Jeff Prince

@ericjhberg thanks for that workflow, it is similar to a block replacement technique I used to use in AutoCAD before I began embedding the irrigation components into the plant blocks. This is an interesting discussion because it has broad implications to other workflows related to assemblies within assemblies we find in the landscape world, or architecture in general. I'm sure I'm not the first to say so. There are so many examples of this assembly within assembly workflow... Furnishings with footings, Planters with plants and irrigation, plants with featured lighting, etc. It's like we need a special container object that doesn't break the sub assemblies' BIM functionalities. Maybe this exists and I'm not aware of it. It seems like everything is evolving in this direction, but from the micro level up instead under a more holistic approach. If VW made these irrigation tools more robust, it would be very helpful. The same principles apply to drainage tools. These are some of the most time consuming technical tasks we deal with and greatly benefit from automation and networked behaviors. I'm frequently compelled to go off on a rant about these kinds of things, but I think I'll stop here and go pet my dogs and hope for a better world

Thanks for your reply. It's not the crossed planes feature of imageprops, that works as expected in TwinMotion. It has something to do with the alpha channel or some other aspect of how textures are handed off to C4D export. I am pretty sure of this based on a series of experiments I posted in the other forum, but I am only a novice in this regard. Yes, Imageprops will not adopt seasonal/weather behavior in TwinMotion...that requires special 3D models designed to take on those characteristics and a separate issue all together. Anyhow, this may have broader implications beyond plants. It also seems to effect the use of Decals in non-plant objects, hence my interest in understanding how it works. I have around 50 plants I am preparing for a custom library and I want to make sure the texture settings for the image props are optimized before doing any further work. Additionally, if one uses Decals in VW for various effects, say placing a rug on a floor or simulating graffiti on a wall, you wouldn't want to rework that in TwinMotion. An example, using plant textures (or any texture for that matter) as a Decal on a Nurbs Surface... The texture mapping and Alpha Channel are as desired in VW. When you import into Twinmotion, things get a little crazy, this time with texture tiling of the decal. Note, the one in the middle does not display this tiling because the decal texture is larger than the surface it is mapped to. The left and right examples are textures that are smaller than the surface they are mapped to, hence tiling. The tree on the left was configured with tiling turned off, yet it tiles in Twinmotion. The grassy pant on the right is with tiling turned on. It doesn't seem to matter, it all still ends up tiling in TwinMotion. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I imagine I'm not the only one interested in developing clean workflows within VW so exporting to TwinMotion is less painful. I prefer to do the majority of my work in VW and then do some plant replacements in TwinMotion for final rendering. I'm really not to keen on the idea of building a bunch of stuff in VW and having it look right only for it to break in TwinMotion due to some obscure method of handing off textures and decals. Fortunately, I am in the experimental stage right now and not applying this to actual projects. I'm just hoping this is user error on my part and not some broader technical issue that can not be resolved easily.

I posted this over on the rendering page, but I suspect more people will see it here: Any help is appreciated.

I have some custom plants intermixed with stock VW plants(the ones in the rightmost rectangle) When I export them to TwinMotion using C4D, note how some of the object have a black background where it should be transparent. The image props were constructed by masking a photograph in Photoshop and/or Affinity Photo to create a texture and saved as PNG with a transparent background. The imageprops were created in VW by using the aforementioned texture file with the options shown in these dialog boxes. Everything behaves as expected in VW, but the black in place of alpha rears its head when VW is exporting the textures. Note the image below. On the left is how my plant with alpha appears outside of VW, as created by me. The same plant as it appears as a texture exported from VW, either via extract image or C4D export. The tree on the right is a default VW tree image prop exported via C4D. I suspect something is slightly different with the alpha channel or image definition, I just can't figure out why the images I am creating are behaving this way. I'm beyond frustrated by this mystery. Any help is appreciated.

Has any progress been making looped mainlines functional in VW? This is important! I have been teaching myself how to use the VW tools on small projects and had some success. However, I am sensing I may encounter some huge disappointments if I try to use it on my large commercial work.

@ericjhberg @bob cleaver I am interested in this too. I just tried adding a ring of emitters and associated piping related to the plant to a plant object's 2D representation. We spend all this time laying out a planting design, it is a waste of time to have to place emitters from scratch. Anyhow, VW was unable to find those emitters and lateral piping within the plant definition and was unable to connect the lateral lines running around to connect the plants to the valve. I hope there is a better workflow for this that I am unaware of. If not, it sounds like those of us with large irrigation needs need to have a brainstorming session with the programmers. There seems to be so much potential with the VW irrigation tools if we can get them to work like we design, especially in places where we are required to show precision drip system designs on large projects.

@ericjhberg I have been transitioning my irrigation work over to vectorworks recently. I agree with you on the Autojump of pipes both in size and priority. Mainlines shouldn't jump laterals or drip lines! Do you have a workflow for placing drip emitters at individual plants? In AutoCAD, I had my emitters as part of my plant symbol for a low level 2D BIM functionality. This allowed me to turn off or grey the plants on the irrigation plan and have my emitters magically appear for pipe connection. I just tried to add emitters to a plant object's 2D graphic, but it does not seem to like working in that fashion graphically or with piping 😞 My old method in AutoCAD was fast, but lacks the power of VW piping and valving calcs. Meanwhile, VW seems to require me to place every emitter by copying them around, which is highly inefficient given I have already placed the plants. Hopefully there is a solution that I am not aware of yet.

