How do you work with styled walls?

[Ramon PG]

I have new 6" plastered CMU walls that are plain, tile finished on 1 side and on 2 sides.

 

Question: Do you have 3 wall styles? Or do you have 1 style and turn on or off the tile finish? 

 

 

 

[zoomer]

First, I always postulate that BIM CADs need to separate

Structure from Finish.

You may likely have 10-20 Finishes and 10-15 Structure Styles.

But in all needed combinations that does no more make sense.

 

OK that needs also intelligent PIO Insertions like Windows and Doors

that are able to cut into more than a single Wall.

 

If the Finishes are defined by Space settings and or outer/inner

building element state - don't know.

 

My other CAD at least allows to manually assign cutting elements to

also cut other objects. And for Styles, it has an option for a variable

thickness for one of the components.

(Like the same concrete Slab package that uses multiple thicknesses

for the structural Slab, according to bearing needs)

This saves a lot of Styles or their similar duplicates.

 

As we are in VW  ....

 

44 minutes ago, Ramon PG said:

Do you have 3 wall styles? Or do you have 1 style and turn on or off the tile finish? 

 

 

As long as it makes sense I do have Style Duplicates.

Exceeding that, I may start searching for some workarounds.

[Tom W.]

1 hour ago, Ramon PG said:

Or do you have 1 style and turn on or off the tile finish? 

 

I personally would not want to go down this route.

 

I often apply tiles (+ adhesive) as a separate Wall over the front of another Wall.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, zoomer said:

First, I always postulate that BIM CADs need to separate

Structure from Finish.

You may likely have 10-20 Finishes and 10-15 Structure Styles.

But in all needed combinations that does no more make sense.

 

 

What @zoomersays.

 

The current system doesn't really work very well.

 

I have a project at the moment where there are internal and external insulation systems applied to existing walls. Because there are so many variations of those existing walls (different thicknesses, internal finishes and so on) if I want to change the spec of one of those insulation systems I have to go and change it in a multitude of wall styles one by one.

 

Have considered the parallel walls approach and in retrospect on this project it might have been less work to have to edit window/door openings twice in each instance, than to have to edit multiple wall styles.

[Boh]

There are various ways to set up wall styles that might suit different projects. My baseline is to make a new style for each wall type of build up but I make sure to set all component and wall style attributes to use class attributes. This means I need a set of wall component classes which wall define the texture of walls with components using that class.

My other baseline is to set the class of the wall core to use the wall class. This means for example the walls placed in a black “proposed wall” class will have a black wall core and the same style placed in a white “existing wall” class will have a white core. 
Using class attributes means that if I decide to change the texture of a certain finish, I just edit the class all wall styles using that component class will update.

Another advantage of using class attributes is that you can use viewport class overides. So I’m one view you can have a pink wall and in another view of the same wall you can have the wall appear blue. 
 

In essence using classes along with wall styles provides simple modelling with flexibility whilst providing global editing capability across multiple wall styles.

 

A project can easily get more complicated but as mentioned this is just a baseline. 

[line-weight]

Using class components lets you update textures globally but unfortunately not the thickness or order of those components.

 

Something like a "component style" (which could contain more than one component) would make this a lot easier.

 

So each wall would have a core style, an interior finish style and an exterior finish style. If I had ten slightly different wall types all with the same external finish and I wanted to make the finish material thicker, or add an extra component, I'd edit the exterior finish style once, instead of having to go into each of the 10 wall styles individually.

[zoomer]

11 hours ago, line-weight said:

(different thicknesses, internal finishes and so on) if I want to change the spec of one of those insulation systems I have to go and change it in a multitude of wall styles one by one.

 

I ran into this too.

Meanwhile we have building materials which helps to creates new Styles from scratch.

But changes in thickness can get very tedious.

 

So we also need "Component Styles"

E.g. Concrete-Style A : concrete X, 20 cm, structural, ....

 

And when you have to change thickness to 25 cm in Style, all Wall Styles will follow (?)

[zoomer]

4 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Something like a "component style"

 

😃

 

I think we agree.

(But you were faster)

[Tom W.]

Another approach would be the ability to edit multiple Wall (or Slab or Roof or...) Styles en masse in a worksheet.

[Tom W.]

6 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Something like a "component style" (which could contain more than one component)

 

Presumably what @Christiaan + possibly others wished for elsewhere which was the ability to 'group' parallel Walls would basically achieve the same thing? Assuming the grouping meant the joined walls could have objects inserted in them as if they were a single wall. A bit like multiple Simple Materials combined together to create a single Compound Material.

[line-weight]

Just now, Tom W. said:

 

Presumably what @Christiaan + possibly others wished for elsewhere which was the ability to 'group' parallel Walls would basically achieve the same thing? Assuming the grouping meant the joined walls could have objects inserted in them as if they were a single wall. A bit like multiple Simple Materials combined together to create a single Compound Material.

 

Yes, I think it would achieve the same thing.

 

The group would obviously have to be intelligent enough to know that if the thickness of the core changed, the lines of the parallel ones would readjust accordingly.

 

Combined with more control of wall-joining this would make walls massively more easy to work with.

[zoomer]

5 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

A bit like multiple Simple Materials combined together to create a single Compound Material.

 

A "Component Container" ?

[zoomer]

Opposed to Walls,

for Slabs it is pretty easy.

Myself and many others use Slab sandwiches ....

The Structural Slab and a separate Floor Packe Slab on top.

If needed also an Insulation package (or Ceiling stuff) below.

 

Does currently not work for Walls because of the inserted PIOs.

Does work for Slabs mainly because Slab openings usually do not change that often.

 

But a change in thickness would be no fun for Slab packages either.

 

[Tom W.]

I found the posts:

 

Just now, zoomer said:

 

A "Component Container" ?

 

Whatever VW calls it you can guarantee it will be wrong 😄

[Ramon PG]

On 11/22/2023 at 4:35 PM, zoomer said:

First, I always postulate that BIM CADs need to separate

Structure from Finish.

You may likely have 10-20 Finishes and 10-15 Structure Styles.

But in all needed combinations that does no more make sense.

 

OK that needs also intelligent PIO Insertions like Windows and Doors

that are able to cut into more than a single Wall.

 

If the Finishes are defined by Space settings and or outer/inner

building element state - don't know.

 

My other CAD at least allows to manually assign cutting elements to

also cut other objects. And for Styles, it has an option for a variable

thickness for one of the components.

(Like the same concrete Slab package that uses multiple thicknesses

for the structural Slab, according to bearing needs)

This saves a lot of Styles or their similar duplicates.

 

As we are in VW  ....

 

 

 

As long as it makes sense I do have Style Duplicates.

Exceeding that, I may start searching for some workarounds.

 

I would agree that room finishes should be inked to walls in the room.