Wall inside a symbol

[paulg]

Hi All

I have made a symbol of a house type which contains walls, slabs, windows doors, etc.. its quite basic as its for a master plan. Whats great is i use scattered over the plan and make changes to the one symbol and its updated. great.

The issue is with walls. I needed to add a little wall to the symbol but i can't seem to get it to have a height. The wall style if set by 'layer wall height' the layer is set to 2400mm high. It just stays as a 2d wall. I tried typing the height in the OIP but it won't show any height in the actual wall.

I wouldn't have thought drawing a wall in a symbol would be so heard.

Does anyone have any ideas. So far i have had convert the symbol, add the walls, make a new symbol and overwrite the old one. Bit of work considering i have 6 house types.

p

[Kevin McAllister]

Looks like setting a wall height by layer from within a symbol isn't possible. Not sure if this is WAD (working as designed) or a bug. Jim?

KM

[PVA - Admin]

I was taught to never place walls within symbols, the inability to link them to layer heights and other walls outside the symbol being the main issue.

Most likely this is working as designed. Design Layer Viewports were designed in part to alleviate the desire to place whole rooms or buildings within symbols.

[Kevin McAllister]

Interesting. So it swaps dependency from one non-auto-updating object (wall in symbol) to another (design layer viewports). They suffer from the same problem as the auto-hybrid which is not so auto in some instances.

I have used walls in symbols once and a while. It can be very useful for scenic elements in theatre (i.e.. walls on a truck unit) and I almost always make scenic units into symbols. But in my instance I am not connecting to surrounding walls or linking to layer heights....

KM

[paulg]

How would you go about making a house type that updates in a referenced file?

The reason i made the houses into symbols was due to a problem with design layer viewports.

I referenced the house types into my terrain model and then created a viewport of the house and duplicated it within the terrain, giving it Z heights as i went (its a sloping site). It worked great but had major issues trying to export the whole model with house in place as IFC and dwg and dxf to consultants.

Some parts of the DLV, like walls and slabs are in the correct Z, around 121m high but the windows and doors went back down at 0.

I tried many export setting but came to the conclusion that making a symbol for the house was more stable.

P

Edited March 31, 2015 by paulg

[AlanW]

Hi,

You are probably using a wall style and have not set the wall height.

Am doing a development at present with 3 Townhouse types within 5 separate building blocks, each two level.

Not sure if its the best way but am open to suggestions.

So each of my townhouses are set up at zero and then I created a Symbol for each and moved the symbol to the relative level RL 181.500 and my first floors are same but the symbol has been created 3m higher at RL 184.500, so I move the symbol to the floor level of that unit and it sits perfectly. Each unit (Symbol) can be placed at different levels depending on the site location and you can see how it fits to the site and whether you need to move it up or down of flatten a section of the site.

All works fine only issue is if you have one unit at the end of the block and it has a window you can either create a new symbol or just leave the wall out and add it in the design layer.

Hope this helps

Attached part image of work in progress, each unit is a separate symbol, no referenced viewports.

Symbol of one first floor unit with wall styles.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Alan777

[paulg]

Hi Alan

I am using a wall style however the wall height is set to be the 'Layer wall height' rather than a fixed height. I guess a symbol does not have a layer height association as things could go very wrong when moving the symbol to layers with varying wall height settings.

The best solution is, as you say, make sure the wall style setting has its height set to 'layer elevation' and then type in the height.

attached image of the master plan with the 5 different house types.

cheers P

[AlanW]

Paul,

In this one i have set all the Design layers to Zero and wall heights to zero. This way you can deal with the different wall heights in individual buildings (Symbols) Could set wall heights and manage them the same way with offsets in the OIP.

I have found that any roofs that cover more then 1 unit may have to be done in a separate design layer, rather than the symbol as you can then control the step in the roof between units better.

By setting your site model to world co-ordinates (Real Rl's) when you set your symbol to the correct RL it sits perfectly in the terrain.

Seems to work well but happy to hear other ways to do this.

By the way I see you have a large block for the site model, if you go into site model settings and set your min Elevation to a few metres below you lowest RL for your site model it will raise the base up so you get a nice thin site model.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Alan777

[AlanW]

In this one i have set all the Design layers to Zero and wall heights to zero. This way you can deal with the different wall heights in individual buildings (Symbols) Could set wall heights and manage them the same way with offsets in the OIP.

I have found that any roofs that cover more then 1 unit may have to be done in a separate design layer, rather than the symbol as you can then control the step in the roof between units better.

By setting your site model to world co-ordinates (Real Rl's) when you set your symbol to the correct RL it sits perfectly in the terrain.

Seems to work well but happy to hear other ways to do this.

By the way I see you have a large block for the site model, if you go into site model settings and set your min Elevation to a few metres below you lowest RL for your site model it will raise the base up so you get a nice thin site model.

[AlanW]

Most likely this is working as designed. Design Layer Viewports were designed in part to alleviate the desire to place whole rooms or buildings within symbols.

Jim,

Will have to look further into the Design Layer Viewports as there must be good reason ans mentioned above.

I use design layer viewports when I have multiple floors in an office building and it generates the elevations and sections easily.

But for small units, will have to investigate once i understand why you recommend the alternative.

Thanks