jeff prince

The easiest and most reliable way to address this is by using an ALL CAPS font for such use cases. Perhaps there is a tricky method of formatting a datatag to achieve this, but I wouldn't bother. I doubt there is any way to do this with a Plant Object's built-in tag beyond my font trick. Installing an ALL CAPS font and building a Vectorworks Text Style around one is simple and quickly modified throughout a single documents when you want to switch back to mixed case. Plus it works equally well for both datatags and built-in plant tags. Might as well get on the datatag bandwagon now, I imagine you won't have a choice in the future...

Opening something in Preview is not a valid test of the problem as Preview will open just about anything, including OBJ and USD models. It's a pretty robust little App. If you follow my advice and open that iPhone photo in an editor (even Preview will work) and export it (as .jpg or .png), you will be able to drag and drop it in Vwx 2022. This will fix the problem you are facing, guaranteed. I suppose you could file this as a bug in 2022, because native drag and drop of iPhone 13 Pro photos works in 2021 without doing the export thing. You can even drag and drop an iPhone photo ,from the Photos App, on a mac, directly into Vectorworks (2021, not 2022). It's probably a metadata issue, but this topic is far outside my area of expertise. Or you can just say "nope"...

I find a lot of beauty in the native desert plants in the southwest US, both in form and color. Yellows are the most dominate bloom color with some purples, oranges, reds, and whites. White blooms are for the night time pollinators like bats and moths. We have many plants that bloom at night only to conserve their pollen, which can die in daytime temps. On the ornamental side of plants, many tropicals do well in desert environments if they are watered. Cold is usually the limiting factor for plants. Lots of drought adapted ornamentals for deserts come from Australia and Africa as well 🙂

I imagine the email client added something to the .jpg format causing it to misbehave in VWX. To test this, open the file in question with your prefered image editor and resave it as a .jpg and see if the behavior repeats. I can drag and drop images into sheet layers without issue.

Hi Andy, Practicing in the desert southwest and Middle East, I have had to make my own plants for the majority of my projects. I think the most efficient way to do this is to take or obtain a desired elevation photograph of the desired plant(s), cut them out in Affinity Photo (or Photoshop), and use them as an imageprop in the plant object's 3D graphics. Sculptural plants like cacti can be modeled or purchased from a variety of 3D model providers and then used for the 3D graphics of the plant object. For what it's worth, I don't think it is realistic for a software company to develop a library for every market around the world, so they focus on the most common plants for the most common areas. Temperate zones seem to have a lot of material that looks good, not so much for the hot deserts 😞 Even when desert plants are provided, they usually look incorrect because they have been made by people with little to no experience with them. There are many plants available for purchase from companies that specialize in developing 3D models for the animation and gaming industries. The only problem with those is they are heavy in polygons and textures. You can hire people here on the forum to make plant libraries for you if needed as well, the best way to find such folks is to post a help wanted ad. Here is an example of some 3D plants I have made, found, or purchased. The ocotillo along the wall are image based 3D models, the rest are actual models with textures for the details. Simple imageprops are much easier to develop in comparison. I made almost all of these from photographs, a couple of the Agaves are from Vectorworks library IIRC.

Almost 2 years later, I find myself in a position to buy yet another computer. I was using a nice iMac in Maine, but had to head back to Phoenix and left it behind. The Mac studio and monitor I spec’d won’t ship til October 😞 Loaded MacBook Pro won’t ship till mid August 😞 Apple is too proud of their refurb units… I couldn’t find an acceptable rental unit and really didn’t want to buy a PC. So, I managed to order the last of the new-old stock i7 3.8 ghz 8 core machines. That and 2x32 GB aftermarket Ram came in at $2320 taxed and shipped with a $250 discount from Costco and a RAM deal from OWC for July 4th. I guess that will hold me over till a fancy new machine arrives, a nice hand-me-down in the near future. Just mentioning it in case anyone else is looking for deals due to the lead times with the new machines.

@zoomer @Mark Aceto I'm almost certain this behavior has been standard since I started using the software… v2017. One of the site modeling classes specifically tells people to invoke the site model creation from plan, after using the validation tool. Between symbols and site models, one can create a lot of drama when creating things in a rotated plan or any 3D view 😞

I’m pretty sure these are covered in the IBC for fire protection, but perhaps called something else. Also, Cavity barriers have a lot in common with thermal breaks in Passive House, at least in terms of how one might want to include such detail in a BIM model and energy analysis. I would think such features would be handled in 2D detailing rather than BIM modeling though. Regardless, my point is Vectorworks users all over likely have a use case for needing this functionality for a variety of reasons if a tool were developed. One would hope it could approach the excellence found in stairs, doors, GIS importing, and looped mainlines for irrigation this software is lauded for 😉

Just a guess, try exporting to DWG and importing that into a new file. It’s a handy trick for creating 2D line work from 3D models, so I suspect it may work in this case, while preserving the desired look.

You are correct sir. Site models should be built from Top/Plan view. @Mark AcetoIf that’s not it, post the import file and describe how you did the site model creation and what VWX version used.

User error.

This is easily accomplished... provided you import your DWG into a Vectorworks file first. DWG references don't rotate off the XY plane 😞 VWX reference viewports will though 🙂

Just a quick follow up, I can't look at the file because it was saved in 2022 and I just uninstalled it from my workstation for safety and sanity's sake.

I'm away from my workstation now so I can't look at your file till tomorrow. 1st thing I do with a survey is rotate it around in 3D so I can determine what data will be useful. Then, I grab it and put it on a separate design layer to segregate it from the less useful info. Sometimes, and in the case of the file you posted earlier, you will find 2D data such as points that have text describing their elevation. The stake tool can quickly recreate these 2D points as 3D data. From there, you can select your loci, stakes, and 3d polys and use the create site model command. I would advise taking a few classes on Vectorworks University to learn this before playing around too much and developing bad habits. The required workflow can be confusing to new people, but with a little practice it gets easier. Small errors can cause big problems with site models. 3D loci or stakes make superior models compared to contour lines. Basically, contour lines are interpretations of points your surveyor collected. These guesstimate contour lines typically have a bunch of vertices which do not add accuracy to your model and only serve to slow your computer down, though your site and data are pretty simple...so that is just general advice to keep in mind for the future.

The provided survey will produce a site model. You just have to grab the loci to use as source date. If you also want to use the line features, convert them to 3d polys first, then use as site model data. There are several points that look to define the top of fence, you probably don't want to use those in your site model, but you could use them to develop a 3D fence. Many of the points outside the parcel of interest do not have any 3d value, but could be used to develop neighboring structures manually. Hope it helps,