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Door styles, door symbols and PIOs - workflow


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Just wondering how everyone is creating and placing doors.  Previously I had a master file of doors and would just copy and insert the first instance as needed in my drawing.  After that using the Eye Dropper tool in the Symbol Insertion Tool I would place further instances of doors as needed.  Then I started exploring Door Styles and liked the greater degree of control but wondering if all doors in a drawing should remain as PIOs or are others creating a symbol for each door size / type once the PIO is configured as needed.  I like the Use Wall Depth for the jambs but once a PIO has been converted to a symbol the jamb depth doesn't seem to adjust.  

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Guest Wes Gardner

@Mitchell (the other one), my suggestion is Door Styles.  For any given project, you can create a style and "lock up" (By Style) those components that are common for that project.  As an example, the height might be the same throughout so that all the head heights align but the door size would be allowed to "float" (By Instance) so that you can have different width doors.  The texture, etc can also be "by style" so they remain constant.  Since these are resources, they can be shared and reused (with any necessary tweaks) for the next project.

 

Wes

 

 

Example Door.vwx

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Once you have created the Door Style you want and then applied it to the door PIO, is there any advantage to then converting that 'styled' door PIO to a symbol?  The conversion to a symbol seems to loose some of the functionality of the style, Use Wall Depth for example.  I'm just having a little problem letting go of years of placing door symbols from my master file of doors.  

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 5/27/2020 at 5:54 PM, Mitchell (the other one) said:

  I like the Use Wall Depth for the jambs but once a PIO has been converted to a symbol the jamb depth doesn't seem to adjust.  

 

Just to give you some background on this...when you convert the PIO to a symbol, you have one copy of the geometry that is duplicated through all instances of that symbol in the drawing. The symbols in the drawing, at that point, have no knowledge of any parameters that the underlying objects may have.

 

In the Use Wall Depth situation, the Jamb Depth parameter gets adjusted whenever the door finds itself in a wall. When using a style, Use Wall Depth will always adjust the Jamb Depth when the door is in a different wall, or the wall's thickness changes. None of this can happen when using a symbol

 

Think of it in terms of a container - when the door is in a symbol, the symbol definition is the container, not the wall. What is in the wall at this point - a symbol, not a door.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@Mitchell (the other one) I would recommend using Door Styles as they would represent a type of Door with exact same parameters that would be used throughout the project - ie bathroom door, bedroom door etc. 

In my opinion, symbols come in handy in case of bespoke/custom Door geometry that can't be achieved with the Door tool (ie doors on a church with intricate detailing and gothic arches). In that case, you would model it, save as a Symbol and use that instead. You would lose parametric control over things like Use Wall Depth like you say, but that's why I would only resort to Symbols if I can't achieve what I want with the Door tool.

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