Landscape Special Interest Group August 2017 am

In this session, we showed how to add 3D—whether a 3D model or an image prop—to plants that only have a 2D view, reviewed using the Callout tool and Notes Manager, and discussed changing Roadway station vertices.

Topics Covered:

• 00:18    We started by looking at an image prop for a groundcover plant. This particular image had been taken from too high up. The plant would appear to be standing upright instead of looking like groundcover. Most people stand over a plant and take the image from eye height in front of a busy background—this really causes image prop difficulties! When a plant has only 2D graphics, maybe only having a locus in a 3D view, you need to add some 3D shapes to the plant. You could add a 3D model or an image prop—or you could use already created 3D symbols or image props from the Vectorworks Libraries and Subscription Libraries. We walked through step-by-step how to add a Vectorworks Libraries image prop to a plant’s 2D graphics. Afterward, we could see a whole plant, not just the locus, in the 3D view! We discovered that another option for groundcover was to add the plant image as a texture to an object, such as an extruded circle with a filleted edge, low to the ground. On our plant, we experimented with tiling and not tiling the texture. We used several techniques in Adobe Photoshop to improve the image for our texture before applying it to our extruded circle. Whether you use a 3D model or a texture applied to an extruded shape depends on what you need your client to see. We then discussed the difference between adding our plants to a Plant Line shape and adding them to a Plant Line or Plant Cloud landscape area. In addition to these techniques, there’s also a plug-in foliage tool for Vectorworks created by Andrea Facchinello (www.andreafachhinello.it). My website has two very useful podcasts on this topic: epodcast067 “Preparing Images for Image Props” and epodcast160 “Adding an Image Prop to a Plant.”
• 39:00    We continued the session by looking at how to use the Callout tool and Notes Manager to add notes to plants. The challenge with using the notes database for a job is that using one database for all your jobs leaves you with too many useless notes to scroll through. After we saved a copy of our database for the particular project that we were working on, we went through it and weeded out any sections of notes that didn’t apply. Be careful that you are in the correct database before you start deleting anything! You can import notes on drawings back into a database, but it can be quite a laborious task.
• 47:35    We finished the session by looking at Roadway station vertices. The challenge was to put a dip in the road. The settings in the Roadway Object Info palette allow you to change the Z value of any vertex. With the Reshape tool, you can change the roadway’s X and Y values.

Landscape August 2017 am
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