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Help with Chimney


MaxStudio

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Hello Everyone,

 

I'm trying to create a chimney that tapers.  (see picture 2)  I've drawn the walls, which represent the wider portion, on the first floor and the walls, that represent the more narrow section, on the second floor.  I need to create the transition piece between (see picture 1).   I want the transition piece to perform much like a slab so that the horizontal lines are invisible when rendering Hidden line.

 

My questions are:

 

1.  What is the best way to go about creating this piece?

2.  I could use a slab but, is there a way to taper a slab?

3.  I tried creating a polygon, performed and extrude and tapered it.  And while that got me the shape I was looking for it still has the horizontal lines in Hidden Line mode.  Is there a way to hide the horizontal lines?

 

Thanks

Derek

 

Picture1.jpg

Picture2.jpg

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36 minutes ago, MaxStudio said:

3.  I tried creating a polygon, performed and extrude and tapered it.  And while that got me the shape I was looking for it still has the horizontal lines in Hidden Line mode.  Is there a way to hide the horizontal lines?

I think this is the way to go except make the other chimney parts solid objects (rahter than wall objects) then you can select the whole chimney, right click and "add solids" which will make the whole chimney a "solid addition" and it will remove the unwanted lines. You can still double click on the chimney to enter the addition and edit it later on.

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50 minutes ago, Boh said:

I think this is the way to go except make the other chimney parts solid objects (rahter than wall objects) then you can select the whole chimney, right click and "add solids" which will make the whole chimney a "solid addition" and it will remove the unwanted lines. You can still double click on the chimney to enter the addition and edit it later on.

 

This is not going to work if the upper and lower parts of the chimney are on different layers, though.

 

@MaxStudio you have hit upon what I think is a pretty basic problem with Vectorworks and one that I've been complaining about for some time. By coincidence I just started a thread on much the same issue a few hours ago:

 

 

I'm afraid the answer is that there isn't really a solution. So far what I end up doing is removing those unwanted lines by blanking them out with patches in the annotations to the viewport, but this is not a satisfactory solution as it leaves you with messy drawings.

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I've also created a 3d tapered object and used the "Add 3d Object to Slab" menu item to attach the object to the slab.  That did attach the 3d object to the slab but, then the horizontal lines of the slab became visible too.  It's almost like the slab became part of the 3d object and inherited it's properties instead of the 3d object becoming part of the slab.

 

1 hour ago, Boh said:

I think this is the way to go except make the other chimney parts solid objects (rahter than wall objects) then you can select the whole chimney, right click and "add solids" which will make the whole chimney a "solid addition" and it will remove the unwanted lines. You can still double click on the chimney to enter the addition and edit it later on.

 

Hi Boh,

What layer do you put the Solid Chimney Object on?   I was able to get it to work but, I had to do a little extra work.  I will list my process below:

 

I did what you said and created the Chimney as 1 solid object.  I'm going to call this object "Chimney_Elevation_Object"

 

I put Chimney_Elevation_Object on the design layer "Slab-1"  (that allows me to show the chimney in elevation but, not on any of the plans because the Slab-1 layer is set to invisible on my plan views)

 

I still needed the walls of the chimney to show in plan so I created a new class called "Wall-Chimney"  I then went to the First Floor Walls design layer and created the walls for the wider portion of the chimney and put those walls on the Wall-Chimney class.  I then went to the Second Floor Walls design layer and created the walls for the narrower portion of the chimney and also put those walls on the Wall-Chimney class.

 

Finally, I set the visibility for the Wall-Chimney class to visible on the plans and invisible on the elevations.   See Pictures 3,4 & 5 Below.

 

Unfortunately, there is a little bit of double work that needs to be done to accomplish this outcome.  In the future, if I change the chimney in plan, I will need to remember to also change the solid Chimney_Elevation_Object.  I will also have to create some more classes for demo and new chimney walls.

 

Thanks for your help and if anyone else has any further solutions I would love to hear.

Derek

 

 

Picture5.png

Picture4.png

Picture3.png

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2 hours ago, line-weight said:

 

I'm afraid the answer is that there isn't really a solution.

 

I should add to the above:   "....without having to draw the element twice" which is what you have ended up doing: once in a way that top/plan view can show correctly at each floor level, and once in a way that hidden line render can show correctly in elevation view. Of course as you are fully aware, each time you want to edit that chimney you will have to separately edit each of these two versions and further multiples of that for demolition plans and so on. With more complex models, trying to manage things like this becomes very laborious and introduces lots of room for errors.

