Hatch patern applied to walls...where is it!

[Patrick Fritsch]

Ok, i'm looking at creating a simple Board & Batten hatch patern on my walls for elevation purposes. Now though the only solution that has been posted was to add a surface poly, trace out the openings (not posible when window trim is complex (ie: cheesy victorian) and then apply a associative hatch. Ok now, i've been using Autocad since DOS, and I might as well draw my elevation in 2D since it would be less painfull (select a bounded region and remove island...voila it's done in ACad).

Someone tell me there is a better way or will there at least eventually be, if not I will buy Archicad Start edition I guess. Argh! just started on my own and trying to figure out what software to migrate towards.

Thanks for any insight

[Jonathan Pickup]

if you have created viewport elevations, edit the annotations on the viewport and user the 2D Polygon tool to add the polygon to the elevation, then hatch that.

have a look at this youtube movie, it might help

[Ozzie]

But just a silly little solution really

To quote from another thread from an unrelated topic

That is a really 80's type solution and not what you expect to see in a program in the second decade of the 21st century

[Patrick Fritsch]

Thanks Archoncad, so I now hatched my elevations but when I use the same method on my pretty perspective views of my model It does not give an acceptable result (ie: hatch is not rendered/tapered to follow perspective)

Side note; have you seen Archicad how you can apply a hatch with a color hue or even a wood pattern behind it right in the walls creation dialog box? That's what i'd like to do with Vectorworks.

Are you aware if Vectorworks will add this maybe in a future version? It's kind of important to be able to freely design and create new innovative bldg cladding...like some blue'ish Zinc fish scales as an example.

[Robert Anderson]

Fritsch, do you have Renderworks? What you seem to ba asking for is textures, which are a part of Renderworks.

[Patrick Fritsch]

Hi Robert, I have renderworks but the only adjustable parameters for walls are image maps that I can adjust hue, reflection, refraction, transparency etc (basically Photoshop stuff). Besides, there isn't a Board & Batten siding texture pattern available with the program, and if there was I'd probably want to modify the vertical line spacing because I usually design Board & Batten with an alternating space pattern to make things more interesting.(ex:6" board then 8" then a 4")

I don't like chasing bitmaps or jpeg's of what I'm trying to create as a bldg cladding pattern, it's much more convenient to simply be able to draw it...but not one line at a time. In addition, when I do construction plans they are black and white line drawings for the workers on site (imagine the cost of printing colored images).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that most architects will want to create custom surfaces using a combination of a customizable vectorial hatch in conjunction with a texture. Check out this video to see what I mean

It's just meat and potatoes for creating the construction sets at the same time as a pretty rendering.

(don't get me wrong I love the modeling capabilities in Vectorworks, but I have to also get the info to site easily).

What's in the works for Vectorworks! Please advise as you may gain a fan club.

[CipesDesign]

Fritsch, I think if you do a search of this forum you will find a lot of info and debate on this exact topic. Some of it gets rather heated. Start with this which will hopefully give you an idea as to how you can get a very similar result to what you're after. Perhaps not perfect, but hopefully acceptable... FWIW, this elevation was created from a 3d model, and in perspective views shows full color which is part of the siding and roofing textures. I got the Elevation to show as B&W by printing to PDF and choosing a Grayscale Filter. You can also do this in Photoshop or similar...

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=71588&Searchpage=46&Main=16192&Words=Elevation%2C+CipesDesign&Search=true#Post71588

http://homepage.mac.com/homedesigns/Elev%20Example.JPG/

NOTE: the methodology has evolved a bit since that post was written. We now have the ability to show both "Background" (eg: Final Quality RW's) and "Foreground" (eg: Hidden Line) rendering in one viewport. Additionally, we now have "Unified View" (formerly knows as Stacked Layers) which allows you to skip the Layer Link step.

[StaticDOS]

Ive drawn a stud wall with the extrude tool and have an elevation viewport of it but hatches dont seem to work when i use the 2D polygon tool? Is it only applicable to walls and roofs etc.

[CipesDesign]

Static, could you post a screenshot please? You can apply hatches to any 2d object. So I'm curious to see what's happening here...

