Non parallel walls tool

[dvdvarch]

The ability to create non parallel walls would be vital to work on existing buildings and in renovation project! 

 

I have been looking for this function for years and I am quite suprised that it is not in the roadmap yet, I haven't found neither in the features request forum, does it look so important to me only? what do you think?

regards, 

Davide

 

[Kevin Allen]

what do you mean by non-parallel walls? Walls with uneven thicknesses?

[zoomer]

Walls with slanted sides ?

Walls that start thick at one end and get thinner over length ?

 

And more important,

do you only need simple single component Walls for e.g. existing old buildings,

or complex multi component Wall Styles ?

(Where certain components should keep their thickness while one needs to

 change ?)

 

[zoomer]

8 hours ago, dvdvarch said:

The ability to create non parallel walls would be vital to work on existing buildings and in renovation project! 

 

 

I would love to hear more about your workflow with existing buildings.

Is it mostly about 2D Plan view, or also in 3D ?

 

How detailed do you want the imperfections documented ?

 

Yes, in VW you are a bit limited and there have been several threads

about how to workaround, e.g. with Wall features to not lose Wall PIO

intelligence and parametric and such ...

 

 

Beside VW I also use Bricscad.

Bricscad works different, simplified you do standard Solid Modeling

and finally apply (or let do the AI apply) IFC tags and Compositions ...

 

So in Bricscad there is any freedom to slant or conify Walls in length by just

rotating one ore more of its faces or move edges ...

Also working with point clouds from laser measurements is great !

 

 

But what is your need for VW Walls or other PIOs ?

 

I am interested to know if you are needing real 3D accuracy of a non

planar Wall surface - like by a Mesh or NURBS Surface, to be able

to create exact Sections at related positions to automate/guaranty

for adding furniture or woodworks ....

 

As I am more interested in getting the essence of what it was meant

to be designed before the inaccuracies.

E.g. I would doing hard to snap to a point cloud to distribute columns

or even model each column differently for their build imperfections ...

I would snap to point cloud ... 7,18; 7,21; 7,195;  .... I think they meant

a 7,2 m grid  and would model it like this and such things.

Which might be counter productive depending on purpose ...

 

Bricscad has Tools to estimate and create a surface from Point Clouds

at a given tolerance, which is great.

But that means that such a planar e.g Wall surface will not be anyhow

orientated to XYZ axes - it it may have been meant or designed,

nor include all imperfections needed to prefabricate an e.g. perfectly

fitting wood desktop.

 

And it even has tools to flatten or orient or un-rotate these Faces to

XYZ or even move them to even dimensions to a typical building

hardware Grid automatically.

Which is the ultimate imperfection cleanup and move to planned

idealism.

As said not suitable for all purposes but just a personal preference.

 

 

So how far in between do you need or want to go to portray build

reality in VW vs an idealized how it was meant to be build ?

(Don't trust our Dimensions, remeasure locally)

 

[zoomer]

E.g. a current existing Building drives my crazy with measurement of existing.

 

I do want existing accuracy - so that it doe no more happen that you decide

furniture placement from an (early) measurement, start building up a bed and

realize that it will never fit between the Door Jamb and Wall corner ...

In this case just a problem of trusting an "existing Plan's" Door misalignment.

But I do know/measure that for some masonry interior Walls, the builder

must have hade some slight plan rotation activated when building them ....

Or they are just not straight in XY.

 

Nevertheless I modeled them straight (!) but in a way that more important

rooms use/get the minimum of both lengths at each ends of the room.

So that any critical furniture insertion should finally fit when counting

on Dimensions.

[dvdvarch]

Thank you Zoomer and Kevin for your comments, 

 

Yes, I mean walls that start at a certain thicknes and finish at a different one (sorry for my weak english).

Here in Italy we work a lot on old building renovations, I would like to work on them in 3D/BIM as I would do with a new construction. So I would like to make a 3D model with a certain level of accuracy, let's say up to a 1:50 scale (I would probably draw more detailed features as old school 1:20/1:1 2D drawings, but potentially I could do them in 3d too). The best would be to be able to manage components as happens with standard walls. Actually Vectorworks is able to manage variations in the thicknes of them yet, it does in slabs with drainage tool. 

 

To clarify what I mean I attahch an example, below you see the survey dwg and on it, in solid gray, the walls drawn in Vectorworks. 

In other cases I have been modeling those walls just extruding but this is a larger project and I would avoid this solution since I need then to extract quantities.

 

How could I solve in your opinion? you made me come up with the idea of making wall recess shaped as the part of wall that I need cut, what do you think?

 

I don't know bricscad, maybe archicad does something similar? Anyway, now switching software is a difficult option.

 

 

 

 

 

[Tom W.]

2 minutes ago, dvdvarch said:

Thank you Zoomer and Kevin for your comments, 

 

Yes, I mean walls that start at a certain thicknes and finish at a different one (sorry for my weak english).

