Laura Stone

Hi Jeremy Thanks for this, yes it is in the yellow pretty consistently when I'm working on that drawing. Swap is 4.15. I think I'll live with it as future drawings should be smaller and tidier - this one's gone on for years and just added more and more on. There is also Cineware using a fair bit but assume that is part of VW? Was more keen on lightness than speed for my laptop but something to bear in mind for a new desktop, 32Gb would presumably perform a lot better. Laura

This is particularly bad for planting plans, there are often areas of planting where you literally can't get the tag attachment point on the plant you want becasue of others overlapping. Also seems to default (with multiple attachment points) to a rectangle around the item, rather than the boundary.

Hi Jeremy I'm using VW2022 on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air with 16Gb RAM. I thought my profile had that, but did I post in the wrong section? Thanks Laura

I have a drawing that is pretty large and on the slow side, but noticed that it keeps pausing whilst the green bar at the bottom of the window moves across with the text 'caching graphics...) This is just revising text in a top/plan view viewport, so not anything I would have thought was putting strain on VW. Any ideas how to prevent it doing this? Thanks Laura

I think this is the same issue as I reported here

Just a bump for this one. Unless I've missed something the landscape area tool only gives you a staggered hedge if you draw each section of hedge at 45° and then rotate it into place so a bit of a long workaround and means lots of labels.

Hi Katarina Did you have that recording? Also how to do custom tags - the default ones aren't what I'm after. Thanks Laura

It would be good if the plant tag settings (or at least 'right' and 'left') could be independent of the plant style. I know it's possible to use a separate data tag but if there is a plant tag built in to VW surely it should be more useful.

I would like to be able to set a custom label position for stakes. I prefer to have the labels in the 'corner' of the cross that I'm using as a marker and it's very time consuming to have to change it after inserting each one.

I have used a custom 2D Exiting tree symbol with transparency and a drop shadow so that everything on the drawing beneath doesn't get hidden and the canopy casts a shadow. This works fine for trees with a regular canopy diameter, but when used with the irregular canopy size the transparency and the drop shadow disappear. Is this a bug and can it be fixed?

Would it be possible to have an option to show tree significance categories in accordance with BS 5837 instead of the defaults in VW? At the moment I either have to fill in the significance manually or change the tree survey file to match the VW categories.

Currently there is no facility as far as I can see to bring in the critical root zone diameter from a tree survey. This means that I have to bring it in to 'field 7' and then type it in manually which can be very time-consuming for a project with many existing trees. Can this feature be added?

It would be good it VW could merge the canopies of existing tree objects when they are close together, perhaps by selecting them plus a command. Separate canopies can look messy in some circumstances.

When I update files to VW2022 then add a new grade object, if I don't change global settings it converts all of the existing grade objects in the drawing to % instead of rise over run. In the large file I was working on this is taking so long that it appears that VW has crashed. Similar happens if I change the global setting to rise over run first, it hangs for ages before it will display the cursor to add the grade object. Nearly sent my 800Mb+ file to support before realising that it was actually doing something. Once the grade object has been put in VW acts normally.

Initially it was because I was using only this method and straight geometry 3D polys modifiers. A curbs curve on its own will mean that the area 'contained' by it is not affected, only the line of it, so by converting a 3D poly I could add vertices to make an enclosed shape that would affect the whole area in question. I've just done an experiment where I made a curbs a site modifier and then used gradients attached to each end to close the shape and it worked, so thanks for the suggestion

I am having the same issue, I think it is a bug because the guidance talks about the alpha channel importing when making the image resource. Other clues: In top view, rather than top/plan, the transparency is there When you scroll across the area, or zoom in and out, the transparency momentarily appears.

I was given a tip a while back to use landscape areas and not hardscapes for the hard surfaces (just with the plants switched off) and I do find that it works much better. This was after finding that hardscapes and landscape areas don't play nicely together. So for angular geometry I use grade networks and for curved areas I have the following workaround: Make a wall style called 'kerb' (or 'edging') and use a curved wall on the area you want. Set the top level to the level you want at the one end of the kerb and put into a 3D view. You can now use the reshape tool to move the other end of the kerb up or down to the correct level. Now use the 'extract' tool to extract a nurbs curve along the top edge of the kerb and convert it to a 3D polygon. Close the 3D poly and add any necessary additional vertices. Move the 3D poly into the Site- DTM - Modifier class to grade the site model. I have grades at the top and bottom of kerbs which gives a slope between them but use the wall style to represent the kerb and landscape areas for the hard surfaces each side so the slope is not seen in the modelling, only on the site model which I don't export to IFC.

Using grade networks to model levels on a site at the moment, but living in terror of the day that the FFL of the building gets changed, this happens a lot. It would be very useful to be able to select a number of grade objects and just move them in the z dimension to fit a new FFL. At the moment the process would be very laborious, manually changing the two levels at each end of the grade. I probably have over 200 of them on this particular site. Is this something that could be incorporated?

Will this include the OzCad railing/fence tool that sends to surface and allows the top rail to be below the top of the uprights?

I'm trying to draw a fence on a slope, but once over a certain gradient the top rail of the fence flips to vertical position. Looks like a bug to me. Laura fence rail flip.vwx

Working on a drawing that already had landscape areas, all of the new ones I draw (or convert from shapes) have a square attached to them in top/plan view. It is not visible in other views. I have used different landscape areas, including ones I used before in this drawing without any issue, and get the same result. I can't select the landscape areas by their edges or fills, they can only be selected by selecting the attached square. Anyone have any idea why this is happening? Thanks Laura

And if I export only the trees and uncheck 'export site model' they export at the correct height, but only from the new file. Laura

And another update, if I export the site model as well the trees export at the correct height. But I don't want to include the site model in my IFC file. Laura

Update on this, double checked the trees and they are displaying z=0 in the OIP but they are actually at the correct height in VW. Then when exported to an IFC file they all drop to zero. Laura

Hadn't seen those before, I usually import things from sketchup files on 3D warehouse. We use generic low-polygon trees for models but have given up on shrubs. It depends what the other disciplines are going to do with them. Laura