Mason2152 Posted June 4, 2019 Share Posted June 4, 2019 Does anybody know of a tutorial for drafting a swimming pool that has sloping levels and free form shape? I feel confident when dealing with simple 3D shapes but get lost when dealing with more organic designs. Thanks. Quote Link to comment
Jim W Posted June 4, 2019 Share Posted June 4, 2019 So the Fundamentals guide had a bit of that: https://www.vectorworks.net/training/2016/getting-started-guides/fundamentals But these days for that kind of oganic shape, I'd recommend the Subdivision tool, it should be able to easily whip out a pool shape: Its changed a bit since then, but still close. 2 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 I don't know of any tutorials, but I made this today after seeing your question and wanting to challenge myself. Typically, I design a pool in plan and section and do not worry about modeling it. However, these curves can be used to loft or revolve a surface and then use the reshape tool restricted on the Z axis to pull the shape into a desired form. Alternatively, you can extrude solids and do subtractions/intersections and fillets to get what you need. I would like to know a good method for doing this because mine was tedious and resulted in some geometry flaws that I couldn't fix. Plus, I could not figure out how to develop the floor of the pool. There's gotta be a better way. 4 Quote Link to comment
fabrica Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 or try this: https://learn.archoncad.com/blog/2011/02/28/sst_1102-creating-a-swimming-pool/ Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 @fabrica can you actually log in and see that content? I just tried with my account and the whole site is locked down for me for some reason. Quote Link to comment
Mason2152 Posted June 6, 2019 Author Share Posted June 6, 2019 @fabrica Thanks for posting. I can't see it either because it says it is content only for members. Quote Link to comment
fabrica Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 @Mason2152 @jeff prince - sorry - you'll need to purchase from to see 1 Quote Link to comment
Mason2152 Posted June 6, 2019 Author Share Posted June 6, 2019 @jeff prince that is beautiful work. I have pretty limited experience with 3D modeling and it is obvious I need a lot more practice. 1 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 (edited) 3 hours ago, fabrica said: @Mason2152 @jeff prince - sorry - you'll need to purchase from to see Yes, I have a paid membership. I just emailed Jonathan to see what is wrong. **Jonathan got it fixed 🙂 Edited June 6, 2019 by jeff prince Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 6, 2019 1 minute ago, Mason2152 said: @jeff prince that is beautiful work. I have pretty limited experience with 3D modeling and it is obvious I need a lot more practice. Thanks man, that was the first time I tried to make such a shape in VW 🙂 I used to do a lot of this kind of thing earlier in my career. He's the first pool I modeled in AutoCAD, in 1999. I had to make all those freak'n boulders by hand and the animation took over a week to render on an ancient pentium pro. There's gotta be a better way in VW, it's been 20 years! My first ever computer animation with all of its glorius flaws. 4 1 2 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 11 minutes ago, Mason2152 said: @jeff prince that is beautiful work. I have pretty limited experience with 3D modeling and it is obvious I need a lot more practice. I think the tricky thing for me is trying to figure out how to take a constructible plan and section and making it into an accurate model. The contractor needs drawings with control points for layout. These curvilinear pools are based on center points and tangent arcs, something I really struggle with drawing in VW, but came easily in AutoCAD. I need VW practice too, hence my interest in your question. Hopefully some of the real gurus here will chime in and give us a hand because the sample I made in VW does not lend itself to creating useful drawings for construction. 2 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 getting closer, but it is still difficult. The subdivision primitive Cube helped with creating the sloped transition between the two levels. 1 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 These are the kinds of complicated shapes we are talking about modeling. Nice, fluid curves, walls that have a fillet where they meet a curved floor which slopes to a drain. I hope someone has some pointers on how to form these complicated surfaces. The skatepark tutorial video just isn't enough... Quote Link to comment
Mason2152 Posted June 6, 2019 Author Share Posted June 6, 2019 @jeff prince That is exactly what I'm looking at (in fact that looks a lot like my pool. I just get frustrated because of my lack of understanding with most of the program Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 6, 2019 Share Posted June 6, 2019 (edited) 42 minutes ago, Mason2152 said: @jeff prince That is exactly what I'm looking at (in fact that looks a lot like my pool. I just get frustrated because of my lack of understanding with most of the program Practice, practice, practice 🙂 Most of these 3D programs work about the same, it's just a matter of getting used to the workflow. I'm going to try a loft with horizontal cross sections and see if that does the trick. Basically, take the pool outline, copy it down in Z a few times and reshape to reflect the walls and pool bottom. Not sure if it will work... Take a look at this. Boats are complicated too. Edited June 6, 2019 by jeff prince 1 Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 9 hours ago, jeff prince said: Practice, practice, practice 🙂 Most of these 3D programs work about the same, it's just a matter of getting used to the workflow. I'm going to try a loft with horizontal cross sections and see if that does the trick. Basically, take the pool outline, copy it down in Z a few times and reshape to reflect the walls and pool bottom. Not sure if it will work... Take a look at this. Boats are complicated too. True that most 3D programs work in a similar way. In theory. However, programs having dedicated boat design programs tend to provide way better shape control than standard CAD / 3D modeling programs. How efficiently it works is another matter. Some years ago, a friend of mine, a professional naval architect, decided to draw a canoe in MaxSurf and TouchCAD. Both have dedicated boat designing features, but the same shape took two hours in Maxsurf and seven minutes in TouchCAD.... 1 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 So, lofting didn't work so well, probably due to the changing number of vertices in the defining curves I made. Jonathan fixed my account problem on his website, so I tried out the tutorial @fabrica mentioned this morning: https://learn.archoncad.com/blog/2011/02/28/sst_1102-creating-a-swimming-pool/ @Mason2152 A membership to Jonathan's website is a great investment. The first pool I did took a dozen iterations to get it in the ballpark using my basic understanding of VW and using the help menu. The second pool took about eight tries to get it close. This morning, adapting techniques from Archoncad, a single iteration to produce the model below. It took me an hour from scratch, including reading the tutorial, texturing with the VW included library, and rendering. Getting closer, but VW did not know how to fillet the transition between the deep and shallow ends (probably due to the edge falling on a curved wall). Note aforementioned bottom fillet fail at transition. Section is watertight and well formed Nice solid model detailing...Bull nose radius on the entire curved coping was flawless. Tile inset was done by forming a solid, duplicating it in place, subtracting one from the pool wall, and placing the remaining one on a separate class with different texture assignment. 3 Quote Link to comment
Mason2152 Posted June 8, 2019 Author Share Posted June 8, 2019 @jeff prince I tried lofting late last night and it did nothing like I wanted, but I have little experience with it. Your last product looks amazing. I'll look into joining the Jonathan group. Thanks for all your help. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 1 minute ago, Mason2152 said: @jeff prince I tried lofting late last night and it did nothing like I wanted, but I have little experience with it. Your last product looks amazing. I'll look into joining the Jonathan group. Thanks for all your help. Thanks and no problem. I've been learning a lot of VW skills simply by reading this forum and trying to figure out how to do what people are asking help with... if it is something I envision needing to do in the future. This pool thread for instance has helped me a great deal in preparing for my next project rather than trying to figure it out under a deadline. Trial and error takes a lot of time, so Jonathan's task based tutorials are a great time saver. If you are just starting out with 3D modeling, quality instruction gets you going on the right foot and will avoid lots of frustration. Good luck on your journey! 1 Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Jeff Prince Posted June 10, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 10, 2019 I decided to throw a little landscaping around the pool and test it in TwinMotion this morning. The textures came in from Vectorworks, plants and people added in TwinMotion. Crazy how fast you can do things these days compared to the 1999 video I posted earlier! 2 3 Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted June 11, 2019 Share Posted June 11, 2019 Here is how i woul'd model a pool like this: 4 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 11, 2019 Share Posted June 11, 2019 5 hours ago, herbieherb said: Here is how i woul'd model a pool like this: Very nice! How would you handle a sloping bottom depicting a transition from a shallow end to the deep end? 1 Quote Link to comment
AlanW Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 Simple way to do all this is to extrude your plan shape, cut the slopes as needed with knife and subtract solid then from top use shell solid. 4 Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Benson Shaw Posted June 12, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 12, 2019 This is similar to @Alan Woodwell 's idea. It's a stepped & filleted extrude used as cutting surface for shallow/deep transition. Fillet along bottom edge worked in one go!😁 Shell Solids would not make it in one go. 😡 Hence the 3 shells. A refinement could be to establish drain slope in the deep end. After Convert to NURBS, and prior to Fillets: Select the deep bottom surface Increase Degree to 2 both directions OIP>Move=Vertex Only Use OIP to move the ctr vertex in xyz Now Fillet to the sides & Shell. -B Pool.vwx 7 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 13 hours ago, Alan Woodwell said: Simple way to do all this is to extrude your plan shape, cut the slopes as needed with knife and subtract solid then from top use shell solid. yes, this is what I did, but had difficulty with fillet on the sloping transition. Quote Link to comment
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