Jeff Prince

I do not believe they have fixed that deficiency yet, but I haven’t looked in years.

It worked for me using your file.

Do you mean something like this where the interior lifework of plants placed along a poly or in a mass from a poly shaped border, then yes...

That's interesting, I hadn't noticed that small difference. This is actually a pretty significant issue for people who are doing as @EliM. I could see a use case where you have a wall style that is defining all the components for spacing/construction method, but you want to render the outermost finish by Class so you don't have a bunch of wall styles for a change in color or texture, but not the type of component (example: different kinds of CMU walls or Stone Veneer). Still, using that methodology makes scheduling and takeoffs a bit more difficult. It wouldn't be the first time we have had to completely change the way we do things because of a small change to object behavior 😞

post a VWX file of your fence.

EDIT:I guess it is a bug in that specific use case. If you are using simple one component walls, I could see using a by class texturing methodology to move quickly during a concept phase. However, you aren't doing that, you are using complex wall styles with many components. So, you should render them "by component" and set your textures within the component settings (in my opinion). If you have a building that has multiple exterior finishes, doing them "by class" could become very cumbersome compared to managing this all with Wall Styles, and perhaps materials if you were so inclined.

Learning about them will be a very good investment of time. There is some good information about Data Tags on Vectorworks University. Essentially, they are fully customizable tags which can get their value from different object attributes, records, and even static information. You have the ability to easily change their layout, graphic appearance, and information to include. It really feels like the direction the entire software is going and it's safe to assume built-in tagging based on an object style will die off. Attached is an example of the Data Tags for plants that shipped with 2023. Plants-DataTags vs old Tags.vwx

You should abandon using the built in plant tags and switch to data tags. Built in tags seem to be going away in favor of data tags. Vectorworks changed how plants behave as they refined the Style based approach. If you want to change the attributes of individual plants, you need to change those attributes to “byinstance” instead of “bystyle”. If you want to control some attributes and keep them the same throughout a document for every instance of a particular plant, keep them “by style” and make any changes via the style editor.

@Ryan Russell just curious, what design software does all of that? I ask because none of my architect clients go to that level of detail. They design the building and specify the systems either per building code or by structural engineer. It seems there is a lot of low hanging fruit that architects would rather have… stacked wall components, better roofs, better parametric assemblies of systems, etc.

Nope. Your professor probably want you to draw it by hand. The only way I know of where you can accurately fake military projection in Vectorworks is to use staked viewports and draw the connecting verticals on a sheet layer, which is essentially like drawing it by hand in the computer. The topic pops up all the time here...

another case of my materials being deleted? What the heck. Here's the file I originally posted: pool test.vwx

Your drawing has 30 points in it. Personally, I would just use the Stake or 3D Loci tool and place the points manually. For sites less than a few 100 points, it's fast and reliable. Otherwise, ask your surveyor for points 🙂 It took less than a minute to do this:

Vectorworks isn't the best tool for this type of work. However, if you must model it instead of referring to details, you could accomplish it by using the Extrude Along A Path tool found in the Modeling menu. Here's an example of how to use it on a swimming pool, but the concept would be the same for what is shown in your detail.

it depends on the project and what is available. Surveys or scans I pay for include clean and classified points. Government data is generally ok as a starting point, but involves lots of cleanup on my end. Stuff I shoot myself with a phone or drone is pretty good, but takes time to deal with.

It helps to know what is driving the design, or why it is shaped the way it is. Oftentimes, this reveals the easiest path to modeling it and establishing the pieces that may be required for future revisions. When I look at the image in your post, I have no idea what the design is trying to achieve aesthetically or structurally. No idea of the scale or purpose. So, it's hard to recommend a best method of modeling. Also, why are your beams all running in the same direction? Shouldn't the leftmost roof have them perpendicular to the building like the other two sides? It's stuff like this that governs the easiest path to making the form.

I posted some information related to @Emj86 's problem with contours here:

