Setting up Walls for my standard ways

[SLD]

I have been a user of VW for over 20 years but always done things in 2D and now I'm in the process of turning into 3D BIM, but still looking to keep my documents looking the same but with some new features.  My questions is about walls.  When I draw walls I show an exterior wall 4" thick (3 1/2" stud and 1/2" plywood).  I also use different colors on wall between the main and upper for design and contrition documents.  With the wall tools that VW provides the overall wall is a lot thicker.  When doing deign or documents I show dimensions to the rough framing and not the finish.  I looked into classes on the wall that VW provides but only has one class for it.  Is there away to have siding and drywall on a class that can me turned on and off?  Attached is my walls that I use but I know that i have to change cause if the 3D.  

 

The typical walls I'm looking for are the following: Stud wall with siding, Stud wall with stone water table and siding, stud wall with stone veneer.  I'm really looking for those walls and able to turn on and off the classes of exterior finish and interior finish.  Also seeing about base trim with the walls too.

 

Walls .vwx

[Pat Stanford]

Wall Components are what you want to look into. And yes, you can put components in classes that you can control the visibility of.

 

[Boh]

In the resource Manager you can edit the wall styles and add components and you can put these components in their own class. You may want to have separate component classes for interior and exterior finishes or go further and have separate classes for each type of interior / exterior finish.

 

Having separate component classes for each finish allows you to control component graphic attributes by class.

 

For your upper and lower floors, you may want to have separate classes for these and have the frame component of the wall style be in the object class and have it's attributes controlled by class. This way the the same wall style can be used in both the upper and lower floors classes and take on the fill colour of those classes.

 

On 5/3/2020 at 5:28 AM, SLD said:

With the wall tools that VW provides the overall wall is a lot thicker.

Not sure what you mean here. Thicker than what?

 

With regard to base trim. You could try add a base trim as the innermost interior component. There is an option to control component height in the edit component dialogue.

 

Edit I just noticed this which may be useful for 3d base boards.

https://fitplot.it/vwplugins/mouldings.html

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Boh

[niagara designer]

Does this mean we can designate the exterior finishes as separate component classes,

and then toggle between them to show clients different options for exteriors?

(ie different siding types and colours?)

thanks

[Pat Stanford]

Theoretically, yes, you could edit your walls to have multiple very thin components each in a different class and each with a different texture. Then you could toggle the class visibilities to get different renderings.

 

But perhaps better to just stick to one component and use Viewports with Class Overrides to generate different options.

[niagara designer]

ok thanks!

 

I'll figure out how to do that - it will save a ton of time.

It's only for the exterior finish.

[Boh]

48 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

 

But perhaps better to just stick to one component and use Viewports with Class Overrides to generate different options.

@niagara designer the key to class overrides is setting attributes by class. So for wall styles make sure the components have their attributes set to by class. (This included textures),

[niagara designer]

are there any good tutorial videos on this?!

[Boh]

There probably are some vids out there but here are some screen shots of a wall style of mine that uses class attributes. Also viewport class override settings. Hope this helps.

 

 

[niagara designer]

thanks very much Boh.

I will try this.

I didn't find a video on this specifically after much looking.

[Boh]

My only other comment would be in the class edit dialogues for your wall and wall component classes to make sure all your class attributes and textures are set to use at creation.

[niagara designer]

thanks - I think I've made a mess of the classes, and have to dig out of the pit and streamline them.

 

I have various "component" classes and  various "wall" classes - both with many sub classes including ext finish and sub classes of that with cladding types.

Many do not say "use at creation" so that may be one part of the problem.

 

I see on your screen shots (which were super clear btw)  that you use the heirarchy:

Component-WALL-Cladding

 

Do you also have classes like: Wall-Component-Cavity etc?

and if so how do you know which to use?

thx again  🙂

 

[Boh]

We have developed our own class system that suits how we work and the sort of work we do. We tend to control graphic attributes by class as much as possible as  it helps streamline and standardise our drawings across our office. Another advantage of course it gives us a lot of control to make global edits in drawings and allows the use of vp overrides. 

 

It does however mean there can be a lot of classes!  That said if you have a good system then managing multiple classes is not a big deal.

 

We have a bunch of classes we use exclusively for wall, slab and roof components and they all have the “COMPONENT-“ prefix. That way they all group together in the class lists. These classes are almost always all set to visible.

 

We also have classes for the wall, floor and Roof objects which have  “MODEL-WALL-“,   “MODEL-FLOOR-“ etc prefixes.

 

In our wall styles we have the core component set to “object class” rather than to a class. That way the core component will take on the graphic attributes of the class the wall is placed in. In this way we can use the same wall style for existing, proposed, interior, exterior, fire rated etc as there are “MODEL-WALL-Exterior-New”, “MODEL-WALL-Exterior-Extg” etc classes for each type of wall and these model classes are set for the required graphics. E.g the “MODEL-WALL-Exterior_New” class as a black solid fill do walls with an “object class“ core component placed in this class will have a black fill.

 

3d finishes are pretty much taken care of with these component and model classes.

 

We don’t model everything in a file so we have a bunch of classes to show 2d floor, roof and ceiling finishes. These have “FINISHES-FLOOR-“, “FINISHES-ROOF-“ etc prefixes.

