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How best to set up glass windows and doors


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I never seem to get it right. Try playing around with all the settings in VW Architect / RW and still the glass is not right - same colour / texture as the wall it is placed in, shows the wall behind, just black or dark grey, etc.

There is so many controls to adjust, but what is best practice. Ideally you want to change it from one point say in the class for windows.

How do you do it?

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1. Place a window (this creates the "Clear" texture in the Resource Browser)

2. Select Door tool (in Building Shell tool set)

3. Click on the preferences button in the mode bar

4. In the Parts tab, change Leaf type to Glass

6. In the View tab, change the Class for the "Int. Panel" and "Ext. Panel Parts" to "Style-Glazing 1" (this creates the Style-Glazing 1 class if it doesn't already exist)

8. Open Organization dialog box

5. Select Classes tab

6. Edit "Style-Glazing 1" class

7. In the Other tab, check the boxes for "Use Textures at Creation" and "Texture" and select the "Clear" texture

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Bill

You make it sound so easy!

Also the movie in the Knowledgebase makes it sound easy.

The problems lays in that there are different ways to setting doors, windows, window walls, etc up - knowing which class / glazing belongs to each.

Frames end up looking like the wall colour and texture.Clear windows show the internal and extenal walls / windows behind. Etc.

It all becomes a mess and you end up spending hours trying to get each individual window / door right and still it does not work.

We end up drawing over the vp elevation, then have to change things to accomodate revisions - but this is not what VW and RW and BIM is all about.

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Short answer at end...theory first.

Using the "ClassNameStds" worksheet you can set up custom naming for the VWarch "style-?" classes.

For example custom naming column "user1" can map:

[VWarch]style-1 -->[user1]style-1-frame a

and

[VWarch]style-6 -->[user1]style-6-paint b

Then if you select "style-1" for the frame of the door in the place where you assigne components, it will be assigned to class "style-1-frame a".

You can do the same thing for the "style-glazing" classes.

Now it becomes a bit confusing because other PIO's such as tables will not use [user1]style classes. They will continue to use (and create) classes per [VWarch].

Of course you need not start [user1] classes with "style-?" but I found that it's easier to track the [VWarch] style classes with a more or less parallel assignment between the two.

In other words [VWarch]style-6 is used to assign a paint texture if the [user1] class is called "style-6-paint b"

End of theory.

Short answer:

For elevations I create and assign a solid grey texture for the glazing.

This can be done as a default for the assigned "style-glazing" class, or by a SLVP overide for the class.

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Some useful stuff there that I will try out - thanks.

To get rid of internal walls I have set them up as a diffrent class and turned them off in the vp.

Had glazing as solid glass but they are still transparent - I will run through the suggestions again.

How do you get the frame to be a different colour / texture to the glass?

Excuse my ignorance, what does SLVP stand for?

I would post an example but last time I tried you need a web site to put the image on - I will try and work out how to do it.

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Some useful stuff there that I will try out - thanks.

To get rid of internal walls I have set them up as a diffrent class and turned them off in the vp.

Had glazing as solid glass but they are still transparent - I will run through the suggestions again.

How do you get the frame to be a different colour / texture to the glass?

Excuse my ignorance, what does SLVP stand for?

I would post an example but last time I tried you need a web site to put the image on - I will try and work out how to do it.

You can set different parts to the style-? classes on the "view" tab of the "window settings" dialog. Look at the "special classes" area.

Double clicking on the window brings up "window settings."

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To make it easier and simpler, I have started a new file with just two walls, two windows and two doors and played about.

I think I can make it work for doors using Door Settings, View and changing the Parts to suit the Class. Using Style 2 and Style Glazing 2 classes. [but under the Edit Class in Other there is only a texture choice and you have no solid choice only the Default Content.]

But for windows I can not make it work. Again using the Settings and under view setting the parts up either classes Style 1 and Style Glazing 1 or Style 2 and Style Glazing 2 but there is no change to the glass. The frame changes but the glass stays clear. Smoked or Opaque glazing settings does not seem to make a diffrence.

I have made sure that the all the layers and classes are turned on in the vp. The render setting is set for Fast RW as Background and HL as Foreground.

This may work for 2 or 3 windows and doors but a building is likely to have hundreds and its pretty labourioust and prone to error going through changing each one.

Also the on screen vp sheet layer does not have a crisp edge / line between windows / walls and doors / walls - the texture and colour spreads acros the line.

I need to work out how to attach an image.

Thanks for your help.

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If you want the door leaf, jamb, and trim all the same color, you don't need to use part styles. Just set the color in the Door-Main class (or which ever class you're using for doors). The same goes for window sashes, frame, and trim - set color in Window-Main (or...).

You can assign a solid color by simply assigning a different fill color to the class.

See:

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=26772&Number=129652#Post129652

Have you tried using Final Quality Renderworks instead of Fast?

To an image or VW file, click on the "Switch to Full Reply Screen" button at the bottom of this page, then use the "File Manager" link to attach files.

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Just the same in Final Quality RW. Tried increasing the dpi settings but this did not help. The funny thing is that iy prints out ok but looks a mess on screen - must be some view setting in vw but I have run through them I can not find one that works.

I followed your link to the other thread and that is very useful. As an aside when opening attachments how do you view all the downloads as I can only open and see one?

The main problem is getting the glass to render in windows, which I still have not been able to achieve.

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I think I am getting to the bottom of this.

And your advice has been very helpful.

The problem is you have to start again with a new document to set up all your doors and windows. It is hard or impossible to get the glass rendering on already created windows to work.

Also the problem is you can not set up classes first such as 'door' and or 'window' before you insert your windows and doors - simply the drag and drop from the tool set does not work.

Now I do not know if this is a problem with 2009 and if so I hope 2010 has sorted it out. One, because we have a lot of projects we are working on that are being converted from 2008 to 2009 and will then be converted to 2010 [when NNA issue it] and we will have lost the window / door / glass change facility. Two we have a master document / file that has all our classes on and it seems that either we will have to set this up again and / or only bring in 'door' and 'window' classes after insertion of the first one.

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I don't know if this is what you are talking about in your 4th paragraph, but VW only allows a single object to have a name.

So if you create a class called Door, then you will not be able to insert Door objects. If you name the class Doors (or Door Class or anything other than Door) then you should be OK.

The same applies to Window and any other Plugin Object. If you want to use the object, you can't have a class (or any other object) with that name.

If you really want to have fun with you associates, edit the title block on your stationary to include objects with names of wall, door and window and stand back. ;-)

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