking place on the Cloud, you won’t have to worry about hardware limitations affecting performance. You can also continue to work while images are generated, and your private information is protected.

To create AI images of your own, select the AI Visualizer from the Model menu to open the web palette. This palette can remain open while you work in Vectorworks.

Note that the feature doesn’t generate any actual Vectorworks objects that can be used in a 3D model.

How to generate images in the AI Visualizer

The AI Visualizer’s easy-to-use interface provides a simple set of parameters to help you create iterative images, such as Generate Similar, Creativity, and—most notably—Prompt.

With Prompt, you’re able to enter a description of what image you’d like generated. To write a useful prompt, use clear and precise language with a comma between each segment of the prompt.

Generate Similar, as the name suggests, maintains your original image, but you can prompt additional alternations or even set a new view of your 3D model.

The Creativity parameter lets you control how far your new image will deviate from the source image or how the conceptual image is based only on a text prompt.

You can prompt the AI Visualizer with information like:

Image style: watercolor, pencil sketch, realistic, crayon, photographic
Style of the objects in the image: modern, brutalist, art deco, or even the name of a well-known designer whose style you want to explore
Type of project: interior, exterior, art gallery, coffee shop, park, apartment tower
Colors and materials: red metal, vertical wood siding, glass, sandstone pavers, brick
Setting or location: meadow, urban, beach, forest, the moon
Season, weather, time of day: autumn, summer, sunny, fog, night, golden hour
Lighting conditions: indirect amber lighting, dappled light, soft light, vibrant light, cyberpunk, or light coming through a window
Style of furniture, plants, and other things that populate the scene: contemporary curved sofa, palm trees, Mission style dining room table
And many more; this list is not exhaustive. Try it and see what works for your own images

Manipulating these different parameters will provide you with a myriad of options; just take a look: