topic Re: wall priority help in Modeling

wall priority help

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 03:40:36 GMT

not sure i understand exactly how wall priorities work..what exactly would be the correct priorities for this intersection to be accurate?

Re: wall priority help

__archiben — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 04:42:42 GMT

aggie463 wrote:
not sure i understand exactly how wall priorities work..what exactly would be the correct priorities for this intersection to be accurate?

back up a little . . .

do your wall reference lines meet? and are the fill-types for each skin the same?

regarding priority intersections, the principle goes something like this:
structures with a higher priority will block structures with a lower priority. identical priorities will cleanly mitre if they're the same fill-type. (i think . . . or at least hope). the reality is much different since archicad's priority system isn't flexible enough, nor thoroughly implemented, in order to cover all possible intersections.

i base my composite structures - and beams/columns - on the following priority principle...

0 - Finish : Secondary - wet finishes such as paint, plaster, etc
2 - Finish : Primary - dry/panel finishes such as boards, sheet cladding, etc.
4 - Thermal/Air Space - all solid insulation skins plus non-core voids, cavities and air spaces
6 - Membrane - solid membrane skins such as asphalt, rubber, sarna etc.
8 - Substrate/Strapping - boards such as ply, particle, MDF, etc. and straps, firring, top hats for fixing
10 - Cavity/Air Space - core-only voids, cavities and air spaces
12 - Wall Structure : Beam Priority - bearing elements such as solid concrete, timber & steel frames, masonry that beams intersect
14 - Wall Structure : Wall Priority - bearing elements such as solid concrete, timber & steel frames, masonry that beams abut
16 - High priority bespoke use - use for walls to manually override beam priority '15' and wall priority '14' elements

Beam Priority Values

1 -
3 -
5 -
7 -
9 -
11 - Beam Structure : Wall Priority - Secondary structural frame elements that abut structural (12) walls and columns
13 - Beam Structure : Beam Priority - Primary structural frame elements that intersect structural (12) walls and columns
15 - High priority bespoke use - use for beams to manually override beam priority '13' and wall priority '14' elements

Column Priority Value

12 - Structural Columns Only - Due to inflexible archicad column priorities, use column tool only for structural elements!

does this help . . . or confuse you more?!

~/archiben

Re: wall priority help

stefan — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:59:27 GMT

Select the three walls and post that as a screenshot... This will accentuate the reference lines.

I have this to suggest to my students:

"When the reference lines connect, you get clean intersections. When you draw a wall against another wall, regardless of the side, ArchiCAD will possibly extend the wall's length to connect to the reference line.
However, for easy connectivity of interior and exterior walls, it is sometimes easier to have the reference line of the wall to the innerside, especially in cases where walls join at the interior corners."

"In this last example, the exterior composite walls at the outside have used the "offset" property of the reference line to place it at the opposite side then usual. This ensures that the interior wall has a reference line to connect to. The left example (which is the default in ArchiCAD) has no automatic solution to have a clean connection, so you'll see the line between the two walls appearing."

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:15:30 GMT

In ArchiCAD 9 wall intersections seemed to behave in a more or less predictable way. Composites usually intersected according to their fill patterns, which (usually) produced the desired result.

It seems that in ArchiCAD 10 things are less intuitive. I understand Stefans explanation about reference lines but this seems like an awkward workaround. Is there a better solution to get this to work? See picture.

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:10:37 GMT

The condition Stephan illustrates has been the same since version 3 and is the main reason I have always standardized on putting the reference line on the inside face of exterior walls. (James Murray: I assume you still do the same?). The advent of the Modify Wall add on has made this so easy to manage that I no longer have any reservations about the practice. (Though I would still love to be able to assign the reference line to any separator within a composite.)

Philip,

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to do. Why are the interior walls extending to the inside face of the brick veneer (fire stopping?). If they really do need to interpenetrate as shown then the intersection would need to be accomplished either by using two separate walls to build up the exterior assembly (and require dummy window openings) or with profiled columns (probably the better solution).

