Site Modeling

[krb]

Hi

I am one week old - i have bought VW 11.5 Ind Collection - I am a Baptist Minister and just become a self-builder on a cottage in North Wales UK.

I have managed to prepare a a model of the cottage add a new ground floor and basement extension and create a roof that i am happy with.

Your tutorial really helped and i have it all dimensioned and rendered as i want it to show to the planners as a first draft.

I can get 3D veiws of the cottage, but i can't put it in an envionment with patio and sunken patio at the basement level with retaining walls.

I have followed you manual 'Site Modeling and planning - 6" till i am blue in the face and so must be doing something wrong.

How do i create a simple 3D environment for my cottage? Do you have a helpful tutorial like the one on creating the building in VW Overview?

Help.... help

Keith

[CipesDesign]

Hello Keith, and welcome to the forum. I think what you are asking to do is create a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of your site. In order to do this you need to have either 2d topographic contours or 3d points as a starting point. However, in some cases if a site is relatively flat you can merely go to top/plan view, zoom way out and draw a large rectangle (or any shape really). Then select the shape and extrude it. Then go to a side view and move it up or down as req'd. If you have further questions post them here. Hope that helps :-)

[CipesDesign]

Keith, Further to the previous post: you could create two extruded shapes, placing one at the basement level and the second one, with a hole cut out of it directly above the patio area, and then create your retaining wall at the lower (basement) level.

[islandmon]

Architectural Protocols requires that you begin with a survey of the site which includes a topographic map. Program or scan the survey into VW and then create a DTM layer and place 3D loci as required along the topo lines. Use AEC >Site Model>New based on the DTM from the 3d loci. This really is the best way to get thing right from the outset of your project.

[Ole]

I have just started to use the DTM and am finding it very good and easy to use when doing a simple site model but i am finding it hard to ad roads and car parks over to site model. Does anyone have sudgestions please

Cheers Ole

[CipesDesign]

Practice, practice, practice. Others may not agree, but I've been using VW's a loooong time and still spend too much time wrestling with this feature. It does, however, get easier the more you do it. For me I think it comes down to a basic lack of everyday use. In other words, there are many tools and features I use every day - DTM's are not onr of them. I seem to forget the process and feel as if I am re-learning for each project. So perservere (sp?), it will come to you!

[Kristen]

Kieth, I'd second the suggestion to use extrusions for your site. Unless the site is very distinctive or you're showing acres of contours, I think the DTM is overkill.

Ole, I?ve given up on using the road tools for the most part. I use pads and fences to modify the site the way I want. Then I paste in place the ?proposed? model symbol into a new file and convert it to a mesh. I extrude the shape of the road and use the Model>Intersect solids command to get a solid that follows the contours of the site. Then I paste it back into my original file and maybe move it up a half inch or so in the z dimension, to get it to show above the site itself. It sounds more convoluted than it is, and I?m having better luck with this technique than I?ve had with the actual road tools. I'd love to hear anyone else's suggestions for dealing with roads.

[Delmer]

The road tool falls in that category of automated things that I often avoid. Since I generally need a 2D adjusted survey with proposed contours I usually just do this first, including swales, berms etc if scale is appropriate, and then make a DTM of that rather than do too much adjusting on the 3D site.

Depending on what you're end goal is that may take more time than you want.

[ 06-08-2005, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: Delmer ]

[poesy]

Glad to have found this thread. Learning, learning... Thanks for the useful tips!

[margie]

I am still on VW10 and cannot seem to find the AEC / DTM commands that EJ Armstrong is suggesting. I've loked in the manual and the help and can't seem to find any mention of it. I do remember using it VW 9 so I'm assuming it's not a new feature.

[islandmon]

Did you know that superstar Clint Eastwood was one of the developers of DTM ?

He worked out the fundamental concepts during the shooting of 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".

For complex Roads forget the Road Tool and just use good ol' NURBS and paths.

Margie , v10 split the DTM into the separate Industry series Architecture package. But if you have v6-9 then you use can use the DTM from there by importing a simple text file of the Northing,Easting, Elevations and copy the results to v10 ( however, the v6 > 3d loci are not compatible with v10 )