 

(This is not a criticism of your solution; it's a criticism of this deficiency in the software)

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Yes this is a tricky situation where you have a single tall building element passing through multiple layer elevations requiring a different 2d plan representation on each level but also requiring a homogenous 3d representation for live sections & elevations and perspective views. This happens with things like downpipes, curtain wall glazing and ramps.

 

As Lineweight has said there isn't a way to model it where a single object can serve satisfactorily for each of these different views.

 

The only way I've found is to create a hybrid symbol which has within it separate 3d & 2d top/plan representations. (I understand VW 2019 has developed this further so that hybrid symbols also have separate 2d elevation representations though I haven't used that yet).

 

It is still drawing 2d & 3d separately but at least it is all contained in the one object.

 

To do this:

  • Create the whole chimney as a single solid 3d object.
  • Place the chimney object in the "Chimney_Elevation_Object" class.
  • Turn it into a symbol. Double click the symbol to edit it and overlay 2d representations of what you want the chimney to look like in top/plan view on both the ground floor and the first floor. Class the 2d linework into something like "Chimney_Plan_Ground" and "Chimney _Plan_First"
  • Place the 2d linework on the screen plane. Now when you exit the symbol edit mode it will have become a hybrid symbol so that only the 3d elements are visible in 3d views and similarly for the 2d portions.
  • Place the symbol in your model, perhaps on a dedicated layer just for the chimney and adjust layer, class visibilities to suit the viewport(s) as needed.

 

Alternately you could place the chimney symbol on both ground floor and first floor design layers (adjusting the symbol's z height as required for the first floor layer) so that in elevation views there would actually be two chimneys but you would only see one as they would be exactly on top of each other.

 

Hope that helps

Edited by Boh
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There's another approach which potentially avoids modelling twice: forget about top/plan view and generate floorplans using horizontal sections. Then there's no problem with elements spanning several storeys, or worries about how top/plan is going to interpret solid objects. Of course, you then lose some stuff like how things like stairs and doors are drawn in plan. How much this matters depends on the nature of the project.

 

I'm actually trying out this approach on a small project I'm doing at the moment where not much stuff can be covered using the standard VW objects anyway. Still using top/plan view for editing purposes, but the floorplans that are output will be generated as horizontal sections.

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19 hours ago, line-weight said:

There's another approach which potentially avoids modelling twice: forget about top/plan view and generate floorplans using horizontal sections. Then there's no problem with elements spanning several storeys, or worries about how top/plan is going to interpret solid objects. Of course, you then lose some stuff like how things like stairs and doors are drawn in plan. How much this matters depends on the nature of the project.

 

I'm actually trying out this approach on a small project I'm doing at the moment where not much stuff can be covered using the standard VW objects anyway. Still using top/plan view for editing purposes, but the floorplans that are output will be generated as horizontal sections.

 

maybe it is useless but...

 

A :

 

what if you:

 

1 - create a separate layer for the chimney where you model the whole thing

2 - create your regular layers for your first and second floor without the chimney.

3 - create 2 design layer section viewport of the chimney layer for both floors on the correct heights 

4 - put the design layer section viewport in the correct place on the floorplans

 

Another option:

 

B:

 

Something else i noticed is that you can create 3d symbol of the chimney. You can paste the symbol on both layers and adjust the Z value of the symbol so it is at the correct height.

On each layer you now can create an auto hybrid of the symbol. If modeled correctly this should show the correct 2d plan.

(at first sight there are no problems with coplanar faces in Opengl if both layers are turned on)

 

Both maybe totally useless, but Vectorworks seems to be so close 😂

 

 

chimney test.vwx

 

Edited by Bas Vellekoop
typo
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@Bas Vellekoop

 

I think option A might work. It's sort-of a variation of a strategy I've used in the past, where the floorplan is a combination (on a sheet layer) of a top-plan viewport and a horizontal section viewport. They are both cropped to show different portions of the plan. So the bits that don't work are cropped out in that viewport, and vice versa.

 

For option B - I don't use auto-hybrids any more. Two reasons;

(1) Because they have their own internal origin, it's not possible to paste-in-place items into or out of them. I find that makes them too difficult to work with whilst drawing/editing.

(2) Where an auto hybrid joins onto a section of wall, top-plan draws a solid cut plane line between them, that shoudn't be there.

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As Line-weight has mentioned, we always end up drawing these things twice, or the other method we use it to extract the surfaces of the object to get rid of the unwanted join lines in elevations.  Only problem is, if the object changes shape or location etc, you have to remember to update all of the items used to create the object including any extracted surfaces.

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