VectorWorks GAIA

[A. Lorberer]

Hi, I am a senior Geologist / Renewable Energy designer, using Vectorworks since 2002. I would like to connect colleagues interested in the same fields.

I noticed the lack of active discussions here about anything but architecture. Even the mechanical engineers are terribly silent here although Vector’s 3D printing features is a definitely an opportunity for them. I admit, that I also met the software through my architect wife, and lately even I use Vectorworks to assist her architectural tasks.

However, I do hope that this universal, user-friendly, and remarkably cost-efficient software could and can impress some other earthbound / natural resource user guys like me. It would be a shame if Vectorworks would just remain to be a valued secret of a handful of architects. :crazy: I also hope that some architects, engineers, Landmarks users and all who would welcome to have integrated environmental design in their projects would also join to this discussion to form a future community.

I would be glad to find some partners to share our ideas and viewpoints regarding:

- Practical Vectorworks visualization methods useful for describing / designing natural phenomenon, resources, or Geotechnical reporting

- Teaching / Advertising the software to non-architects

- Applying existing scientific visualization methods to this software

(If a market can exist or can be created for a Vectorworks tutorial/handbook aimed for Geoscientists, I would be glad to help in writing one. The existing SketchUp methodology created specifically for Geologists is good, but not really useful for design, or even for communicating with engineers. On the other hand, I went through some Vector architectural handbooks and tutorials, which were useful for me, but the attitude and wording is so different that they are just hard to use by most Scientists.)

What can I surely share is Experience / Files / Hatches / Ideas in designing:

- Water wells, thermal wells, springs, boreholes, and all sorts of Geothermal utilizations / heat pump systems, including their shafts/manholes/tanks, wellheads, valves, etc.

- Geotechnical, drainage and environmental/remediation design plan drafting elements/customs

- Colorful surface and underground geological maps and sections usually covering several square kilometers with scales varying between 1:200 - 1:500.000 scale (It took some time for my architect wife to be accustomed to use geological scales, probability maps, and the number of possible interpretations resulting from the same geological data. However, believe me, I was also stunned when I first needed to use inches and millimeters

[Jim Smith]

Are there tools that would make the use of V2016 of more use to your profession?

Could some of the Marionette functions be helpful?

[Art V]

Glad to see someone outside the building/landscape architecture. I'm more in the civil engineering and GIS area, as well as other things. but there is still a reasonable overlap in required functionality in Vectorworks between geographic information system use and geology so I'm definitely interested in discussing workflow topics covering GIS/geography/geology.

One thing I'm currently trying to achieve when it comes to Vectorworks is improving its GIS functionality as there are still some hiccups and if possible raising wish list items to expand its GIS functionality. Have been bugging the very nice people at the helpdesk on this for quite a while.

Regarding using millimeters... I've come across civil drawings covering some 2000 square kilometers drawn in millimeters. Either someone had too much time on his/her hands or wasn't really familiar with GIS/Geography scales. :-)

[Art V]

Are there tools that would make the use of V2016 of more use to your profession?

Could some of the Marionette functions be helpful?

Well... at the risk of sounding like a broken grammophone (or MP3 player if you want) , implementing the EPSG database to expand the GIS capabilities of Vectorworks Landmark would be nice for those of us who work with worldwide geographic information.

UTM/Lat-Lon/NAD alone is just not going work in the long run and even though WKT allows for non listed CRS's to be used, if the associated datums/ellipsoids etc. are not there in Vectorworks reliability/accuracy of the information in a drawing becomes an important issue.

Another thing that might be welcome is a library for GIS/general geography and mapping/geology.

And, last but not least, improved compatibility with AutoCAD dwg format (e.g. text styles import/export, automatic adjustment of design layers and classes to be compatible with dwg formatting) and Microstation (DGN file import) would be helpful too as there is a good chance of having to deal with AutoCAD MAP/Civil and Microstation files.

[A. Lorberer]

Dear Jim,

Thanks for your positive comment.

I just upgraded to 2016 yesterday, and I am definitely positive regarding the changes.

First of all, as a geothermal / heat pump designer with a wife who is professional in both architecture and physics, and worked as a building science technologist we are glad to be able to test Energos. We hope that we will be able to extend our services with it.

Point cloud support can also be beneficial, especially in mapping a tunnel, cave or stone query. In most countries, the state tax is payed according to regular geodesic re-mapping of a query, and this tool can hopefully allow Vectorworks market to enter to this market.

I also often export to dxf, and dwg, so I am glad for those updates as well.

I am not yet sure how will I use Marionet for Geoscience purposes, but will try.

[A. Lorberer]

Dear art V,

I am glad that I am refreshing :-)

I agree that it would be nice to be able to use better GIS tools, and be more compatible with other programs.

I used to create digital surface and underground maps using 3D polyogons in Vectorworks, and axported them to DXF, than used a specific program called DXFtoXYZ to create a matrix of XYZ surface topografic points, and used this points to create interpolated surfaces in other programs (Golden Sofware's SURFER, and MODFLOW versions mainly) From my Geoscientist point of view the surfaces created in Vector are just not nice / not natural enough, not suitable to statistical analyses, and their triangulation networks is far too simple. However, instead of all these steps, I would be glad to be able to simply export the stake points to an excel or ascii file (er even be compatible with .srf, geotiff, or esri formats)

I worked mainly as a small consulting / design business, and it seems to me that Vector is cheap enough for this segment. Most GIS software and even full extended versions of AutoCAD are rather expensive options for small companies. So if Nemetschek can do improvements and courses designed to attract Geo-engineers, Journeymans, and the increasing number of small renewable energy firms etc. they have some chance to step into this market. Geo-softwares are also an overcrowded software market, I admit, but this is true for the architectural field as well.

[Art V]

I would be glad to be able to simply export the stake points to an excel or ascii file (er even be compatible with .srf, geotiff, or esri formats)

Just a quick reply to this part (will reply more later)

This would be quite simple, if you create a worksheet that reads out the X,Y,Z coordinates of the stake points you can then copy/paste it into an Excel file.

If I recall correctly stake points can also be exported to shapefiles, but I would have to check that with an older project where I may have done this, though these were "2D" stake points (i.e. Z=0).