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Floor functionality


mike m oz

Question

It would be useful if floors could adopt the hole forming functionality of roofs. ie. the way in which you can cut holes in roofs by just placing a polygon into the "roof group". Cutting holes in floor slabs would be a lot easier if it could be done the same way.

Another nice feature would be the ability to resize the floor polygon inwards or outwards by a one click method, rather than having to create a new polygon using the offset tool and then deleting the original polygon. This would allow the source polygon to be generated by the walls and then this polygon could be easily resized to get the right relationship to the walls.

The other necessary floor improvement which is required (and has often been mentioned before) is the ability to apply different textures to the top, bottom and side surfaces of the floor slabs.

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Hi Alexandre

thanks for the explanation. I tend to model(not an architect) with visibility in mind, so thats why it takes me so long !!!. I can see this would save you time, but does it not give a false impression on exterior wall height. Then again it depends on the slab and other thickness I suppose.

Just of the top of my head, thinking about it, I would tackle it this way, in this instance.

You need the model to sit on something such as the impression on the ground. I'd take the "ground" and from it subtract it, as in subtract solids, a copy of the floor slab, this would of course need to be moved downwards to subtract correctly. Then move the ground up the required amount to hide the edges of slab etc. It should render okay then.

Bound to be a reason why this won't work but its just a thought.

Alan

[ 12-19-2004, 08:04 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

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Cheers Alan,

I'm not sure I got your subtraction idea right, but I'll list the things I do:

1A) Sometimes I create 2 floors inside the external walls and a "poly-offset-inside-n-clipped" floor (just under the external walls).

1B) I can also create the floors inside and increase the external walls' height

2) Other times I make a sort of 3D poly cap to hide my floors on the outside.

3) And yet another solution is the slab object at www.vectordepot.com (it has 3 classes: for the top, bottom and siding faces).

[ 12-19-2004, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: Alexandre B A Villares ]

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Alanmac

I will give an example to explain why. Consider a first floor slab:

- On the top it may need to have a tiled, timber or carpeted floor finish.

- On the underside it needs to have a plastered finish to simulate its role as a ceiling.

- The sides will be exposed in stairwell openings and/or balcony situations. In both cases it will probably not be finished as for the floor above or the ceiling below.

Hence the need for 3 separate surface finishes.

I will qualify this by saying that here in Australia we tend to build with concrete floor slabs, and in domestic work the slab soffit is usually the ceiling for the floor below.

To overcome the issue I have occassionally resorted to using two layers of floor slabs for each floor of the building.

- The first floor is the structural slab which I finish as for the ceiling below.

- On top of this I then place floor finish slabs to obtain the correct floor finishes for various rooms / spaces in the model.

it is a bit time consuming but it works.

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Dan,

I would like to see the same kind of control for roof faces as is being discussed for floors. The homes I design are timberframe structures with vaulted ceilings and the use of structural insulated panels (SIP) for walls and roofs. The roof face would require roofing tiles, for example, for the roofing, T&G ceiling boards for the ceiling finish side, and fascia boards for the side texture.

Don

Samuelson Timberframe Design

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Chris's need for data is all part of the BIM concept.

That is having created the model for it to be truly useful under the BIM paradigm the model must return accurate data which can translate into accurate costings.

For me however I am more interested in the appearance and issues like representing building reality as close as possible. Some examples:

- Being able to have different appearance attributes for the top, bottom and side surfaces of floors.

- Having the capability to return both the exterior and interior wall finishes separately into the reveals of door and window openings (we don't use timber reveal linings internally - the wall finish wraps in)

- Having the capability to add slab thickenings (with 45? edges) to slabs on ground (both to the perimeter and under internal walls).

- Having the capability to add integral beams to the underside of slabs.

- Having a 3D ceiling tool which will create suspended ceilings of different types.

- Being able to simply add cornices and skirtings to walls (having them return into reveal openings where appropriate would be great, but I suspect this is too difficult).

With some of this I am thinking forward to where we want to be - ie. producing accurate useful and useable 'live sections'.

On this issue it would be nice if the 'architectural live sectioning' had a depth of field capability. By this I mean the capability to choose how much of the model is seen beyond the cutting plane ranging from nothing (ie just the section) to all of the model beyond. The cutting plane should also have the capability to be stepped in plan.

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What also would be nice would be the ability to reshape floors using the polygon reshape tool as you can with roof objects.

As show other objects while in groups does not work for floors (or extrusions) this would overcome the issue of not being able to see other objects whilst you are making the changes to floors.

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I second Chris Manus' request for top down editing of walls too. Instead of adding cavities I would like to be able to build up seperate independently editable wall "layers" ( not the same layers as in Layers & Classes) or skins. They could be internal trim, linings, framing, insulation, cavities, sheathing, external trim etc. It should be possible to edit the height, Z value and thickness of each skin and place doors and windows in any or all skins.

Too much of an ask? That would make live sections really powerful.

Don

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