Architect Special Interest Group March 2019

In this webinar we looked at how to deal with difficult wall thickening and an awkward chamfered corner between walls with different thicknesses. Then we looked at inserting objects in walls. The problem was two windows with a thin mullion between, which lead on to looking at to insert objects into walls.

Topics Covered:

• 00:26   Someone had a section that was too big—only part of the building really needed to be shown in the drawing—so we discussed ways of limiting the section. One way was to duplicate the section and crop it. You can use the Split Line tool to cut a viewport into parts and then revise the crop of each part to only show what is needed.
• 05:21   Another person had two walls coming together in a kind of Z-shape with a fireplace nested in the shape and wanted to show where they all came together as one wall object. We demonstrated how to have these come together nicely by making the odd-shaped 2D geometry into a pillar and then joining the walls to the pillar. We demonstrated how these might look in elevation—sometimes the joining lines are visible, and sometimes not. Changing the smoothing angle can often help. You can also use the Fillet tool to put curves in walls.
• 26:24   Someone had a double window that needed to be shown as one window. We set up the two double-hung windows outside of a wall, put a pillar for the mullion between them and turned them all into a symbol. Then, we placed the symbol into the wall. When you create the symbol, be sure to select the Insert into Wall option. There’s also the choice in the Window tool of selecting the Use Window Geometry option to insert the symbol into the wall. If you do that, Vectorworks will consider the symbol as a Window object—however, that option has its own set of challenges, as we saw in the webinar.
• 34:25   We experimented with making wall recesses by inserting objects—symbols, extrusions—into walls. The 3D Wall Hole Component is used to punch the hole into a wall. We went through step by step how to create the symbol, including using the Shell Solid tool to hollow the object out, and add the Wall Hole Component to it—together they create the wall recess.

Architect March 2019

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