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3d Polygon to extrusion


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I have a DXF file that we brought in from another software. When brought into vectorworks it shows up as a 3d wireframe model.

We want to be able to render this and give the wireframe model some depth for a photo sim.

What is the best way to do this? I have tried the extrude along path with sucess, unfortunately this model has over 1166 lines and this is just not a solution to do one by one.

Ive tried selecting the similar components in an attempt to do a batch extrude so to speak, but doesnt seem to work.

I have attached the file. Any suggestions would be great. This seems like it should be a rather simple task for VW.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

3D polygons aren't a great source, if this was already a 3D model, generally exporting from the source software to 3DS or DWG would work better than DXF.

However, if you're stuck with a DXF, you can select these 3d polys then convert them to NURBS (Modify > Convert > Convert to NURBS) then ungroup the result and with all the NURBS selected, use Compose, this will attempt to join the hundreds of NURBS into single objects, which will reduce the amount of work needed to create extrude along paths with the desired profile for the tubing/pipes/wires you want to create.

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Might be a start. We had another gentleman here thinking we could possible create a script or plugin using 'Create objects from shapes" but Im not that well versed.

Just thought while I got someone Id ask if there were any additional methods beyond what you described. Sounds like this could be the ticket tho.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

No, I had to select specifically the 3D polygons, there are already some portions that were converted to solids.

I used the Select Similar tool (looks like a magic wand) from the Basic palette to select all the 3D polygons before I converted to NURBS, ungrouped then Composed.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

The idea was to simplify the number of operations needed, also NURBS tend to create cleaner geometry when used as a base.

However in this case, a complete conversion isn't really needed. The same pattern repeats itself in this tower over and over again, you should be able to create one "instance" of the framing pipe pattern, which would only be 5-8 extrude along paths done individually, then duplicate that set of extrudes up as tall as needed.

Then create extrudes along the wires at the desired diameter, which I assume would be different than the pipes themselves. Basically a 3D trace of the object rather than trying to convert everything directly bit by bit.

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Seems far to time consuming for what the ultimate goal is. I was hoping for a few commands. Even if we simplified it down this workflow isnt gonna help. We have lots of towers. Some with different lengths and Id guess this alone would take a few hrs to get one tower built. I appreciate the help, but Im not sure there is a solution.

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I think you should think about rebuilding the tower rather than trying to convert it to something that is not there.

It looks like each of the sections of truss are the same. Most of them have 7 sections with the bottom one having 5. Either the top or bottom of each section has the "spacer" between sections.

I would do the Extrude Along Path and create a symbol of one section and a symbol of one "spacer". Make a symbol that consists of 7 section and one spacer at an end.

Duplicate Array this to get the overall height.

Either create another symbol for the 5 high at the bottom or just use the original symbols.

You will need to manually model the taper at the bottom.

Benefit of this is that the symbols will render much faster than a model made of individual extrudes.

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Probably easier to just recreate/trace the tower and make some symbols of the different parts and copy those around with the move by point tool

I made a little start, 10 min work. Should be do able in hour or so to build the complete tower

(but maybe I'm missing something and you have to use the imported geometry?)

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Using SketchUp and a Ruby plugin I was able to extrude the edges of the SST.dxf pretty easily. Once I remembered how to properly use SketchUp ;) it only took about 30 seconds of processing time.

Not knowing what size members the SST would have, I extruded 4" diameter cylinders along each edge. I know that in real-life it might not be built with cylinders, but it should be good enough for a context view.

I can go into more detail about which SketchUp plugin I used if you want.

I would give the Guyed_Tower.vwx one a shot in SketchUp but it seems to be at an incorrect scale since the total height of it is about 15'-9", which doesn't seem correct.

HTH.

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Ok, I saw the DXF and you need something like this which i created using nurbs lines and extruded along path. I only created one side and mirrored the rest.

With the tapering tower you could create the section and if you knew the proportion of the reduction you can scale the symbol down and copy it up with the scaled symbol each time.

HTH

Edited by Alan Woodwell
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