Vectorworks Intermediate  videos

The following videos will give you an understanding of how to create plant symbols, planting schedules and link data to the plant symbols.

 

There have been some significant changes over the past couple of years to the plant tool and now some of the information in the videos are no longer accurate.

The most significant change is to the Plant Tool Preferences. Historically you could use this to set defaults to parameters which determined all future plants inserted into your project.

Now, however it doesn’t influence the future plants in the same way. Plants at creation can be made with two options for each of the parameters 1. Set by Style and 2. Set by Instance

  1. Set by style determines that the parameter when changed will apply to all instances of the plant symbol (taxon of plant)

  2. Set by Instance means that the settings will be applied initially but can be changed through the object info panel for different instances of the same symbol (taxon of plant)

So how do I use this differently now. The way that I currently feel is most sensible is to create one or more plants that you are happy with the settings for and then duplicate them and replace the species-specific data and the 2d symbol within that plant.

To do this select the plant you wish to duplicate and go to the menus and select Landmark > Create Plant Style from Selection. This will open the style dialog box and you can then make amendments to the species-specific data on the first two tabs. Then in the Graphics tab select Copy from Symbol and find an appropriate symbol to represent your plant.

So which parameters should be by Style and which should be by Instance? This will be different for each person. Some things you may want to stay the same across all plants e.g. Botanical Name, Plant/Tag ID etc. Others you will want to change across different instances of the same plants like how the Tag will appear, or Polygon displays.


Session 1

General Help

Plant Tool

  • Placement Modes

  • Style editing

  • Plant Catalog

  • Editing 2d symbols - Setting massing outline

  • Pickup mode

  • Tags

  • Using classes

  • Plant Schedules



Activity

  • Sketching garden beds in plan and elevation

  • 3d Demo

Session 2

Revision of last class


New

  • Setting up viewports

  • Aligning tags

  • Intermediate plant schedules

  • Specifications

  • Setting up a legend

  • Printing cultural notes

  • Saving and exporting plants to favourites

  • Setting up favourites in the resource manager

Other Plant TOOLS

  • Landscape area

  • Plant line and vegetation line

Activity

  • Setting up colour schemes across your drawing

  • Find an example of a plan style you would like to replicate

Keys to the efficient use of the plant tool

  • Creating a strong database of plant symbols that all work within one aesthetic style so that they can be used together without conflict

  • Creating updating plant data as you go

  • Setting up classes withing you plant symbols so that they can be visualised differently between the concept and planting plan phases

  • Taking advantage of the ‘Instance’ vs ‘Style’ parameters in your symbols

  • Setting up plant schedules stylistically to be reused across your projects

  • Saving new plants that you create out into your favourites folder as you go and amending them to be better as you use them in the future