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:34:46 GMT

Sorry for not explaining. The internal walls should actually stop at the inner face as you would expect but for some reason ArchiCAD is punching them through to the inner face of the outer leaf.
The reference lines are on the outer face of the external walls.
see picture of how version 9 did it:

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:35:39 GMT

And now Version 10 does this with exactly the same composites:

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:38:29 GMT

In that case you must have some skins intersection priority problem. Check your composites. I suppose it could also be the layer intersection priorities if the reference line of the exterior walls is at the inside face of the brick.

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:44:55 GMT

It must be the skin intersection priorities because in these examples all the walls are on the same layer. I go and study them.

Re: wall priority help

KeesW — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:56:11 GMT

I am sorry to say this but wall priorities are a nightmare. There are so many factors that could affect it. Just a few from recent postings in response to this query:
*it could be the layer
*it could be the position of the reference line
*it could be the overall wall priority
*it could be the individual element within the composite wall
*etc!

Wow! And AC is supposed to be productive?

What happens when, within one wall, the priorities for the same wall have to be varied to suit different intersection conditions? Or can't that happen?

AC should be clever enough to predict standard situations in 'T' and '+' junctions.

If this can't be done, maybe the whole approach needs to change. For example, if one was to draw the core wall first, and then add the linings with cavities and different materials etc. One could do this now if Archicad didn't have an aversion to having different wall layers share the same reference line position.

Or default priorities could be automatically determined by the materials used. For example, internal plasterboard lining are always connected. Brick or block walls always connect rather than being interupted by a plasterboard layer. Note I used the word 'default'. The option to alter priorities should probably remain available for masochists, refined intellectuals, or those with lots of time working in a non-commercial environment.

Re: wall priority help

__archiben — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:03:27 GMT

KeesW wrote:
Or default priorities could be automatically determined by the materials used. For example, internal plasterboard lining are always connected. Brick or block walls always connect rather than being interupted by a plasterboard layer. Note I used the word 'default'. The option to alter priorities should probably remain available for masochists, refined intellectuals, or those with lots of time working in a non-commercial environment.

that is indeed the ideal development direction for this type of thing: 'physical' material definitions that automatically take their attributes through to any required level of interaction within the model. until then, i remain a faithful masochist: working my skin definitions based on the hierarchy i outlined earlier . . . and leaving only number 16 available for the commercial-environment-friday-afternoon-issue-manual-over-ride times . . .

philip - i rarely use a plain ol' vanilla wall as a wall anymore. i define composite structures for walls containing even only one skin. there are benefits that include being able to choose walls based on descriptions grounded in reality, and being able to lock fill orientation to the wall orientation rather than to the project origin.

what's needed is a bit of rigour when setting them up and expanding them . . . and you need to always ensure that the priority over-ride toggle in the wall 'floor plan and section' settings are set to always 'enable skin priorities'.

HTH
~/archiben

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:42:18 GMT

KeesW wrote:
I am sorry to say this but wall priorities are a nightmare...

I am afraid that I have to agree. All the various intersection controls are desirable features, but they should remain in the background while walls generally work as they should and be invoked (resorted to) only in the exceptional cases as needed. Of course I think this is how all software should work - unfortunately very little actually does.

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:19:42 GMT

~/archiben wrote:
...

... philip - i rarely use a plain ol' vanilla wall as a wall anymore. i define composite structures for walls containing even only one skin. ...

... what's needed is a bit of rigour when setting them up and expanding them . . .
~/archiben

I agree with your approach. Most of my composites are a legacy copied across from previous versions. Unfortunately the way that 10 treats these is not as reliable as it could be. The lesson I think is to re-create the composites with due care in version 10.

"Just because it worked before, don't assume it will work now!"

Re: wall priority help

KeesW — Fri, 18 May 2007 00:52:39 GMT

I guess I'm having a bad archicad day! I've gone back to an as-existing model. We have sinced worked over it to show changes and these have been saved separately as different views in Navigator. Anyway, the as-existing drawings now show gaps in existing walls where new walls and items have been inserted. New wall layers are, of course, turned off.

Obviously something to do with priorities of new walls - I usually give them a higher priority than existing ones. Can I have a different priority for as-existing walls when they show in Navigator's 'First floor-existing' view, than when they are used in 'First floor-new' views?

Could any really clever Graphisoft boffin please explain why Archicad shoud default to such a crappy and frustrating arrrangement? Could they suggest ANY circumstance where one would want gaps in existing walls when only these are selected and new walls are turned off? If there is some logic, it escapes me. GGGRRRR!

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Fri, 18 May 2007 02:07:18 GMT

Kees

The key is Layer Combinations.

You should have a layer combo assigned to each view (existing and proposed). Edit the wall priorities in each combo so that, for existing plan proposed walls (turned off) have a different priority to existing ones. In the proposed plan combo, existing and proposed walls have the same priority. Don't forget to hit the Update button when changing the layer combo's.

EG:
Existing plan Combo-
Existing walls ON priority 1
Proposed walls OFF priority 2

Proposed plan Combo-
Existing walls ON priority 1
Proposed walls ON priority 1

Make any sense?

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Fri, 18 May 2007 08:40:20 GMT

s2art wrote:
Kees

The key is Layer Combinations.

You should have a layer combo assigned to each view (existing and proposed). Edit the wall priorities in each combo so that, for existing plan proposed walls (turned off) have a different priority to existing ones. In the proposed plan combo, existing and proposed walls have the same priority. Don't forget to hit the Update button when changing the layer combo's.

It's important to make a distinction between layer combination priorities (what ArchiCAD calls layer intersection groups) and composite skin intersection priorities. The latter can be set for a composite individually regardless of which layer it is placed on, by enabling or disabling skin priorities. It can be varied for different occurences of the same composite within a project - but this gets messy and very tedious to edit.

A cleaner way is to duplicate the composite and rename it for example "composite A - exis" and "composite A prop" - make them exactly the same but with different priorities. It would be a good idea to change one of the background colours to identify which is which on viewing the plans.

Re: wall priority help

KeesW — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:55:39 GMT

Thanks Philip and Stuart

I thought that it had something to do with combinations and priorities and your comments are very helpful. I''ll try it tomorrow. Archicad is sometimes not very intuitive, is it?

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:39:44 GMT

KeesW wrote:
Thanks Philip and Stuart
Archicad is sometimes not very intuitive, is it?

It used to be! About 4 versions back. Thankfully it still is basically intuitive in the core areas, like the tool box, the layer sets and the layout book arrangement but it has become a VERY complex tool and with that comes a whole lot more learning.

You can't have it both ways I suppose.

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 10:50:51 GMT

I would like to know - just to add another problem - how to get hatching to work correctly with walls at different angles? I am doing a plan now where 45 degree brick walls are joining 0 and 90 degree brick walls. When I draw the 45degree walls the brick hatching just becomes parallel lines rather than proper brick hatching. Ive sort of got over the problem by defining a special composite just for the 45 degree walls that show brick hatching at a different angle. But is this the best way to do it - having differnet composites for 45 degree walls seems a waste?

IE: is there anything I can set in Archicad that will automatically rotate the hatching to suit the wall orientation? You would think the composites would be programmed to automatically rotate their hatching to suit their orientation but they dont!

Nats

Re: wall priority help

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:48:58 GMT

nats wrote:
IE: is there anything I can set in Archicad that will automatically rotate the hatching to suit the wall orientation? You would think the composites would be programmed to automatically rotate their hatching to suit their orientation but they dont!

Nats

You might look at the "orientation" options when you are setting up a component of a composite wall.