Drawing 3D polygons in 3D view and extrude

[MGuilfoile]

One of the things I do all the time in FormZ is draw shapes--rectangles, circles, etc.-- on the X,Y plane while in a 3D view, then extruding them in the Z direction while in the same 3D view3. This is very handy in situations when you can only see what you are doing while in a 3D view. I can draw a 2D shape on any 2D plane and extrude in the third dimension. Is there a way to do this in Vectorworks 2024?

 

I have no problem drawing 3D rectangles, but I don't see a way to keep the angles at 90 degrees. It is out of character for a Vectorworks tool to be so free-form. It is also hard to type in the length of the sides that are not snapping to something. Lastly, once created, there is no way to extrude the 3D polygon you have created. The Extrude tool does not work (it should) and the Push-Pull tool only works sporadically (mostly not at all). To be honest, I don't see what the 3D polygon tool is for since "2D" polygons are already 3D.

 

In short, what I want is to be able to draw a 3D rectangle (aka, a polygon with four sides and four 90-degree angles) with one of the rectangle tools without having to snap to anything. I want to do this while in a 3D view isographic or perspective. I then want to extrude it in the dimension in which it was not created. I hope that makes sense. I'm showing two images from a FormZ file to help explain what I'd like to do in Vectorworks. Is it possible? I have not been able to find a tutorial on this.

 

Thanks

MH Brown

[Kevin Allen]

I do this al of the time. Typically from a right Isometric view. You're using the 2D Polygon tool?

[Pat Stanford]

You can't extrude a 3D Polygon. It is already a 3D object.

 

You can create a Working Plane (Working Plane tool in the 3D Pallette or the Autoworking Plane mode) draw your 2D polygon or rectangle there then extrude or use the Push/Pull tool to extrude it to the "height" you need.

[Jeff Prince]

14 minutes ago, MGuilfoile said:

I can draw a 2D shape on any 2D plane and extrude in the third dimension. Is there a way to do this in Vectorworks 2024?

Yes.  I don't know why you have such claimed difficulties, Vectorworks really improved the interactive 3D and automatic working planes some time ago.  It's really nice now.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin Allen]

You can push/pull a 3D Poly on creation.

[Pat Stanford]

Wow!  Thanks for the heads up Kevin.  I did not know that.

 

I love it when we can both be right. 😉😂

 

I am right that you can not extrude a 3D Polygon. You are right that you can use the Push/Pull on a 3D polygon, either the automatic push/pull at creation or by selecting the Push/Pull tool later.

 

 

[Kevin Allen]

26 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

Wow!  Thanks for the heads up Kevin.  I did not know that.

 

I had to try it!

 

It would make more sense if a 3D poly had an extrusion of zero that could be changed in the OIP

[MGuilfoile]

Thanks for the tip. No, I start with the 3D poly, but it seems like the 2D polys are actually 3D (when you fly around over them they are clearly 3D.) It seems intuitive that a 3D polygon would be the starting point when in a 3D view. When I try to draw a 2D rectangle from an isometric view, it does not draw on the X,Y plane. It draws it in a somewhat random tilt. If you look in plan view, they are crazy non-rectangular polygons. The shapes in the attached image should be aligned. If I extruded these there is no telling where they would go.

I think we may be talking about a different thing. By the way, I can't get a 3D polygon to "push-pull." I know how to do it. It just does not work on 3D polys...for me. I don't use it much because it turns it into a generic solid and is no longer editable as an extrude.

 

And, Jeff, I apologize if you think my difficulties are "claimed," implying they are not real. I don't know where you get off with such boorish comments, but I can assure you that I know what I'm doing when it comes to Vectorworks. Perhaps you are just smarter than me and I'm missing something obvious. Please point me to a tutorial where this is explained.

 

[MGuilfoile]

By the way, Auto Plane is greyed out in my workspace.

 

[Kevin Allen]

So, 2D polys are not 3D, but they exist in 3D space.

