Render Bitmap tool. Adding area lights and line lights makes rendering very slow. If you add bluriness to a texture, it will make the rendering take longer as well. This has the effect of locking up your computer for 10 or 20 minutes at a time. This is not a great…
HDRI Backgrounds. Vectorworks comes with several built-in HDRI backgrounds, built-in. To use one of these as a background, you have to use it as an environment light first, this imports the background into your file, then you can use it as a Renderworks Background.
Renderworks Background. The Renderworks Background allows you to create something behind your model to make it look better.
Lighting Options. The Lighting Options controls the ambient lighting (the lighting all around), the environmental lighting (overall lighting), and the indirect lighting (the light that bounces around).
Area Light. Area lights can be used to simulate a large area of lighting, like a window. In earlier versions of Vectorworks we would use the area light to mimic the light from outside.
Line Light. Lines lights can be used to replicate tube lighting and neon lighting. There is no tool to use. You draw a shape you want and use a command to convert the shape to a line light.
Spot Light. Spot lights are directional lights that point at a particular location, and they have a controllable beam and spread. Spot lights are best placed in plan and then checked in elevation.
Directional Light. The Directional Light is like a sun, it’s an outside light. It is the type of light that is placed when you use the Set Sun Position from the View Menu.
Changing your Vectorworks preferences affects your rendering and modeling.
For lights you can do this is by using different classes for different lights or groups of lights, then having the appropriate class(es) on or off in any particular VP. I do this with different sun angles all the time.