This is in response to a question in another thread, figured it should be its own thread.... Vectorworks has a hard time trimming imported contours, but there are some things you can do to make it easier. #1, set your view to Top/Plan to avoid problems with the geometry or site model misbehaving during this editing procedure. Even if Vectorworks "fixes" this in future versions, it is generally a good practice to orientate your view to something orthogonal to the edit when using automated 3D editing tools. In the case of imported contours from other GIS or CAD programs, you first need to get all your contours converted from Polygons (2D) to 3D Polys. This simultaneously fixes the issue of each contour being on a 3D plane and instead issues a correct Z elevation that occurs with some imports. Some might say this is potato/potahto, but it makes a difference when you are building site models. Next you have a choice on how to "trim" out the contours to focus on your area of interest and make the model more efficient for Vectorworks to handle. I have named these the Split Method and the Site Model Crop Method. In either case, a rectangle will define your area of interest and serve as a boundary for some editing operations. Pro tip - Make this rectangle a bit larger than the site model you hope to end up with, as this will make your contours and 3D surfaces look much nicer instead of the data abruptly ending at the site model crop. Prior to doing any edits, it may be beneficial to run the Simplification and then Validation tools found in the Site Modeling menu. This can make your data much faster to process, but will consume your time in manually refining the data. It's still a good idea because you will save time over the life of the project with each site model update or edit. Just keep in mind, each time you do a simplification, you will likely create validation issues like intersecting contours or contours that have overlapping endpoints. You will need to correct those issues prior to site modeling for the best results. Experience will give you a sense of the time commitment required to get things working correctly, do not underestimate this because bad site models can become a vortex of despair on your project if done incorrectly. Split Method - Manually trim the contours using the split tool. Concept-Use the tool you think you should, but in small steps to make Vectorworks happy. Delete any contours which to not cross or fall within the study area, you don't need them if they won't be seen and this make processing faster. Then, grab only the contours within or crossing the rectangle (which should be all the remaining contours at this point). Next, split them by doing a cutline one side of the rectangle at a time in LINE SPLIT + SELECTED OBJECT mode of the Split tool. Delete the unneeded portions of the contours and repeat your way around the rectangle. Vectorworks can't handle splitting a lot of complex contours simultaneously around a crop boundary like a rectangle. Do it in QGIS or other GIS programs prior to export if you can, it's faster and easier. Site Model Crop Method-this is a trick to get Vectorworks to crop your contours as most other programs do. Concept - Make a site model out of the entire collection of contours and trim to your desired site model boundary afterwards. First, deal with the source data as mentioned earlier.... Convert your contours to 3D Polys. Use Simplify 3D Polys to make the polys more efficient. Finish by validating the site model data to correct any problems created by the simplification process. Next, generate a site model....Switch to Top/Plan view, grab the contours, and generate the site model. You can then adjust the site model crop to your area of interest which will make things look like you want. Finally, create a more efficient site model.... Select the site model you just created. Change the Site Model's 3D Display to "3D Contours". Change the view to Top instead of Top/Plan so the site model displays the 3D contours instead of a plan view. Ungroup the Site model. Magically, you now have cropped 3D contours. Make a new site model with this cropped data and enjoy the accelerated performance of your site model. In either case, if you were a good site modeler and included data outside your desired depiction of the land, you can now adjust your site model crop and enjoy the benefits of having data beyond your crop for nice smooth contours free of cliffs and jaggies. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ So, all this being said, you would really be better off using Points to build site models instead of contours. Contours are simply a computer's best guess as to where an elevation exists based on what you feed it. If you feed vectorworks point data, it will generate contours for you. If you feed it contours, it treats each vertex of the contour as a point, which isn't really accurate in the grand scheme of things and makes your site model very slow. Don't believe me? Here's a video of a 6500' x 6500' mountain in Phoenix I modeled from LiDAR points. Note how quickly it is to develop the site model, render with a geo image, and crop down as described above. If you take any area and convert it to contours to rebuild a site model, the resulting contours will usually generate 10x the number of vertices as the original point data if your contour value is the same. Switching to a finer level of detail for the contour interval and the number of points will become exponentially larger. That's not making your work more accurate, it's just bringing your computer to its knees for no reason. Although, if you are trying to convince your boss to pop for a fancy computer, I guess I have now demonstrated how you can make your computer look "slow" 🙂 Site Modeling tricks.mp4

I think that's a function of how you imported it. If you import as millimeters and ignore the invisible layers, it will pop in correctly. Vectorworks has never explained why, but I found the "5km safe zone" does not apply if you have geometry at the origin. I've had site models over 50 miles across without issue, as long as they are centered on the origin.

When the dwg is imported, it's converting over 500,000 objects.... How these are converted will influence how snappy the file is. It's a 2D file, but if your Vectorworks is setup to convert everything to 3D, things will slow down. The title blocks contain many things that are causing problems, delete them. Also, grab all the groups and ungroup them, place the resulting object on the layer plane. Once you delete them and purge, things should behave. I got the file to respond fairly quickly with those changes. A little deeper and you find... The Chinese characters found in the file could also be causing a problem. There are unimportant graphic orphans floating around the drawing space. There are scaled symbols, both symmetric and asymmetric. Dealing with that stuff could help too.

Was helping via PM, there is a host of issues not related to Vectorworks. The recommended solution was to trim the area in QGiS, export to .shp, then import .shp to vectorworks, finish with modify by record. Trimming or slicing 3D contours in vectorworks is possible, but best done one at a time to avoid lockups.

It’s a guessing game without seeing the files. Could be clipping due to content in the reference being far from the origin. Is there 3D content in the reference that is simply above the rotated view? Clip cube turned on?

Same problem happens for me in VWX 2024. The problem does not occur in VWX 2023, so it looks like you found a bug. 2022-Roof dormer disappearing in viewport v2022 v2023.pdf2022-Roof dormer disappearing in viewport v2022 v2023.pdf

Just post your file, it's faster to look at the source than try to recreate the problem. Too many other things could be going on in your file.

Do it in blender and you can preserve your texture mapping. Solid subtract in VWX isn’t going to work so well on a textured mesh.

I have several customers who have shared this sentiment. Like them, you could just use the version you have paid for until you retire at this point. That sure beats learning another software. Just keep it on a computer dedicated for vectorworks, don’t upgrade the operating system, and stay off the internet. That could easily survive 10 years or more. Blender is probably the only software that is guaranteed to avoid the subscription model 🙂