Junctions

[RCrussellUK]

I'm still having difficulties getting my head around how to manufacture junctions between walls/roofs/cealings/surfaces clearly and accurately, when there's more than two different styles of wall and varying levels (beams).

I have an existing situation with a single story room at the back of a two story house. The room volume from within the main property projects out into the extension, the roof from the extension cuts into the main block expressing itself as a large beam at the back of the room. The walls are all different thicknesses. I must read the top wall inside the room as a beam, and from outside a continuation with the upper wall and those to either side, making the roof join correctly and also showing a ceiling height inside (drawings included).

One thing I thought I might do is create multiple wall styles, I already have 10 or so in the model but this seems to be quite an inefficient way of continuing to do this - instead of joining create a separation between the extension and main block (to avoid awkward angled joins and problems with surface components correctly forming corners) but this way I end up just building stand alone objects and the whole practice of joining things together seems to become rather laborious and somewhat pointless.

I need that eureka moment where I can predictably use the wall join/component join tools, as it all seems hit and miss right now? I know practice will help, but it's the bespoke (and actually quite frequent) junctions like this I need to develop a method for. I know in SketchUP something like this would be fairly easy and fast to model. Yet I know so much about Vectorworks is superior to SketchUP (this became very apparent when I recently imported a complex SketchUP model of a large skatepark I had worked on and went though it with Vectorworks transforming the geometry to the much more powerful, and controlled geometry tools of Vectorworks) which is exactly why I made the switch, but I'm spending a lot more time doing fairly straight forwards things in Vectorworks than I ever did in SketchUP.

I need to know this will improve, and how to improve it!

[bc]

Maybe DWorks can offer something. He seems to have extensive knowledge of such things as wall and component joins and the proper sequencing.

Maybe he can chime in if he's not under a deadline or you could search his previous posts for some insight.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

There are different ways you could do this:

1. If you can, split your walls horizontally. This is the easiest way for the joins, but can't always be done.

2. Split your walls vertically where needed. So one wall you normally draw in one piece will be sliced in different pieces, so you can better join other walls like your 'beam' like wall you have. This is more difficult for joins, but VW2013 and up can surely handle them. though you will need to get comfortable with component joins.

3. Other methods involve hybrid symbols, auto-hybrids, ... and are only for when the first two don't work.

This is done with the second method (and floors and ceilings will still be boundable):

(The left bottom picture shows the different walls. And yes, the component joins are that good now. For the normal wall joins, start with an L and a T join, then go for the components in top 3d view.)

(PS: the reason I'm less here is because I'm now working as a developer instead of cad manager, but I still do cad management for my own business.)

Edited December 9, 2013 by DWorks

[RCrussellUK]

Thanks DWorks, I'm going to try some of that now, I've been coming close to the first part, but I think I need to get to grips with the Component Join. I wasn't aware it could be used efficiently in 3D view.

[RCrussellUK]

The problem I find is that to get a clean wall join I must use a capped joint, or drag the one wall to the right line and then use the T join etc - so when it comes to component joining I get components of capped walls cannot be joined or walls must be joined before their components intersect messages. Yet as I found as with a previous issue, it's very hard to avoid a diagonal intersections so I have been using the capping to square the joins.

[RCrussellUK]

In this instance the outer surface is now working correctly, the interior junction (Join.jpg image) looks good, but I cannot seems to avoid this diagonal join if I want the exterior surfaces to seal correctly on the exterior corner. Perhaps I must construct the wall on the right with the window in it, in two bands, one interacting with the beam wall, the other connecting through to the continuous lower wall?

[Dieter @ DWorks]

In this instance the outer surface is now working correctly, the interior junction (Join.jpg image) looks good, but I cannot seems to avoid this diagonal join if I want the exterior surfaces to seal correctly on the exterior corner. Perhaps I must construct the wall on the right with the window in it, in two bands, one interacting with the beam wall, the other connecting through to the continuous lower wall?

your second picture is good, you only need to add some other wall component joins now. You will have to t-join the components of your outer wall that are diagonal at end to the beamed wall. If you then do the same with the components of the other outer wall to the beam, they will perfectly come together. (Not at my office now, but if you can't get it to work, I'll try to make some sort of step guide tonight or tomorrow...)

Edited December 10, 2013 by DWorks

[Dieter @ DWorks]

The problem I find is that to get a clean wall join I must use a capped joint, or drag the one wall to the right line and then use the T join etc - so when it comes to component joining I get components of capped walls cannot be joined or walls must be joined before their components intersect messages. Yet as I found as with a previous issue, it's very hard to avoid a diagonal intersections so I have been using the capping to square the joins.

