Introduction

Walls, slabs, and roofs are designed to interact. This means that when you connect a slab to walls, it will update when you move the walls. Roofs can be connected to walls so that parts of the roof are inside the building and some parts of the roof extend out to the eaves.
In order to make these connections, we need to understand how walls, slabs, and roofs connect. We need to understand how the walls have been designed, how the slabs have been designed, and how the roofs have been designed.

The manual has been divided into three parts. The first part looks at the basic concepts of walls, roofs, and slabs. The second part looks at these elements in detail and shows how the components for these objects work. The final part of the manual looks at how these objects interact with each other.

Content

• Walls
• Slabs and Floors
• Roofs
• Beginner Topics
  • Walls
  • Floors and Slab
  • Roofs
• Intermediate Topics
  • Wall Components and Wall Style
  • Slab Components and Slab Styles
  • Roof Components and Roof Styles
• Advanced Topics
  • Interaction Between Wall Components and Slab Components
  • Interaction Between Wall Components and Roof Components

Walls

When we start looking at walls, it is important for us to understand how the top and the bottom of the wall are controlled. Controlling the top bound and the bottom bound seems to be the first hurdle for people learning to use walls. The bottom of the wall is controlled by a level called Bottom Bound. This level can be the layer elevation. If you are using Stories, this bottom bound can be a story level, allowing you to set the bounding of the wall to any level you require.
Walls can have components. These components can represent parts of a wall such as cladding, cavities, framing, lining, etc. The components can be connected to the wall height or they can be connected to story levels.

Slabs and Floors

The Floor object is used for drawing simple slabs and other horizontal objects. The Floor object is set out from the underside (bottom Z) and has a thickness. A slab can be set out from the top or the bottom of the slab (the datum). A slab can also be created with components, and any one of these components can be used for the datum of the slab.

Roofs

The bearing height of the roof controls the elevation to the start of the roof. The bearing height is normally measured from where the roof and the wall touch. The bearing height is measured in the current layer, in some cases the roof bearing height has to be changed in order to accommodate the layer elevation. I generally set my roof layer to have the same elevation as the layer for the walls supporting the roof. You can have a series of components that represent parts of the roof, such as cladding, purlins, rafters, ceilings, etc.
[ms-protect-content id=”34491,34492,34493, 34494, 34495, 34496, 344927″]

Beginner Topics

Beginner Topics – Wall Top Bound and Wall Bottom Bound

Walls heights are controlled by a combination of the wall bounding and the offsets from the top and bottom bounds. The way to deal with the height of a wall is to choose the Top Bound and the Bottom Bound, then enter the offsets from each bound. If you want a very simple way to set the height of the wall, set both the top and bottom bounds to Layer Elevation and then enter the offsets for each.

Beginner Topics – Floors and Slab

The Floor object has a fixed bounding. There is the underside of the floor and the floor’s thickness. If you want your slab top to finish at zero, then the bottom offset has to be the negative value of the thickness. For slab objects, you can choose whether the elevation of the slab is measured to the top or bottom of the slab.

Beginner Topics – Roofs

Roofs are controlled by a combination of the roof bearing height and the layer elevation. The easiest way to deal with your roof bearing height is to set your Layer Elevation to the same elevation as the layer of the walls supporting the roof. This allows you to measure the bearing height of the roof from the floor slab.

Intermediate Topics

Intermediate Topics – Wall Components and Wall Styles

Walls can have components. The components represent a part of the wall, the exterior cladding for example. These components can have their own color, line weight, texture, and class. This allows you to have parts of the wall visible in some drawings and not visible in others. As well as creating wall components, you can save your wall settings as a Wall Style that can be saved to your library and used on multiple projects.

Intermediate Topics – Slab Components and Slab Styles

Slabs can have components. The components represent a part of the slab, the slab topping for example. These components can have their own color, line weight, texture, and class. This allows you to have parts of the slab visible in some drawings and not visible in others and to control the extent of each component . As well as creating components, you can save your Slab settings as a Slab Style that can be saved to your library and used on multiple projects.

Intermediate Topics – Roof Components and Roof Styles

Roofs can have components. The components represent a part of the wall, the exterior cladding for example. These components can have their own color, line weight, texture, and class. This allows you to have parts of the roof visible in some drawings and not visible in others. As well as creating components, you can save your settings as a Roof Style that can be saved to your library and used on multiple projects.

Advanced Topics

Advanced Topics – Interaction Between Wall Components and Slab Components

When the wall components and slab components have been correctly created, they can be used to interact with each other.
For example, you can create a brick veneer wall that will connect correctly with a corresponding slab to create the set downs in the slab for the brick veneer. Slabs can be connected to walls so that when the walls are amended, the slabs update automatically.

Advanced Topics – Interaction Between Wall Components and Roof Components

When the wall components and roof components have been correctly created, they can be used to interact with each other. For example, you can create roof components that stop at the interface of wall components. An example might be a roof where the rafters stop at the wall line but the purlins extend to the outside of the roof, or ceilings that stop on the internal lining of the wall.

Download the Vectorworks 2017 file
Download the Vectorworks 2018 file
[/ms-protect-content]