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Drawing Decking Surface


mpkeane

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What is the best tool to use to draw a triangular deck surface (i.e., the rows of decking boards themselves). The triangle is an equilateral triangle, so each board will meet one side at 90 degrees but the other sides at 60 degrees. Is there a way to automatically fill in the triangle with a stipulated pattern of boards? If the boards are drawn one by one, how can I make one end of the board 90 degress and the other 60 degress?

Using VW Designer 12.5.0, mac OS 10.3.9

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If you're talking 2d: use a HATCH. Create a hatch with a solid line/6" repeat (or whatever). Duplicate the hatch and rotate the duplcate(s) for the various different angles req'd.

If you're talking 3d: use a TEXTURE (there are 3+ decking textures included in RW's. Look for them at the bottom of the Exterior Surfaces resource folder). The (angular) orientation of textures can be set on a per-object basis. Thus you can apply the texture to a 3d object (a floor or extrude) then rotate the texture as req'd.

HTH's

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

If the deck is an equilateral triangle, I'm not sure I understand the 90 and 60 degree spec. Wouldn't they both be 60 degrees? In any case, if you're drawing a plan view, you can draw a single equilateral triangle (use the regular polygon tool set to 3 vertices) and then use the offset tool to do the other joints.

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I needed to show the plank width and gap between planks, etc. More detail than pre-set Hatching allows for.

Well no actually. That is simply a 2 line hatch with the appropriate ofsetts and would be far simpler than what you're doing.

Make the hatch and use it with Modify>Hatch.

You can then apply it to any surface and rotate it within the object to whatever angle. It will give you a group of lines nicely trimmed to the margins of your surface which can then be edited.

Very ggod for decking!

cheers

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mpkeane,

You were kind of going down the right direction in the beginning if you intend to model your project. Hatch is great for documentation but if you have to build model why not just do it in 3D and use the real power of VW....which will doc out just as good as hatch for drawing. I don't wast much time with trying to get my plans to look and feel like ACAD...I have learned that spending time learning how to model will save tons of time and produce much more detailed results on the finish end.

See file below....took 5 mins. to make simple deck.

DeckRender.jpg

This will show up on plan perfectly for my CD's

Pete A.

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The entire deck is created from simple solids and assigned a texture through the Object Info Palette.

1.) created the basic deck board shape with lines and arcs.

2.) Filled the line/arc area with polygon from inner boundry mode.

3.) Got rid of the lines and arcs used to create the shape.

4.) Offset the area with two times to define the rim joist

5.) Extruded the deck surface 1.5" and raised the "Z" to 9.25"

6.) Created a double-line polygon(the width of the space between boards) on a 45deg and duplicated along path to cover the entire deck extrusion(plus a few more to make sure that I got it covered)

7.) Extruded the gap polys' 1.5" and raised the "Z" to 9.25"

8.) Selected the deck board extrusion and the gap extrusions and performed a subtract solids(from the deck board surface)

Deck boards complete

9.) Clipped the remaining two polygons and deleted the center poly left from the clip and got the 1.5" rim board width.

10.) Extruded the clipped rim board poly to 9.25"

11.) Assigned the render texture.

That was it... took about 5-10 min.

I do this with all of my deck, floors & ceilings were I need detail shown on my section viewports. Takes all the guesswork out generating sections. Plus I have a really cool model to display infront of the client.

Pete A.

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DAFlannery,

Here are my set-ups for a quick railing. Hope this will help you. These particular settings represent a wrought iron rail and picket but with larger sizes could look more like wood spindle and rail. I am currently kicking around with making a couple of 3D spindles that I can dup along path and also some rail profiles to extrude along path. Only need some time.

ForsythiaRail.jpg

I left the image large so you can read the settings.

Pete A

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