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Any way of extruding/extracting a surface from a site model?


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So, I've got a site model set up with the basic underlying landscape. Now I want simply to lay something on it, that follows its surface but is slightly raised.

 

Like for example a path or road. I know there are tools for these but having played with them I think they may be too inflexible for what I want, and have found a couple of old threads on here which suggest they just don't work very well.

 

Pad modifier will let me raise a surface but not a surface that follows the underlying surface.

 

Thought maybe I could extract a series of faces from the 3d mesh version of the site model and use these as the basis of the geometry, but doesn't seem to be possible to extract in this way.

 

Closest I can find is to set the working plane to individual mesh faces, trace them off and build it up that way but seems rather laborious.

 

Any other suggestions?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I think Extract Face won't let you select Site Models regardless of their 3D display, however the Project tool should let you project a surface downwards at a site model and then that projected face can be extracted or trimmed off for this kind of thing.

Project tool should probably be in the 3rd and second tool modes respectively for the two settings (Add Mode and Add Downward Mode). Draw your desired profile of the shape and position it above the site model above (I used a simple circle in my test) then select the profile first, the model second, and try the Project. The bottom face of the resulting solid should be what you're looking to get.

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1 hour ago, JimW said:

I think Extract Face won't let you select Site Models regardless of their 3D display, however the Project tool should let you project a surface downwards at a site model and then that projected face can be extracted or trimmed off for this kind of thing.

Project tool should probably be in the 3rd and second tool modes respectively for the two settings (Add Mode and Add Downward Mode). Draw your desired profile of the shape and position it above the site model above (I used a simple circle in my test) then select the profile first, the model second, and try the Project. The bottom face of the resulting solid should be what you're looking to get.

 

Hm, this worked fine with a circle (and an ellipse) but it doesn't seem to want to do it with a closed polygon or a rectangle (I get a "project tool failed" error message).

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33 minutes ago, Hans-Olav said:

I had success if i first un-gruped the site model. It changed to a Mesh and then it was possible to project the circle.

Important to make a copy of the site model if one wants to make changes to it later.

Tried changing mine to mesh, but behaviour remains the same (circle will project but not polygon or rectangle).

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2 hours ago, JimW said:


Project tool should probably be in the 3rd and second tool modes respectively for the two settings (Add Mode and Add Downward Mode).

 

 

OK...after some more fiddling around, I've got it to work with a polygon but by using the 3rd and 1st (or 3rd and 3rd) modes.

 

So, it's something to do with the "normal" of the profile plane.

 

In fact, I now find that it depends in which direction I draw the polygon (clockwise or anticlockwise)

 

So does VW create a circle with a normal that's opposite to the one it creates a rectangle with?

 

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