topic Re: Trapezoidal Wall in Modeling

Trapezoidal Wall

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2023 15:48:47 GMT

Having trouble creating a wall elevation - 3 storey building - external wall is 200mm thick, 7200mm wide at the top storey and tapers to 4200mm at the ground floor slab - very new at ArchiCAD - how do I create a tapered wall like this? Talk real slow please as I'm a slow reader. Thanks.

How to make a "conic" Wall?

Ingolf — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:23:37 GMT

How to make a "conic" wall, an Australian new member asked today (Can't find the question, but remember it). A "conic" wall that is 7200mm long at the top and just 4200mm long at the bottom. This wall should reach over three Floors and can therefore be 9000mm high. (But the Wall may still be made on a single floor).

Use a mixture of Complex Walls and ordinary Walls. Make first a Complex Profile that is tilted 1500mm to one side and 9000mm high. Place a wall with this Complex Profile on the Floor Plan by making an U-Wall (seen from the top).

Then ungroup the Walls. Make the middle Wall straight. Drag both the two Side Walls in towards the Middle Wall and stop when the Side Walls are 1mm long, and therfore almost invisible....(OK, I admit a little cheating here)

Then you have a straight Wall with sloped sides, a "conic" Wall.

(All free stuff from my soon-to-come books on ArchiCAD)

Re: How to make a "conic" Wall?

Brett Brown — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:50:05 GMT

Why do you not just use the slanted wall to do this?

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Barry Kelly — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:57:18 GMT

S o u n d s l i k e y o u n e e d S E O
My attempt at humour (sorry)

As you want to taper the wall along it's length you would probably want to add a roof plane at the angle required and then either Trim To Roof or use a Solid Element Operation to cut away the part you don't want.

If you use TTR then you can delete the roof plane but any amendments will have to be untrimmed and then re-trimmed.

If you use SEO then just hide the roof in a layer that is never shown.
Then if amendments are needed you can just move the roof around.

Either way the plan representation will not be correct as TTR and SEO do not affect the plan view.

Another way would be to creat a complex profile in the shape you want to see in elevation and then make the wall just 200mm long.
You will get a true representation in plan this way if you use the Projected With Overhead setting for the wall.
However you will not be able to place doors and windows as the wall will be drawn sideways (along its width and not its length).

I would got for one of the first methods and simply add a white solid fill to the various floor plans to hide the various lengths of wall that should not be shown.

Barry.

Re: How to make a "conic" Wall?

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:34:28 GMT

Ingolf,

The original question was here - http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=154321

I've linked back to this one!

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Karl Ottenstein — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:29:06 GMT

Thanks, Peter. I merged the answer into the question thread.

Karl

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Ingolf — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:15:06 GMT

Several good suggestions here...
A lot of creativity on this Forum, I must say!
The original question is good and addresses a weakness in ArchiCAD. This is one of the few instances that Revit surpasses ArchiCAD (along with dimensioning). In ArchiCAD we shold be able to make a Wall excectly the way we want it - in an Elevation. Draw the wall as a Free Form in the Elevation Window with the Line Tool and transform it to a Wall with the Magic Wand... But that is unfortunately not possible.... yet.
And while I am on to ArchiCADs potential. It should be possible to copy (not just move) elements and objects in Section/Elevation.

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:10:01 GMT

Barry wrote:"S o u n d s l i k e y o u n e e d S E O"
I like that. Sounds like a Super Hero to the rescue.

Hello Ingolf,
who wrote:"Free Form in the Elevation Window with the Line Tool and transform it to a Wall with the Magic Wand..."
That would be great!
However until then, since I had not seen the "conic" wall trick before, I tried it out, with a slight modification of plumbing (Latin: plumbum) up the outside walls with a little SEO action using 4' diam columns.

Then had a hell of a time trying to add my C.P. of Vrustic wall to the lower slanted section.
As you can see I sort of got it, but can't get walls to join properly, especially [1].
When I try some joining, pieces of conic wall start disappearing.
Have faked it a bit and could do more fakery if I had the time, or it was a real client.
Is there a way to join this screwball walls easily that I don't understand?
Or is fakery the the best trick?
And by the way, Thank you very much Ingolf!
lec

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Ingolf — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 07:28:56 GMT

Helo lec1212!

What an unusual customer! This resembles a boat? Tell us more about your exciting assignment and the need for slanted walls on the sides of the house (cottage?) and just 1 meter up.

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Ingolf — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:51:02 GMT

Hello lec1212!

Reading your message once more I see that you don't have any client...OK...but a fantasy project still gives food for thought!
If you use my recipe earlier in this thread, you will see that the use of Complex Walls rather than Solid Element Operations (SOE) makes your task possible. Make a double slanted Wall 45 degrees and then 135 degrees (if that is what you want). Look at the attached Image.

Then choose the Complex Wall and draw it in an U-shape.
Ungroup
Make the middle Wall a straight Wall with a thickness of for instance 200mm
Place Door and Window.
Good luck!
PS: SOE doesn't work very well in an IFC model ...just so that you know to use SOE with modesty...

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:39:33 GMT

lec1212,

Material textures work best on flat planes, they may not align when used with sloped walls or especially curved walls.

BUT, you can force the material texture to align in 3D by using the Design>Align 3D texture>Set Origin command. To use it: you must be in the 3D window, select your wall first, then use the "set origin".

Because you are using a complex profile, I'm not sure this will work. You might need to add a node on the point joining the upper straight wall and slanted wall. This node will create two material surfaces, each one can have its origin set independently.

When I created this with a roof trim operation, both textures and wall joins looked good. I've included an image showing 1: how it looked when I created it, and 2 using set origin to move the texture off a little just to show the effect.

Snap

Re: Trapezoidal Wall

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:31:40 GMT

Hello
Ingolf and Snapcrackle
This started off as a fun diversion (based on Ingolf's post) from my real project and I learned a few things.

However luckily overloaded with work right now so I'll explore more of each of your suggestions at a latter date, especially as there seems to be multitudes of ways to approach this kind of wall and (on top of that) it's a very unlikely wall to build in a residence, (which is all I do).

But it was fun and general concepts can be used other ways I'm sure.
Thanks for the lessons and challenges:-))
lec