Gutter & Eave

As I like using the roof object (not slabs - article coming!) I needed to find a way of quickly replicating gutter & fascia and after my first effort gave reasonable results, I found that it was even more capable for the task than I first thought. I know that some have used structural elements for gutters but I like the wall object because;

1. Walls cleanup automatically ( I put my eave 'wall' on it's own cleanup group),
2. Every element can have different material applied. (you can only have two with slab edge styles – fascia & soffeit).
   
3. Can be on their own layer and turned off in plan views, you can even assign different componants for different views for the same part if required. (we'll explore that one here).
4. I can use the wall width to set my eave width (0 = no eave) which adds the eave ceiling in for 3D renders and sections.
5. You can also use it with slabs and get multiple material assignments for rendering.

So to explain what I have done with no.3 I found that adding a nicely profiled gutter shape that gives me a nice shadow and shine line for a rendering adds far too many lines in an aecElevation. So by doubling up on the componant for the gutter (& fascia), I can turn on whichever componant will give me the desired result.  This is done automatically in your display representations.   For the elevations, my profile is simpler giving a cleaner elevation (actually should be simpler and cleaner than what I have shown here).

Now if you love palettes, unfortunately they don't carry the sweep profile, so I would usually apply this style by the old cut & paste method. If you do use palettes, you can select multiple eave objects (try using 'select similar') and apply the profile to all of them at once. Don't forget to tick the 'Mitre selected Walls' box so you don't have to do it as a 2nd step.

See the Eave wall style in action here (item no.2 in two of the images).

So again with the drawing of one line, I can have my gutter, fascia, boxed eave ready for rendering, elevations and sections.

Tip: Select your eave wall and right click for the add selected option. Unlike palettes, this does retain the sweep. So you can cut from a template drawing, paste into and then 'Add selected' around. My eave wall is set to be setout from the top edge of the roof and it's done in Iso mode though if you lock your Z, you could do it in plan.

Tip: I used to turn off the display of the eave style in plan view but then it couldn't be selected. Now by assigning it the invisibility plot style (Aec Standard.stb) I can see it but it doesn;t print.

First Impressions

I was asked to create some quick elevations of a large project for council discussions and I thought this was a chance to try out Impression2 from Adesk. So I downloaded and tried it out. It is quite easy and links (updates) really well (especially after using the VizRender link). If you are still on subscription it's a free download so defintely well worth a try. It may only be available with a sub so if you are not on sub you may be out of luck.

It ignored my linework (didn't show) and I had to use rectangles or closed PLines so I had something to 'fill'. But the height lines showed so I don't understand what happened there. Still some learning to do but what you see took me about 20mins for a first try.

Now I'm sure you have a project more exciting than mine to work on so go for it. Give it a try.

Interesting news on Subscriptions

Well news is surfacing about a new move by Autodesk on distribution models for Revit and ACA. Apparently Revit Suite subscriptions will now include ACA as well as Autocad! What does that mean to the future of ACA? (Here's a NG thread that has lots of info and some links)

Well from Autodesks view I think this is a smart move. How can an ACA user move to Revit when they have existing projects running in ACA. To move to the Revit suite previously meant only having AutoCAD which made transitions difficult. Now they will be able to transition their office at their own pace. They can train on Revit whilst keeping existing projects going in ACA. Very smart (doh!). ACA is only around $1700 upgrade on top of ACAD anyway and sub is cheaper.

But again what does this mean to ACA. Well I think the mass weight of Revit in big offices means most will move across unless they are still on autocad and don't care to go 3D. But they will not be able to resist the customer demand (whether that's logical or simply good advertising).
The "writing has been on the wall" and it is "only a matter of time". But unlike mechanical, I would argue that the architectural base of ACA is much larger and slower to react and will hold on for some years to come. Development on ACA is already a sore point and there will be those who jump ship and slowly the numbers will turn.

