Jeff Prince

Interesting question, I would like to know how to accomplish this too. You can export your render with an alpha channel. thats handy for dropping your rendered objects onto a different background. I’m not sure if it is possible to export each object with an alpha... I doubt it. If it’s not possible, i suppose you could turn off classes or layers, render, and export each one individually. Seems like a great job for a script if the scene was complicated, but it could present too much work in an image editor to reassemble. It would be cool to have a render method that facilitated changing DOF after the fact. I had an actual camera that could do that.

@HEengineering I agree with your sentiments. When I was evaluating programs for adopting a landscape BIM workflow, VWX ticked the most boxes. That being said, I look forward to refinements to features such as grading, point clouds, geotiffs on a site model, irrigation, and modeling of landscape features. The bones of VWX seem to provide a nice structure for really making these workflows dance. I came from an Autodesk background using AutoCAD, Land Desktop, and Civil 3D. I was never excited to use any of those tools because of the look and feel, but they did the job. During my evaluation phase of VWX, I threw a few very large projects at it to see what would happen in regards to site model and grading, the harbor being the most complicated. I have seen several people here comment on the need for better roadway tools and I have to agree. The latest upgrades to the hardscape tool give me hope for the future 🙂. The problem with being a landscape architect on BIM is that I not only have to be an expert on the landscape side, but also Architecture and Civil Engineering with the way things are progressing. I’ll post the project I’m working on right now once it gets to a significant milestone. It’s a home on a 2 acre hillside with retaining walls, sloped driveway, hardscape at different levels, natural washes, and lots of existing vegetation. Oh, and a giant house with a split level floor plan, stairs a rooftop patio, and other tricky details. It’s the most complicated project I have done to date with these tools, but far from the largest.

Yes, I have an uneasy relationship with site modifiers and save frequently when using them.

I have no idea why that is happening to you. It doesn’t happen to me.

@HEengineering Thanks, it was tough to learn how to use it. I never figured out what it was doing for that line. I seems like it was a bug because when I tried to edit that particular contour, it ended up putting a hole in my site model 🙂. The harbor has been off my desk for a long time. I’m working on a new project with some extensive topo, so I’m eager to see how it turns out. I’m guessing it will work out in the new project because I generated the the contours from a point cloud and validated them in a different program before bringing them into VWX.

Here’s the online help system’s address for 2019: http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2019/eng/index.htm#t=VW2019_Guide%2FLandingPage%2FWelcome_to_Vectorworks.htm I find that using google helpful to locate instructions and techniques. I usually enter “vectorworks 2019” along with whatever I am looking for and get good results. There are many videos on YouTube as well. Jonathan Pickup’s Archoncad is a tremendous resource for learning the program as well. https://learn.archoncad.com

The problem with the VW service select method is highlighted at 5:55 of the video. "Again, the units here really doesn't matter because we are going to rescale it. There is no way that the photos to 3D models could know what scale and units this was produced in". Yikes! AutoDesk Recap or the Pix4D suite of tools have no problem determining the geographic location and size of images taken by drone. The data is present in the drone photography and quality software knows how do do the math to create usable surfaces and point clouds. This is of critical importance, could you imagine if we had to arbitrarily scale and rotate traditional surveys or architectural models during a typical project development? And we thought the new icons in 2020 were amateur.... With the latest project I posted, I do the real work of measuring and interpreting the drone photo model outside of VWX because I can't rely on half baked scaling and rotating methods required in VWX. This can't be hard to solve, VWX needs to step up and offer usable solutions rather than novelty features that presenters get giddy about in marketing videos if they want to make customers happy rather than disappointed ones. You can see that arc with me in this thread. I was all excited by the potential at first, mostly because I was exploring and researching. I attributed the difficulties due to my apparent lack of knowledge, figuring I get better with time and experience. After intensely studying the process in multiple softwares, consulting with my civil engineers and surveyors, and analyzing the processing results from different software packages, I have learned where the achilles heel is. I love creating in VWX, it's beautiful for design within a CAD/BIM environment. However, if the engineering side of things don't get fixed and present themselves in elegant workflows, I will really have to question why I have invested so much time, money, and effort in adopting VWX. Most small firms don't want to maintain multiple softwares, workstations, and the employees needed to operate them to do what should be simple. If VWX wants to be relevant to Landscape Architects adopting BIM, they need to focus on our design process and optimize the software to be a trusted part of it. Yes, VWX your elegant drawing window with it's beautiful graphic attributes bring me happiness whenever I need to make something. But if you really want to fulfill the promise of Landscape BIM, less marketing and better workflows is the path to follow IMHO. I want us all to be successful and profitable, let's make it happen!

