Jeff Prince

You can’t do an undercut or tunnel with the site modeling tools currently. However, you can use a trick to do it…. Use two different site models, one for the site and one for the fill. Alternatively, you can do one site model and then use object modeling tools to create the fill above. There are a ton of threads here on the forum about the topic if you need more ideas.

You are going to hear some varied opinions on that topic. I prefer to do it as you describe, building in one file which is then referenced into the site. I have not seen a tutorial that explains it, but in a nutshell.... Set up your building how you like, typically FF= 0' elevation, lower leftmost corner of the building at 0,0 Set you site up with correct georeferrencing of the location, best to coordinate with the surveyor and structural folks as to their preferred staking out method and coordinate system. Then, it's simply a reference of the building into the site. You can move the building around freely on the site that way without effecting your building drawings. Be sure to place it at the desired site elevation so it shows up correctly in sections and such. Back in the building file... If you like to have real world elevation on your building in section or elevation, you can make a data tag that adds real world elevation to measured and everything will be work nicely. Ask away if you have questions.

You could use a Report and/or a Data Viz Legend Bonus, you could use a Data Visualization to color the cubes 🙂 I'm not sure how you could go about adding quantities to a Data Viz Legend though, I haven't done that yet and handle quantities with Reports typically. See if the attached VWX gets you going in the right direction. Maybe @Pat Stanford will chime in... cube vis.vwx

That doesn't seem right, you must have something set up incorrectly and it's hard to identify what that might be from the information provided. See attached VWX file for an example of how it should behave using very basic settings. renovation wall help.vwx

My pleasure, I had the time to give 🙂

@ajemutt I made a quick video which shows some of the difficulties one can run into when importing .obj models. It might be an hour or so before the HD and 4K videos are available on Youtube.... https://youtu.be/whCL5xvrLBk

Did you watch the video I posted? Did you see where I imported the dwg, hit the "advanced" button, and made sure the Conversion settings were such that it Convert Object = 2D & 3D? This is what I am referring to. You gotta do some training man, the forum can only do so much for you.

Thanks for looking into it. Note, I tried turning a portion of the ribbon into a light fixture and made the other portions glow materials. I would like to learn more about lighting within Vectorworks, solving this lit fog effect would be really useful. spiral final-to forum.vwx

Have you done the Landmark classes on Vectorworks University?

@JHEarcht3 Here's a video showing the steps to import the .dwg you provided and the result. You'll note that the errors are not present in the .dwg and a few tricks for inspecting and cleaning these things up before building a site model... site model example.mp4

You need to use the tools properly, the software does what you tell it to. I was able to import your .dwg survey as 3D geometry because I configured the import to preserve 3D objects, I suspect you did not. The first thing you should do after you import a 3D files is use the FLY AROUND tool to view the model in 3D. This is the quickest way to visually evaluate the import, see if your contours are in 3D, and identify possible errors in elevation.

You beat me to it today 🙂 It's reminiscent of the Möbius strip, but actually possible within VWX. Now, does anyone know how to turn geometry into... a light fixture that will do lit fog... within Vectorworks? I know the glow trick with materials and the fog trick with environmental lighting and fixtures. I just don't know how to set geometry to do the job instead of a light fixture, or if it is even possible. Seems it is not, but I could be wrong.

Building a site from a text based delaminated point file is still faster. Try it sometime compared to importing a .dwg with points in it and you'll see. The added benefit to a delaminated file is you can open it in a spreadsheet or text editor to check the data for problems, edit, or reformat it. Stu asked for the "best file type", that's what I provided.

using the sources data as points from a delimitated file is the most accurate and fastest way to generate a site model in my experience. Processing contours takes forever in comparison.

can you do that in VWX 2013 though? I thought that was an added feature with some past OIP enhancements.

Reshape tool, reposition vertex on z axis from Front view while holding shift key. There are other ways too…

in fairness to Vectorworks, this problem you are experiencing has more to do with the lack of quality on the model builder’s part than the software’s ability to import the file. It could be as simple as the name of the image texture does not match the .mtl file.l (common problem with Turbosquid). You can check this by opening the .mtl file in a text editor and comparing that to the names of the image files. If that looks correct, the next step is to import the .obj file and review the textures created. If the model is white, there is still a problem with the image names not matching the .mtl OR the image files are saved in a format that is hanging VWX up, usually a colorspace or bit depth issue. That can be fixed by opening the image files in an image editor and resaving them (probobaly why C4D seems to fix things, it handles images a more robustly like Blender). if the model is colored generally, does vectorworks have an image in the shader for a particular texture? If not, you can map it. If it does have an image in the texture bit you aren’t really seeing it, you likely have a units/scale issue. That can be corrected with your import settings. Once you get used to working with these files, fixing the issues will become second nature… there are a lot of poorly constructed models out there 😉 Blender mesh editing works well and can round trip back to VWX.

Point file in .txt or .csv basically, it’s a list of points collected by the surveyor, it’s the rawest data. At a minimum, it consists of point #, X, Y, Z.

Not that I’m aware of.

@JHEarcht3 See, that was so much easier 🙂 Your problem is one of the contours has some points set at 0 and others at the correct elevation. This can be fixed by moving the incorrect points to the correct elevation, deleting the offending points, or using a trick (convert to 2D Poly, Ungroup, Compose, Convert to 3D poly, and move to correct Z elevation). The last method is probably the fastest in this case, the first two are handy when it's only a few points on a poly that need to be adjusted. EDIT - Actually, looking at the DWG you provided, the contours were already correctly located in 3D by the surveyor. So, you could have just imported the contours as 3D items and been done a lot quicker w/o issue. It looks like you created this issue by unnecessarily modifying the contours. That can happen when you are snapping to the wrong plane or using the wrong tools for the job.

That doesn't create these spikes. Its bad data used as a source for the site model that is causing this issue. Apparently, the OP wants us to diagnose their problems with words alone 🙂 I don't do that anymore, it's getting old. It's like people who want help modeling something but can't be bothered to post a sketch of what they hope to create.

The quickest way for people to see your problem is to look at the file.

The main problem with Vectowork's implementation of Plant Styles is the data is locked into the Vectorworks ecosystem, one which does not allow you to do the things Landscape Architects frequently do with plants... Illustrative plant booklets, project manuals, spec cut sheets, etc. This is something database programs, Filemaker in particular, do a very nice job of. If Vectorworks discontinues the plant database, I sure hope you guys make a tool that allows people to EASILY connect an outside database to populate a project with plants. Why? Because in a BIM workflow, there should be one source of truth. Professionals have to do more than modeling and documentation for projects, so it makes sense for plant and product data to live in outside databases and be referenced in for the least amount of errors and greatest efficiency.

It's a lot easier for people to help you if you post your files. I recommend the VWX file you are showing here plus the original source DWG.

I would bet the farm on that being the case.