Stacked Wall Components

[Ross Harris]

Horizontal viewports will only be any use if they are live (like another BIM platform...) - having to update viewports is an absolute productivity killer.

[DBrown]

On 1/18/2025 at 2:53 PM, Christopher Graye said:

The reason stacked wall components has posed a unique challenge for Vectorworks is the unique way it has a Top/Plan view, which is a sort of context-less pseudo floor plan.  It works great if there is no vertical variation to your model on a given layer, and you don't even think about it.  But the limitations become apparent if you start introducing things like stacked components.  You'll notice that whatever your wall looks like in 3D, however tall or short any of the components are, the Top/Plan view looks the same, assuming you are cutting through all of the components.  This is because Vectorworks does not cut through anything or consider the 3D in any way to make the Top/Plan view of walls.  So if we are going to introduce features in walls like stacked components, that has to change.  But as it happens, I was just working on that this afternoon...

Why don't create a new tool altogether, see the Curtain wall tool, is a totally new tool and works great!

[Christopher Graye]

4 hours ago, DBrown said:

Why don't create a new tool altogether, see the Curtain wall tool, is a totally new tool and works great!

 

Because walls are not just isolated objects, they have close couplings to other walls, to slabs, to roofs, to symbols, and to any plug-in object that can be inserted in walls (including those developed by users and third parties).  If we made a completely new object, all of those interactions would have to be duplicated in their appropriately modified forms, and everything would have to continue to support both kinds of walls in perpetuity.  And that would make it even more difficult and time consuming to add new features.

 

The curtain wall is actually not a new kind of object - it is the same wall object as regular walls.  And we made it the same type of object for this exact reason - so we would not have to reinvent all of these interactions, and everything would just work with them.

[line-weight]

On 1/19/2025 at 9:25 PM, Ross Harris said:

Horizontal viewports will only be any use if they are live (like another BIM platform...) - having to update viewports is an absolute productivity killer.

Well, I use them all the time. It would be nice if they updated live (like it would be nice if all viewports did) but it doesn't make them unusable for me.

 

If I am editing my floorplans, most of the time I'm either doing it in 3d or in a top/plan design layer view.

 

If working in a fully top/plan workflow, then a certain amount of your model is going to have to be within autohybrids, and editing geometry within those involves extra steps.

 

It's a trade-off either way of course. If you are dealing with large primarily rectilinear buildings then using HSVPs may still not make sense. However, they do allow certain freedoms that are very advantageous for certain types of buildings. One of those is the ability to use stacked walls without it causing too many issues.