Phillip Tripp

Thank you for the effort in follow ups. I was able to visually demonstrate the change in behavior with VW staff this morning between 2022 and 2023. I used the exact same new contour lines in 2022 and 2023 (contours vs open edge lines), all based on the same existing contours, using a simple 100x100 feet model with simple shaped contour lines in an attempt to eliminate any odd unique conditions that might impact results. VW 2022 works great and as expected (model exactly matches desired contours) and VW 2023 mishandles the last contour in a series of contours or mishandles a single isolated contour. The reason I use the word "mishandles" is the model re-interprets the contour line we must exactly match because the contour line is coming from another consultant of the client. In a collaborative, multi-year project where we are receiving files from other consultants with changes every two weeks, with revised contours covering multiple acres, we cannot spend time adjusting contours afterwards because VW site model wants to reinterpret contour data received from others. To be clear, I am referring to straight line contours (open edge line) being ignored, not complex multi vertices lines where simplification has an impact. We have our own scope of work to focus on and cannot spend time re-drawing the work of others to maintain consistency of contractual drawings which is why it has a real impact on our office. I have passed along the example files to VW for further review. Thanks again for feedback.

Amending my concern, the issue appears to be related to the first or last desired contour in a series of proposed contour lines or the one contour in cases of a singular desired new contour. In these instances, the Open Edge Line modifier resorts to interpreting rather than implementing a contour at that designated location. We happened to be dealing with a vary flat area where singular contour edits were desired in several locations that triggered this feature quirk discussion.

That seems to not work the same as VW 2022 Contour Site Modifier. In VW 2022, Contour Site Modifier usually forced the site model to draw the contour where the contour site modifier was drawn. In VW 2023, the model interprets and we get mixed results (see Katarina's response below). We cannot have mixed results when we want to tell the site model to draw a contour in a specific location per a specific line. And we certainly can't explain to another professional office that we can't produce a model with contours matching their contours because VW dropped a feature. When I refer to contour, I mean a line with a whole number elevation assigned to it that should appear exactly in the spot designated, because the model illustrates whole number contours. Stating that to avoid any misunderstanding with Katarina's comment about site model settings determine what intervals contours appear at. Katarina Ollikainen, VW employee, shared the following on the forums: “If you have precise contours you want to have in the site model, then by all means, use the open edge modifier, but remember that the site model settings will determine at what intervals you will see contours. If there are some contours you want to adjust at the end, then go into the 'Edit proposed Contours', but this is not an efficient workflow to start with.”

In VW 2022, we used (Create Objects from Shapes - Site Modifier - Contour) feature when we wanted to force a specific line to be a proposed contour in a site model. This was a helpful feature when working collaboratively with a civil engineer who might be responsible for stormwater management device new contours and our landscape architecture office would be responsible for new contours in other areas of the site. When we received the new contours from the civil, we would use this command to make their contours (contour site modifiers) and the model would update with contours almost exactly matching those contour lines in 99% of the cases. The effort involved was limited to assigning the correct elevation to the lines, but otherwise the process was straight forward. Also having their contours treated as site modifiers allowed us to continue using other site modifiers and not override their contours because their contours were also site modifiers. In VW 2023, "Contour" is no longer an option in the (Create Objects from Shapes - Site Modifier) drop-down menu. How do we add new contour data from other consultants to our proposed site model and have our proposed site model illustrate their new contours exactly? Ideally with as little effort as was required in VW 2022.

Can anyone share how to re-enable the login prompt screen when starting Vectorworks, after someone has clicked the button to "don't show at startup"? thanks in advance! disregard - solved it - vectorworks preferences session tab "login settings".

Jeff, have you noticed with 2023 created hardscapes set to drape cut site model, the surface renders black when using the twinmotion visual effects clay render? Literally everything is white except pure black hardscapes. Change hardscapes to texture bed and hardscape material renders white in clay render mode. I am leaning towards new drape feature maybe doesn't play nice with all of twinmotion features or it is a VW setting on the material or hardscape that needs an adjustment and we haven't figured it out.