My thoughts are that ACA is good value for those offices already using ACAD and for a small(er) upgrade fee can be into BIM approach and get some good return. But perhaps that is getting more difficult to justify as the weight of numbers changes. Why would you train an office on a product that is being superceded albeit gradually?

I could happily end my sub now and continue using ACA09 (actually I''m still using ADT6). But I charge extra to maintain my sub so it's covered anyway. I know others are not so well looked after and some have dropped their sub. Basically, if the product does what you need then be happy. Maximise your existing setup. Might be nice not to worry about all those re-installs and reset ups and relearning a whole new interface just for the heck of it.

But if you are going to be in the industry for some years to come and want to stay current then you may need to stay tuned. If you are self-sufficient and do things as you want to (like me) then you are free to choose. If you are reliant on working in other environments then you may need to keep up to date with the latest software.

What will I do? Well I ain't going to ArchiCAD! Chief Architect seems to have a solid sales base in Australia. My kids enjoyed that one! For the time being I will continue on ACA but I would think that Revit is going to be somewhere in the future. The economy of the cross-grade!

Revit has strength in that it doesn't have so many options. It doesn't give you choices you don't really need to bog you down. I'm sure in time Adesk marketing will add back in lots of unnecessary options because the user base keeps asking for them and Revit will become complicated and slower etc.

Anyways, that's progress for you!
Best to ya!

Cabinetry

For cabinets I owe much to Archidigm and Odin's great tutorials. But we make cabinets differently and don't generally have a splashback but a number of rows of tiles above. Whilst you can have a variable height you only have one option and you can't have a different height to your cabinet and tile height. (well you could if you cab height was the wall base height and the tile height was the top of wall but you would have to manually grab each side and pull them up to get the tile height extension. Actually I just tried that and it might work okay for some).

Therefore I use a separate simple wall style with hatch pattern to indicate tiling (more on this later). So check out Odin's well laid out tutorial and then view the following wall component list for a full Aussie cabinet spec. Unlike Odin's cabinets which uses the wall style as a placeholder, I went further and created a whole cabinet that will plan, elevate and section complete without further attention. It really isn't much more effort.

Many model the bench top separately with slabs but using body modifiers you can add breakfast overhangs etc without much fuss (ok a little). Probably the trickiest part is creating the endcaps for cabinet ends. I tremble at trying to explain how to create the endcap but I did mine using the edit-in-place and trial and error. It was easy to get lost but I prevailed and won!

I have created different styles for a wall oven stack, pantry cabinets overheads. This way you can quickly lay down the whole kitchen when sketching and be ready for CD's. They are also ready for rendering. I should probably be using the Tool Palletes but I really just cut & paste a whole kitchen from another similar job and alter as required.

Here is one bathroom cabinet shown without doors. It's designed to take a reef (semi-recessed) basin. You can see it's much as they would build it. Encaps assigned to the style so this can be created by drawing JUST ONE LINE! Length is of course completely adjustable.

Thsi cabinet has adjustable height but the midshelf is set.

For the doors you could add a componant for that too but I have used door styles to model the cabinet doors, both single and double, glazed & profiled using the typical rules we use for a normal door object. If you add a door componant in the wall style itself, you could leave it on until you are ready to add more detail to your cabinets for either rendering or detail drawings.

Even handles can be added and are great if you are wanting to do renderings for clients. If you are able to use your model for CD's and for a little more work do some renderings then all the better.

It's probably better anyway to have your doors separate as it gives you more flexibility.

I have tried to anchor the doors to the cabinet using aecobjectanchorattach but that will cut the cabinet so I will have to investigate that further. I seem to remember Odin mentioning that on his article.

As I suggested, you could add a tiling componant and make it's Bottom Elevation 0 Base Height and it's Top Elevation 0 Wall Top. Once you 'draw' the cabinet, just go into iso view and stretch each side up and your tiles will appear. For now I am content to have the tiling as a separate wall style. It is also better to have them separate if you want to take quantities.

