TREES AND BUSHES

[brantfetter]

I would tend to agree with robmorfin regarding the relative amount of work involved in placing a decent number of plantings on a site. I've used Accurender since it first came out and loved the technology base (the use of fractals). It makes fantastic plants. As for flexibility, I totally agree with Marty and Scott (Tree editor - YEAH!).

However, I've discovered just how limited the library is compared to what in real practice is needed. While coordinating with the Landscape architects on major projects, the AR3 library seems to come up pretty short. Furthermore, the symbolic representations are terrible for client presentations (right out of the box). Considering the pride connected to the usability "straight out of the box" of the Revit Dev group, I would think that there would be more of a selection of trees, bushes, shrubs, grasses, and even flowers in symbolic representation. But there isn't, even on version 8.1. The Plant Library can be made to be quite extensive, but this is a [highlight]lot[hightlight] of work. Can this be expanded? As for the family model of each plant.... I've ended up making separate families for each type of tree and plant for elevation and plan views. To me this seems to go against the logic of having everything parametric, but my options are very limited. Having the end user setting these up to be properly ordered and parametric doesn't seem very kind.

Clients start to wonder what happened to their property when all evergreens have been stripped of foliage on what is supposed to be the final black and white rendering of their project. The scale elevations should hold their own as presentation images too. As always I'm open to being proven wrong, and shown that there are available families that include symbol drawings for elevation and plan views (other than stick trees). Any body have an idea where an expansion of the ar3 library can be downloaded? (no hint on the AR3 site).

[kpaxton]

I would tend to agree with robmorfin regarding the relative amount of work involved in placing a decent number of plantings on a site...

However, I've discovered just how limited the library is compared to what in real practice is needed.

I have to TOTALLY agree with this post. Here we are at 8.1 and these 'basic' elements have not been updated since 5? or earlier? I too have used the Accurender Tree library to a great extent (and have used Accustudio's) and love it's ability to create realistic foliage on the fly.

However, what a P.I.T.A. it is. I'm just as angry at the folks at Accurender. I have searched hi and low for libraries on the web, and the only place I've found was the folks at Accustudio. You would have thought that with all the years and years that this has been available, there would bea HUGE library by now. Divided by geographic region would be nice too! (Palms aren't too fond of wintery wonderlands!)

Sure I can manipulate the library of trees, but I've got SO much better things to be doing with my time. I can make a BMW wireframe model too, but I'd rather just download one. I'm happy to purchase these libraries, but to my knowledge, they just don't exist.

As for he way they look graphically in Revit.... well... don't even get me started. (See 8.1 comment above.) Again, I don't necessarily have the time to update every single plant to look the way it should look. I'm sure we all have tons of blocks of trees in elevations, plan, etc. Did I read somewhere that you can place these in the Tree Family to take the place of those 'Beetle-kill" trees that are the de-Facto tree images (plan view, elevations view, etc)?

I like the idea of trying to create libraries to share, but we also have to get these things to look right.

Kyle

[david.fannon]

Propbably the only thing that you might have to do if you dont like the sketch plant icon is make your own, download something or insert a plant outline block in a new plant family, assign the Accurender plant, done.

Really? Has anyone been able to do this? Because I've been trying to drop some different representitive graphics into the accurender procedureal plants, and the scale is really wierd.

I made a copy of "Tree Deciduous.rfa and added a detail component to represent the tree differently in plan. I used visibility to hide the accurender procedural tree in plan views and I built the icon about 12'-0" accrros, so it's similar to the procedural tree. (see Tree1 below).

However, when I load this into the project, the detail component is HUGE (see Tree2 below). I believe the procedural tree using a scale factor to get the right size, but this is not visible in family types or anywhere else, so I cannot use it to drive a parametric detail component.

Right now I'm trying to determine empirically if there is some mathematical relationship that I can use in a formula, but that's sort of a drag. Thoughts?