 

Wall finishes are usually taken care of by the component/model-wall classes but we do have a bunch of “ELEVATION-“ classes used for tweaking finishes in VP annotations.

 

I could rave on about what classes are for what etc but every practice probably does it differently. 
 

The main thing for us is using by class attributes (so having “use at creation” active for almost all classes is a good thing for us) and I guess separating out model work from 2d work. 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Boh

[Pat Stanford]

Great explanation Boh.  

 

I often say that the way to use VW is the way that makes sense to YOUR brain. What works for me is unlikely to work for you.

 

There are certainly Best Practices and things that are typically done to facilitate sharing of data with consultants, but if you are the one working on the drawing 98% of the time and electronic versions are only given to others 2% of the time, what you use had better make sense to you and be natural and easy to use.

[niagara designer]

Sorry thought I had sent this  - thank you -  I think that's the key - the wall core is in the MODEL-WALL class, which is where you draw the wall.

then you set/define the other components into whatever specific classes you want.

 

I thought the whole wall had to be either "by component" or "by object" -  and I didn't know what kind of class heirarchy to use -

rather than having just the wall core "by object".

Do I have that right?

 

And you still have sub categories like: MODEL-WALL-EXT or INT

 

I will see if I can get things working again with this info. I don't mind having lots of classes to get the most out of this program, as long as they are organized.

 

thanks so much for your help!

[Boh]

2 hours ago, niagara designer said:

I thought the whole wall had to be either "by component" or "by object" -  and I didn't know what kind of class heirarchy to use -

rather than having just the wall core "by object".

Do I have that right?

Yes I think you have it. Essentially the wall classes are for types of walls and components the parts of walls. The exception being by setting up the wall style core component to by object it takes on the wall class graphic attributes. The wall class is in effect a container class for the wall with its graphics expressed through the wall core component.

 

An additional note here. Some wall types don’t need components e.g a concrete block wall. So for these we have a wall style that has no components and just has its “wall attributes” set to by class ( see screen shot in earlier post). We have a bunch of these “ generic” wall styles at a range of widths. So for new concrete block we would probably use a 190 thick generic style and place it in the “MODEL-WALL-Concrete Block-New” class. No components needed. 
 

Edit Just noticed that technically the core components isnt set to “by object” rather to “object class”. Setting attributes “by object” is a slightly different thing so I have corrected the terminology in my previous post in case it causes confusion.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Boh

[Boh]

2 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

 

There are certainly Best Practices and things that are typically done to facilitate sharing of data with consultants, but if you are the one working on the drawing 98% of the time and electronic versions are only given to others 2% of the time, what you use had better make sense to you and be natural and easy to use.

Quite right @Pat StanfordWe are a smallish practice of 7 vw users. What we do is customised to our requirements and we rarely have to share our vw files outside the office. We have found some other class standard too convoluted and coded for what we need. I think ours is fairly intuitive for new staff to learn quickly.

[niagara designer]

Ah - thanks again Boh, and Pat,

I very much appreciate the help.

Lisa

[Boh]

Good luck. Fire back any questions. I suggest getting a typical wall style and all its settings the you want and using this as a template for creating other styles.

[niagara designer]

Ok -  will do.

I work alone and get too comfortable with doing things the hard way lol.

time to learn more to save time.

so thanks!!

[Boh]

12 hours ago, niagara designer said:

 

I thought the whole wall had to be either "by component" or "by object" -  and I didn't know what kind of class heirarchy to use -

I missed this and should clarify. I think my terminology was slightly wrong and has confused you slightly. In my earlier post I used the term “by object” to describe how to set wall style core components. I should have said to use “object class” for this instead - my bad sorry. I have edited the earlier post to correct this.
 

In this context the terms “by component “ and “by object” refer only to how textures are applied to walls. By component means each component has its own textures (defined in the wall components dialogue). By object means for textures components are ignored and instead different textures can be applied to different faces of the wall. (Back, front, top, ends etc).

 

In a wall style definition you can choose if the wall style is to apply textures by component or by object (see one of the screen shots posted earlier), however after drawing a wall you can change it for each instance of a wall in the render tab of the object info palette.

 

If you have a good set of wall styles with good component textures/classes then setting textures by component is the way to go. It’s not as easy to change a wall texture on the fly however as to do so you either need edit the wall component or wall component class (if using by class component textures). I think wall textures set by component are more articulate as each component is usually a different material which is expressed graphically by its own texture. 
 

Setting textures by object might be the way to go if you don’t have good component textures/classes for your wall style. Setting by object means you can quickly change textures in the oip render tab for a wall which can be handy as it’s easier to do a trial and error type design. Graphically I think it’s a bit clumsier but often times it does the job fine.

 

I hope I have cleared up any confusion, probably not! I still get confused sometimes setting wall textures...

 

As mentioned, repost if there is something still not clear.  Cheers

 

[niagara designer]

Thanks for taking the time to clarify and add more info.

And for the advice re surface object textures vs component textures by class.

 

I found one good VW video on surface textures, and now think I know why I was having trouble using it with walls.

Will report back with more questions, I am sure!

I think this topic could be a 2+ hr course!

 

thanks again.

Lisa