Stepped walls - How Too?? & Extend siding beyond wall bottoms

[taoist]

What is the best way to do stepped walls?

Bottoms of walls are at same elevation.

Want to step the tops.

Can we do this without having to draw individual walls?

Also, how do we extend the siding below the bottom of the wall on a wall by wall basis and have openings in walls below show correctly?

Example:

Have 8' foundation wall with overhead garage door.

Want to show siding from wall above to cover foundation wall to about 12" above the ground.

Do I need to create special walls for this so openings show correctly?

taoist

[Pat Stanford]

Wall Peaks are the answer. How you get them is the question.

If you have (or can create) 3D geometry on a different layer that will "bound" the walls then you can use the Fit Walls to Roof command to automatically extend the walls (either top or bottom, your choice) to fit to the geometry. The geometry can be almost anything 3D. I have tried Custom and Simple Stairs, slabs and extrudes recently, but anything 3D should work.

If it is easier to do it by hand you can use the Reshape tool in the add vertex mode. Click and drag from one of the existing corner points of the wall to generate a new vertex along the top (or bottom) of the wall. If you don't get it in exactly the right place the first time just switch to the move vertex mode and move as you see fit.

There is a movie showing how to do this to "notch" a wall to accept a window that spans layers at: http://www.vectortasks.com/Movies/Movies.html

[taoist]

Pat,

Thanks

Download and ran all I get is intro video screen and music.

[bc]

Problem with Reshape is that you cannot create truly vertical sides (one wall peak being directly below the other)...despite curser clues indicating otherwise.

Zoom in and you will see they are ever just a tad off. If this innaccuracy is within your tolerances, then have at. Otherwise fit to geometry on another layer as Pat suggests.

[CipesDesign]

bc, yes that's true. It has always been that way. I prefer to create a dummy layer with simple geometry (extrudes) and use that as the "fit to" layer...

Taoist, go to a side view and draw the steps, then make them into a closed poly and extrude, then place on a dummy layer. Then use the dummy layer to "fit top to".

[Damon Design]

Also using loci at specific distances to snap to will force the wall to be reshaped as accurately as you can, ignoring unwanted snaps- with the tiny angular inaccuracy that Peter mentions.

-The "lowly locus" come through again (from Francois Levy/Pat & Dan's Podcad from long ago)

btw Pat whatever happened to the Podcad?- I really miss it (I guess that shows what a geek I am lol)

I'm going to PM you about some advice on user group leading/Tips here in San Diego.

[Pat Stanford]

Pat,

Thanks

Download and ran all I get is intro video screen and music.

Try and download it again. I downloaded the movie this evening and it seems to be all there.

[Pat Stanford]

-The "lowly locus" come through again (from Francois Levy/Pat & Dan's Podcad from long ago)

btw Pat whatever happened to the Podcad?- I really miss it (I guess that shows what a geek I am lol)

I simply have run out of time. I would love to get back into it, but trying to coordinate three very busy schedules has become temporarily impossible.