MaltbyDesign

That's what I'm doing now. The little lane house I'm designing is a make-work project for myself while I'm not busy. I figured if I didn't do it now, I might never get to it.

No offence taken. I do have some of the manuals and tend to look for what I'm trying to do in them before asking here. I couldn't find anything in his manuals that described how to create/edit wall styles. Unfortunately I'm learning VW slowly between projects being done in AutoCad, so it often seems I go one step forward and two steps back.

I'm designing a small lane house (see my thread on walls with multiple materials) and want to explore different siding options in my 3D renderings. One of the finishes I want to use is a cement panel rain screen system. The panels would be sized to suit the fenestration of the house and, rather than butt the panels against one another, there would be gaps (reveals) both horizontally and vertically to delineate each panel. I can't imagine defining something this complex in a wall style and have thought of two ways I might achieve my goal. The first is to simply create a wall style with a seamless exterior panel with the colour and texture I want and then simply add lines to represent the reveals after I've created elevation views and perspectives on their own sheets (by adding the additional information to the viewports). The second method would be for me to use a wall style that shows studs, exterior sheathing and interior drywall and then add the exterior components (the rain screen strapping/air gap and cement panels) as individual extruded shapes (these objects would be separate from the wall style behind them). This would be more work but might give a more realistic appearance in my 3D views and exterior elevations, sections, etc. Has anyone down anything like this before? Any recommendations or feedback on successful work flows for such things? Thanks in advance!

Hi Wes, I took an existing wall style and modified it to include an air gap between the sheathing and the siding. I also changed the siding to a panel (I'm using cement board on vertical battens). I then renamed the wall style and replaced the exterior wall styles with my newly created style. The problem now is that I can no longer join the walls (of the new style). Is there a setting that I messed up when I created this new wall style? Edited to ad: Never mind. I found the problem, I had accidentally toggled to the capped mode.

Thanks again, Wes. I followed your steps and was able to get my sheathing and siding to offset to cover my rim joists. Great tip! Thanks for the wall style. I downloaded it and added it to a new Library folder that I created for new wall styles. It looks as though this will give me flexibility to change the exterior finish to what ever I want to make it. I'll have to spend some time playing around with it and see how it goes. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions and offer your experience. It's much appreciated.

Wes, Thanks so much for the explanation! I'm going to try your preferred method. Can you tell me if there is a tutorial for creating wall styles from scratch? The VW library doesn't seem to include the sorts of wall finishes or rain screen components that I need to utilize and I'd like to learn to create walls styles to suit my needs. Thanks again for all your help!

Thanks for the useful information, Wes. I think that you do what I'm attempting to achieve with my drawings. You bring up the idea of 'forcing' sheathing and cladding to 'run long', which is something I've been trying to figure out how to do. I have my walls sitting on the floor 'slab' of floor sheathing, joists and rim joists. I don't care for finished band boards and would like to have my exterior wall finish run beyond the face of my rim joists. Is there a tutorial that shows how to do this?

Here's a link to a little lane house project I'm working on now. I haven't done anything about sorting out the siding yet. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21255348/Coachhouse2.vwx

Peter, I understand what you mean. I'm trying to model my buildings like you, that is I 'build' the building and I think I'm struggling with some of the aspects of making the software do what I want it to do. I want to add as much information as I can, hoping that will translate to saving me time when I start developing working drawings in 2D. Is it okay to post a .vwx file here for people to look at and tell me if what I'm doing makes sense?

Peter, you may be right. All I want to do is what I do when I draw by hand, and that's define a floor-to-floor height without having to think a whole lot about it. I'm not sure why I struggle so much with getting my head around object based drawing as opposed to drawing single lines...

Patrick, after I wrote my question I did some looking around for clues about storey setup and you're right, the discussion is pretty extensive! I'll have to spend some time fiddling around and try to come up with a work flow that makes sense to me. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate it!

Patrick, I was watching the video you linked to and was attempting to follow along. The one thing I seem to be having problems with is figuring out the best way to set up my storeys. If I use the Vectorworks template at start up, I get a bunch of Layers with slabs, ceilings, roofs, etc. In the video he simply identifies Floor 1, Floor 2, Floor 3, and Floor 4. When he converted the model to exterior walls, the end result seemed to allow recesses at each floor level to accommodate the floor assembly. Is there an easy way to set up storeys that is tried and true that everyone but us beginners know about?

Very useful, thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to help, Patrick.

Interesting. How easy is it to change the initial massing model to working drawings? Can that be done, or do I have to start from scratch and create more refined drawings once I've done massing models?

Thanks for the clarification. Ultimately, would I be best to build my model with styled walls? I'm trying to develop a system of creating working drawings that will contain all the necessary information and it seems to me that the styled wall would achieve that goal. Or am I missing something?

Thanks for that tip, Patrick. Does this work when one has already created a plan with wall styles that include siding? Or do you need to use something simpler, like a wall style that is showing framing only? Will this method retain the information in a 2D view and a Section?

Vincent and Josh, thank you for the suggestions. I had thought about your suggestion Josh and had hoped that there might be a more graceful way of achieving my goal. Vincent, I think I understand what you propose. I just have to experiment with the components (I've never gotten into editing the components of walls, so hopefully I can figure it out). Thanks again.

Is there a way to create an exterior wall that has a hierarchy of different siding materials? Fo example, I might have Shiplap siding from grade to window sill height, followed by a wood water table and then from there to the soffit I might have stucco or smooth cedar. Is it possible to define these finishes in a single wall type? I'm mostly thinking translating from a 2D floor plan to a 3D rendering or even elevations and sections and trying to figure out the most effective way of inputing this information. Is there a standard method for this that might be illustrated somewhere? I come from an hand draughting and AutoCad background where plans were drawn as just the studs or concrete (or other material) and then the finish materials were only drawn on elevations, sections and perspectives. But it appears that with Vectorworks there is the opportunity to include this information right from the beginning to be included in the overall drawing. This is a simple thing if one is dealing with a single finish, but I'm scratching my head where multiple finishes are involved. Any tips would be much appreciated.

Well, I guess I had better go shopping. ETA: Actually, I just double checked and I do have 4 gigs of RAM. 2 in each slot. Would I see a noticeable difference on my machine if I upgraded to 8? I have a late 2008 15 inch macbook pro.

Thanks Peter. I'll monkey around a bit and see how it works out.

I've never had a problem with 2 gigs. Both Vectorworks and Autocad have run fine. Does 2013 need more?

Actually, now I'm wondering if it is possible to add a segment to an existing roof. I have a house with an existing gabled roof and need to add an addition. If I treat the entire floor plan as a single 'mass' and convert it to a roof, I can't get the roof to look how it really should. I'm wondering if I can create the existing roof, then create the additions roof and then somehow combine them?

I think that it is just a matter of Edit Group and then delete the shape that you initially added.

...the program has locked up while "Loading Architectural Workspace..." and I can't quit the program, which means I can't properly shut down my computer. Any suggestions on how to proceed? I've never had any Vectorworks software, prior to this release, behave is such a way. Edited to add: I can force quit the program, but couldn't do a regular quit when it was locked up.

That worked brilliantly. Thank you!