@JMR do you know how one could do this with hardscape styles? I checked out your file for the wall types, but was unable to identify how to get an image of the hardscape build up like you have with the wall components.

@jmccain8 Now that you know the easy way to solve this problem, time to right click on that turf area and explore "create objects from shapes". You can get a lot of added value from that simple polyline. It's not difficult to switch to a BIM approach for this stuff, even if you have no immediate use for the 3D display. Anyhow, hope this motivates you to explore the function. It is a game changer for me. You can turn that polyline into a hardscape and define it as a turf. Want a border to show up to the party? Done by selecting the option. Need quantity take offs? Done automatically via worksheets and update as the design changes. Even shows up in 3D with the proper build up. Depending on the nature of your work, this could be a big time saver if you invest some time in learning it. Here's an example.. The turf area was generated from a polyline I drew, the tan topdressing was created using the paint bucket method. The border was generated by the turf object and is part of it. I removed the border where the deck is by using the reshape tool and deleting those sections quickly. Vectorworks includes some predefined build ups for landscapes such as this example. All the textures and build up depths are defined for you or you can change them to suit. The turf area and border in this example are one "object", but contains separate definition for the turf bed and border. The rock topdressing is a separate "hardscape object". All of it created by two 2D polylines and selecting some styles to apply 🙂

@Pat Stanford thanks for bringing this tool to my attention! I'll play with it and see if I can make it work.

This is a hobby pursuit for studying the relationship of bicycle geometry, crank arm length, and seat height/position on pedaling my mountain bike within Vectorworks. Is it possible to develop a model like the one seen at 8:40 in the video below within Vectorworks? If so, how would I go about learning how to do it? If not, does anyone have a suggestion on a free Mac version of software capable of doing so? Essentially, it’s a 2D parametric model that allows you to change the length of femur, shin, crank arm length, seat tube angle, and seat tube height to study the angles as you move thru the range of motion. While this is not for my work, I could see applications of such models for some of my design work potentially.

while we are at it on this example... Is is possible to use VW Wall Styles to create walls that have decorative caps like the attached image? I've just been doing it by extruding 2D geometry. It sure would be nice if it could be done using a wall object instead.

Great suggestion, this is a new command for me and seems to do the trick. Are there any issues with converting something to an Autohybrid in regards to editing geometry? thanks, Jeff

I'm constantly building landscape walls with overhanging caps, like the attached image, using Extrudes instead of the Wall Tool. Is there some magical way to make a Wall Style in VW which has an overhanging cap, or cap of any kind? I've been experimenting w/o any luck... The image on the bottom is via a wall style I made. I can get the cap to sit where I want it vertically, but I can not get it to center on the wall supporting it 😞 It sure would be nice to know if this is possible with wall styles and how to do it.

I threw together a model of an existing pool & hardscape surfaces for the purposes of showing a planting design in 3D. I made the gravel planting beds, pool deck, and lawn area using the Hardscape Tool, which is great in both Top/Plan and 3D views. However, I built the curved feature walls and stone caps as extrusions. These look fine in 3D, but the Top/Plan view looks like a hidden line rendering with the all the edges showing but no fill. I encountered this issue too with the pool water that I had extruded and resolved by changing the water to a hardscape object. I really don't want to rebuild the feature walls and caps as Wall Object if I can avoid it. Is it possible to get the Top/Plan view of these specific features to show an outline and a fill like my other hardscape elements? thanks for any help, Jeff

Yes, that is one of my objectives for sure. Sorry I didn’t phrase it better. I’m getting ready to customized my symbol library and figured it would be nice to have everything in one place for mass editing and standardization. This would culminate in a physical book of symbols showing relative size and graphic to pic from to compliment the resource manager. The other lesser one was to visually see the default reuse of symbols in the list like the image I posted above. 7 of the 19 plants essentially use the same symbol in the Cactus/Succulents category. I imagine this is fairly widespread across the plant groups, it would be nice to see what I have to work with. And even lesser, I also had an interest in seeing the 3D representations all in one place to see what I might reuse and help identify what I need to make. I figure I would want to do that by type of plant ,such as palms, to simplify operations. Ultimately, I’ll probably migrate my AutoCAD stuff over since it is very well developed. I just happen to like graphics of some of the VW symbols.

So I take it the file I am looking for does not exist...

Thanks for the unsolicited advice 🙂

@bgoff Thanks for the reply, but that's not what I'm looking for. In your example, each plant is a separate file. I'm looking for them all inserted into a single file.

Just curious if there is a VW file hiding in the software or posted here that has each of the plants from the resource browser inserted into a single drawing based upon the collection it comes from, something like the attached example.