Here in Italy we work a lot on old building renovations, I would like to work on them in 3D/BIM as I would do with a new construction. So I would like to make a 3D model with a certain level of accuracy, let's say up to a 1:50 scale (I would probably draw more detailed features as old school 1:20/1:1 2D drawings, but potentially I could do them in 3d too). The best would be to be able to manage components as happens with standard walls. Actually Vectorworks is able to manage variations in the thicknes of them yet, it does in slabs with drainage tool. 

 

To clarify what I mean I attahch an example, below you see the survey dwg and on it, in solid gray, the walls drawn in Vectorworks. 

In other cases I have been modeling those walls just extruding but this is a larger project and I would avoid this solution since I need then to extract quantities.

 

How could I solve in your opinion? you made me come up with the idea of making wall recess shaped as the part of wall that I need cut, what do you think?

 

I don't know bricscad, maybe archicad does something similar? Anyway, now switching software is a difficult option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But this is just in plan - what about 3D? No doubt the walls lean vertically as well + possibly taper in thickness in this direction too. Plus they may twist (the lean may vary across the wall's length). This has certainly been my experience of modelling old buildings. This is a bit more complex than how Slab Drainage works + I'm not sure how practical/feasible it would be to do parametrically. That's not to say I don't sympathise with what you're saying + am very interested to know how people tackle these issues + what ideas they have for improving things. In one project where I had a very old, very irregularly-shaped building I ended up modelling it twice: first a 3D solid-modelled version where I matched the geometry very closely to the actual architecture (I was modelling from a point cloud) + then a second one modelled using the parametric tools where I rationalised the structure to best fit it to the 'realistic' version. The first version just showed the existing architecture, the second version the existing + proposed architecture. This approach worked quite well as both versions existed in the file + I could switch between them at any time to check that objects/features I was placing in the 'BIM' model would work with the slightly different (+ more accurate) dimensions of the 'real' model. And it allowed me to use the 'real' model for producing as-existing drawings + the 'BIM' model for all the proposed drawings. It was still quite hard to model the 'BIM' version using the parametric tools because the walls were all at different angles/thicknesses (in plan) + needed to incorporate all sorts of protrusions + other features, but to have attempted to make it even more accurate (in terms of replicating the lean/twist of the walls) would have been a complete nightmare + brought a whole host of additional problems such as how to achieve the roof + slab junctions etc.

[Tom W.]

26 minutes ago, dvdvarch said:

In other cases I have been modeling those walls just extruding but this is a larger project and I would avoid this solution since I need then to extract quantities.

 

If you model the architecture using 3D solids then assign Materials to those objects you can report on those Materials exactly the same as if they were assigned to Wall Components.

[dvdvarch]

29 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

In one project where I had a very old, very irregularly-shaped building I ended up modelling it twice

 

Thise could be a way, I actually have a very accurate dwg survey that I may simply extrude as is. Than I could model, as I am actuallt doing, a bim/parametric moodel for practical use, extract interior views, calculate components quantities. 

 

Bytheway, in dreinage tool, the thickness of various components is managed flagging the desired ones as tapered to follow the slope or straight to be parallel to it. For now it would be enough for me to have this possibility just in plan view.

[dvdvarch]

33 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

If you model the architecture using 3D solids then assign Materials to those objects you can report on those Materials exactly the same as if they were assigned to Wall Components.

 

so do you suggest to model each component as one slice of solid? plaster, insulation, bricks, plaster, ... and eventually cutting them one by one for windows and doors? or is there a better way of doing it?

[Tom W.]

Just now, dvdvarch said:

so do you suggest to model each component as one slice of solid? plaster, insulation, bricks, plaster, ... and eventually cutting them one by one for windows and doors? or is there a better way of doing it?

 

In my project the existing architecture was just solid brickwork as it was a very old building so I didn't need to represent different components/materials in that way. There were a couple of areas where render had been applied part way up some of the walls internally which it was important to reflect in the model (because some of these walls were remaining exposed in the final scheme) + yes I just use solid modelling to add these objects.

 

I don't think I actually used this 'real' model for reporting Material quantities although I did consider it: for example, openings that needed filling in with salvaged brickwork I could have reported the quantities of bricks required; or sections of masonry that were being removed I could have reported the quantity of salvaged bricks this was going to generate. But in the end I decided to limit the 'real' model to just the two things I referred to earlier - a dimensionally-accurate 'background model' I could use for reference purposes + something I could use for generating as-existing drawings/imagery - and limit all the BIM stuff (Material reporting) to the parametric model.

 

I'm talking in the past tense but this project is still ongoing. I need to pick it up again actually...

 

14 minutes ago, dvdvarch said:

Bytheway, in dreinage tool, the thickness of various components is managed flagging the desired ones as tapered to follow the slope or straight to be parallel to it. For now it would be enough for me to have this possibility just in plan view.

 

Sure. And I could see how it would work quite well in plan. But in 3D, if you required the Walls to taper in multiple directions at once, I can see it being overly complicated...