VectorWorks Plants Libraries

The VectorWorks Designer and Landmark come with a huge Plants library that provide a ready-to-customize plant symbols, which can used to build your own plants library in no time.

You can access the libraries from  [Vectorworks]\Libraries\Plants

Xfrog library

In the plant library from Xfrog, you'll find photorealistic and artistic images of plants in top, elevation and 3D views, in two seasonal views and two growth stages.

The Xfrog library provide plants imagery, this means it will give high realisticty to your design, but it will not benefit from some advanced rendering methods in Plant placement (like plant shadows in plan view, mass overlapping plants and vector outline controlling).

The Xfrog library provides:

• 1896 Photorealistic Color Images showing 195 Different Plants 
  
• 255 Artistic Images in 3 color modes showing 87 Different Plants
  
• 1270 Grayscale and silhouette Images showing 195 Different Plants 

Using Xfrog library

The Xfrog library can be easily used to create plant symbols:

1. Open any file from the Xfrog top symbols, and select the desired symbol to use
   
2. Insert the symbol in the Top/Plan view, this will form the 2D Graphics of the plant symbol
   
3. Open the corresponding file from the Xfrog IP symbols, and select the desired symbol to use
   
4. Insert the symbol, this will form the 3D Graphics of the plant symbol (it resembles a large plus sign in Top/Plan view)
   
5. Select the 2D symbol and select AEC -> Plants -> Create New Plant
   
6. Fill-in the plant details, then click OK
   
7. Select the 3D symbol of the plant, and select Copy
   
8. Right click on the new Plant symbol in the Resources Browser, and select Edit
   
9. Select 3D Graphics
   
10. You will be in the Isolated mode, select paste and snap the pasted symbol to the already-there 3D locus
    
11. Click Exit Plant
    

Use the plant as needed

Plant Objects 

While the Xfrog library is an imagery library, the Plant Objects library on the other hand is a vector library that provides advanced 2D plant symbols that take advantage of:

• 2D plant symbols rendering (plant shadows, mass overlapping plants and vector outline controlling)
  
• Classes capabilities (and how its settings can be applied globally)
  
• The customization options when viewed in different Viewports (using Class overrides)

It provides 50 different 2D plants symbols

Using Plant Objects library

By customizing a viewport visible and invisible classes and setting a class opacity, a single Design layer can be viewed in different states and presentations, as the sub-parts of the plants symbols belong to different classes, they are:

• Plant-Component-Outline: This class is used for the outside perimeter of the plant.
  
• Plant-Component-Color Fill: This class is used for the background color in shrubs and smaller plants.
  
• Plant-Component-Bloom: This class is used for plants that have a bloom. If the blooms are too bright they can be 'toned down' by reducing the class opacity setting in the Class Settings dialog.
  
• Plant-Component-Canopy: This class is used for the colored fill in tree canopies.
  
• Plant-Component-Interior Linework: This class is used to control the visibility of detail lines that are used in the interior of plants. At smaller scales it may become desirable that these lines are not drawn.
  
• Plant-Component-Tags: This class is used for plant tags (and polygons) and is set in the Place Plant Settings - > Edit Definition dialog on the default Prefs tab.
  

The Plant Objects library also suggests that when the plant symbols are placed in Design Layers they should be classified under the classes Plants-New, Plants-Remove, and Plants-Existing. These allow the user to discriminate between the plants based on the intent.

For instance class Plants-Remove will be invisible except on a Demolition Plan. Plants-Existing would be grayed on a Planting Plan but left visible on a colored presentation drawing.

The easiest way to browse the different effects on plants is to open the Plant Objects.vwx file in VectorWorks (not in the Resources Browser) and see the different viewports and their overriding effects on the classes.