That you don't have a clean wall join is not because of joins, not directly. You will get a line in hidden line where wall components end diagonal. So knowing this, sometimes you will just have to edit a wall component join to have it squared.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

Here the guide:

Edited December 10, 2013 by DWorks

[bc]

NICELY DONE DWORKS. THANKS

[RCrussellUK]

Excellent, I will try this out today. Thanks very much for the help DWorks.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

NICELY DONE DWORKS. THANKS

Well, I love wall joins. (And I want things to be as perfect as possible!)

[bc]

NICELY DONE DWORKS. THANKS

Well, I love wall joins. (And I want things to be as perfect as possible!)

I can tell. I can also tell it isn't getting any easier for the average user to implement these features that sometimes require complex sequencing.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge of this esoterica.

Should be an example in the manual.

[RCrussellUK]

So close, thanks for your input, I've played around with this for a bit and achieved a much more satisfactory junction (luckily the client is not so worried about this, but I am!)... still one clash that I don't seem to be able to remove though? (see joint 1)

I think you're absolutely right bc, this sort of thing should be made much clearer - tooltips like the way Revit does it, leap to mind, where they take you through the stages of using each tool, these tips can be switched on or off as the user requires. Another idea might be a proxy diagram like in the wall style browser, which just includes the geometry affected by the tool (along the lines of the clip cube perhaps?)... Junctions are some of the most difficult and most interesting and creative elements of architecture and surely deserve a good set of editing and visualisation tools.

Saying that I'm sure I'll do a much better job of it when I get more used to the existing functionality (or learn some more of the workarounds!)

Edited December 12, 2013 by RCrussellUK

[Dieter @ DWorks]

So close, thanks for your input, I've played around with this for a bit and achieved a much more satisfactory junction (luckily the client is not so worried about this, but I am!)... still one clash that I don't seem to be able to remove though? (see joint 1)

I think you're absolutely right bc, this sort of thing should be made much clearer - tooltips like the way Revit does it, leap to mind, where they take you through the stages of using each tool, these tips can be switched on or off as the user requires. Another idea might be a proxy diagram like in the wall style browser, which just includes the geometry affected by the tool (along the lines of the clip cube perhaps?)... Junctions are some of the most difficult and most interesting and creative elements of architecture and surely deserve a good set of editing and visualisation tools.

Saying that I'm sure I'll do a much better job of it when I get more used to the existing functionality (or learn some more of the workarounds!)

Did you follow my guide completely? From what I can see in the pictures, the wall components are joined to the wrong ones. It is very important to do these right.

These joins aren't workarounds. I know it's not always easy to see how you must do it, but the couple of last releases of VW, it has become so much easier and so much better, also a lot more user friendly. You just have to keep in mind that you first have to join the walls as a whole, and then, if VW doesn't automatically joins the components correctly, you have to do component joins. I guess the help should include some vids on these joins to make it more clear how you can do them.

If it doesn't work, then send me the file.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Dieter @ DWorks

[RCrussellUK]

Hi DWorks, thanks again for the support. I'm trying to follow the guide. Where you show an finish component, I am assuming that you mean click on both surfaces of the component, not just the outer line which is an option? When I tried following, the wall inside the plaster and render at the junction disappeared along the column of the join. I shall give it a few more goes!

[RCrussellUK]

Yes!

It worked, thanks so much DWorks.

Now I just need to go over it again so I know exactly what I did. I think I had mixed up a couple of L's with T's... will practice some more until I get this.

(would be so useful to use component join in 3D open GL)

Edited December 12, 2013 by RCrussellUK

[RCrussellUK]

I don't want to take up too much of your time DWorks, but you're good at this!

I had a problem a little while back that was left unsolved, but it's been bugging me. Part of the issue is that in the UK there's no way to get hold of WinDoor, which it seems would have made constructing a window of this type much easier.

I have made my own Bay Window model (for an existing window)... problem is, I cannot seem to get both the upper and lower wall to join correctly at the same time. This is similar to the previous problem and I have tried applying similar solutions with no success.

Perhaps you can advise?

[Dieter @ DWorks]

This is because walls that overlap can't be connected to the same other wall.

What you could do in this example is splitting up the wall horizontally:

- So you have the bottom part of the bay window and the normal walls, to be able to bound the floor to them.

- So you have the top part of the normal walls and the 'beam' kind of wall, to be able to bound your ceiling to it.

(This works better for spaces too)

If you don't use bounded floors and ceilings, or you don't mind adding/subtracting surface of your bounded slabs, you can do:

- Create the space without the bay window.

- Make a symbol for the bay window and insert that into the wall.

Walls that overlap at junctions always behave strange, as they will try to connect automatically. So keep them at separate layers, or just group them.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Dieter @ DWorks