Jeff Prince
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Posts posted by Jeff Prince
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1 hour ago, Poot said:
One big question is, how/where are you getting your source data with relatively clean points?
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.-
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4 hours ago, Justin21 said:
On the other hand, general tips for the overall order of approaching this design challenge would be helpful
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.
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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.
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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" 🙂
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2 hours ago, Tom W. said:
Also, check the scale of the objects. Everything is rather large. The red circle is your 5km safe working zone around the Internal Origin. The geometry fills the screen:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Same problem happens for me in VWX 2024.
The problem does not occur in VWX 2023, so it looks like you found a bug.
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20 minutes ago, Catmansound said:
Thanks Jeff, I should be more specific, I'm running Dell Precision 7670 Laptop, 12th Gen i9-12950HX, 64GB RAM, nVidia RTX 4500. I should add that any combination of classes and layers that I turn on or off in that viewport, i.e. everything on, only items I want displayed on etc. still the same result. Try it and see if you get the same results.
create a roof
place a window in Vectorworks and explode it and make a symbol out of it (it's how you make dormers)
activate that window and place it on the roof, the Dormer dialog box appears to allow you to configure your dormer
create a viewport and place it on a Sheet layer
publish, print or just export to pdf
Make sure the viewport is set to Top/Plan View and Wireframe Background Render.
let me know if you get the same result, it might be a graphics card issue, i do have 24gb graphics card, so who knows.
cheers,
Anthony
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.
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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.
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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 🙂
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If you mean an above the foundation/footing structural support that looks similar to a pilaster, I would just use another wall or make a symbol to represent them. Alternatively, you might be able to use a Wall Projection to achieve what you want.
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5 hours ago, kitkaye said:
Please help
You need to post a file demonstrating the problem so we can understand it better.
Also, explaining what your issue is with more clarity would help.
The fix should be simple and then you will just need to follow best practices for modeling and symbol building.
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You can build a site model from points. There is an import survey file command. The help menu and many videos online describes it in detail.
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1 hour ago, skeyshubber said:
Actually, I JUST solve the issue by inserting duplicate doors in each wall instance when in plan view. Found a workaround but seems like there should be a better way....
Instead of duplicate doors, you can always use a wall opening and a door. This makes scheduling a little easier.-
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A point file is best for creating a native vectorworks site model. A space of comma delaminated file in .TxT or .CSV work nicely.
Alternatively, they could make a mesh of their TIN and send it in .dwg format
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On 4/3/2024 at 7:02 AM, dutch Rene said:
can get the mixed hedge an object style so you can save them and reuse them
It's not a function of the tool now, but I imagine it will be added since everything else is becoming style based.
In the meantime, you create a file to hold your hedgerow library so you can copy and paste them into your project file. From there, you can use the Eyedropper tool to transfer properties from your desired hedgerow to others. Admittedly, it's not the best workflow, but it's useful if you intend on using hedgerows.
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It's hard to tell why this is happening from a screen shot and pdf. Maybe it is related to the classes and design layers used to make and place the dormers. Maybe a draw order issue. Post the file and perhaps a more definitive solution can be arrived at.
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You can drag and drop most .eps files into vectorworks and it will convert it to an image.
A better solution would be if you could directly import vector versions of .eps and .svg files and have their strokes and such preserved.
Currently, you can open a .svg or .eps in a graphics program like Affinity Designer, copy and paste the graphics you want into Vectorworks.
You then ungroup the resulting PDF import to access the vector portions of the design. It works fairly well, though strokes and fills are not preserved.
The only trick is you need to have another graphics program, which is the complaint of your thread. I highly recommend the Affinity suite as an affordable alternative to Adobe. It runs on your computer, runs on an iPad, and gives you incredible capabilities for cheap.
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The work around is to save your file before publishing and make sure you don't have anything else open.
Then you can just force quit the program to cancel the publish 😉
One would hope there could be a better way...
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On 4/4/2024 at 2:26 AM, Gal said:
Strange,
#IPZL# gives me no value. What is this function?
Insertion Pt Z layer elevation
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At some point, we all have to move to the latest version for a variety of reasons. I am still advising my clients to stick with 2023 until the bugs are mostly exterminated. The staying one release behind strategy is more important than ever this season.
I suggest people start exploring 2024 for small tasks such as drawing details or modeling small objects like entourage just to become familiar with the significantly changed interface…. Tools look different and the arrangement of the workspace will take some time for most to become comfortable with. This update costs companies significant time and money to transition to, I wouldn’t move my projects to it until the majority of your staff feels ready. Getting buy in from your group is the most important thing, not the opinions of strangers on the internet 🙂
The new AI rendering tool could become a big distraction in some offices. I would find a way to disable it until the legal questions get sorted out and the company developed its own policies on how these tools are used. It’s like when people first got the internet in their office, countless hours lost to slack’n and lots of lawsuits for using the tool inappropriately. Humans are going to human after all.
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Maybe there is a Spotlight workflow that would make this easy. Hopefully someone will respond with some ideas.
Road tool with complex gutter and sidewalk cross section profile
in Site Design
Posted
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.