On the endcaps, I have done this one with a little overhang to the top. For finishing up against a wall on the side, it may be better to have no overhang as the standard endcap. To add overhang, you can create a ME to the size requried and add it as a BodMod. In the endcap illustrated above I have the side panels coming forward to the front face of the door. Some build them with the doors overlapping the side. It's just choice and could be covered with different endcap styles that you could have available to select from or edit on the fly.

HTH's

If you have an interesting use for a wall then please post a pic and an explanation.

Another Computer hitch

I do have more great posts to put up but I have no start bar and no icons on my pc so it can be a little slow to get around (cntrl-alt-del and use file open to get programs started).  I'm not sure if it relates to my recent upgrade, fan speed, installing a new AV (AVG8.0) or my kids messing on those online gaming sites!  But I have used a boot cd (Ulitmate Boot4WIN) to boot off the CD and be able to check the disk without loading anything on it.  I have restored the network which disappeared and checked for virus's, disappointed that I didn't find any, and hope to be able to be back up and posting again.  I have some great tips from James and plenty more of my own articles to get up there, so hang in there and stay tuned.

If you have specific queries on the wall styles let me know but I hope to post details of how to do them soon.

(And if anyone has specific hints on restoring a desktop please let me know.  My latest take is that my profile is corrupted ut it appears windows normally tells you if that's the case).

When is a Wall not a Wall?

When it's a roof !!!

Or how about a road?

Now I don't often have an original idea but I did investigate roads before I found that Odin had got there first and has some seriously good content available. at a great low price. I don't intend to be doing much on road's as I was just exploring to see what I could achieve (though the roads do belong on a subdivision plan I've done).

Wall !! What is it good for?

Absolutely Nothi....... (sorry just watched Rush Hour 3 and couldn't help myself).

As you get into any CAD programs, the more curious of us often look to how far we can push the objects we are provided with. I have found the wall object has a few more uses other than for walls.

If we leave the idea that it's a wall and just think of it as a tool to create anything that is linear then we can think up any number of items. And don't forget that endcaps can resolve the ends and perhaps by using opening endcaps, a few other things as well mmmm...... have to explore that one!

This article is big so we'll split it up into modules but I include some taster pictures here.

Oh and I'm still to post an update on my pc upgrade. I ran benchmarks on the old system and am still to test the new one. I have four fans in my case and they seem to be running slower than they should especially the cpu fan so I am thinking I am a little under powered. However, seeing that the Core2Duo's are supposed to be very power efficient compared to the D805 it replaced, I am a little bamboozled. (I have a 430w ps).

I'll keep you posted.

Good Links

Have you registered with AUGI? (Autodesk User Group International) I must admit that after an initial looksee I have mostly ignored their site for a while but it has great info on it. At the moment there is a series on ACA that may be helpful to some on Structural Members. Have a look down the left hand side for the older articles. It has something on ACA every issue (monthly). You do need to register to see much older articles but it's well worth it as there is lots of other gear that will be helpful. As well they have their own NG specicially for ACA as well as ACAD etc.

Check them out. Joining is FREE!
(Dang! I can't remember what password I used! :-)

Chasing a Skirt -updated

I investigated the possibility of adding a skirting componant to my standard wall style. You can add skirting as a separate wall style on it's own cleanup group but that's a lot of extra work, though if you use ACA for quantities it's possibly worth it. Unfortunately such an idea gives you more work if design changes are made. So off I went looking for an alternative.

First I added a componant of about the right size which worked fine but then I wanted to have either a splay or a moulding profile, you know, to make the sections & renderings look elegant. Fine but what happens in a bathroom where you have no skirting. You can create another wall style copied from the first and remove the skirting but some walls have skirting one side only, other walls have no skirting at all and I really didn't like having essentially the same wall style repeated several times.

