jeff prince

@PMLA something in your plant object settings seems to be incorrect. I sometimes see this when I copy and paste plants from other projects. Select the plant, in the OIP click the "advanced plant settings" button, change the shadow setting there to respect the document. That should override any style based problems that may exist.

@Christiaan Thanks for the info. I looked at the archives for the project and could see these copies steadily increasing over time. I wonder if the duplicates are created when features adjacent to the stairs are updated or if fitting walls to the stair object creates this situation as those are the only things I can think of that accelerated the rate of duplication towards the end of the project. We were doing a lot of fine tuning to those adjacent features, but not the stairs themselves.

@DDD Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm confused by the intent in the latest file you posted. Here's what I see. You have an existing site that you are developing a 3'9" high pad onto in the existing phase, identified as site preparation. That makes sense. Then you have two new pads to affect the proposed condition. One pad sits at 2'11" (below the site prep), and one pad above the site prep at 5'10" Mmmkay. What is the desired outcome in this situation? Would you not have a retaining situation where these pads sit over or under the initial site preparation OR are you going to bring in a fill to resolve those edges and blend them with the site preparation? Given that design choice, how do you expect Vectorworks to grade for those pads? With the information provided Vectorworks is attempting to resolve the edges of these pads and bring the grade to them. I can see why Vectorworks is confused, or maybe I just don't get it.

A client and I have been working developing a BIM model of a 2 story home. Over a month ago, we placed a stair PIO on the ground floor and configured it to show on both floors. Wow, that works great. Fast forward to today. The stair on the ground floor is fine and it appears graphically on the second floor correctly, which is a separate design layer. However, we discovered that there are nearly 100 duplicate objects on the 2nd floor depicting this stair now, all nicely stacked on top of one another. The OIP does not identify them as stairs and simply reports a quantity of the duplicates, even when only one is selected. I can not think of how this happened, as the stair exists on the ground floor only and was never copied to the second floor. This is reminding me of the site model contour label problem when Vectorworks magically stacks 100s of duplicate labels on top of one another. Have you experienced this? Does anyone know why or how it occurs? How can it be prevented?

@line-weight I did the same you a while back. Sadly, it never really seemed to have value beyond citing it on the feature list. Reminiscent of the point cloud processing, good on paper, lacking on execution when compared to competing products 😞

@DDD that's strange, it has always worked for me. Post the file in 2020 format and I'll take a look at it.

@ericjhberg I like this idea for it's aesthetics, but there is also another potential upside as well... The aerial data I use renders a heightfield in this way, primarily for visual analysis, and I find it appealing. So much of the global satellite survey data is available in the same format. Back in day, I used Bryce and Rhino to model landscapes and they both used greyscale heightfields to develop interesting surfaces. We would edit those images in photoshop and create all kinds of naturalistic surfaces, kind of like a primitive and manual version of Z-brush 🙂 There were applications that could do math operations between heightfields to create surfaces expressing the difference between them. If Vectorworks exported a heightfield of a surface model, there are all kinds of fun things that could be done. Here's on of my drone projects displayed as a heightfield.

In a separate Twinmotion thread, there was a question touching on version control / display of design iterations within TwinMotion. Figured I would start a thread for those who would like to specifically discuss this topic. @line-weight Yes, you create different c4D export files for each version you want to display. In your example, you would turn the design layer for version B off and export only the visible design layers to C4D. You would then turn version A off / B on and export again, creating another file you name accordingly. Anything common to both versions would be left on during this process. Now you have two c4d files and a folder of textures Now in TwinMotion, you just have to import one of those versions, let's say A. When you want to display B, you reload the c4D file using the three dots above the file icon and simply point the file to version B. This whole process takes like 20-30 seconds total. I toggled between 3 different design iterations (reloading models) and two view points (switching views) within TM in roughly 90 seconds. tm versioning.mov Taking it a step further. Let us say there are large parts of your project that are quite detailed and will not be changing. You can break that model up into separate c4d exports to manage what gets loaded and when. We used to do this 20 years ago to cope with slow computers and clunky software 🙂 In TM as you can have multiple c4D files loaded simultaneously. Say you are doing interior renderings and do not need to see the site and the vast majority of the rest of the building... Using separate c4D files gives you the freedom to selectively load just what you want and provides a versioning method. It would be nice if TM just ran inside VWX so these tricks didn't have to be used, but really, we do the same process within Vectorworks using design layers and viewports when you think about it. Yes, you do this in the media center when creating your images. Each image you create can have different environmental settings, etc which you can export as images. Similarly, you can do the same thing with video. I've developed several VWX/TM workflows to deal with all kinds of special requirements of my B2B clients, one of whom went from never using the software to creating a nicely textured and planted model with a 20+ image presentation within a single day...including purchasing and installing the software! There are things it could do better. However, for the price, included libraries, available online assets and tutorials, and quick onboarding, I know of nothing comparable.

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@fjgolf check your attribute panel and class the polygon was drawn on, do they have a solid fill? Also, extrudes viewed from TOP/Plan will show as unfilled unless turned into an AutoHybrid.

@Talitha what @zoomer said. See attached image. Putting your posts on a class with invisible attributes and turned off makes the magic happen. Putting the rest of your stair and railing components on appropriate classes gives you fine control. I'm with @Frank Brault on this though. VWX stair tool leaves a bit to be desired sometimes, so modeling directly produces predictable results.

@LisaErn No worries 🙂 @Benson Shaw gave you some good advice to start, follow that for sure, especially being far from the origin. The “modeling tools” would be any of the Vectorworks 3D tools that create geometry rather than style based plugin objects (hardscape, slabs, walls, etc). Based on the sloped tops and forms in your file, you probably would not be able to achieve a simple way of changing height in the OIP,rather you would edit the source geometry of your 3D. Extrudes can have their extrusion height modified in the OIP, but those cross slope tops will be difficult to control as Benson mentions. An alternative strategy with extrude... using subtraction and/or intersections could generate this type of cross slope geometry. It would be editable for height by editing the Solid and repositioning the geometry used to cur the top. If keep the edit history of the solids, going back in to edit heights and such is pretty easy. If these features repeat across the site, using reference files or symbols of the geometry can make life easier. I’ll try to get an example going for you once I clear some stuff off my plate. Maybe @Tom W. will jump in here and show you how it’s done in the meantime.

@Tom W. Set working planes, convert to nurbs, orientating 2D profiles in 3D... yeah, that’s quick and easy for people just trying to orientate a turndown to a slab 🙂

@Tom W. In regards to the use of ex. Vs proposed strategy, I got that from Vectorworks as a technique and I have found it works fine. in regards to Points vs Lines data... Surveyors collect points and the lines they show in their drawings are an interpretation of the points. I suspect Vectorworks is no different. I use points whenever I can because they are faster with more predictable results.

@DDD have you considered telling your pad to affect the existing site model and have your road affect the proposed? This can eliminate some conflicts in such cases.