Street Furniture Library

Street furniture library objects can be either parametric or static objects.

Static objects are merged into the current scene directly from mesh objects derived from existing 3ds Max Design (.max) files. Parametric objects are derived directly from their 3ds Max Design plug-in class. Civil View ships with some standard parametric furniture plug-ins such as gantries and lamp columns.

The CivilViewObjects material is automatically assigned to all furniture objects, except when the object definition uses a 3ds Max Design (.max) file as its source and the object within that .max file already contains a material pre-assignment.  In this case, the Override Pre-Assigned Materials option on the Civil View Preferences panel dictates whether this pre-assigned material is retained or overwritten by the CivilViewObjects material.

Object INI File Structure

Street Furniture Object INI File

[Parameters] Length= Width= Height=   [Object] Source= Proxy= Preview=   [Placement] DefaultInterval=   [Group] Name=

[Parameters]

Length, Width, and Height

Specify the dimensional characteristics of parametric objects. If the object is non-parametric or does not feature one or more of these parameters, these values will be ignored as appropriate.

[Object]

Indicates the source files or classes of the furniture object.

Source

Can be used in one of two ways depending on whether the source is a static object or a parametric object:

• For static objects, names the external 3ds Max Design (.max) file that contains the furniture object. This .max file must exist within the /objlibs/furniture folder within a current Civil View resource kit. File names can be specified with or without the ".max" file name extension.

• For parametric objects, a 3ds Max Design object plug-in class must be specified. Class names must end with "()" in order to be recognised as a plug-in class rather than a .max file. Several parametric object plug-ins ship with Civil View as standard, for example:
  • Vsp_Gantry()
  • Vsp_Lamp()

Proxy

Not currently used.

Preview

Names the thumbnail image used in the Object Placement Style Editor to provide a preview of the geometry associated with this Object Definition file. If this entry is blank or the file cannot be found, a blank thumbnail is displayed. This thumbnail image file must exist within the /objlibs/previews folder within a current Civil View resource kit.

[Placement]

DefaultInterval

Sets the default spacing interval at which this furniture object is placed. This value can be overwritten manually in the Object Placement Style Editor at any time, and is intended purely as a default "start" value.

[Group]

Name

Names the category sub-group in which this object should be listed. If no name is specified, the object is listed as ungrouped.

Adding Custom Street Furniture to the Library

Please also refer to the general instructions on object library customization in Civil View Object Library Overview.

Static Furniture Objects

To add street furniture to a library, add a .max file that contains your own furniture object to the /objlibs/furniture folder within the Civil View resource kit you want to use. Then create an associated INI file, in the format described above, and place it in the same folder. Multiple INI files can reference the same .max file.

Parametric Furniture Objects

To create custom parametric objects, you need to use MAXScript. See the topic "Scripted SimpleObject Plug-ins" in the MAXScript help.