I watched that video back when I tried this the first time. Popped for Service Select to use their point cloud service, tried to get technical support on a few things such as point clouds and the plant database. Largely left to wither on the vine or figure it out myself. So I haven't renewed my service select and do my point cloud work in another platform. Really makes me wonder why I am aggressively pursing Landscape BIM in Vectorworks with these broken workflows 😞

Well, the honeymoon appears to be over now with the upgrade to 2020. Nearly a year has passed since I last leveraged my drone for residential work. Went out this week to look at a new project and put the bird up in the sky. I spent a brief amount of time on a site and collect a vast amount of data. The data gets crunched online using other software solutions. I get nice high resolution 2D geotiffs that surpasses anything I can buy commercially. So clear and accurate I can determine plant species from 150' above ground level with 1/2" per pixel resolution, flying at 20 mph. I can see individual pavers, railings, steps, count the pebbles around the fountain if I was so inclined. The 3D point cloud and mesh is good enough to establish rough grading, determine top of wall heights, and provide a virtual site visit in case I forget something. The I go into VWX... I end up having to move and scale the model in unpredictable ways in order to get something to usable after hours of trial and error. I end up relying on outside software to generate the contour lines that I can use to make a site model since digesting the point cloud is beyond VWX's appetite. And to add insult to injury... I can't add a georeferenced image to the site model, that priviledge seems to be reserved for the ESRI enhancement to the site model settings. I have to create a renderworks texture of my wonderful georeferenced image and then manually scale and offset it until it lines up with model features that I recognize such as plants, walls, or driveways. This is not an enjoyable way to spend a Friday evening, even with social distancing greatly impacting my social life 🙂 6 hours to take properly georeferenced data having to scale, move, and line it up in VWX? Importing a geotif should be automatic, not some silly game of pin the tail on the donkey via render textures. Your import of point clouds needs to work correctly by recognizing georeferencing and units. It shows up in other packages flawlessly, remains broken in VWX 😞 Come on guys, this is the future and it is happening now. Fix our tools by talking to those of us in the trenches making it happen. Develop workflows that embrace our industry practices, not fight against it. I don't need ESRI data, I need to import my data and that of my consultants quickly and accurately like Autodesk lets me do. Thoughts @tekbench @ericjhberg

Thanks for the reply. I figured it was the software and not the operator ruining my work today 🙂

The program comes with various standards you can import. I uses the AIA classes for my work.

I set this problem on the shelf hoping a solution would manifest itself, it has not. I sure wish someone from Vectorworks could shed some light on this problem, even if it something broken with my workflow.

@tekbench I'm assuming this is still broken in VW2020. I just imported a point cloud and was reminded why I stopped trying to use VW when I need to work with this type of data. Is there some kind of recommended workflow that came out of the problems you were having? Has the software been fixed?

Was this ever resolved? @ericjhberg I just imported a point cloud into VW2020. The cloud behaves in other software packages and can be measured. When it arrives into VW, it is at 6.56168 larger than it should (2x the meter to feet conversion). This is crazy if it's still broke. I kind of gave up on VW in regards to point clouds a few years ago when I ran into issues that tech support could not solve. I ended up working in Autodesk packages instead for that job 😞

I think I will experiment with Twinmotion's replacement tool. If I use symbols in VWX to identify the lights, perhaps I can automatically replace them in Twinmotion with their lights. That works well for plants. Something to play with in the coming weeks 🙂

@MAD-LD Thanks for the tip! Turns out I dragged an alias over instead of the main program as you noted. I might have to check out that icon workflow you have sometime, the results are very good. I just copy/pasted a few PNGs I hacked together one day in an effort to keep those blue folders from cluttering up things 🙂

That might be a valid concern for some I suppose. Maybe they need better clients 🙂 My clients hire me for my expertise and the final product, not the tools I use to get there.

Thanks for the icons, they look great! I gave it my ghost treatment that I use for folders on my desktop. Wish I knew hot to get rid of those pesky alias arrow like the one on my Twinmotion icon.

True. If we don't have the tools to do our work in an efficient and profitable way, it doesn't matter how pretty the program looks.

@Hanna N glad it worked for you 🙂 That used to drive me crazy when I was learning.

I can't open it, was created in the student version 😞 Make sure your plant is inserted on a class that is turned on. Make sure the plant is on a design layer that is visible. On your layer options, make sure it is set to "show, snap, modify others" Those are the big 3 when it comes to seeming invisible stuff. There might be other object settings you have set that come into play, but I bet it is one of those.

the vectorworks file, not a screen shot 🙂

post the file.

You didn't quote the part about the hardscape tool looking like a shoe from an old Atari game. That was the essence of my rant 🙂 @drelARCH glad you enjoyed, it was writing therapy for me 🙂

@Phil hunt thanks for the reply and information. I admittedly have done no research into how or if this would work. It just seems like something software would have an easy time understanding since real light definitions in industry have mathematical definitions for their characteristics and seem to transfer between BIM applications fairly well. I hope others will weigh in with their experiences as well.