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Better Walls! (and Gardens, too)


Kool Aid

Question

I promised to illustrate my issues with the Wall tool in relation to precast elements in Finnish construction. I imagine this is relevant in various other contries, too.

Typically all walls are elements; external walls are sandwich panels. Since floors are also typically made of pre-tensioned elements, not all external walls are load-bearing. The floor elements sit on top of the inner shells of the wall elements.

What we can't do is ? well, practically everything! The inner & outer shells have very often different dimensions both vertically and horizontally. It is practically impossible to create a professional BIM with VW ? and what's the point in an unprofessional model!

These are basic, simple situations in residential buildings and many non-residential ones, too. You don't want to know about complexities of more complex projects?

Plan

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8129/planf.png

Sections

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4936/sections.png

Notwithstanding, I am looking forward to further improvements. The almost-there Wall Styles -system was a major one and this new Wall Sculpting may be both a very nice feature in terms of design freedom and an indication that the good people at NNA are taking a new look at the walls ? which, from the user's point of view, haven't evolved much since 1993?

Finally: can we in VW 2011 please have an arbitrary & persistent reference line, like already in ArchiCAD Beta AD 1985! No, the centreline is not good enough, not even the trichotomy of left, centre and right.

And the maximum allowed height in wall styles. Code compliance, you know?

I'll discuss the Gardens later on.

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14 answers to this question

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In my opinion, Vectorworks extrudes walls in the wrong direction.

The wall should be defined in section and extruded along it's length.

In the real world, you have two different types of wall when they section differently.

The plan representation of a wall is much more dependent external factors such as conventions and/or arbitrary decisions than is a section.

For example, the plan representation of two walls with identical construction will be different based upon their spatial location, the view represented, or the relative height of the walls.

Most definitely.

Edited by brudgers
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What we can't do is ? well, practically everything! The inner & outer shells have very often different dimensions both vertically and horizontally. It is practically impossible to create a professional BIM with VW ? and what's the point in an unprofessional model!

Kool Aid

You are spot on, this is an issue that effects all sections with highly inaccurate relations depicted. The sculptural wall enhancement may solve this, but will require more work and time than sectional type walls. No construction type for the walls is properly depicted at this time. Sectional walls have a whole other set of issues that may not solve this issue either and increase the amount of wall styles needed for the multiplicity of wall construction interfaces with horizontal constructs.

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This is a most interesting idea!

Perhaps either a Plan (most definitely not just a line with a width: a polygon) or a Section and a kind of Multiple Extrusion (realistically of two profiles only) of either direction.

But where would my thermal insulation go?

Maybe I'l see what the geometric results would be. My ?famous? slanted wall can easily (?) be modified to work with two arbitrary profiles. Meanwhile, the interactive Multiple Extrusion could be the original test bench.

Must be, in fact; the behaviour of this function is, well, brudgingly unpredictable.

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The way walls work in ADT the width, height and position of each wall component can be controlled independently. components are positioned in plan based on a baseline that is defined when creating a wall style. Plus and minus dimensions are used to determine the position either side of the base line. You have options to either define the exact height and vertical position of a component or define a distance from the wall baseline, bottom or top so you can position any component anywhere. These settings also control which components are used or ignored when fitting walls to roof or other 3D geometry.

Wall components also have cleanup priorities so like components will automatically join even between different wall styles.You can also set which component you want your dimensions to default to.

Is your slanted wall uniform width and tilted or is it tapered?

ADT walls allow you to attach a modifier to any component similar to the extrude in VW only the modifier becomes part of the wall style and is drawn with the wall automatically.

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Necessity is truly the mother of invention!

After I explained my problem to you (whoever you are), I realised that as comes to ?sculpting?, I can do at least something related to windows.

Now, here in the snowy Llareggub, window flashings are preferably at an angle: a Serious Angle, in fact. As windows open inwards, you don't want to have half a metre (20 inches to Texans) of snow falling in.

So, I'm now faking it: I create an opening with an allowance for the slope of the flashing and create a ?fake wall? to compensate.

BIMwise shocking, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do! No, I have no idea how to manage this invention when my objects become IFC-enabled in October. Hopefully I'm able to state the problem properly?

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Please, Lord: I have once again misunderstood NNA's documentation!

It has turned out that the explicit wall opening of a symbol or a PIO can be anything.

I hereby withdraw the potentially defamatory comments made by yours truly (having been mislead) regarding Windows and wall openings.

No more fake/helper walls!

Notwithstanding: creating a wall opening component into a symbol definition altogether is somewhat beyond the skills of the average user. If that also involves Solids (adding or subtracting), I will have well and truly lost them (and their account.)

Nevertheless, now we ? both Ren and Stimpy ? are happy and joyous. (Untll the next conceptual issue needs to be resolved, but that, my young friends, shall enable arbitrary splaying of the wall opening. I already know how to do it. Wishin' and hopin'? )

Gratefully yours,

Kool Aid

EDIT

It seems that the User Interface of this forum is VERY inconsistent and unpredictable. The in-line image is only half of the message. ?so_flashing? is something completely different.

Edited by Kool Aid
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Nice job solving the flashing conundrum ...

Nevertheless...

That's an odd way to flash... especially for ice-dams...

what happens at the sidewalls ?

Shouldn't there... at least... be caulked sideways penetrations

to prevent lateral weepage under the flashing panel ?

Winter windows are forever weeping ...

accumulated ice is constantly creeping ...

melt water escapes by seeping...

over, under, around and through...

not just in areas that you drew ; )

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Nice job solving the flashing conundrum ...

Nevertheless...

That's an odd way to flash... especially for ice-dams...

what happens at the sidewalls ?

Shouldn't there... at least... be caulked sideways penetrations

to prevent lateral weepage under the flashing panel ?

Good point! However, here in the sunny Llareggub we have this thing called The Specification. Despite my profound dislike of things like (silicon) caulkings, even I have to accept those for precast elements and brick. With hard plaster, things are different. Unfortunately, VW cannot reliably communicate the condition to the Window object.

(Read: I decided not to try to implement this aspect as it would have required even more user input; the poor user already has to deal with over 100 parameters. Since they only really need Elevations for the Permit Drawings (& means for Design Decisions), I think I'm a Lumberjack & OK.)

EDIT

My informant in Melbourne, Australia, tells me that in the 1800s they had compulsory parapets in order to prevent snow falling from roofs on innocent bystanders and pedestrians.

Edited by Kool Aid
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Exactly? Why can't we view (at least) a[n unstyled] wall in 3D and just drag the components to our liking.

Besides, why can't an unstyled wall be an instance of a wall style: inheriting pertinent properties of the Class of Wall Style (no, I'm not referring to VW's ?classes? but OOP-classes), allowing one manipulate eg. dimensional properties of the wall object.

Whoops! Here I assume that wall instances ARE indeed REAL objects (OOP classes). Maybe they aren't, in which case they cannot inherit properties in a controlled manner.

Have I ever mentioned that Hungary, the Home of ArchiCAD, has for decades been a leading country in ?real? Object Oriented Programming? Maryland has not.

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