The Next Step in Walls 2.

Advancing on the previous post about messing with the footing, we can use the same ideas to alter to top of the wall. This style has the 3c step down built in to the external leaf and a plate fixed to the very top of the wall.

If we don't have an eave for a portion of our house wall, with the gutter up hard against the brickwall face, then we would typically build up the outside leaf to the same height as the inside leaf. But our wall style has the external wall componant told to stop 3c+plate short of the top.

There are 2 ways we can overcome this.
1. Create a 2nd near matching Wall Style that has the external componant defined only the plate height lower than top of wall. OR.

2. Simply add an aecMassElement as described in the previous article to the top of the external wall in the shape of the extended brickwork and add it as a body modifer.Which way you choose depends on any number of factors but the second method reduces the number of styles you need to maintain. If you have lots of walls with both situations then create another style. If it's only on a couple of sections then you can use the wall modifier. Reducing the number of styles makes it easier to maintain the drawing, especially if someone else starts working on it.

What do you do when it goes around a corner? Using ACA08 I put Mass Elements (ME's) on both walls and tried various options.

1. Merge the two ME's. Add to both walls (only delete the ME after the 2nd add. - I was surprised that it left a line where the ME joined the wall.

2. Add both ME's to both walls. - Left a line at the join again.

3. Mitred the ME's at their join and then added each on to it's own wall. As the mitre forms the cleanup normally undertaken by the wall, this gave a clean 'best on ground' finish. Boy manipulating ME's is easy in 08.

Of course these principals are good for many situations where you need to add extra 'bits'. We'll have a look at some of those next.