Five tools, built for architects.
Drawing, vector work, retouching, layout and video editing. Five tools built for the way architectural work actually gets made, in one plan rather than five subscriptions.
Good software stopped being affordable
Adobe Creative Cloud and AutoCAD alone run over £200 a month, and neither was built with a small architectural practice in mind. The tools that were tend to cost more, not less. So a student, a sole practitioner and a five-person studio all end up paying industry rates for software they use a fraction of.
We took the five jobs that stack is actually doing on a scheme and built each of them for this work specifically. All five are included in one ArchAdemia Tools plan, from £29 a month. One subscription instead of five, priced for the practices the industry has been quietly leaving out.
Five tools, one plan
Each one has a page of its own, written to be checked rather than skimmed: what it does, what it does not, and what it is a genuine alternative to.
Linea
The SketchUp and AutoCAD job
2D and 3D drawing software, one building in both views.
See LineaVector
The Illustrator job
Vector drawing for site plans, diagrams and CAD linework.
See VectorRetouch
A real slice of the Photoshop job
Non-destructive photo editing for renders and photographs.
See RetouchLayout
The InDesign job
Presentation boards and multi-page documents at true scale.
See LayoutCut
The cut, not the colour grade
Multi-track video editing, with captions that cost nothing.
See CutBecause nothing in the middle existed
On one side, general creative software that has never heard of a sheet size. On the other, industry CAD priced for a firm with a procurement department. Almost nothing sits between them, and that is where most architectural work is done.
Built for this work, not adapted to it
Sheet sizes from A4 to A0, drawings that plot at a true ratio, room areas measured in square metres, title blocks carrying a real drawing number and revision. None of that is a preset someone added to a general design tool later. It is what these were built around.
It runs on the laptop you already have
Nothing to install, no licence server, no workstation. Open a link and the tool is there, on a studio machine or on a train. A student and a five-person practice get the same software, which is not how any of this normally works.
The work is already where the tool is
A plan opens straight into Vector from Linea. A render finished in Retouch is on a Layout board without a trip through a downloads folder. A shot from Image or Video drops into a Cut edit with one action. Nothing has to be found, re-uploaded and matched back up, which is the part a stack of separate subscriptions structurally cannot do.
What these are not
Cheaper software that claims to be everything is how people get burned. Each of these is built to finish a real job rather than to be a lighter substitute for one, and each page says the same thing at greater length.
- Linea is not Revit or ArchiCAD. There is no clash detection and there are no schedules.
- Retouch has not got Photoshop's plugin ecosystem, or every specialist tool a photography studio would want.
- Vector is scoped to architectural vector work rather than general graphic design. Live-shape corner radii and colour-managed CMYK output are not built.
- Layout has not got InDesign's full depth as a general desktop publishing tool.
- Cut covers the cut, not the grade. There is no colour grading, no multicam, no keyframed effects and no ProRes. Editing and captions are free; exporting is billed by resolution, and the AI edit, AI Assist and audio stem splitting are billed on what they consume.
Start with the one you would use first
Every plan carries all five, so there is nothing to choose between now and nothing to add later.