3D Modelling Special Interest Group – August 2014

The idea behind the special interest group sessions is to look at one of the really fun part of Vectorworks, modelling in 3D. But it’s easy to create three-dimensional objects in Vectorworks that you can’t then translate into Vectorworks architectural objects (walls, roofs, etc). In the session we look at a couple of strategies for taking your conceptual model and moving it into detailed Vectorworks objects.

Topics covered:

• using the Model to Floorplan command. This command will look at your 3D model and break it up by height based on the settings in the design layers. You then need to look at the resulting walls and adjust them to suit your design.
• tidying up the walls to suit the design
• how to model a sloping wall. At the moment it’s not possible to model a sloping wall so you have to find a workaround. You can take a three-dimensional object and then use auto-hybrid on it to create a 3D object that looks like a wall in plan. You can also try using the taper face tool on a wall, but this makes it into a solid addition and is no longer a wall. Again, you have to use the auto-hybrid to give it the plan appearance that you want.
• Creating an auto-hybrid.
• Using a 3D object to create a roof face by tracing over it with a rectangle or polygon
• using the Project Tool to extrude a NURBS or planar object to meet another 3D object
• using the command Fit Walls to 3D Objects
• one of the users recommends the manual on creating a 3D swimming pool
• creating a floating curving roof using the loft surface tool
• using the Project Tool to cut out the loft surface to suit a planar shape
• Drawing planar objects and using the Project Tool to extrude them to cut the curving roof
• creating contours through a 3D object
• how to use the create contours tool and create radial contours instead of parallel contours
• using the contours to create a new curving roof
• creating a fence around the boundary using extrude along a path
• creating cutouts in this fence using subtract solid
• editing the fence cross-section
• editing the cutouts on the fence

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