Viewshed/ZVI analysis - can Vectorworks do this?

[Gilly]

Can Vectorworks be used to do viewshed/Zone of Visual Influence analysis(ZVI)analysis?

[monkey]

yes it can, i have used a DTM of the site i am working on, then took an average height for any woodland and built up areas around the site and modeled this on, using send to surface to get them onto the DTM.

you can then use the ZVI function in landmark to give you a theoretical ZVI, basically you put a light at the centre of your site or where you wish, and this then projects light out onto the model, everywhere which has shadows falls outside the ZVI. this works better if you have renderworks as the shadows look better, but it works anyway.

Remember that this is only theoretical, and is only as good as your modeling of the surrounding landscape.

I know that you can get 2 types of height data, i think one is called 'bald earth' which shows exactly that, just the contours of the land, and then i think you can get another type of height data which has the heights of trees and buildings on it, i havent experimented with the latter but might try it in the near future if a good project arises.

[lisagravy]

...

Edited November 24, 2016 by lisag
tried to delete duplicate post

[lisagravy]

On 20/06/2008 at 5:06 PM, monkey said:

...you can then use the ZVI function in landmark...

 

Does this exist? I've tried looking for (and indeed googling!) a ZVI function in Landmark but can't seem to locate it... (though appreciate this is an old post and functionality may have been removed?)

Edited November 24, 2016 by lisag

[DanT]

I'm looking to migrate towards Vectorworks and having this capability could be the deal maker. 

 

Can anyone share their experiences of using ZVI/ZTV Viewshed analysis within Vectorworks. What are the strengths/weaknesses etc.

 

I'm from the UK and I'm hoping I can use governement aerial LiDAR data which natively comes in a .asc format. Is vectorworks capable of reading this directly, or should I be looking to add a conversion step in there via QGIS or something?

 

Thanks,
D

[louisesamsin]

On 6/23/2017 at 12:21 PM, DanT said:

I'm looking to migrate towards Vectorworks and having this capability could be the deal maker. 

 

Can anyone share their experiences of using ZVI/ZTV Viewshed analysis within Vectorworks. What are the strengths/weaknesses etc.

 

I'm from the UK and I'm hoping I can use governement aerial LiDAR data which natively comes in a .asc format. Is vectorworks capable of reading this directly, or should I be looking to add a conversion step in there via QGIS or something?

 

Thanks,
D

I don't suppose you ever got a response to this?  I'm currently investigating same.

Thanks

[rDesign]

Vectorworks 2020 still cannot directly import point cloud files in the .ASC file format. You’ll have to use CloudCompare (or something similar) to convert the .ASC files to one of the accepted formats prior to importing them into Vw. 
 

As of Vw 2020, the Design Series products import registered point cloud data in the .laz, .las, .pts, .e57, .xyz, and .ply file formats.

 

See the following thread for additional info.

 

[DanT]

5 hours ago, louisesamsin said:

I don't suppose you ever got a response to this?  I'm currently investigating same.

Thanks

 

I think I ended up using QGIS for the issue. At the time the ZVI ability within VW was essentially a light cast over the adjacent terrain showing relief/shadows, with no real ability to quantify/scale the impact/visibility beyond 'intensity of light'. It looked pretty, but wasn't quite sufficient for the planning process in my estimation at the time.

 

It may have progressed some now though.

 

Dan

[louisesamsin]

@DanT thanks DanT. We have vectorworks 2020 landmark edition in the office.  I investigated it's SCI function yesterday and it looks like it hasn't progressed any since you looked at it. 

The SCI fun croon seems to be just a simple vectorscript which inserted a light source at a nominated height. For some reason, when I placed it on a test terrain, it also shone "through" the terrain to hit other facing terrain planes...!?!

This isn't something substantial enough to add to a report and be able to quantify effects in any meaningful way. 

 

I appreciate that you got back to me and wish you all the best.