Ext. wall hatches in 2011 - Best practice

[Patrick Fritsch]

Hi, so I was all excited when I saw the new extract planer faces, but I'm still having trouble.

What is the best and easiest way to create a black and white hatch on my elevations (ie: on exterior bldg walls). I would like to be able to stretch the walls afterward and have the cladding hatch pattern associative to the new wall length.

I tried the extract planer face and hatched it but is there a way to make the extracted planer face associative to the wall? (and it's openings). I tried to simply pull on the extracted planer faces control handles but all the openings are no longer aligned. The other problem I encountered is I also need to modify the extracted plane so it does not hatch over the corner trims I add to my elevations.

Any suggestions?

Edited September 27, 2010 by Fritsch

[VincentCuclair]

Perhaps create a texture of the hatch?

[rDesign]

I don't think there is a way to make the extracted planar polygon an associative object, although it is a great idea.

Try using the '2D Reshape' tool instead of just stretching it with the control handles. (Unfortunately the Vw help file is not terribly helpful on how to use this tool).

In case you don't know how to use it : Double click on the extracted 2d planar object and the '2d Reshape' tool is automatically selected. Click & drag from the upper left corner down to the lower left part over all the areas you want to stretch, then click on the edges of the opening you want to keep aligned (you can click anywhere inside the selected bounding box), drag and release.

Use the 'Clip' tool to trim away the areas of the planar poly that cover your corner trim.

Regards,

Tim

[CARMELHILL]

So does this "Extract Planar Objects" finally allow Vectorworks to really and truly draw elevations for us automatically, without having to use the time consuming and memory intensive "rendered viewport". Or is this just more fluff.

[Bob Holtzmann]

The way I understand it, wall objects can't have line hatches (only textures), but 3D polygons can. So by extracting the plane of the wall, the hatch can be applied and seen in any view.

In the past, I've had to do hatching in 2D views, usually with 2D polygons in the 2D annotation layer of elevation viewports. So this extract plane for hatching business is really a step in the right direction.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Bob-H

[Patrick Fritsch]

Would it be nice if there was a new bldg cladding set of tools where you could detail on all your wall faces siding and masonry corner details, belly bands, window perimeter and cornice detail ect. It would really be BIM cladding with emphasis on the information because then we could not only extract siding quantities but also trim work quantities (being an ex-estimator, trim and corner bricks can cost as much as the cladding).