Separate Solids and Canopies Tool
As the name suggests, the Separate Solids and Canopies Tool (often just called the "Separate Tool" or the "Separation Tool") is used to identify and separate Solid geometry from Canopy geometry. Unlike the Make Terrain Tool, which is a manual tool in the sense that you have to tell it exactly what geometry to promote, the Separate Tool is an automatic tool: you hit the button and it does all the work for you.
The Separate Solids and Canopies Tool can be accessed from the main menu via the Plugins → Virtualwind → Utility tools → Separate Solids and Canopies sub-menu item, or through the "Utilities" portion on the Virtualwind Plugin toolbar.
![]() |
Although there are no "rules" to using the Separate Tool – it always works – the following section presents some details about the tool that are important to know nonetheless.
Scope
The Separate Tool always operates over all geometry in the entire model. It does not matter if there is currently selected geometry, or if you are editing a Group: all geometry in the entire model is traversed.
The only exception to this rule is with regards to the Terrain Layer: anything that is on the Layer vwPlugin_Terrain is ignored by the Separate Tool. The Separate Tool figures that if something is on the Terrain Layer, it means that you put it there – and want it there.
Completion Time
Since this Tool traverses all geometry in the model, it can take a little while to complete on large models. An hour glass will appear to let you know that it's busy, and will disappear when the operation is done.
Created Layers
The Separation Tool always creates the following Layers, if they do not already exist:
- vwPlugin_Solids: Holds "Solid" geometry (Buildings)
- vwPlugin_Canopies: Holds "Canopy" geometry
- vwPlugin_Images: Holds SketchUp "Image" Entities. These are currently ignored by the Virtualwind Plugin, but may be supported in future versions.
- vwPlugin_Unhandled: Holds all remaining geometry that is not currently support by Virtualwind.
These Layers are created even if nothing gets placed on some of them. For example, the vwPlugin_Images Layer always gets created, even though your model might not have any SketchUp Image Entities.
Nested Solids in Larger Canopies
A Group is placed on the Solid Layer if it is a watertight Solid – that is, if all edges in it have exactly two faces, including the edges in all its sub-Groups. This is a universal rule, regardless of the level of the Group. In particular, it is possible for a low-level sub-Group to be on the Solid Layer, even if its parent fails validation and is on the Canopy Layer. Note that the Export Tools only look at the Layer information of the top-most Groups – sub-Group Layer information is ignored by the Export Tools. Consequently, a Solid-Layer Group within a larger Canopy-Layer Group will always be exported as a Canopy.
Note that the inverse situation can never happen: a large Solid Group can never contain a smaller Canopy Group.
Manually Changing Layers
As with the Terrain Layer, there is no mechanism in place to prevent a user from manually changing a geometry's Layer. In some cases, it might even be desirable to manually move a Group from the Solid Layer (or the Terrain Layer) onto the Canopy Layer. However, nothing should ever manually be placed on the Solid Layer. The Export Tools expect that all geometry on vwPlugin_Solids is, in fact, solid geometry. If it is not, the Export tools will fail.