Phillip Tripp

Paul, we got hit with a ransomware attack over the holidays, so our in-office tutorial took a back seat for the moment. Lots of image restores and reinstalls later we are back up and running. Thank you for asking 🙂. We will hopefully get back on it soon. My mix of both comment was specific to site model tools. A combination of grade tool and open end site modifier lines (aka contours) assigned with a z-elevation. A grade tool could be used for longitudinal axis of swale and perhaps the shape of the bottom of the swale if that is a constant shape. If the side slopes vary to create more of a custom land form of berms sweeping through the site, then manually drawing those lines and converting to a site modifier open end line could be the best method. The site model will listen to all the site modifiers and interpret the contours based on the user's chosen types of site modifiers. Sometimes the model will interpret something unexpectedly and require a little trial and error. Did that help explain?

Grade tool works great for specific slopes between 2 points with even distribution of contours. So if your swale has specific constants that fit that narrative for longitudinal slope and side slopes, you can likely achieve your goal pretty quickly with the grade tool. But if you are hoping for beautiful serpentine contours with varying slopes from bottom to top of berm, manually laying them out will likely be less frustrating. You can have both methods in the same model.

Thanks for the quick follow up!

Paul, is there a method to split the nurbs surface into each drain area when the drain areas are not arranged in a grid, for conditions when use of a straight line split tool doesn't work? The workaround I used was rather than using the ridge lines as guides for the split tool, I used them as boundaries for the polygon fill tool, then used those fills with the extract surface method to get individual nurbs surfaces. This method works fine and is faster than the loft method. If I had to guess, the site model method would be fastest if geometry is clean to start with.

thanks BCD. if my memory is right, i did try the mesh from site model, but it was early test using poorly constructed lines from a consultant for the roof model, so it was a bad site model result on our end due to gaps between lines. when i get a free moment, i'll probably do a quick test of the options to see what's fastest, all starting from good line work. the good news is the quick model helped convey clash points and helped bump the urgency of team coordination. i appreciate the continued feedback!

Thank you both. We'll look into Paul's convert to mesh option. We initially tried the terrain model option which was quick like expected, but it was successful for a short time. The same file had a site model within inches vertically of the roof slab site model and several walking surface grade tool options which all competed for claiming a z elevation at coincident points in space which quickly led to issues even if we assigned only limited design layers to each site model. This is an older large project in VW2022. We cleaned the file up but wanted to keep the roof slab as separate 3D object rather than another site model given the issues we were seeing in the file.

I modeled it one drain at a time. To recap, was curious if there was a shortcut to do the entire roof top surface all at once.

Yes. All at once. The grid was only an example layout. If it was an actual grid, we'd copy and paste and be done. The real world example is made up of 100 unique shapes with a central low point in each shape. Outer shape is not always 4 sided or regular. The central low point is a 6 inch square and every low point will have the same elevation. The outer shapes will all have the same elevation, but higher. It is roof top slab drainage, but it is not our scope of work. We were looking for a fast way to 3D illustrate the intent for checking for conflicts with surface pavement above the roof, rather than wait for a consultant to deliver their model. I was hoping if we assigned z elevation to all the interior low points and assigned a z elevation to all the outer shape lines, there was a way to create a surface all at once for everything, rather than one shape at a time.

Objects on left in image below are all nurbs curves. Outer squares are higher elevation and smaller square is central drain at lower elevation. I know I can use the loft command to create a surface from the one large outer square to a small central square creating an upside down pyramid surface. Is there a command that would allow me to convert all the nurbs curves to a surface in one operation, rather than going through each 2 object area one at a time? The image on the right is the goal, a surface (shown in wireframe).

This may not be the case, but we have had occasional issues similar to that if we open multiple versions of Vectorworks, i.e. 2019, 2022, 2023 at the same time. Closing down and opening only one version resolved our issues.

