Vectorworks Tips 449 – Setting Wall Heights

I hear some users talk about setting the height of a wall. Even people that have been using Vectorworks for a while seem to be struggling with the new settings that control the top and bottom elevations of walls. The names of these settings have also changed; the top of the wall is now called the Top Bound, and the bottom elevation is called the Bottom Bound.

These reference levels, the Top Bound and Bottom Bound, are used to control the wall heights.

The first step is to choose what controls the Bottom Bound. A pop-up on the Object Info palette allows you to choose the reference level. The options will depend on your file settings. If you are using stories, you might have several options to choose from; whereas, if you’re using a simpler file setup, you might only have the option of choosing Layer Elevation. You can think of the Layer Elevation as being the bottom of the wall.

The next step is to choose what is controlling the top of the wall. This depends on the settings in the file. If you have set up stories, you will have different options. In a simpler file, you can choose Layer Elevation or Layer Wall Height.

After you have chosen the top bound and the bottom bound, you can enter the offsets from each; these offsets will set the wall height.

If you set the top bound to Layer Wall Height, when you change the Layer Wall Height value in the Edit Design Layers dialog, the wall will change its height. In other words, the wall height is now connected to the design layer settings; when they are updated, the wall updates.

Remember, regardless of the top bound and the bottom bound that you have selected, you can edit the height of the wall by editing the Height field in the Object Info palette.