Question

[Minna]

I received a 3d file (dwg) of the streets in a residential area from a street designer.  It shows the structural layers of the streets, ditches, cuts etc. Is there any way to get from it a site modifier for my landscape plan.   I can get the file imported into my own plan, but as it is not a site modifier it does not show up correctly in the image.  The file size is quite huge... 
I am quite new to Vectorworks and just learning 3d drawing.  I am using VW2023.Road plan.dwg

[Kevin K]

Minna

A few questions...

1) Are you working in meters?  I assume you probably are,  based upon your location.

2) What exactly is your goal in the big picture using data from the dwg file?

3) When you said 'site modifier' did you mean 'site model'??

4) Do you know what the scale of the dwg file should be?

5) Will you be using just a portion of the roads shown?

 

All your classes are noted in your native language so I don't really know what they mean 😞

 

[zoomer]

I also opened the DWG in Bricscad.

It contains mainly the Components Streets.

Corpus or Foundations, wear Coverings and such things.

 

I can sort them in my Structural Browser by Layers, Geometry Types, ...

 

These are somehow 3D Volumes, or could at least get some by

stitching these "polyline" meshes.

But I did not really get how the faces are meant or if there are any

redundant parts that could cause stitch problems.

 

And there are some Faces at the borders that represent cut faces

of the terrain where he created banks/slopes.

 

Also there are a lot of Polylines.

Looks like for each edge, of each Component, along street direction.

(Maybe useful asa prototype for creating Site Modifiers from it)

But there are many so hard to find the needed ones.

 

 

Not sure how much of the geometry you need to extract for your purpose.

But I think the key is to sort and separate the content and hide/delete

everything you do not need.

 

Theoretically, if getting proper Solids is possible, you could lay them

over your DTM.

I am not very experienced with the Landscape Tools.

Not sure if you can just lay Solids on your terrain and make them work

as Site Modifiers or if it would be better to extract the bottom faces

and replace Street Volumes with your own multi ply Hardscape Modifiers

instead.

 

I am pretty sure you could create site modifiers from the bottom faces.

Or from the Polylines.

 

[Minna]

5 hours ago, Kevin K said:

Minna

A few questions...

1) Are you working in meters?  I assume you probably are,  based upon your location.

2) What exactly is your goal in the big picture using data from the dwg file?

3) When you said 'site modifier' did you mean 'site model'??

4) Do you know what the scale of the dwg file should be?

5)

 

 

All your classes are noted in your native language so I don't really know what they mean 😞

 

1) yes

2) I hoped that i could use that material in some way as side modifier.

3) no.  I have my  DTM.  And this is how the roads are looking right now

4) yes.  I have already imported that.

5) no - I need all of them.

 

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

11 hours ago, Minna said:

I received a 3d file (dwg) of the streets in a residential area from a street designer.  It shows the structural layers of the streets, ditches, cuts etc. Is there any way to get from it a site modifier for my landscape plan.   I can get the file imported into my own plan, but as it is not a site modifier it does not show up correctly in the image.  The file size is quite huge... 
I am quite new to Vectorworks and just learning 3d drawing.  I am using VW2023.Road plan.dwg

 

How you approach this depends on the desired end result.

 

It's difficult to provide helpful guidance without knowing where your site is within this roadway context and what data you have to represent that surface.

 

Based on your most recent post, it looks like you just want to add the roads for visual rendering purposes, not for construction documentation.  Is that correct?

 

When you look really close at this roadway data, there is a lot of conflicting geometry.  The swales next the road for instance, their geometry is not valid where two roads intersect.  Then there are problems with the road surfaces where they intersect, sometimes meeting at unequal camber.  I would ask the roadway person for a point file representing the topmost surface of the areas of interest and then just map 2D graphics to the site model to texture the roads and related structures, assuming it's not that important.

Edited July 29, 2023 by jeff prince

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, jeff prince said:

How you approach this depends on the desired end result.

 

It's difficult to provide helpful guidance without knowing where your site is within this roadway context and what data you have to represent that surface.

 

Based on your most recent post, it looks like you just want to add the roads for visual rendering purposes, not for construction documentation.  Is that correct?

 

 

If the purpose is decided,

I am sure we can help further ....

 

(E.g. the DWG could be cleaned up or Solids created/simplified and such)

 

But I think we still need @jeff prince landscape experience on what of the available

DWG objects could be useful to create any DTM Modifiers or whatever you need.

[Kevin K]

Minna

Without getting too complicated, there are several ways to create a site model in VW.

 

Usually, if you receive a dwg file from a 'surveyor' (that is what we call them in the US) the file will include 3d polygons (hopefully continuous) that you can quickly use to create your site model.

In your file there were tons of 3d polygons, but instead of having each vertex of the 3d poly have the same 'z' height, yours were sort of all over the place, and they were also crossing over each other like crazy. VW doesn't like that 🙂

 

The file that person sent you ws pretty much a 'hot mess' regarding trying to create a site model. the file had many many meshes, which can be ok, but they will not produce a nice clean site model.

I attached a VW 2022 file that just shows a site model, created from 3d polygons, each having their own z height.

If you open the file, double click on the site model, and choose the option noted in the screen shot, you will see all the 3d polys that created the site model....very clean....no overlaps, etc. You can rotate them around if you wish to see how they all interact with each other.

 

I am just doing this as a simple example to perhaps let you better understand some aspects of creating site models. They can be tricky 🙂

Also, that road you see on the site model was simply created as a 'texture bed'.  The reason that option works well is because the road lays perfectly on the site model, and you can apply a texture to it....asphalt in this example.

Anyway ....perhaps this will make some sense to you.

 

 

Example for Minna.vwx

 

[Jeff Prince]

You can likely create a passable site model just using the data on following classes:

Kaikki objektit

StakeOutStringStructure_

StakeOutStringTopLevel_

 

This will get you pretty close to a good solution without any editing.  Then you can can go in and delete the messes around the intersections and such, if required

Adding the site data, which you have not provided, will fill in the areas between roads, presumably.

 

Then, you can graphically depict the roads by convert the meshes representing the topmost surface to 2D polys.  Once you have added those together, you could convert it to texture beds for mapping to the site model surface... depending on your desired workflow and outcome.

 

Just the layers mentioned will produce something like this:

 

Without editing, you get errors at the intersections, though it did a nice job with the swales along the roads and cuts into the presumed hillsides adjacent to the road.

 

 

 

Converting the road meshes to polys and then to texture bed site modifiers will give the a semblance of a road pretty quickly.

The same strategy could be used for the texture of the roadway cut slopes and swales to depict vegetation, cut stone, etc.