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Distribute Plants along a curved path?


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Is there a way to do this using the Plant Tool in 'poly edged spaced mode"?

 

 

I couldn't find anything in the documentation about this so I tried using the 'Duplicate Along Path" tool.

 

The first time I tried this the Plant Objects they were not centered along the polyline (I did have 'center object on path' selected.)

The second try VW crashed hard.

The third time VW crashed again.

 

So then I duplicated a circle along the path and then just snapped each plant to the center of each circle.

Much slower and limited editing control  (I really like the ease VW allows for moving rows of Plant Objects!) vs if they followed a polyline.

 

So then I tried using the Plant Tool in 'poly edge space mode' to create a straight path and using the 'reshape tool' converted the straight line into a curved line.

I really thought I had found the work around!

 

But this created a polygon with 50 or so vertexes - again not an easy object to edit.

 

 

What is the best way for plants and hedges to follow curves?

 

Some screen grabs

 

Using the duplicate along path tool

path, original object, and offset final object highlight:

482824085_duplicatealongpath-plant.thumb.jpg.88e4e6020ae56c008efad1720c92855b.jpg

 

 

 

using the reshape tool:

505668737_duplicatealongpath-plant2.jpg.de79632eb273c1dac584a45d4590e2da.jpg

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Draw the curve using the polyline tool.

In the Plant tool, choose your plant and the poly edged space mode, then choose the Fill Bucket mode (I can't remember exactly what it's called, but choose it instead of Insertion mode. Then click on the Polyline. It will convert it to a Plant object and the plants will be perfectly aligned along the path. 

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Thanks Tamsin, I'll try the bucket mode.

 

And Tom too, I'll try the convert to object workflow.

 

48 minutes ago, jeff prince said:

...It would be nice if Vectorworks just kept the original curve as part of the plant definition for reshaping purposes rather than converting it...

 

I do like the keeping the original shapes - especially if the curve get converted to an approximated curve composed of straight lines... that's what creating the curve shape with the reshape tool resulted in when I was exploring this.

 

I use the reshape tool all the time on my straight plant object paths. 

If you have to basically rebuild a new curve for any edit - and then re-convert to a new plant group - you lose all your tag editing and any data tags you've attached to the plants...

 

 

 

Has editable curve plant grouping been added to the 'wish list'?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is a good solution.

 

On 8/7/2021 at 1:10 AM, Peter Neufeld. said:

...select the plants and go to the Landmark>Change Plant Grouping...

 

I just wish there was better 'polygon' editing for the auto generated change plant groupings!

 

I almost always have to redo the order by placing new plants and snapping to the auto generated spacing.

The auto generated polygons can sometimes be... very odd.

 

(side note - plus we still can't make segments of the polygons 'curve' around other plants or objects for clarity. this would be SO helpful!)

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