Feedback on Special Interest Groups for Landmark

Thanks again for creating the VW Landmark Special Interest Group.  I think yesterday’s session on plant symbols was very helpful, especially since I’m just about to embark on creating my own set of 2d symbols.  I’m definitely going to use classes to control the graphics, but keep them to a minimum.  I thought I was going to create a few extra classes just to make the tree graphics more transparent, but I now think I’ll make the tree graphics transparent to begin with.   I’m going to have a couple of classes so I can
You asked the class to submit our ideas for topics we’d like to cover in upcoming sessions, so I took a look through some of my projects and made a few notes about things I need to learn more about.
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First, Vectorworks Landmark 2010 (and now 2012) is the first CAD program I’ve actually used to do real design work, everything I’ve done up to this point has been 100% hand drawing.  But after starting Pangaea Design in 2008, I realized I was missing opportunities because I had no efficient way of collaborating with builders, Architects and landscape contractors (especially on larger projects) and I would need to purchase and learn to use a good CAD program, one that could handle 3D site design along with the more common offerings like plantings.  Most of the Landscape Designers in the Minneapolis/St Paul area use Dynascape, but it doesn’t do anything with 3d, especially site design.  I considered Land F/X, but there again no 3d, plus it needed to “sit on” AutoCAD to function (that makes it very expensive as well as non-functional).  Both of those programs had powerful planting design components, and reasonable 2d plan graphics, but for anything 3d, you needed to bring the work into SketchUp.  LandCADD also needed AutoCAD to function.   After comparing all my options, I was convinced VW Landmark was easily my best choice, I had only one real (but minor) concern:  the native drawing organization system used by Vectorworks and its compatibility with AutoCAD and the other similarly organized programs.
 
That’s a lot of words to tell you about the first two topic ideas for the special interest group:
 

• Collaborating with other designers/users on AutoCAD and other dxf or dwg –based projects.  I’ve had good luck importing dxf files of site surveys, but I’ve never actually worked with another company on a design project, especially one that used AutoCAD.  I think VW realizes this and keeps making improvements on their import/export ability, but it would be helpful to see how actual projects work back and forth between the two programs.
• An obvious extension to this would be collaborating with other Vectorworks users – best practices for file sharing, staying current through the design process, and of course sharing your work with clients
• Any of the site modeling and site analysis features would be good candidates for topics
• The detailed workings of the various site modifiers.
• More on the idea of using polylines as site modifiers.  I used the method you had outlined in one of your site modeling PDF’s and it worked like a charm.
• A detailed review of the wall tool as a site modifier, especially the features for stepped wall base and tops.
• A sub-topic of the wall tool is the problem of creating a decent looking natural stone wall, and how to show caps on a retaining wall.  I couldn’t  find a CMU wall with a masonry veneer (only brick) in my resource browser, but maybe I just don’t know where to look.
• Create Snapshot tool
• Checking your site model for errors, and how to correct them .
• Incorporating water into a site model that features a pond or a lakeshore.  This is not a site modeling feature, but I do wonder how I could indicate water in a pond area, and possibly even how to calculate the water volume in something like a pond or rain garden.

 
Here are a few more topics based on my experience so far:
 

• Concept design in Landmark – this covers an odd array of features, but in general I feel like there’s a huge disconnect between the way I’m used to working through early design concepts (rough sketches on tracing paper overlays, etc.)  and the very precise drafting in any CAD program.  I realize I’ll need to make a few adjustments to the way I think about design, but here are a few things that I’d like to learn more about:
• Creating and manipulating geometry, but especially arcs and curvy polylines to develop spaces, bed lines and even contour lines.  What’s the best way to work with and especially adjust these?  I’m pretty familiar with the reshape tool, and most of the arc tool settings (especially the very useful arc by tangent) but even this is unwieldy.
• Using the landscape area tool, and setting it up with plants.  I would like to create (and save) a couple of representative “mixes” to use in areas such as river banks, forest edges, rain gardens, and possibly a native meadow area or two.  Then I could easily sketch in the space, and hopefully even get an initial cost to start the budget process.
• Hardscape Tool
• Creating a hardscape area on a sloped surface (this may not be directly possible, but maybe you know of a graceful work-around.  As far as I can tell, you can only create a true Hardscape Area on a flat surface which is a pretty significant weakness in the program since all surfaces outdoors must have some kind of pitch or slope to handle stormwater.
• Creating custom hatches, especially ones that represent “random” cobble paver patterns that require 3 or more paver sizes.  I realize this would be very difficult given what I understand about creating hatches.
• Importing images or textures from various paver manufacturers and hardscape surfaces such as flagstone.

 
The topics below aren’t really specific to Landmark, but I wanted to mention them:
 
·        Putting together a finished drawing set for either presentation or construction
o   Assembling the various elements such as viewports, annotations and reports onto the sheet, and more importantly, other elements such as PDF’s and photos from outside the drawing itself.
o   Creating a useful legend or key to describe materials used on the sheet.  This is different than a report, it’s maybe a hybrid mix of notes and graphics (and perhaps even mini-viewports).  But could I create a legend “object” that could be used in any drawing?
o   Creating a custom title block (I realize you’ve probably done this several times, and I know there is a decent video of this on Vectorworks’ site as well).
o   Best methods for exporting or printing documents – particularly discussion about line weights, the scale of textures/hatches, the various settings in the PDF menu.
o   Color palettes – creating a custom palette, what are the differences between the different color palettes included in Vectorworks (what’s the difference between coated and uncoated for instance?) and are some color sets better for gradients, printing, exporting.  I’ve been using colors from the Pantone Paints + Int. set because they’re all named and that makes remembering them a little easier.  But what happens to the color when I export that drawing as a PDF, or a dxf, or a regular Vectorworks file?
·        Creating a simple set of drawing templates.  I have the idea that I should create a core template that I would use for nearly everything, then develop 2 or 3 title blocks that would be designed to work on a few different sheet sizes.
o   But are there times when a special template would be useful when collaborating?  For instance, do you have a template specifically to translate AutoCAD lines/colors a certain way specific to another company’s office standards?
o   What elements do you normally adjust?  I can understand the settings found in the Document Setup menu pretty well (that’s because I don’t have a template, so I keep having to set these up in every new drawing I start, but it’s actually good practice for me and it’s really very quick) but are there other less obvious things you like to control on your templates?
o    I’m still a little shaky about classes and layers when it comes to templates, but I know that would be a big time saver to have those already set up in a template.
o   Figuring out how fonts work in drawings, and templates.  If I have a certain font, but another user doesn’t, can I embed that font in my drawings when exporting in the different formats (vwx, dwg, PDF)
That seems like a lot of topics, and you’ve probably already covered most of them in one of your past sessions.  I didn’t create the list in any particular order of importance, but I know you’ll ask, so I highlighted a few of the topics I’m most interested in learning about, but everything is useful so it doesn’t really matter.
 
I didn’t include the Existing Plant Tool in the above since I’m thinking you’ll be addressing that next time, but I’m also interested in learning more about that and I’ll try experimenting with different 3d graphics to represent the canopy shapes.  I noticed a discussion on the VW community board today, and I thought this very problem was discussed.  It might be interesting to try using an image prop, and also play around with some slightly improved 3d masses, a better color (that bright green is pretty bad) and check into what transparency would look like.
 
Thanks for all your help, I’m finally feeling confident enough to use Vectorworks in most of my design work, and my clients have appreciated the result
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