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Site Modelling - Cut / Fill Quantities


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I'm wondering what the best way is to get cut / fill quantities from Vectorworks. For every park project we do, we end up hiring a civil engineer to get these quantities for us and it would be great if we could do this in house.

I have existing contours from a survey file and I also have our proposed contours for the landscape improvements we've designed. All I need are the cut / fill quantities for cost estimating.

I thought it would be easy, just make a site model based on the existing contours and add in the proposed contours as site modifiers, but it won't work; the proposed contours on the site model change slightly, but do not match my proposed contours.

I would appreciate any help on this!

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Outlander, Tamsin is right...you should watch the webinar and it should be working. :) Let us know what version you are using...each year, the improvements to the site model make some difference to how accurate it becomes. I have had success using 3D polygons as site modifiers so long as they are on the Site-DTM-Modifier class (also same Design Layer as the Site Model) and are surrounded by a Boundary (Fence in previous versions).

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Hey guys, thanks for the tips. I already had a boundary and had them on the site modifier class, but I did try changing it over to the same design layer. No luck though, still when I change between existing to proposed some parts of the contours follow my proposed contours, but then some parts go way off. Is there a way that I can send you the file to look at?

I use Vectorworks 2010.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Outlander,

You might consider many separate fences/boundaries around each grading areas, which will keep the "existing" contours in ungraded areas. Not sure if that is what you mean.

BTW, in the prelim phase, I sometimes get just 2D contours, and there is not time to do the whole site model. In such cases, I just trace the 2D contours (splitting lines if necessary when they are part fill and part cut), then select all the cut or fill lines and get a total area of the polygons or polylines (they must be closed to get a readout in the OIP)

Basically, this replicates the old planimeter method digitally. I would love to use the 3D more but sometimes, we just don't get the fee/time to build the site model and this workaround comes in handy.

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