[StaticDOS]

Sorry CD its actually a 3D object

[Patrick Fritsch]

Sorry but this method does not help me getting me perspectives looking like my elevations. Seems theres only a 2d solution here.

To end this thread, will someone from NNA step up to plate and let us know if they are dealing with this program short coming.

Personally, I don't care! I'm just in the process of trying 30 day trials of various software (while things are slow) to decide which one to invest in. I like many aspects of VW vs competition but I cannot go with it unless I know what NNA roadpath for VW is headed towards...hey fair enough maybe they don't know themselves. But most firms need to know this type of stuff before investing a lot of time and money.

www.fpwi.ca

[J Lucas]

Currently in VW the 3d way to show b&b on walls is to add a b&b texture to the exterior wall and render (background) with hidden line (foreground) in a viewport. It is actually very fast and graphically effective. You can also add a sun light source for a particular day and time and render with shade and shadow. Robert Anderson of NNA answered your question above.

[CipesDesign]

Fritsch, if you actually read the responses carefully you might find that the solution is staring right at you. Here are two screen shots of the exact same building, with the exact same texture, in two different types of presentation modes...PS: there is no reason to shout ;-)

[Patrick Fritsch]

Thanks, but how can I do that in just plain black & white line drawings for perspectives and elevations?

Edited May 18, 2010 by Fritsch

[CipesDesign]

Use a texture that is made from an image of the B&W lines you want to use. Here is a very quick example. Note, I only did this for the walls. You could easily do a similar texture for the roof, etc... NOTE: I think that you might be missing the point a little, in that you can (and might end up wanting to) use a more refined and photorealistic texture, instead of just lines... But each to their own. Hope that helps P

[Matt Panzer]

There's a recent thread on the VW MailList about this. Here's my method. While there are advantages and disadvantages to this method, I think it's similar to the direction VW should be going to get elevations from models.

------------------------------------------

What I've been doing is to create black & white "line" texture equivalents of the textures used on the building exterior. Then, in my elevation viewports of the model, I override the class textures of the exterior objects to use the B&W "line" versions. This does require the viewport to use a background Renderworks render mode (I use Custom Renderworks with stripped down settings to reduce render time) and a Hidden Line foreground render mode. It can take some experimenting to get the look you want, but I've found it to work very well. A nice benefit is that textured surfaces that are set off at an angle (roof slopes, angled walls, etc) show their textures accurately instead of "head on". This method does require more time to update viewports after making revisions, but it's worth it, IMO. To help things along, I set the sheet layer DPI to 72 while working, then bump it up to 300 DPI for final output. Another option I use often is to turn off the background Renderworks render mode while I make changes until I need to view the textures.

See the attached file...

[Patrick Fritsch]

Ok Ok, so can you tell me how to create these custom textures on the fly?...can't seem to figure it out. Do I need to Photoshop one?

Another thought, can I do a hatch pattern and turn it into texture? That could be quick!

[mar schrammeyer]

you could try to play with a texture called vertical stripe to be found under create new texture

Edited May 20, 2010 by mar schrammeyer

[Matt Panzer]

Fritsch,

As mar suggested, the vertical line can be of use for some things. The brick in the elevation was created using the brick shader in Renderworks. I just set the bricks to white with a black mortar. Some textures I created in Photoshop. If you already have a color image based texture that you need a B&W version of, try exporting it's image to a file, use an image editor (ie Photoshop), set it to greyscale, adjust the brightness and contrast, etc. and you may get something close to what you need. Yes it takes some work, but it may be worth trying. If you thinking of trying this method, experiment with some quickly done textures to make sure you're getting what you expect in the model. I've found some issues with textures not lining up from one wall to another or between walls and floors. This has caused me to manually edit the problem objects to shift the texture to line up. I'm using the "Use Z Origin" feature on the texture mapping which should take care of this, but it doesn't seem to be working. This is why I say, experiment a bit before investing the time to create perfect textures in Photoshop.

Oh, and another thing you may want to use in your textures for elevations is Constant Reflectivity. This will prevent Renderworks from shading the object.

HTH