Classes for placed objects in walls

[jason schneider]

I'm a total rookie - I've been trying to teach myself VW for about a week now. The forum is awesome - but I am struggling with a concept.

 

So from what I can figure out, the class of a placed object, such as a window or door, is overridden by the class of the wall in which it is placed. I can turn off windows and doors and still see the walls, but I cannot turn off walls and only see windows and doors. Is this correct? 

 

Thanks!

[Pat Stanford]

The concept you are missing is called "Container Objects".

 

There are a number of types of objects that can "Contain" other object. These include Symbols, Groups, Plugin Objects, and as you have noticed, Walls.

 

When a Contained object has a different class than the Containing object, both of those classes have to be visible for the Contained object to be seen. This has lead many people to not use classes on Container Objects and always use the None class for them. Then they always leave the None class visible.

 

The Container Object also makes the Class Option of "Active Only" less useful because you will never be able to see contained objects with that setting. The Work around is to set the visibility of all the classes except the class of the Container to invisible. You can then make any other class the Active Class which is always visible and get something similar to Active Only.

 

Ask again if this is not clear enough.

 

HTH

[jason schneider]

Pat - Thanks so much for the quick response and the lesson on Container Objects. I can wrap my head around the "none" class concept for symbols, groups, etc., but I'm struggling with how this applies to walls. If I place the wall on the "None" class, how do I take advantage of controlling attributes (pen, fill, texture, etc) that I would have using a dedicated "Wall" class? Do I link the wall guts (components) to the class? (I gave this a shot and it didn't seem to work).

 

If there is a video or something that would help, feel free to post a link. And thank you for your patience! 

 

-J