Plant Massing

Mass Outline

Select a plant outline style

The outline’s pen attributes can be changed for selected plant objects in the Attributes palette.

Mass Plants

Hides the details of plants that overlap to easily create a plant mass. A continuous outline is created around overlapping plants, and internal details are hidden. The 2D appearance of the massed group is controlled by the back polygon in the plant symbol group, so massing could cause the plant to display without a fill color. (An alternative way of hiding plant details is to use the Plant-Components classes to control the visibility of elements within the plant symbol.)

Plants that contain bitmap images cannot be massed.

Plant Shadow in Plan View

Specifies special shadow effects that display in Top/Plan view only

No Shadow

Omits shadows from the Top/Plan view

Use Document Preference Settings

Uses the settings from the Plan Shadows pane on the Document Preferences dialog box; click Settings to review or edit these document-wide shadow settings (see Document preferences: Plan Shadows tab)

Custom

Creates a custom shadow setting for this plant style; click Settings to open the Plant Shadow Settings dialog box (see Plant shadow settings)

Graphics

The plant graphics in a plant style can easily be created from a symbol, from an existing plant, from automatically generated 3D geometry, or from an image.

Plant graphics can also be created from 2D and optionally 3D drawing objects, including xFrog plant images and image props. Once the plant has been created, edit the symbol components as necessary; see Editing symbol definitions.

Edit Current Graphics

Closes the Plant Style dialog to set all parameters, and opens Object editing mode to edit the 2D or 3D graphics for the plant symbol

Copy from Symbol

Obtains the 2D or 3D plant geometry from a symbol in the file or from a library.

The Copy From Symbol 2D or Copy From Symbol 3D dialog box opens.

Click the plant selector. From the Resource Selector, double-click a plant resource to activate it, and then specify whether to resize the diameter and/or height of the symbol geometry.

Generate

Generates 3D plant geometry when the 3D representation of the symbol used to create the plant is not suitable; see Generating 3D plant geometry from a shape

Create from Image

Generates 3D plant geometry when the 3D representation of the image used to create the plant is not suitable.

The Create From Image dialog box opens.

Click the image selector. From the Resource Selector, double-click an image resource to activate it, and then specify whether the diameter and/or height of the plant geometry image.

Preview

Displays a preview of the 3D geometry to be generated. Select a View for the preview.

Parameters

Canopy Shape

Select a general shape for the tree canopy; the preview dynamically displays the shape

Canopy Spread

Sets the diameter of the canopy shape at its widest point

First Branch Height

Sets the height where the trunk ends and the canopy starts

Canopy Height

Specifies the height of the canopy, not including the trunk

Item Height

Specifies the total height of the canopy including the trunk