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Turn on/off wall components


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This ability would be extremely handy since floor plans are often drawn with stud walls, while elevations have sheathing and siding. The ability to turn on/off wall components in either viewports or design layers would be very very helpful. Yes, you can currently "hide" the wall components, but you still have a wall thickness that correlates to all the components and is somewhat useless when it comes time to dimension the floor plans.

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I would second this one also. I think it ties into the issue of wall cavities as model vs. graphic entities. When modeling, the finish surfaces are most important, but in construction documents, it's all about the type of drawing you need.

For example, on floor plans, you want to be able to dimension to the face of framing, face of masonry or face of structural concrete, even if you can see the "finish" cavities. Most cases though, at 1/4" scale or less, only the structural cavity (or additional masonry cavity) is shown, not the plywood or gypsum sheathing, stucco, siding, etc. Otherwise the drawing can become too congested with lines. This can be sloppy and confusing.

At larger, detail scales (1" or more), which may indicate specific section or plan conditions, it is important to show all components of the wall (unless they are just structural drawings). This means including exterior and interior finishes and a graphic means of differentiating between materials (i.e. hatching/poche).

The true modeling CADD programs I have personally used (VW & ArchiCAD) both struggle wth how this optimally works. The difficulty seems to be in changing the nature of the walls display based upon view (plan, section, elevation) and the control elements/edges vs. model/graphic components.

I'm sure it is no simple programming issue. It seems that the demand is for a hierarchy of elements that is counter intuitive to the "wall" command structure which focuses on the totality of the wall being one way or another, not four dfferent ways at once.

One path of resolution may be the use of CLASSES to each wall component. That way the visibility of the components/cavities may be controlled by visibility setups for desired views. This, of course adds another level of complexity to wall objects... and another level of nomenclature that I'm already buried in and was hoping to escape from in ArchiCAD.

Sometimes there is such a thing as too much control... no?

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  • 2 weeks later...

With one exception, I'm fine with the walls as they are--being able to set components then, when printing, turn off the components so only the outermost lines are showing. I snap to the face-of-stud component when I lay out my dimensions. At 1/4" per foot, when I turn off the inner lams, the dimension line will look ever so slightly off from the wall edge. But if I clearly state on the plan sheet that the dimension is from Face of Stud, it shouldn't matter. What I DO want is a key command to turn off and on wall parts without having to go to Prefs. And yes, too many choices will overwhelm the user--especially the newer user who needs speed and success over infinite variability.

Tom Greggs

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