Creating files for individual rooms

[Leon024]

Hi, I am currently designing a Vectorworks file for a local theatre I am volunteering at. Currently I have a floor plan base file, and my goal is to have multiple different files for each room, as well as a file for the entire building with each file referencing the floor plan. e.g.

 

- Floor plan.vwx (this includes walls)

- Auditorium.vwx: references floor plan

- Cafe.vwx: references floor plan

- Theatre.vwx: references floor plan, cafe, auditorium (referencing the seats / tables / etc from Auditorium and Cafe files)

 

The reason being to limit unnecessary geometry from being exported out when using pre-vis like augment3d or Vision. My main problem right now is that I can't think of a good way of separating walls that border two rooms. An example is shown below with some walls separating the Auditorium from the Cafe

 

 

As it stands, the walls are all on one class, and either all of them are shown or none of them are. Since you can't have two layers, there's not the option of picking the design layers when referencing that will be able to separate both auditorium walls and cafe walls in a different file. Referencing files doesn't let you change the classes either, so for an Auditorium file there's no way of actually hiding the rest of the building without adding a design layer called "other", but that would then mean the cafe can't be referenced.

 

My best solutions I can come up with are all a bit messy:

- Have lots of mini-design layers in the floor plan file such as Auditorium, Auditorium/Cafe, Cafe, Cafe/Box Office, Auditorium/Corriror, etc. Then for each referenced file, select the finely partitioned walls and hide them with a filter to decrease clutter. Makes it very annoying to make changes or files for new rooms though

- Have two half-width walls for each room, and just have them as separate objects.

- Have different "floor plan" files for each room, and just use that instead. Makes it hard to change though if you need to edit every file individually

 

If there is a better way of doing this I would love to know 🙂

 

Thanks!

[Jonathan Pickup]

You are choosing a very complex way to set up the project and this is going to make it hard later on.  Why not just have the entire project in one file and create drawings of each room

[FlyingHoward]

Hi @Leon024, If I understand your post..

There are many workflows and setups that many users have developed, here is mine in hopefully not too many words.

 

I have an complex of 4 buildings, all having various event spaces [including Atriums and even a 3rd party restaurant].

About 18 years ago, I did import a few dwg files, created a whole lot of Design Layers [ie.Theatre or Classroom setup] and Classes [ie Room Dividers or Category of a Table].

Design Layers for some preset Furniture/Equipment layouts and the Classes for various items within those Layouts. Updating never stops as buildings are always being edited due to construction/refurbishment.

Viewports were then created of each space as required using a simple Crop.

Then Sheet Layers created [related Title Blacks made as well],and Published as per a specific Event. 

This file becomes [as @Jonathan Pickupmentions] is your Master Template, to be used over and over.

There are many more factors to it, but this is my General Workflow.

 

Loads of info not included here but these are my general steps

 

Perhaps more experienced Venue peeps can add further detail.

 

[Tom W.]

@Leon024 you should explain a bit further to non-entertainment people what the deal is exporting to pre-vis + why limiting the amount of exported geometry is important as I'm not sure this aspect is being picked up on.

[Leon024]

Hi thank you for the reply everyone. I should have specified but the goal is to have a file that people can edit and make their own rig plots, set design, sound design or whatnot for the shows that we put on. The reason I am trying to split up the file is so that the file can be more accessible for users without needing a super beefy PC. We are a student theatre, and the gate for being a lighting designer shouldn't be stopped by a 1gb vwx file if they don't have a fast enough laptop.

 

In most cases, a lighting designer making a rig plot for the auditorium doesn't actually need to have the furniture in the cafe loaded, or even need to have the cafe exist at all, and the same for every other room. And then when exporting, lighting software like Augment3d simulates the lighting fixtures on the stage, but there is no practical reason to have the rest of the building as part of that model, since it is not important to what the stage will look like, will always be in darkness, and will only slow down the exports, increase file sizes, and make the PCs trying to run visualisation software the bed.

 

The idea is to just have a minimal file with as few classes/layers as needed. Sure they can be filtered out but ideally a "bar counter" or "Oven" class doesn't exist at all. In most cases, isolating the Auditorium will be good enough but ideally I would want it to accommodate not just the auditorium. We've had shows performed in the Cafe in the past - late night, drama, etc. and having to re-classify walls and then deleting a bunch of geometry is not the best scenario in my eyes.

 

But I also want a master file so that I can later make well documented plans of the buildings dimensions, as well as the surrounding cable routing or whatnot. This is why I had the initial hierarchy in the post that the master building file references the cafe/auditorium files, so edits can be made in the auditorium file and just carried over to the master file.

[Jeff Prince]

Curious if the modeling of everything really adds much overhead.  I mean buildings are relatively simple compared to simulating natural environments.  Does modeling it all really bog you down if the objects are not in the scene?  Some software excludes items not contributing to the rendering.

[Leon024]

@Jeff Prince It probably doesn't affect it that much in fairness, but I do know people who have laptops that can barely run Vectorworks without any file open at all, so if possible I'd want to make it as easy on the CPU as possible for them. Though if there is no easy solution then you're probably right, a few more walls probably won't be that integral to running it smoothly lol 🙂