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Soffits


BJS

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I am using floors to represent soffits and it works well with one exception. I show the floor with dashed lines and no fill so that it appears correctly in plan view (with fill it would obscure what is below). The problem is that in 3D the lack of fill doesn't look right.

Does anyone know of a way to make soffits work in both 2D and 3D (ie - no fill in plan but with fill in 3D)?

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Guest Wes Gardner

Like Mike says, extrudes will get you there, I've also used extrudes for beams, etc. and in several cases, made a hybrid symbol with the extrude for 3D and a dashed rectangle for 2D.

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Two options I can think of. 1) Use a floor, with attributes set by class, then use VP Class overrides as needed for various different views, scenes, etc. 2) Create your own custom 2d/3d hybrid symbol, which is actually very easy: use an extrude for the 3d part and any dashed, polygonal shape for the 2d. The only problem with either method is that neither object is "smart" (ie: able to recognize changes to its context, position, etc) so each would need to be manually modified when any changes are made. But hey, that's just part of the job, right?

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I am using floors to represent soffits and it works well with one exception. I show the floor with dashed lines and no fill so that it appears correctly in plan view (with fill it would obscure what is below). The problem is that in 3D the lack of fill doesn't look right.

Does anyone know of a way to make soffits work in both 2D and 3D (ie - no fill in plan but with fill in 3D)?

I had an idea about this and tested it. And it works!

Just keep using floors and set them by class. Set the colors of the class to the colors you want the soffit to have in 3D. Then when that's done, set the fill of the class to a hatch. Make the hatch so that it has no background fill and that the lines are so far from each other that they will never be seen on the plan (because the plan is much smaller then the distance between the lines). Now you will have your dotted line and no fill in plan view and a solid floor in 3D view.

About attributes and classes:

I noticed that not much poeple know that you can do 'magic' with the attributes of classes. Here are some examples:

* You can use the foreground and background color of the clas. This way a class can store 2 fill colors to use and to use in class overrides. If you want to use the fore or background color, first choose a pattern for fill, and choose the fore or background color in the pattern table.

* And you can even use a hatch, and two colors like the solution to this problem.

* You can store a dash line and have a dash and a solid line for the class.

* You can also have two colors for lines the way you have two colors for fills.

* You can have a colored line and black text with the same class. Just set the foreground fill to black because text will always use the foreground fill and use the background fill for the color of the lines, this is really good for spaces and other objects that uses figures and text.

Just take in account that you can override multiple colors with one class this way, but can't change the fill type this way. If an object uses the background fill and the class is set to foreground fill, then you can't override the fill.

Just some tips.

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There's some very creative solutions here however having suggested earlier simply to use 'send to back/backward' in Top/Plan view on the soffit element (assuming ofcourse that the element has a fill), i'm starting to get worried here have i missed something...doesn't this work?

Edited by Vincent Cuclair
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The first part was the solution to your question, The other things were just tips. here is the part you should use:

I had an idea about this and tested it. And it works!

Just keep using floors and set them by class. Set the colors of the class to the colors you want the soffit to have in 3D. Then when that's done, set the fill of the class to a hatch. Make the hatch so that it has no background fill and that the lines are so far from each other that they will never be seen on the plan (because the plan is much smaller then the distance between the lines). Now you will have your dotted line and no fill in plan view and a solid floor in 3D view.

And it is really simple, just make the hatch once, make the class once, and use that class for all suffits.

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VW2009 floor tool benefits:

Different textures on sides (all sides same though), top, and bottom.

Can do holes, or multiple objects as a single floor.

Using 2d add/subtract surface commands makes size manipulation easy.

Slab tool benefits:

Lots more class control (although not needed if using class overrides in 2008+)

Separate textures on sides (still all sides the same though), top, and bottom for pre-2009 VW users.

Since getting VW2009 I haven't bothered to bring the slab tool into my workspace.

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