So I added two 0 width componants (sleeper componants) to both sides of the wall and applied profiles & found out I had to create a 2nd profile mirrored of the first to get the 2nd one to display correctly. So now I had to add 2 profiles to each wall and you can bet I got them mixed up and applied the wrong profile to each side more than 50% of the time.. Also using the PN I had the internal layout in a seperate element (it was repetitive) and the internal skirting wouldn't cleanup with the external. (see tips below)
Oh and back to applying a profile, it seems the applied profile doesn't obey priorities and/or cleanup rules and I ended up with skirting piercing clear thru the wall (I think this is a bug). See tips below. Maybe it will be a different solution for different projects – at least now I know some options.

Tip: Oh and unlike a body modifer, the position of your componant is important for a sweep as the insert point of your profile will correspond to the offset and ht of your componant (though you can edit that in the sweep section on your property pallete)

Tip: Did you notice that I had set a height for my skirting componants. When you sweep a profile, the height has no effect. Only the bottom elevation of the componant the profile is applied to.

Tip update: An applied profile will NOT obey priorities so it really only fully works if you accept a shape defined in the componants list (width & height) rather than apply a profile. Using it this way it is reliable and efficient - just not pretty. Your componant could also be a dado, or picture rail but they really need a profile don't they!

Tip update: If you do decide to use a profiled style, apply it to one and then use the 'Add Selected" on your right click to add the rest of your walls. (Sorry it won't help if you have already drawn the walls). That way the profile will already be applied and get's over the limitation of the tool pallete not being able to hold profiles. When you come to a bathroom wall that has no skirting, you can more easily remove the profile from a couple of walls rather than apply it to many.

Is it worth it for a skirting? Maybe not :-( If it had worked simply like I was hoping for! but I am sure you can apply these principles to something more worthwhile. Let me know what you come up with.

Wall - Sleeper componants (cont.)

A reader has asked me clarify the last article and give an example of how it can be used in the real world. Let's go back to an earlier example of adding a capping to a feature addition to a wall. I applied a body modifer and added it to an existing componant that had the same material as I wanted to add - red brick. But what if the addition needs to be in a new material not already part of the wall. Let's say I want the top capping rendered instead. So I need a componant with a render material assignment. So I add it to the existing wall style and make the width =0 so it won't show up on the regular walls.

(remember that this wall was for existing so iI haven't bothered with a cavity etc).

But when I apply the modifer to the wall and select the 'sleeper' componant, it comes alive and takes on the new material assigned.

You can of course have the added portion as a separate entity instead but this way, the material is controlled from & by the wall style which is logical because it's part of the wall. It moves with the wall.

The other big advantage is that you haven't created another wall style to have to maintain, keeping things simple. If you alter the wall style, this one wall won't be left out. On the General tab of the wall style, you may want to add an explanation just in case someone else works on the file.

Hopefully that's made it a bit clearer but I have at least one other example I will post that also can utilise the 'sleeper' componant.

Walls – Sleeper Componant

I've seen this used in various ways for various reasons and I think we can give the concept a name. If you have a particular addition to your walls that only occurs in some places, add a componant into your wall style and give it a 0 width. Say you have a corbel only appearing on the front of the house, or a feature niche in the entry, or a rendered feature portion on a face brick house. If you add a body modifier, you need to apply it to a componant in your wall style. If that componant has a 0 width, it won't appear until you 'awaken it' by adding the BodMod or applying a profile. Using this technique, rather than a special wall having to be isolated from the other styles, you can just add a 'sleeper' componant to the main style and 'awaken' it where & as required. Of course you may now have to adjust settings for that additional componant in several DispReps and also set your componant priority wisely.
You can now also control the material of this componant via the wall style rather than via a ME style or some other separate object.

WARNING: Be aware that adding a componant may mess with your endcaps. I don't often need them but if you do, push the sleeper to the end of the list & you should be ok.