[david.fannon]

Update:

So I did the empirical testing and learned that, at least for Tree-Deciduous, the procedural tree starts as 1'-0" tall. When you enter a number like 18'-0" in the parameter "Plant Height" the tree is scaled (in all dimensions) by a factor of 18. This is very useful when setting up other graphic representations for plan or elevation because we can make detail components appear at predictable sizes if we start them with a size of 1'-0" and allow them to scale as well.

For example, a 1'-0" diameter tree symbol nested into the Tree-Deciduous.rfa family will appear 18'-0" in diameter. This would be great for elevations, but I'm trying to adjust the plan graphics. To do that I need to scale this 18'-0" circle down so that the diameter of the detail component matches the diameter of the tree, rather than it's height.

This required another round of empirical testing. I compared the diameter of procedural tree with it's height for every type included in the Tree-Deciduous family. This must be done in a project file as the symbology doesn't change in the family file. It turns out that the diameter of the canopy is always about 55% of the height (it is procedural, after all) All of the values were within 0.0347% of each other, but because I'm that OCD, I averaged them and came up with: 55.3301% as my factor. Note the variation is simple rounding error from the dimensions and 55.33% or even just 55% will work just fine also, trees lacking a hard-edged drip line.

So if you make your detail components based on a 1'-0" diameter circle, and then scale them down by 0.553301 you will be all set. Or just start with a 6.63961502" diameter, 3.31980751" radius circle if you prefer!)

Hopefully the attached screen shot illustrates this more clearly.

The wierd part is that it all works fine with circles, but when I try some more complex geometry from our old cad symbols, the scale shoots up unpredictably, even if I copy-paste into a detail component that worked fine and it's the same size as the circle. Very odd.

[david.fannon]

Further Update:
The wierd part is that it all works fine with circles, but when I try some more complex geometry from our old cad symbols, the scale shoots up unpredictably, even if I copy-paste into a detail component that worked fine and it's the same size as the circle. Very odd.

Turns out that the cad geometry I was using had some screwy little lines and some eliptical curves, which revit didn't like. Once I replaced that geometry with revit arcs it's working perfectly. See the image below for 3 different types, all updating size and detail component, and each assigned to a different accurender tree as well.

[ajayholland]

Nice work, David. Thanks.

~AJH

[knurrebusk]

Check out Vue 6.5 xstream/Infinite, it´s a perfect tool.
No problem getting complex Revit shapes into it´s world.

Still I believe the Crysis Engine is the future, has roads/pads everything.
And if Architecture get´s boring you can make a game

[SkiSouth]

David - good post. Thanks for working this out for all of us.

[iru69]

David, good work. I never had picked up on the exact percentage relationship between the procedural tree's width to height. Very nice to know.

A couple of things I've found work well (which I believe have been similarly described elsewhere before):

I'm a little OCD myself about liking to keep everything pure Revit. However, one place I make an exception is plantings (unfortunately due to the ridiculous hoops we're forced to jump through).

DWG files are easily scalable. So I export out all my planting symbols to DWG (or draw them in AutoCAD - including hatches and use of color - solid fill hatches will converted to filled regions in Revit). I draw them with a 12" diameter.

(a pure Revit detail component will work fine, but if you use complex geometry or filled regions, you'll have to draw it at the exact scale as David describes, because the Scale tool will not work on filled regions for instance. The DWG allows a more scaling flexibility in my experience)

I then import the DWG file into a new Revit planting family (1). Now you can assign any scale factor to the dwg file in it's properties box (unfortunately you can not link the scale factor to a parameter and make its scale factor adjustable on the fly). So, in this case, you'd use a scale factor of .55 to get it to match up as David describes. Personally, I'll usually use .5 to make the math easy when I want a 12' diameter tree on my site plan.

Next, load the newly created planting family into a (hosting) planting family (2). You can have this hosting planting family use the rendering type of your choice (geometrical, accurender procedural or RPC). The size of the nested planting family (1) will be controlled by the height of the hosting planting family (2).

I've tried loading detail components directly into the planting family as David describes, and I've run into the unpredictable scale issue. Using the above method appears to circumvent that issue.