Wall opening w/ 3 arches

[Yellowstone Construction]

I'm making a wall opening with 3 arches at the top. When I make the symbol it looks right and it cuts the wall correctly, but when viewed in 3D with textures the openning is more if a rectangle. The arches are not filled in between. Am I missing something here or is this one of those things that's to complicated.

[mike m oz]

Mike - this is because openings in walls cannot have re-entrant corners. You cannot form an 'L' shaped opening either for the same reason.

The way around this is to model the arches in 3D and include them in the 3D portion of the hybrid symbol you are creating. The symbol will then cut a rectangular hole in the wall in 3D with your 3D components filling in the required areas.

PS - the solution to the 'L' shaped opening is to include a piece of wall in the 3D part of the hybrid symbol. You can use a similar technique to model two separate windows aligned vertically in the same piece of wall - form the hybrid symbol using one 2D instance and two 3D instances separated by a piece of wall.

[ 04-09-2006, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

[Yellowstone Construction]

Thanks mike, I created a 3D symbol and iserted it into the wall and it won't fill in between the arches. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. I thought if we made a 3D symbol it would cut into the wall or do I need to create a 3d wall symbol to replace the wall?

[mike m oz]

Mike, because of the way that 3D symbols form holes in walls the reentrant portions will always be missing, You will have to include these in your symbol.

As an alternative to this you could solid subtract the required hole from the wall an then manually insert your symbol into the hole. The problem with this method is the wall loses its intelligence and you do not get a nice 2D look in Top / Plan View.

[ 04-10-2006, 09:45 PM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

[Yellowstone Construction]

Thanks Mike ! I added the missing features to the symbol as you wrote. And the problem is history. Although this is a time consuming solution it never the less works. Thanks again.