Upgrading my PC

End of Tax year on Monday and I rushed out to buy the chip I had built my pc for - Core2Duo! finally! Currently at home I am running an overclocked Pentium D805 at 3ghz instead of it's regular 2.66. I was hoping for close to 4.0 but I didn't go for the full liquid cooling so I had to settle. I have got it to 3.2. As the C2D's run very cool, I am hoping to be able to get well over the rated 3.0ghz. I also bought 2Gb of RAM for $90Aus !!! Last 1Gb I bought was several hundred $$ so I was very pleased. Hopefully it will all go in and work first time!!



Just thought I would drop some tech hints as there are lots of misconceptions about hardware for Acad. When I rang the pc guy the first thing he said was "You can get a faster QuadCore for the same price". But if you peruse the hardware NG you will find some disappointed users who thought that the Quad was going to give them so much more. Truth is that Acad is STILL not multiprocessor aware, or at least not fully. Some activity can benefit from an extra 'core' but most things are single threaded. SO.. if you compare a Quad core running at 2.66 with a Dual at 3.0, guess which one runs Acad faster. Truth is lots of app's are not multi-processor aware. If you are downloading, encoding mp3's, and Acad'ing at the same time, you might like Quad. If you just want raw power then go with the faster processor. Acad will never look past the 2nd core. Not sure if Mental Ray is multi because if it is then it might make sweet use of a Quad core. Anyone?? --Word is Yes! So if you do lots of rendering then Quad can give you a decent return but your modelling work will be quicker with a quicker DualCore. Check this link to Shaan Hurley or Adesk.

Now if you are really serious you can look at the Xeon's but this is for home and I'm paying!



The other item is the Graphics card which is quite a sore spot because of a lack of clear information. Previously a high end Nvidea Quadro was the go for OpenGL performance but now in 09 they have introduced DirectX support so the games cards will give better performance for the buck! I have used a Quadro 1500fx 256mb and a mildly cheaper FX8950 512mb and I wouldn't move back to the Quadro. And that's using 06. So... go for a fast game card and it will do. Most of us can't run in hardware mode anyway so it's the cpu doing most of the work. UPDATED! In 09, a Quadro will be a massive waste of funds as it is more expensive and doesn't offer better performance (possibly poorer) than the game card using DirextX. In Vista your quadro possibly won't work at all as Vista won;t support OpenGL. Previously the ATI cards did not have as reliable drivers as NVidea but I haven't seen complaints for some time so they maybe they could be ok for Autocad. Stuart has sent me this link to a great read which perhaps indicates that I should be updated my GC as well :-) http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-hd-4870,review-31046.html




Beef your RAM. WinXP Pro will only allow any one app to use 2gb max of RAM unless you enable the 3GB switch (Autodesk). 4Mb seems to be the maximum worthwhile for WinXP pro. As we move to 64bit things will change but that's another minefield (just ask James). Ram is probably a better upgrade than your graphics card unless you have a dog or shared memory graphics. RAM is faster access than hard drive and when your pc runs out of RAM to use, it starts using the hard drive and that slows things down. Do a Control-alt-del and have a look at the performance tab. Leave it open while you work and you can review how much Physical Memory (RAM) is being used. Your page file is your hard drive 'virtual' space and though it will use some regardless, you don't want it too active. If the line's not moving you are probably ok. If it's dancing, you need RAM.



This tab is also useful for seeing how much work your cpu's are doing. It will show each core and what is doing what. I should do some testing and observations before removing the D805 just to compare.



Another tip:

My 3ghz Pentium D805 is much slower than a Core2Duo at 3ghz. The AMD Athlons came up against the old Pentium4's and wipped them with slower clock speeds. Clock speed is NOT everything!



Oh... and any REAL techie's out there who want to correct me then please do so. Qualified hardware info for Acad is scarce and Autodesk have not been forthcoming up until recently where they seem to be making an effort to be more helpful.