My pleasure. I kind of felt the same way about data being stuck in VW at first. Once I realized how to interact with it and how Filemaker(FMP) could help take things further, I became happy again. So much of what we do in this industry benefits from having database skills. I ended up making all kinds of things not related to VW in FMP. I started with the plant database, then did a personal recipe database, and eventually graduated to developing a project management system to keep track of my projects and staff. I took a while to learn, but the time savings in searching for information and eliminating duplication has paid off.

@plantkind Hey Ethan, I switched to VW after 20 years of AutoCAD. I have done projects ranging from residential back yards to regional masterplans in AutoCAD. Switching to VW was easy and a much better tool for the work I do. The plant library was one of the deciding factors for me, though I have to highly customize it for the regions of the world I work in. Typically, software vendors in the AEC space over-market and under-perform. And while VW is far from perfect and could use some improvements in site modeling BIM, it is superior to AutoCAD in ever way for a landscape designer. The included symbol libraries, extendable plant database, irrigation tools, and BIM functionalities are a huge added value compared to vanilla AutoCAD IMHO. I find the standard graphics to be visually pleasing and more aligned with my preferred aesthetics. The modeling and rendering features have replaced sketchup for my needs. During my time in Kuwait, I was doing a lot of R&D to modernized our landscape architecture practice within a large AEC firm. I had my staff transition our autocad and excell plant library to VW. I also purchased a copy of Filemaker Pro for doing some heavy modifying of the database for other purposes, like running it on an ipad to collect data in the field and generating custom plant books/cut sheets. I poked around with VW for 6-9 months in order to learn it and develop a 3D & BIM workflow for my staff to follow. Surprisingly, this was time well spent and the transition was less painful by watching lots of tutorials and doing a few practice projects first to refine the process before committing to a large project in VW. I created my office, my house, and an old project in VW to test everything out without the pressure of deadlines. Now that I'm back home, I'm using all that research in my private practice. I find developing projects in 3D/BIM with the available tools to be vastly superior to my old AutoCAD 2D/3D practices. While I am not a full master of VW worksheets yet, the functionality for calculating materials and quantities reduces errors and time required to do take offs. Even site data collection by aerial drone and full 3D design in VW has proven to be extremely cost effective for me in the residential sector. Here was my first attempt at it on the residential scale: https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/63372-thanks-for-making-computer-work-fun-again/&do=findComment&comment=322275 FYI, I leave the entire interface active. This encourages you to press buttons and learn about tools you didn't realize you might actually use 🙂 hope it helps, Jeff

@Amorphous - Julian No issues, it's just a little slower rendering a video on the MacBook compared to the Imac. Provides a reason to take a little break I guess 🙂

This. The last place I worked was a 900+ AEC firm. We had a dedicated and highly talented 3D department doing renderings. They used 3D Studio Max with VRay. They rarely used the models created by architects using Revit, Sketchup, or Vectorworks, choosing to build the models themselves to suit their purposes. Why? Because architects model with a different level of detail suited to their purposes which often conflicts with what the 3D team needs to produce. Add animation and things get even more complicated (see link below for some really complicated stuff). Two of the design architects at our office provide and interesting case study. One used Revit during conceptual development, the other used Sketchup or Vectorworks. The Revit guy's rendering production really ground to a halt as his models became increasingly more detailed during design development. The dedicated 3D team couldn't salvage his work and chose to remodel, in spite of MAX/Revit integration. Meanwhile, the Sketchup/Vectorworks architect always hit the deadlines and produced beautiful work on his own without the 3D team. It wasn't the software that made him better, it was process. He made drawings in Vectorworks and maintained separate sketchup models to suit his study model rendering needs, saving significant time over the Revit architect's efforts. I showed him how my landscape team was using Vectorworks as a sketchup replacement, but even then his process was faster overall. I think having a fair quality built in rendering engine is important to those of us who are designing, rather than rendering, for a living. If I need something highly polished, I'm outsourcing it to a professional 3D artist. If I need process study models or progress renderings, I want VW to quickly generate the appropriate level of detail, I don't want to go outside to another program and have to redo my efforts. My time is best spent addressing my client's needs and focusing our resources to achieve that. If you want to see some of the design animations I have directed and contributed to, visit https://jeffprince.weebly.com/video-production.html I played with VW to Twinmotion last year. It's a fun toy for me as a landscape architect. I figured it out with little time or effort. I won't bother with it on an actual project until I can: 1. link my VW model to the Twin Motion and have it update automatically in both directions (example: move a tree in TM, location changes in VW and vice versa) 2. have Twin Motion automatically texture and plant a scene based on my VW specified materials and objects at a coordinated scale (bi-directional functionality again would be helpful). It would be nice to have the Twin Motion renderings update on my sheet/viewports as a normal VW drawing does, but that's not a deal breaker. Until then, it's faster and cheaper for me to hire an outside 3D artist to get the work done. I don't have the time or interest, though I posses the ability, to become a true 3D visualization expert. I expect software to be my assistant and do it for me. The only reason I bother to do some of my own drawings anymore is because I actually enjoy it and the software makes it economically feasible for me to do so. Rendering needs to have the same financial/time benefit. The software industry has been marketing this to us professionals long enough, it's time to deliver on these promises IMHO.

I haven't pulled the trigger yet, going to wait until January 2020 for tax reasons 😞