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Pete (STZ)

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Posts posted by Pete (STZ)

  1. we have tried 3 projects in the past 12-14 months in full BIM using VW2011....everything from a two storey house alts and adds, 12 storey 165 unit apartment building and development of 5 town houses and villas running into the same problems as you christian - stuffing around with wall and floor junctions, then an engineer changes the slab profile or we move a wall and have to do it all again....

    Doing 1:100 plans and elevations and 1:50 sections (using them as a base to draw over....

    After all of this and experiencing all the annoyances we have with creating the model, I have been looking very seriously at Revit and Archicad and had many interrogations with 'experts' and done my own test projects using the trial version...

    Result: Revit is the far superior modeller - even for simple projects, ArchiCAD wins for getting the stuff out, project setup, interface, Revit wins on compatibility with other consultants (many who are moving to Revit from ACAD).

    As for vectorworks - nothing beats it for making communication easy - pity it is so bloody hard to get it to work... it needs the constraint locks of Revit, and the teamwork of Archicad, and the section (both vertical and horizontal) settings (to control both lineweights AND depth of cut of both AC and R....storeys that work (preferably like Revit) then perfecto!... oh and vector patterns.

    P

  2. This discussion has been good, and has helped crystalise some of the workflow issues I had been having..

    In short currently in VW you need to to a class override on the elevation views to get the elevation lineweight to look good.

    The problem still exists where you want to create 'depth' of view or highlight 'profiles' of the building.

    I do:

    -A class override of all walls to be 0.15mm

    - 80% opaque white fill over the parts of the elevation you want to fade (not ideal as it makes these bits a bit fuzzy)

    - Trace over some profile lines where you say want the edges of a building / part to read a bit thicker with a 0.35mm line

    This combined with adding hatches in the elevation (as I think patterns give a crap looking drawings)are all work around we need to do to get the 3d elevations looking as good as the 2D ones.

  3. I am of two minds about this

    Always check 'use class attributes'. You have always better control through classes.

    Generally I agree, however we often have a number of different types of masonry wall or framed walls with insulation, some without or slightly different widths etc.... I often find the best way do deal with communicating the different types is to apply different hatches.

    So we 'use class attributes' for all linework, however the fill is applied by wall component type.

    Also I have issue with lack of control for the way line weights and fills are applied to walls when used in 3d.

    For example: the wall is set to class attributes and the class has a red fill and a line weight of 0.3mm. This is how it will be viewed in both plan and elevation. However in elevation generally you want much finer line work, and often don't want the same colours.

    IN SUMMARY:

    "Edit wall attributes" - controls how the wall is viewed in 3d and when 'show wall components' is turned off in a viewport.

    "Wall components" control how it is viewed in plan

    Except the edit 'wall attributes' will be always be visible unless the 'wall component' settings block it out - ie if you have a wall attribute with a pink fill but a component with a none fill the pink fill with be visible.

    I have a three generic wall classes - New, Exg and Demolition. Every wall is on one of these. Then a number of component walls - frame, masonry, cavity, low.

    Dworks: I tried the 'none' line on for the main wall class but it made the walls transparent in hidden line view.?

  4. It is easiest to have all the classes in the template file.... We generally use the standard vectorworks ones with a few additions and substractions....

    We have two templates.... a blank one and one with full classes - when we add a new class we import the class from a standard file.

    The template files and the standards files are located on the network.. so any refinements we make are easily updated for all new files created.

    The key with classes is to be able to judge how to have enough to be able to manage your drawing information but not too much that it causes a headache.

    I have found the standard vectorworks ones a good start.

    (And we do have autoclassing turned on - and like DWorks every symbol in our library is set to the appropriate class - everything to make it easier so you don't have to think about applying classes)

  5. Yes - and I thought I was the only one - We do apartment buildings and the most efficient way to do the apartments is to create symbols for each type - however if for some reason you have different floor heights you have to create a new symbol.

    You start to get to the point where the software dictates the building design - not good.

  6. we really love vectorworks because you can make the 2d elevations look so great - good control of lineweights, hatches, fills, gradients etc...

    But in 3d it is a different problem. The elevations look clunky, so just thought I would get some advice on getting the settings right.

    In the absence of separate controls for how a wall looks in plan, section and elevation what is the best way to set the combination of classes, and wall type settings...

    It is a pity that this is not clear anywhere in any VW help.

    For a wall... there is:

    -The class the wall is on which you can control fill and line weight....

    - the wall attributes

    - The wall components.

    I currently have the wall types as:

    The best way to get the walls to look good in plan and elevation is to:

    Have the class showing the setting that you want to be, (say 0.15, black with white fill) and set the wall attributes to 'class' then set the wall components to the fill, lineweights and colours you want to see in plan. (eg. hatch and 0.3 lineweights)

    However, if you want to use the 'hide wall components' then all you get is the lineweights of the wall attributes - which is the same as the elevation.

    What to others do?

  7. The 'Date Stamp' works very well. We use it all the time in title blocks.

    When you export the pdf or print make sure the "Reset all plug in objects' is ticked in the print / export dialog box.

    Set it once and forget!

    • Like 1
  8. I seem to do quite a few houses with split levels / mezanine type arrangements.

    In starting the 3d journey, i have tried both of the options above. I have tried separate layers for each floor level - very easy to control wall heights then, and also just adjust the slabs / wall heights in parts. Neither is better than the other.

    I just changed one project from separate layers for each level to one layer for levels that are similar to resolve dwg export issues and make it a bit simpler.

    When you have a a mezzanine type of arrangement it all becomes very inefficient - you want to be able to just have the one wall run all the way to the roof, but then you only see that on the lower level plan, and not at the upper mezzanine level.

    I guess this one of the limitations of vectorworks hybrid 2d/3d environment

    Although my pet hate is that if you have to export dwg files of the design layers then you only get the contents of each layer - which becomes annoying as the recipient has to piece it all together

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