 

I don't tend to use the 3D Poly tool unless I am trying to create an object using/snapping to existing geometry or 3D Loci. In a right Iso view using either the 2D or 3D Ploy tools, I can draw a shape and then push pull to a desired extrusion. The Extrude command will work on the 2D. I have the push/pull mode and the push/pull combine modes activated.

 

 

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

14 minutes ago, MGuilfoile said:

And, Jeff, I apologize if you think my difficulties are "claimed," implying they are not real. I don't know where you get off with such boorish comments, but I can assure you that I know what I'm doing when it comes to Vectorworks. Perhaps you are just smarter than me and I'm missing something obvious. Please point me to a tutorial where this is explained.

 

Wow, you read a lot into a comment just trying to give you a hand.

Good luck buddy, I'm done dealing with triggered individuals.

 

14 minutes ago, MGuilfoile said:

By the way, Auto Plane is greyed out in my workspace.

Sounds like your Automatic working plane is broken.

[MGuilfoile]

To quote: "Yes.  I don't know why you have such claimed difficulties..."

If that is not boorish, I don't know what is. I'm leaving this forum and moving my questions to one on Facebook. Going forward, I'll just use this VW site for software information, etc.

Don't bother replying, Jeff, I won't see it.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

16 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

You can't extrude a 3D Polygon. It is already a 3D object.

Besides push/pull, you can shell a 3D polygon.  I use this method quite often for more than 3D polygons.

[Jesse Cogswell]

@MGuilfoile I think what's tripping you up is that you are trying to do this with only the 3D Polygon tool rather than the standard planar tools (Rectangle, Circle, etc).  You can absolutely use the Extrude command on a planar object drawn on a 3D face without leaving a 3D view, but you do have to set a proper Working Plane first.

 

Let me put together a quick example.  Let's say that you needed to draw a tetrahedron with a ringed inlay on one side.

 

First, I'm going to draw the bottom triangle in plan view using the Regular Polygon tool.

 

 

Next, I'm going to place a 3D Locus in the center of that triangle and set the Z height to the height of the peak.

 

 

From here, I'm going to switch to a 3D view, select the bottom triangle, and run the Modify - Convert - Convert to 3D Polys menu command to turn into a 3D Polygon (trust me, I'm going somewhere with this).

 

 

Without changing my view, I can use the 3D Polygon tool to draw the remaining three faces, snapping from the corners of the bottom 3D polygon to the 3D locus.

 

 

The reason I did this with 3D Polygons is that they behave as solids, I can select all of them and run the Model - Add Solids command to create a solid object.

 

 

Okay, now let's do the inlay.  Without changing view, I'm going to select the Circle tool.  You should see the option for Auto-Plane be selectable in the upper left of the mode bar.  You can also engage/disengage the Auto-Plane mode by pressing the backslash (\) key.  Note, this will be grayed out if you are not in a 3D view and do not have a planar tool selected.  Now when I hover the mouse over a face of the object, that face should automatically highlight.

 

 

I'm going to place a circle at the center of the face with a radius of 2.5".

 

 

Once complete, the circle will immediately be able to be pushed/pulled by clicking on it when the face is highlighted in red without needing to start the Push/Pull Faces tool.  Like you, I am not a fan of the Push/Pull tool and prefer to do extrusions the old-fashioned way.  But we're not quite done making the ring, so we're going to use everybody's favorite Offset tool and Modify - Clip Surface command to create a 1/4" ring.

 

 

With that ring selected, I can then extrude the ring -1/2" to form the inlay, and finish with a Model - Subtract Solids.  It looks like they made a change to VW2024 and the extrusion default is 1'0" instead of 0", so we get a fun preview.

 

 

After doing the subtraction, we now have our inlay, all modeled without changing our initial view.

 

 

If the Auto-Plane option isn't working for you, you can also manually specify a working plane by using the Set Working Plane tool in the 3D Modeling toolset, which will let you select a face as the working plane.  This is the option that I typically use, the default shortcut is Shift + 1, and I find it safer to always specify my working plane rather than relying on Auto-Plane.  To reset the working plane back to the layer plane, I usually just press the 0 on my numeric keypad to return to Top/Plan, then press the Previous View button if I need to return to the 3D view.