I was curious if there is a preferred method by all for illustrating vehicular/pedestrian curbs in 3D that is user friendly? Currently our office uses grade tools to custom grade everything, pretty much replacing hand/calculator grading with grade tools and then drape (2023) hardscape which works great. We could manually use grade tools to define top and bottom of curb and the surface would slope steeply within the profile of the curb, but I was curious if others are using a method that simplifies this effort. Obviously curbs vary in style on a project from raised 6 inches, transition to flush, rolled curbs, chamfered curbs, etc. We are not a parking lot focused office, so we haven't dived into parking or road tools yet, but the more 3D visuals include a portion of curb lines into the imagery, the more we need to figure this out.

I too have avoided the built in contour edit methods. I use the grade tool, pads, grade limits because you visually see a direct relationship between the objects representing your intentions and the results in the site model updates. If a civil engineer shares contour lines from their scope of work, we will add those to our file and convert to contours to assign a z elevation which also works fine. The trick to any of these is adding a grade limits line so the grading instructions are not carried out across the entire model in a strange way. Using these ways also lets you have multiple versions of grading concepts on different design layers in the same model and then you can pick can and choose which design layers the site model listens to.

I noticed that as well and have experienced that going back to 2019. Although, we've had other priorities and haven't pursued the GIS features heavily, so I don't know if it's an always present issue or just random files in our office.

😣 it's been too long since I've made that mistake. Thank you for pointing it out so quickly!!

I'm suspecting their might be a bad contour overlap and I just need to go over the contours closely looking for problems.

Are you able to switch to the typical 3D mesh colored elevation view option without the aerial? That's when I get the wireframe like appearance.

Does anyone know why the site model colored elevation mesh is rendering like this? The origin is georeferenced near the middle of the site. The aerial texture works fine in the site model settings, so it is geolocated correctly. File is attached. We are testing out VW 2023 and GIS tools. 583834646_GeoreferencedSiteModelMeshColoredElevation.vwx

And if you make friends with the BIM manager sending the revit DWGs, they should be able to save custom settings for future exports specific to your needs. For instance, if they have tagged all exterior walls, windows, and doors, they can have a custom export showing a really nice footprint only with no additional edits needed on the receiving end.

Our landscape architecture office typically converts DWG consultant files into VWX files and then references the converted VWX files into our Working File using the Layer Import method of referencing. This works well for most projects, but can become difficult to maintain in a timely manner on large complex projects with numerous consultants and frequent file exchanges. We recently started testing directly linking DWG files into our Working File using the Design Layer Viewport method of referencing and found it seems to work fine for our needs and has the potential to simplify our consultant file update process. Some projects have 8 architectural backgrounds or 20+ civil background files that update weekly, so setting up the ability to swap out DWG links without taking the time to convert them to VWX files would be beneficial. We'll still do color and lineweight overrides via the viewport properties of the reference which tends to be greying lines. We understand that the viewport visibility settings would be forced to be consistent across all sheet viewports, but that is what we typically do for all reference files except survey linework. We also noticed that if the original DWG author does not assign their objects to be color controlled by autocad layer, that Vectorworks cannot apply the color override which may be the one downside. The exception in our office to potentially using the Design Layer Viewport method of referencing, would be a survey reference file that we manually edit to move some existing linework onto demolition classes. Given a survey does not frequently update and we have to actually edit the file, unlike an architectural reference file, we will continue to convert a survey DWG into a VWX file. Our question is how to reference consultant DWG files that will remain as DWG files and also reference a survey VWX file into the same Working File. When we attempt to reference another VWX file into a VWX Working File using the Design Layer Viewport method of referencing, no objects from the VWX survey file are visible in the working file and no design layer viewport is created. It also appears we cannot have both a methods of file referencing in the same document, so we must choose one or the other. In the interest of reducing reference update processing time of consultant files, it seems we would choose the Design Layer Viewport method and then we would have to add the VWX survey linework directly to our Working File without referencing the survey, which is also fine; but we would like to hear from others if the Vectorworks referencing behavior described above is normal. We'd also be interested in hearing if others have encountered workflow issues using the Design Layer Viewport method of referencing for consultant DWG files. Thank you for taking time to read.