Unable to Apply Hatch Pattern

[Frank Williams]

Total newbie here so forgive my ignorance. I am battling with applying a hatch pattern to some unconventional wall shapes in the enclosed file. I have tried both associative and non-associative methods with no luck. They either show up on only a portion of the selection or not at all. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,

F.

[Ray Libby]

Welcome to the Community Board.

You can only apply a hatch to a surface. In your file I selected the objects that make up one of the wall segments and chose Menu Bar>Modify>Compose. It's now a polyline that can accept hatches or be extruded.

[Ray Libby]

As I look at your drawing some more you are going to have problems. If you select all of the bottom wall segment and try to compose it will fail because you have many lines that are not connected. All of your corners are made up of many lines instead of arcs, which will lead to problems if you try to extrude.

If you look at the file I attached this is an obvious example of objects not connected at the corner. This would be my method for replacing the lines with arcs. Many of your straight lines are made up of multiple lines. Marquee select one of the lines and check the OIP (Object Info Palette). If it shows more than one line, delete all the extra lines and connect the one left.

[Frank Williams]

Thank you so much for your help. The drawing was imported as a .dwg file that was exported from Sketchup Pro. I will go in audit everything. One more question for you..... when I extrude these walls into 3D, the outer part of the wall will have an angle of about 92.1 degrees going from 24" at the bottom to 18" at the top. The inner part will be completely vertical. Any idea on how I can accomplish this.

Thanks again,

Frank

[Ray Libby]

I extruded the wall, then switched to the side view of the wall and drew a triangle with the polygon tool around the part I want to cut off to get the angle. If you switch to the view from the left side and look at the bottom wall the triangle is in red. I extruded the triangle longer than the wall length, then used Subtract Solids. The radius on the outside is now gone, so I used the Fillet Edge tool on the corners.

[Frank Williams]

Thank you for your help Ray. This will help immensely. I have no previous CAD experience but can draw pretty much anything in Sketchup. I've designed the house we are going to build (straw bale) in Sketchup and decided I want to try and do the construction drawings myself along with the 3d model in Vectorworks, so I will have alot more questions I'm sure.

[Ray Libby]

Great, glad it helped!

[starling75]

A)

Edit your model in SU omiting round corners (in fact polygonal).

Import your model directly into VW using plain geometry.

Use command Cut 2D Section to create planar slices from your model placed on separate layers (horizontal or vertical sections...)

And finally fillet your corners in sections with 2D fillet tool.

B)

First two steps are the same.

Then convert your model into solids.... see last post

Use 3D fillet edge tool on your solid model and than you can create slices from your model again.

1 - SU model

2 - imported model

3 - model converted into solids with filleted corners

4 - 2D section command

5 - and finally slice from your model

[Frank Williams]

Thank you Bohdan. That will be very helpful in the future.

[Frank Williams]

Thought I would include some pictures of the finished model I've done in Sketchup.

[starling75]

Well ...

If you have everything accurately organized - clustered into components and groups, you can simply import your model, attach records to your windows/doors etc components (in VW symbols, create from model horizontal and vertical section viewports add some annotations and hatches in viewport editing mode and you have complete project ..

[Frank Williams]

Ah, you make it sound so simple...........

[starling75]

Ok, there is a lot of things to do.. but it was description of principle

Anyway, there is still one improvement possible:

Import your SU model into VW file and name it for example SU_source.

This Su_source file attach to another VW file (called for example - project_annotations) as external reference. You can create now your sections and elevations in this file.

Whenever you change your SU model, you can simply rewrite SU_source file with new one and all sections in project_annotations file will update ...

This is workaround if you dont want to rebuild your model in VW.