Jeff Prince

@MariannaCarr I’m curious why you need to do this. What is the intended purpose of the symbol? Does the existing tree tool fail to achieve what you want?

Bumped because someone mentioned this thread when creating the same wish.

The easy thing to do…. place their models into individual vectorworks files in their native position and orientations. “Design layer viewport Reference” those new vectorworks files into yours. You can then rotate and position their work to suit yours.

Easy way…. Use multiple heliodons place them on different design layers turn off design layers in Viewports as appropriate to create desired result.

Save a copy of the fence object on a separate design layer and ungroup the one in your active design layer. This will give you control over the pieces and the ability to go back and redesign later if needed. Yes, it is a poor work-around, but that's Vectorworks sometimes...

I generally avoid using contours and add points for my site models. I'm pretty sure all Vectorworks does with a contour is look at the vertices and use those points to create triangular faces like any other TIN modeler. Smoothing makes it look prettier in 3D, smoothed contours makes the 2D contours look prettier... but the data (points or vertices) is what ultimately counts.

That was humorous. I’m guessing you haven’t used such services.

It is interesting to hear people advocating for cloud or web based vectorworks and the continuous updating of software. That may be nice for urbanites working in the western world, but…. Much of the world where interesting mega projects are happening does not have reliable enough internet or power to facilitate designing in the cloud. On the other end of the spectrum, a portion of vectorworks users focus on residential architecture and landscapes where designing and presenting in the field or on the road is typical. This past July I have had 6 days of interrupted power or internet due to storms or high temperatures… in urban Phoenix, AZ. Imagine how things are in less developed areas of the world, like a temporary construction office made out of portables sitting in a middle eastern desert. Cloud reliant processes will kill some people’s ability to use the software, how many? Who knows. …and then there is the less than stellar Vectorworks technical support on seemingly simple topics… what happens if the whole operation is ‘in da cloud mahn”? You gotta be smoke’n something if you think that is a recipe for success 😉

Given how long the issues in my signature line have been left unresolved, it’s hard to believe there is much capacity to focus on quality. Juan got a tech support person to contact me and then silence…

Nope, but they do offer some very favorable legacy licensing to subscription pricing even today (until they don't). But if I am being forced into a subscription model and must maintain some level of BIM compliance on certain projects, I believe it's a better small business decision to opt for a software where there is a huge labor pool of prospective employees, subcontractors, or production outsourcing. It's hard to find qualified Vectorworks people and takes significant resources developing them. Having control over software investment at least makes those development costs more palatable, though software cost is minor in comparison. If that option is removed, I guess we shall see what the larger effects on Vectorworks is. On a side note, I do not see subscription models leading to better software features, just better cash flow for the developers. The notion of continuous release of features might be nice for some, typically the elite technicians and developers keen on keeping you tied to current versioning (ex. Revit), but keeping a staff abreast of the changes and implementing new workflows has significant cost to organizations large and small. Feature roll out within Vectorworks has already proven challenging enough with changes to materials, data tags, title blocks, plant object, slab/hardscape/landscape area workflows, etc. Fortunately, sketching and illustrating does not have these costs and a competitive CAD/BIM outsourcing marketplace can provide the technical documentation at a reasonable price.

Terrible news. I left Adobe for Affinity due to corporate decisions like this. It was also a factor in leaving Autodesk when my decades old license was forced to subscription. Neither of those companies’ products substantially improved due the switch, but their revenue and share holder enthusiasm sure did. If this is true for the US, which I suspect it is after being told “big news” in August by my account rep, I’m gone. I will stay on the last intel iMac and 2021 until they don’t work anymore. Then, it will be time to migrate back to the Autodesk offerings or just hire out CAD/BIM and go back to hand illustration. Maybe I should thank VWX, I rather enjoy drawing by hand.

I’ve started using 2022 on a new project just to see how it behaves, which I really wish I hadn’t. Anyhow, I have had VWX crash without warning when switching between 8 different graphically intense sheets quickly to update some sheet notes. Turning “save viewport cache” and “save VGM graphics cache” seems to cure the problem, but I do not know why. Running on Windows 10 Pro to increase the suffering.

