Architect Special Interest Group November 2017 (am)

In this session, we covered how to quickly add drainage to a parking area, combine two roofs together, add dormer windows or skylights, and use the various stair tools in Vectorworks, as well as discussing the advantages of using Vectorworks Cloud Services.

• 00:13    We started off the session by looking at how to quickly add drainage to a parking area. We added the parking slab to a file and used the Slab Drainage tool to create drains and valleys. You can grab the blue handles and relocate the drains to where you want. You can also put in additional drains and link them to the existing drains.
• 04:55    Next, we created a simple roof. That’s easy enough to do. The challenge is how to join it to another roof. How do we calculate where one roof passes into the other? We used the Convert Copy to Lines command to analyze the intersection of the two shapes. This gave us the shapes to use to modify the 3D roof surfaces. The Paste in Place and Clip Surface commands were all we needed. We continued looking at roof faces by going through the steps to put in a dormer. First, we had to make the window into a symbol. Then, we added it to the roof. The software created the dormer shape. It’s the little blue handle at the bottom of the window that contains all of the Edit Roof Element settings. One of the things that always comes up is how to get rid of the dormer—the answer is in the Edit Roof Element settings. Another confusing thing is moving the dormer—the distance is referenced from a corner of the roof. But, which corner? You have to move it first to see. We continued our experimentation by adding a skylight to our roof. Just by clicking the Edit skylight choice in the settings will change it from a dormer into a skylight. The skylight only punches a hole through the roof—it would be perfect if it also punched the hole through the attic, but it doesn’t. We built walls around the skylight and used the Fit Walls to Object command to align them with the roof. Building splayed walls requires 3D modeling. We walked through some possibilities for that.
• 25:32    How do you create a more complex stair? The Custom Stair tool is good for this. However, to use the Custom Stair tool, which is now considered a Legacy tool, you have to use the Workspace Editor to add it to your workspace. Remember that the Custom Stair tool is a kit of parts that you add together. We walked through how to add different bits together to get the stair we wanted. Next, we discussed the best way to create a stair elevation. I use a section of the stair to create the overall, but I often just trace over the bits in the section that I want to show and turn off everything else. I like to make my stair detail in 2D, copying it from project to project. I usually only need to make very few changes to it. Using the Simple Stair tool is a very fast way to make a conceptual stair at the design stage of a project.
• 41:38    We finished the session talking about Vectorworks Cloud Services. This service is a great way to finish a rendering while freeing up your machine. The service is something that you log into, but, when you add a file with sheet layers to it, the service will complete the rendering for the sheet layers and generate the PDFs for them. Then, you can easily share the file or share a link to the file with a collaborator or client.

 
Architect November 2017 am
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