Fill floor area with 2d polygon

[John Whyte]

We use the 2d polygon tool to fill floor areas for UFH (under floor heating) drawings / floor finishes and floor level drawings. These look like the image below.

At the moment we draw these by going around the room and drawing our polygons, but on larger projects, especially if they are refurbishments of older buildings, rather than new builds there are many angles and returns to deal with and it can take ages to go through each floor marking off the areas.

Is there a 'one click' fill or some other technique that we can use to mark off these areas quicker ?

For the majority of our projects we get .dwgs submitted by surveyor which we load into vectorworks - not sure if that makes a difference for what we want to do, but just wanted to point out that the walls are not drawn using the vwx wall tool - having said that if they where drawn with the wall tool would there be a different approach to produce these flooring area drawings ?

Edited March 30, 2014 by John Whyte

[CipesDesign]

Have a look at the "Create Polys from Walls" command, in the AEC Menu. Also, you might have some success with the Inner/Outer Boundary Modes of the Polygon tool. Note that in order for the Inner Boundary Mode to work properly, all line/segment endpoints must be exactly coincident (i.e.: no gaps).

[VincentCuclair]

If they are drawn with walls you could use the Spaces tool which can be applied with one click (flood fill mode) as well as it being autobounded, it can be bounded to different parts of the wall, it can have a label and you can apply textures etc to it.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

If they are drawn with walls you could use the Spaces tool which can be applied with one click (flood fill mode) as well as it being autobounded, it can be bounded to different parts of the wall, it can have a label and you can apply textures etc to it.

You have to make sure all walls are joined correctly and that each room forms a closed space with walls around it.

If you do not draw with walls, or because it's an import, the polygon tool also have this flood fill mode.

[John Whyte]

Thanks for all the above input, ive tried the "Create Polys from Walls" tool which worked great, but i could only get it to work if the walls had been drawn using the vwx wall tool. On an imported dwg drawing like the image below i couldnt seem to get it to work.

@CipesDesign i looked into the inner / outer boundary tool, although they are not perfect at picking out the exact area, in most instances they create quite a good poly which i can then tweak with the reshape tool. All in all i think its still quicker for more complex spaces than individually skirting the perimeter of each room using the 2d poly vertex mode. Thanks

Edited March 31, 2014 by John Whyte

[VincentCuclair]

There is actually also a (legacy) hatch command that allows you to select a group of objects with a lasso which are then used to create a hatch within.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Vincent C

[Dieter @ DWorks]

Also, it can be faster to draw basic shapes and combine/substract them instead of having to define each point.