Fence Tool Options

[Landartma]

I am working on a very simple project and need to simply place a typical white vinyl fence to match the existing one.  I am looking for the work flow to do that without "modeling" a fence.  I have had luck with some wood textures but vectorworks does not seem to have anything preset for a vinyl fence panel or gate.  Its all wood or metal.  I definitely do not want to have to invent something thats standard on so many homes.  I'd like a click and drop, get close enough and move on.  I messed with the attributes panel, messed with textures in the classes menu I created for the fence and for vinyl get a solid white board, I messed with styles.  The gates will not let me adjust the attributes at all.  The option is grayed out.  Looking through the resource manager there is nothing that matches either.  The last thing I want to do today is model a vinyl fence.  Any advice would be helpful.

[Tom W.]

What does a typical white vinyl fence look like?

[Landartma]

11 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

What does a typical white vinyl fence look like?

@Tom W. just take a drive through any neighborhood.  Vinyl board panel with a rail top and rail bottom and if its a fancy piece of plastic it might have a lattice on the top too.  I think they are about as plane vanilla and standard as they can be.  Almost like a slice of yellow/orange cheese food in a stack all individually wrapped in plastic...One might even say they look trashy.  You may be guessing my position on Vinyl fence.  I just want to drag drop and forget  about it without the Vectorworks nuance....simple, vanilla and boring just like the type of fence.  BTW there is a bit of venting in here...nothing personal @Tom W.  I find the fence tool to be useless unless you go through the exercise of creating your own resources or your willing to slap in what VW has for resources and explain away to your client the fence isn't even close because you aren't going to spend the time modeling an existing site feature that architecturally is already as aforementioned "trashy" looking.  Happy to go through the exercise if a client asks me to design a fence though.  I'm hoping someone can tell me different.

[Pat Stanford]

@Landartma  Tom is from the UK, so he really does not understand what a US white vinyl fence is. And it is a long way for him to "drive though any neighborhood".  😉

 

Post a picture of what you want and Tom is the one most likely to be able to tell you how to kick the Fence tool to make it.

[Landartma]

Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the fence I want.  But if you picture a 48" solid board on board fence with a top and bottom rail with a lattice top 24" with a 3"x3" frame around it is basically it.  The wise guy comments are not directed at anyone but to be honest every time I go to delve into a vectorworks tool its total frustration....This should be really simple.  I've watched the videos read about it but oddly nothing seems to work as advertized.  https://www.bestvinyl.com/blog/what-is-a-lattice-top-fence/  This is close.

[Scott Lebsack]

@Landartma I developed the defaults, though it's been a couple of years, so I'm rusty and relying on memory from almost three years ago. My best suggestion is to pick one of the existing styles ending with the word Panel. If I was developing it I would start with "Fence Stepped Wood Framed Wire Panel". When you bring this style into your file it will bring in several symbols. The "panel" portion of the fence style is a single symbol you can remodel the geometry as you need, replace textures and whatever else to get a plain white panel with the detail level you need, if it's existing you could just do a very simple extrude and call it a day. This style is "stepped" so it may not be awesome on steeply sloping sites, but hopefully it's good enought. There are some limitations to the tool, but in general, it should be able to handle the majority of situations you might need a fence, and for those beyond it's capability they can be modeled manually. Good Luck! let me know if you have questions once you dig in.

[Tom W.]

3 hours ago, Landartma said:

Looking through the resource manager there is nothing that matches either.  The last thing I want to do today is model a vinyl fence. 

1 hour ago, Landartma said:

I find the fence tool to be useless unless you go through the exercise of creating your own resources

 

Well how many resources do you use off the shelf rather than creating your own? I'd say that the Fence styles in the libraries are there primarily to provide examples of the different ways the tool can be used. It's up to us to build on those examples + create the precise resources we want. The main thing is that the tool is flexible + versatile enough to allow that to happen which I think it is. It is vastly better than the previous Railing/Fence Tool + I like it a lot.

 

3 hours ago, Landartma said:

The gates will not let me adjust the attributes at all.  The option is grayed out.

 

Gates are symbols so take their attributes from the symbol geometry. You need to edit the symbol.

 

[Landartma]

@Scott Lebsack & @Tom W. Ok I got some sort of a fence to work by trial and error.  I created a style (Style 4) but new fence sections do not pick up all the attributes automatically.  I see my class settings in the attributes are not set properly but are grayed out.  How do I edit those so I get a consistent infill and posts each time.  The issue I am having now is with the posts.  I want them about 2" above the top of my fence.  I'm getting the behavior you see in the screen shot.  The only thing I can think of is that I modified the stock post and took off the point with the split tool and it changed the object to solid section and thus changed its behavior in the tool.  Any input is helpful.

FlaherityConcept1noPTC.vwx

[Tom W.]

15 minutes ago, Landartma said:

I created a style (Style 4) but new fence sections do not pick up all the attributes automatically.  I see my class settings in the attributes are not set properly but are grayed out.  How do I edit those so I get a consistent infill and posts each time. 

 

Similar to what I said before about Gates, your fence panel is a 3D symbol so you need to edit the symbol geometry to change the attributes. If you put the geometry in a class + make sure it takes its attributes from that class this gives you a way to control the attributes from outside the symbol. Or just give the geometry the PVC Material if you know what you want + don't need to change it.

 

24 minutes ago, Landartma said:

The issue I am having now is with the posts.  I want them about 2" above the top of my fence.  I'm getting the behavior you see in the screen shot.  The only thing I can think of is that I modified the stock post and took off the point with the split tool and it changed the object to solid section and thus changed its behavior in the tool. 

 

These are your post settings:

 

You have a Fence style but all the settings are by instance so what you have set for the style is not what you're seeing in the instance. You need to edit the 'Fence Settings' rather than the 'Fence Style' the way you've set things up. Or make all the settings by style.

 

These are concepts/workflows that apply to all sorts of tools/objects in VW so not exclusively a Fence issue.

 

[Scott Lebsack]

@Landartma checking back in this morning to see if you more questions if you don't know how to change bystyle/by instance, it's the toggle to the right of the settings by instance is the stacked horizontal sliders, by style is the curved arrow - when I work I typically like everything by style, then create a new style if I need one. There may be times when editing a style, if you don't have the setting you are changing set to "by style" you won't see the changes.

 

For the post, based on your screen shot it is set by instance, setting by style may result in the changes you are expecting. It is also profile based. That means you've chosen the nominal 6x6 profile and the tool is creating the geometry, 3ft below grade and 5' above would mean a standard 8' post. The attributes for generated geometry are set in the attributes pane.

[Scott Lebsack]

@Landartma the profile for the post is also a symbol that can be customized to closer closer match a vinyl post - filleted corners, etc. Or the post can be a 3D symbol if you want the cap an everything - depending on the level of detail. Once you have your style precisely as you like, save it to a file in favorites, or in a workgroup folder if you have one setup and it will be drag and drop next time you need it.

[Tom W.]

These are the settings that @Landartma actually wanted to apply to the post:

 

As we've both said, switching these settings from by instance to by style will push them through to the Fences in the drawing.

[Landartma]

I think I have a few basics created that will work.  Thanks for the help.  I'm sure I'm still missing something....I'll be back...Again thanks for the help.