I am reaching out for advice from 3D freeform modelers about preferred strategy/tools/methods for creating a custom shaped bench. Staff in our office are often familiar with Rhino from college classes, but not familiar with the processes in Vectorworks, even though both use solid modeling. I am sure there are different approaches to accomplishing the same result such as simple shapes directly to nurbs modeling or using extrude along path tools for each similar shape section of the bench, but we are eager to hear the preference or trade-offs between the different approaches or completely different approaches. The end goal is transitioning more staff from relying entirely on Rhino for 3D freeform modeling to using Vectorworks tools given a high volume of VW licenses in the office compared to Rhino, as well as a desire to keep design progress in one program. We are a landscape architecture office and I believe the full features of Rhino exceed the basic needs of custom shapes our office may dream up. Given the different methods available, we were hoping to choose a method based on responses from others. The images below illustrates progress for a bench modeled in rhino. Roughly 3 or 4 profiles extruded along a curving path with 2 moments of the bench including a portion where the seatback tapers from full seat back to flush at an exponential rate of rise. Another unique element of the bench is a varying fillet radius of the front seat edge along the length of the bench. Other features of the model would be the breaking of the bench into segments and skate deterrent void evenly distributed along the front seat edge. In the end, the model is both for visual renderings, but eventually becomes used for sharing directly to granite fabricators. We would provide enough dimensional info for key sections using the elevation tool and plan view for radii, etc. While these images show every segment pulled apart, we typically only dimension the unique pieces. Here a few of the most desired goals: Easy Future Editing: Prefer the tools that allow preservation of history for easy future edits over a process that requires complete restarts, although open to the idea of preserving the original starter objects if that is the alternative. Models are never done until the clock runs out, so ability to edit afterwards is essential. Dimensioning: Is there a way to associate the dimensions labeled in the section viewport annotation space that will auto update if the bench profile or path changes in the model? When I tested, the viewport updates correctly as expected for the revised model section, but the dimensions required adjusting to new snap points. Thank you in advance for any time and advice you are able to offer! Images Below: The bench is a continuous curving bench with varying seat back condition. The individual seats surrounding this are parts of the large bench and can be ignored.

Pat, just read your suggestion for the Objects Far Out Warning and one of the potential solutions including georeferencing the file. I wasn't aware georeferencing would help this situation. Is that a guaranteed solution or sometimes works solution? We usually delete all the nonsense stuff beyond the project site, but if georeferencing saves us a cleanup step every time we get junky files from others, that's a win.

Jeff, curious if the 3D Block definitions were related to architectural models or Civil 3D files. We primarily tested civil 3D files which routinely trigger audit errors within basic Autocad in our office. VW seemed to purge the same problematic audit errors fine. But to your point, when there are obvious fails within VW, we go back to Autocad to do the usual purge, audit, wblock, recover tricks. I've been running VW23 for a couple years direct importing DWG of survey/utility/3D architectural models and converting to VW files for referencing without VW crashing, but I know I could be a lucky one.

Sharing a tip about Autocad vs VW purging: We used to pre clean DWGs in autocad with purge, (-PU,all), & audit, but we stopped doing that step after running several comparative tests with VW's own purge feature within the advanced import settings. We found VW accomplished essentially the same level of cleaning which saved us the pre clean time and effort. The comparison looked at empty layer reduction and elimination of known audit errors that Autocad would catch with the files we tested. After VW import, then immediately export back out to DWG, autocad usually reports zero errors in audits nor finds additional items to purge, which gave us more confidence in VW's built in purge feature during import. One exception is files that seem to include mystery objects or layers that cannot be purged, try using Autocad's WBlock command to select the objects you only care about and Autocad will create a really clean new DWG file of just those objects. That's a tip straight from Autocad's tech support. Another exception for problem DWG files is Autocad's recover file feature that VW can't duplicate.

Thank you. I discovered what you meant between actual distance and the texture setting box to enter that amount. Worked like a charm after that.