insert a door object on a composite wall

[Robert Anderson]

Draw the foundation (concrete) wall with a gap at the garage door on your foundation layer.

Draw the stud wall on your first floor layer and insert the garage door in it. Set the height of the door (select the door and look in the Info palette) to -12" (or whatever the height of your conc wall). Now your door and wall should be correct in 2D and 3D.

[stephanie]

thank you Mr. Anderson.

[stephanie]

hello, thanks for helping.

the question is a little odd, but i don't know how else i can put it.

the bottom 12" of my garage enclosure is concrete (from the foundation), above that, stud wall.

1)the concrete part is in the mod-floor-b1 layer, while the stud wall is in the mod-floor-1 layer. how do i insert a garage door into this concrete/wood wall?

2) if i were to put the entire wall in one single layer, and create one stud wall on top of a concrete wall, how do i go about inserting a garage door punching through both of them?

3) as an extension of this question, if i have a double height space, how do i place a window object that is between the two floors? should i abandon organizing the layers by floor levels and make it a 20' tall wall in one single layer?

thank you so much.

[stephanie]

uh... it doesn't quite work... it looks right in 2d, but in 3d, the footprint of the wall cuts through the middle of the garage door. the region of space defined by the orthogonal projection of the wall on the floor plane is opaque. it looks like the garage door plugin can only punch an "O" shape openning but not a "C" shape openning. i have tried that also with cased opennings, doors, and windows, same thing. of course, there are many ways to work around that, but we are totally losing the theoretical flexibility and power of a plugin object. there must be something that i am not doing right, please shed some light. thanks.

[CipesDesign]

Is your stud wall set to correct "z" height? That is, is it actually on top of the concrete wall, or does it overlap it.

Change the line color of your wood framed wall to red (or anything other than black). This is temporary, you'll change it back later. It's so you can tell one 3d thing from others, and dont move the wrong thing by mistake.

Go to the View menu and set you view to FRONT (or LEFT or RIGHT) so that you can see the wall straight on.

If your wall is in the same layer as the concrete wall, and both are set with bottom z = o, then you will see the overlap. To change that either select the wall and move it up (which will cause the bottom z to change in the OI palette) OR go to the OI palette and set the bottom z to 12" (or whatever you need).

I hope this helps!!!

Peter

[stephanie]

Thanks again Peter!

the goal is to open a garage door in a stud wall that has a 12" concrete base.

the garage door plug-in does not cut across the two parts of the wall that sit in separate layers. (foundation and floor-1)

according to Mr. Anderson's fix, i first made a check in the foundation wall to accomodate the door openning, then, on the layer floor-1, i made a stud wall with bot.z=0. in this wall, i tried to place a garage door with the bot.z=-12", but, this doesn't cut a clean openning in the stud wall. as a matter of fact, the footprint of the wall appears in the openning in the form of a thin ribbon.

i gather that when you partially intersect a plug-in object with a wall object, it doesn't cut a clean "C" shape openning, i.e. take a bite at a round pizza, but the rim of the pizza remains in place.

my way to work around it is to draw the stud wall in three sections, each directly above the concrete wall, i.e. bot.z =0, bot.z=-12", bot.z=0 respectively, and place the plug-in in the sunken wall.

it works, but it is really time consumming, and totally not flexible at all. that is why i think there must be a better way to do this. Peter, i am not sure i get your point, having used only autodek , i don't really have the vectorworks reflexes. are you saying that if i placed the concrete wall and stud wall in the same layer, i should be able to place a plug-in across both of them?

that was long and confusing! sorry about that. thanks!

[laldenj]

I could have sworn that I had successfully accomplished this before but, in fact, I end up repeating the problem you're describing(quite patiently, I might add).

If you're willing to give up the accuracy of the VW framing utility, you could simply allow your door wall to extrude into your 12" footing mass(created as Robert proposed)---making your door wall 12" higher than it really is and leaving the door elevation at 0"(top of slab).

At least you'd retain the plug-in functionality and flexibility.