In this session, we demonstrated how to build an organic pond and add a water surface, how to construct a footpath that sits on your site model, including adjusting the footpath’s slope, and how to turn the water into a 3D volume so that you can calculate its volume.
- 00:06 Opening a file with an existing site model, we experimented with how to go about building an organic pond. We started by using the Polygon tool to draw a pond shape that followed some of the site contours. We turned the shape into a Pad site modifier, which is easy to do using the Create Objects From Shape command, and then used the Offset tool to duplicate the Pad and give our pond a sloping bottom. We went through the steps for turning one of the site modifiers into a water surface. For our bank, we added a Texture Bed over the pond.
- 13:25 We wanted to make a footpath. The only useful Roadway objects in Vectorworks are the Roadway (Poly) and Roadway (Custom Curb) tools—I think that you can build everything you want using only those two tools. One challenge is that our path wasn’t following our site, so we used the Send Stations to Surface command. When we were done setting up the footpath, which was affecting our proposed site, we updated our site model and calculated the cut and fill. Clicking on the Align Stations Vertically button, we could see the grades and adjust the elevations of the stations. Adding more stations smoothed out the slope of our path, while Vectorworks added the needed fill.
- 26:51 The downside of the Roadway (Poly) object is that it creates an object with a uniform width. If you want a Roadway object with a variable width, use the Roadway (Custom Curb) tool. We demonstrated how to use the Reshape tool to modify a Custom Curb object. You can push and pull the object in any direction, but it can only slope in one direction. Sometimes I use the Roadway (Custom Curb) tool to build parking lots, but I think that a better method is to join two Slabs together and to use the Drainage tool. Using the Extract tool, we created site modifiers—added to the Site-DTM-Modifier class—under the Slabs.
- 37:18 We finished by trying to find a method for creating a 3D water object, instead of a 2D one. That way, we would be able to calculate the amount of water in liters—which would be a useful trick! We eventually found a method that worked. You could add Record Formats for various pools on a site so that they would report to a worksheet and always give you an updated volume calculation in liters. In addition, you could use Record Formats and a worksheet to give you the cut and fill of individual site modifiers!
Landscape June 2019