@blanger I get what you are saying overall, and consistency between the viewport controls within VWX is certainly a desirable characteristic from a user interface point of view. However, I wonder how many of these scale issues are related to digital drafting practices without regard to classic manual drafting conventions. This is one area where Vectorworks seems to have done a good job... page scale hatches. Have you considered drawing your objects 'by class' and using class overrides to address different depiction needs? This gives me the flexibility to achieve what I need to do. Having a default hatch set when one is not specified would be a good catchall.

seems you have identified the source of the problem 😉

When you ungroup the site model, it provides meshes rather than solids IIRC. Keeping a copy of you site model can provide you with the data to a certain extent, or you can convert the meshes to solids I suppose. I would suggest not getting to hung up on the BIM of mounds, there is a diminishing return here.

Yes, vectorworks can import dxf, dwg, ifc, and such to get your geometry into Vectorworks. Within the program, it is easy to add dimensions and other annotations. You should check out Vectorworks University and take the Architectural Learning track. The first lessons get you familiar with the interface and methods of operations. This is pretty critical to getting started on the right foot. From there, you will want to learn about Design Layer vs Sheet Layer vs Annotation Space (in a sheet layer viewport). Placing design geometry in a design layer and then presenting it in a sheet layer using annotation space of a viewport is my preferred method. I feel it is best method when working in 3D. There are other ways to do it too, but I'll leave that to others to describe since I'm not a fan of those 🙂 I believe if you watch the first few lessons, you will get up to speed quickly. Vectorworks is great for this kind of stuff, but there is a bit of a learning curve when you are used to doing things in other software. It gets easier with training and experience.

Welcome to the forum. I'm not familiar with your software, but it sounds like it is exporting in 2D. Vectorworks just reads what you give it. You should investigate what your software actually exports to see if you can get your desired result. Perhaps try .ifc if there is an option to do so.

Nothing significant has improved since the overhaul of the VGM some time ago IMHO. That was when things suddenly sped up and became more usable for 3D. Everything else has been shiny objects and in some cases, broken workflows. I predict 2023 will be more of a service pack to 2022 rather than something feature rich for landscape. Hopefully I am wrong. It would be nice if they made site model creation and adjustments multithreaded to take advantage of our fancy computers. It sucks waiting 5 minutes for a site model update while your computer is sitting a 5% utilization.

I've never had a problem with Zoom and Vectorworks on a variety of Macs. I've tutored people in Vectorworks for hours at a time on that platform. I've done 3D walkthroughs with it as well, though that can get a little dicey... best to use saved views to navigate around rather than the walk around tools. The few times I have used Zoom on a PC with any 3D application, nothing but problem. I do not know why this is the case on either platform.

Generally speaking, GIS data is not considered acceptably accurate for AEC work. Useful for general contextual information? Yes. Something you would rely on for developing working drawings? Highly unlikely.

I hadn’t tried anything like @Jack2022’s request until this morning. Got it first shot, so it seems to be easy and work well.

Yes, having the components in advance is handy for such hacks.

You can not cut a tunnel thru a site model and preserve it as a site model. However, you can make a copy of your site model, ungroup it, and then subtract a tunnel from the resulting mesh components. Prior to doing this, you will want to use the edge of your hardscape as the clip boundary for the site model to get nice clean edges. Keeping a copy of your site model intact, perhaps on a separate design layer, will allow you to modify the design of the mound and repeat the tunnel digging exercise 🙂 Also, see my post on your other thread about locating your geometry near the internal origin. Hope it helps... Tunneling a site model 🙂

You have created a model really far away from the internal origin, that is likely the culprit. If you need to set it up for georeferencing, there is a good tutorial on how to do this properly on Vectorworks University. Essentially, your geometry should be close to the internal origin and the user origin is adjusted during georeferencing so as to preserve the coordinates and make Vectorworks happy. The problem you observed is not limited to hardscapes when placing things far from the internal origin.

I'm not really into dual monitors, I was thinking more of dual workstations 🙂 VWX 2021 has really been a grind on big site models and consuming tons of RAM, so I thought I might setup my MBP as a second workstation for Affinity Photo and other tasks. I guess I should stop clogging up this thread with my unrelated questions now. Thanks for the thoughts.