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arched opening in a wall


JoeF

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Thanks Peter, I hadn't thought to look there. The documentation should probably deal with openings in walls, floors and roofs as an architectural element. As it stands the solution is not that obvious. (At least to me it wasn't that obvious.)

What do you do if the opening does not conform to one of the shapes available as a window or door?

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Then it gets trickier! One way is to use a 3d object as the "cutter" in a solid subtraction. But be warned that the wall will no longer be (or behave like) a wall - it'll be a 3d solid (as opposed to a parametric object). I would certainly try to model it with the included tools/objects/etc. first. Also, a lot depends on what your ultimate goal is. Is it a 3d presentation model? A set of CD's? Both?

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My intention with Vectorworks is to use the model for CD's. Since this is an unusual sort of condition I can probably deal with using whatever fills or linework are needed to recreate the wall in plan. Has anyone tried creating a wall with an opening in Sketchup and bringing it into VW? Would it still be a wall?

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Thanks Peter, I think the parameters in the OIP will suffice for most wall openings that I may need. I tried creating a face in sketchup with an unusual opening cut into it and then imported it into VW. VW will turn this into a wall, no problem. This could prove quite handy.

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Why not use a symbol to create the opening? A symbol of any shape will automatically cut an opening for itself in the wall, and can have any representation you want in the 2D plan view. In the plan view, loci can be used to determine where the wall breaks (so that, for example, casings can be shown wrapping the wall at the jambs). In cutting openings, I think sympols do have a shortcoming in that they will not cut 'concavities' - in other words, a five-pointed star will cut a pentagon hole in the wall, not a star shape in the wall. But an arched opening should not have that problem.

I'm pretty new to VectorWorks, but those are my thoughts, hope they're helpful...

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Why not use a symbol to create the opening?

Yes thats how I put complex shapes into a wall without resorting to solids subtractions.

For odd shapes (such as stars) you can model the wall around it so that the orthoginal shape cut in the wall by the symbol bounding box is properly filled.

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Joe,

Yes...See graphic below.

WackyOpening2.JPG

It is possible to create just an opening using poly's or simple lines...extruded then converted to a symbol and inserted into a wall. In the examle above the left rectangle and oval were created as polygons...then extruded to the thickness of the wall with thier fill attribute set to none (I leave the pen style in order to see the object). The right rectangle was built from (4) lines that were extruded to the thickness of the wall giving the appearance of a jamb but having no fill characteristics. As you can see there are several methods available to make a wall opening without using door or window PIO's allthough it sometimes easier to use the door and window PIO's to make simple rectangles or arch heads openings for the fact that you can easily modify their settings on the fly.

Pete A.

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