Architect Special Interest Group April 2017 (pm)

In this session, we looked at capping the end of a wall, and we looked at roading on a site model. We spent most of the time looking at roading, how to set the road in relation to a site model and how to make changes to the end of a Roadway object so that it matches the opening of a garage.

• 00:18    We started our session by looking at the capping on walls. In plan view, when you cap the end of a wall, it draws a line across the end of the wall; it does not make the components go around the end of the wall. If you want your wall to look as if the wall components go around the end of the wall, then you have to use the Wall End Cap tool. This tool allows you to determine which components will seal off the end of the wall.
• 05:29    The rest of the session was taken up with creating roads on a site model. We started out by looking at the Polygon Road tool. The Polygon Road tool does not look like it creates a very nice road, but the Reshape tool allows you to change the position of the vertices and allows you to change the vertex type. This may not sound like much of an advantage, but it allows you to change a corner vertex into an arc vertex. This allows you to create a road with exact radiused corners.
• 10:24    Once the road has been created, you can send the road to the surface of the site model by using the Object Info palette. There is a button on the palette to send the station points of the road to the surface of the site model. This will cause the road to exactly follow the surface of the site model. If you want the road to have a constant slope between station points, there is another option on the Object Info palette that allows you to align the stations vertically (creating a constant slope). The road has an option to become a site modifier, and this can include grade limits. The grade limits can be a specific distance from the edge of the road, or it can be a specific slope. If you want to create your own grade limits, you can do that as well. One trick I use is to trace over the grade limits that Vectorworks creates or to make a copy of the road and convert that to a group. Inside the group, you will find a copy of the grade limits.
• 26:10    Vectorworks Road has a constant width. If you want the road to become wider at some point, you cannot use the Polygon Road tool. The Custom Kerb Road tool will allow you to create one with a changing width. So, in order to make a road that changes in width, you will have to use the custom kerb. I often find that, in order to create the design that I require, I have to use more than one road tool.
  31:16    In some situations, the only way to create the required site modifier is to use a 3D polygon, a NURBS surface, or a NURBS curve. As long as these objects are assigned to the correct class, they will become site modifiers. One technique you can use to get a NURBS surface is to use the Extract tool to extract the surface of an object. Once you have the surface you can then assign it to the correct class, and it will become a site modifier.

Architect April 2017 pm
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