Data visualisation, some help in setting up new properties for walls (slabs and roofs) please…

[High_Viz]

Hi all, I’m hoping to call upon your collective expertise, I’ve a model of a small house extension, and I’d like to experiment with adding data to building elements like walls, floor and roofs etc.

 

id really like to learn how I can tag a wall type to hold its data, like 60 or 30 minutes fire resistance. I’d also like to record its acoustic properties say 46 or 42dB for example, and a simple way of recording the uvalue of the wall type for some external walls as I build up my specifications.

 

my idea is that I can colour code wall performances using data visualisation… and I’d like to experiment with additional properties I’d tag in wall types such as existing to be retained, existing to be refurbished, existing to be demolished, and new build.

 

anyone know how I’d get started in this, if you can give me a few tips or a link to a tutorial that would be great. I don’t know how to add custom properties to elements, and I’m not sure what I should be looking for… is it record formats? Or object records…? I’m confused.

 

 

your help and guidance is much appreciated.

 

thanks all

Edited March 8 by High_Viz

[Jeff Prince]

1st thing to do is become familiar with all the data fields already present in Wall Styles.

There are fields for Acoustic and Fire Ratings that you can make use of and then report to a Data Tag.

 

For instance, if you put a value in the default Fire Rating field, you can configure a data tag to display it with this definition:

#IfcWallStandardCase#.#Pset_WallCommon#.#FireRating#

But you should do some lessons before diving too deeply into custom data tags....

 

You might want to watch "Refurbishment Workflows", which will demonstrate some record format and data vis techniques

https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/overview/view.php?id=4355

Just compare the contents of the video against the data that is housed within wall styles already before going crazy creating record formats.

For instance, you could repurpose the Wall Style "Function" field to "user-defined" and house the  "Existing - Demo - New" status of a wall.  You could use classes and/or layers to organize walls and visualize them.  You could even add a small component to your walls to hold data values if you wanted to really exploit the system toward easy and rapid editing of data throughout a model, but that can be risky if you don't understand the implications.  You will find there are lots of ways to do what you want.  Just be consistent and try to use what is provided by VWX out of the box within the intended use cases and you should be ok.

 

So after watching the video and if Wall Styles, classes, or layers don't offer the desired places to house your data, you can attach a custom record format to wall objects.

Try to use what the Wall Style provides though, otherwise you will have to attach records to every wall you create.  Magic wand is your friend if you go that route.

 

And now you should have an understanding of data, where it's housed, and how it can be visualized.

Dive into Data Tags and Reports to see how you can retrieve that data and use it for annotations, schedules, and more.

Here's one of the many videos introducing the Data Tag customization topic...

https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/overview/view.php?id=3018

 

It's a lot to learn and some of it can be a bit cryptic at first when you retrieve records or create calculations for reports and data tags (see example above).

However, if you follow the tutorials and experiment a bit, it becomes easier.  Just don't expect to take one 60 minute class and have an immediate mastery 🙂

 

There are lots of examples on the forum of custom data tags, visualizations, and related workflows.

I wouldn't burn too much time on the forum until you have watched some of the introductory classes.

 

Here are a few file for you to play with that illustrate some things...

The Wall Styles file does some of the things you are interested in.

The Cube file shows data visualization technique of Design Layers

 

Wall Style and Tag Example.vwx cube vis.vwx

[E|FA]

1 hour ago, Jeff Prince said:

you could repurpose the Wall Style "Function" field to "user-defined" and house the  "Existing - Demo - New" status of a wall

I attach a custom record for this purpose because I'll also have other object types that need to be tagged.  My workflow is to build the existing conditions model, select all and attach the record and mark everything as "existing".  I save a copy of this file for safety.  I then go through and mark anything needed as "demo".  It turns out that I don't need the "New" data attached because  everything not already marked is new.  I'm sure there are flaws with this system, but it works for me.

[Jeff Prince]

21 minutes ago, E|FA said:

I attach a custom record for this purpose because I'll also have other object types that need to be tagged.  My workflow is to build the existing conditions model, select all and attach the record and mark everything as "existing".  I save a copy of this file for safety.  I then go through and mark anything needed as "demo".  It turns out that I don't need the "New" data attached because  everything not already marked is new.  I'm sure there are flaws with this system, but it works for me.

That’s a great strategy

[Tom W.]

21 hours ago, High_Viz said:

Hi all, I’m hoping to call upon your collective expertise, I’ve a model of a small house extension, and I’d like to experiment with adding data to building elements like walls, floor and roofs etc.

 

id really like to learn how I can tag a wall type to hold its data, like 60 or 30 minutes fire resistance. I’d also like to record its acoustic properties say 46 or 42dB for example, and a simple way of recording the uvalue of the wall type for some external walls as I build up my specifications.

 

my idea is that I can colour code wall performances using data visualisation… and I’d like to experiment with additional properties I’d tag in wall types such as existing to be retained, existing to be refurbished, existing to be demolished, and new build.

 

anyone know how I’d get started in this, if you can give me a few tips or a link to a tutorial that would be great. I don’t know how to add custom properties to elements, and I’m not sure what I should be looking for… is it record formats? Or object records…? I’m confused.

 

 

your help and guidance is much appreciated.

 

thanks all

 

One pretty cool thing you can do once you're feeling adventurous is use a Data Tag to take the fire rating of a Wall + send that data to a Record Format which is attached to the tag itself. Data Tags have a 'Link to data source' function which allows you to send data back to the tagged object or to a Record attached to the tag. In this case, because each of your 'Wall Fire Rating' Data Tags will have the fire rating of the Wall attached to it you can then use Data Vis to colour the tags accordingly e.g. blue for 15mins, orange for 30 mins + red for 60 mins or whatever. So leave the Wall attributes they are + colour code the Data Tags instead to improve the readability of the drawing.

 

Just as another example of the many things you can do with data attached to objects + the tools for extracting/utilising that data.

 

The best thing is to take some time out + play around in a test file + get a feel for how it all works. Search through the videos on the University + watch as many as you can. These ones might be good if you haven't already seen them:

https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=557&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=1114

https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=634&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=1290

 

It's fine to make a mess of things in a test file. Once you have Records, Wall Styles, Data Tags, Worksheets, etc set up + working the way you want them, then save them as resources in your Favorites + bring them into your project file.