Showing surfaces on site model

[Alan H]

What is the best / easiest way to show hatches on a 3D site model.

I have a series of different footpath textures and roads through the site and want to show these in 3D.

I only have Vectorworks architect is it possible to show surface materials with the tools within it?

[CipesDesign]

Without render works you might be a little crippled, but try using Nurbs Road and make sure to Send To Surface. The Nurbs Road is defined by its centerline and is easily created by a)draw the centerline (polyline), b) with poly selected run Modify>objects from poly. Once created, select the road and run Send to Surface. Sometimes, even after send to surface is run, some parts of the road may be below the terrain. In that case you might want to cheat by selecting the road and moving the entire thing up a couple inches...

[Alan H]

Thanks again Peter.

Unfortunately there are too many angles because of the shape of the site and traffic calming measures proposed to make the road tool work in this instance.

unfortunatley I think I may need to revert back to 2D for the site model on this project.

Hopefully my boss will be nice and get me a copy of Render works for the next project!

[CipesDesign]

How about this: start with the Drape Surface tool over the entire Site Model, then cut away (subtract solids) the portions of the drape that are not roads and pathways... I have used this method once or twice and while it can be time consuming the result is usually more than adequate for presentation purposes.

[ray isaacs]

hey, peter. reviving an old thread here.

after working in rhino, in thought about trying the drape surface tool to create a nurbs surface of my site model. i can't get it to work. how do you do it?

cheers,

ray

[Jonathan Pickup]

Have you selected the site model first?

[ray isaacs]

hi, jonathon.

yes, it's selected. what drape is doing is creating a tiny (30cm rectangular) nurbs surface about 700,000 meters from my site model. now that happens to be about the distance the the original site data was from the origin. currently, the origin is in the center of my model. i tested this in a couple of other models and got almost the same result.

i'm scratching my head.

cheers,

ray

[Jonathan Pickup]

it works for me. what happens if you don't move the site model?

[ray isaacs]

okay...i went back to an early version with the original coordinates. when i drape that dtm, i get a tiny rectangle at the origin.

i'm sending it to vss.

ray

[ray isaacs]

okay, jonathon, here's what now know.

the problem seems to be the distance from the origin. based on feedback from jim at vss tech support, i copied the dtm into a new document, at the default origin. tried drape, but it failed. however, when i ungrouped the dtm and selected the resulting mesh, the drape worked as expected, yielding a good match.

it seems that after changing the origin to be the center of my model, somehow vw remembers the original coordinates when executing the drape tool. and because if the distance, doesn't work properly.

cheers,

ray