HP Sauce Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 After searching through previous posts it appears creating roads in VW isn't quite as productive as the rest of the software... How would one go about modelling the attached site's roads in 3D - most notably where curves intersect? Preferably without creating overly-complicated meshes, extrude-along-path objects, or the use of additional software. Cheers Quote Link to comment
Bob Holtzmann Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 The straight and single curves could be done by the Roadway Tools. Beyond that, you could make 2D polygons of the curved shapes, and make floor objects from them. Everything would be segmented though. Or you could make all of the paving a single 2D polygon, and make a floor of that. Using a floor on a site model requires some Site Modifiers to do the grading. I don't see any contours on the site - does it require some grading? Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 VW2009 has a new polyline mode of tangent arcs that would would very well for laying out roads. Quote Link to comment
HP Sauce Posted September 18, 2008 Author Share Posted September 18, 2008 Manually creating the roads as you suggest was indeed my backup plan, similar to what you suggest but using extrude-along-path to get the curb profile right. I realise it'll take forever to render but it'll look lovely. There will be some grading but this is just a proof of concept rendering for the time being, so we're not too bothered about that. VW09 is in the post - hopefully arriving in time for us to try that magic new command before the deadline, Pat. Quote Link to comment
HP Sauce Posted September 18, 2008 Author Share Posted September 18, 2008 Pat: VW09 has just arrived. How on earth does the tool you mention work? Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 It is a new mode in the polyline tool. Set the 4th mode in the mode bar and every arc you draw will be tangent to the previous one. The icon looks a little like a reverse greek character Mu (lowercase). Quote Link to comment
Bob Holtzmann Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 That's the problem with the VW2008 Road Tool - there is no way of shaping the edge of the road with the cursor for the wider, curved paving shapes. So that leaves us with floors or roof surfaces, which do not have the site modifier function. And then there is the problem of making parking strips alongside a driveway. I would be interested to see if Vw2009 can handle this better. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Robert Anderson Posted September 19, 2008 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted September 19, 2008 highpass, it depends on what you are wanting from your roads. If you just want "graphics" on the site, I'd do the roads as texture beds. If you want "contouring", I'd do them as pads. Quote Link to comment
HP Sauce Posted September 19, 2008 Author Share Posted September 19, 2008 Mr Anderson, I was hoping that the road tool would be good enough that our bosses could see themselves using it. It's very rare for our sites not to contain Y-shaped roads, and to model these manually every time is too much hassle in the eyes of our elders. (I was expecting to be able to select two roads and CTRL/Apple+J them... ha). For this particular project it's simply a graphical matter, although must still look realistic when rendered. I've manually modelled the Y intersections and they look great, just take far too long. Quote Link to comment
brudgers Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 I've looked at this product: http://scs-inc.us/default.php?page=products&subPage=Products/Land%20Planning/Default It's the sort of functionality I expected from the marketing literature. Quote Link to comment
Bob Holtzmann Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 It might be the way I do it, but whenever I put a pad next to a road or another pad..... weird things happen to the site model. Usually they are sharp, vertically edged ravines at the corners. I usually resolved such grading problems by replacing the pads with non-intrusive objects, like floors or roof surfaces, and site modifier graders underneath. And if it's still not right, I resort to 2D polygons to mask the problem spots. Quote Link to comment
jbrhwy Posted September 20, 2008 Share Posted September 20, 2008 Does the new arc tangent mode solve the long standing problem with Vectorworks ie "For 15 years I have been requesting an additional vertex method that would insert a symmetrical curve between two intersecting lines that is not constrained by an artificial mid-point. The current problem is if the tangent distance of 1 curve is greater than 1/2 the distance between the intersection points , VW moves that vertex (disaster)!" Quote Link to comment
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