composite walls vs. simple wall fills

[Anonymous]

A Basic question about wall types:

We do a lot of TI work in 1/8" scale--elaborated space planning straight to construction. We use perhaps 10 different wall types and track unit costing on these.

In the past, we have used composite wall types but at 1/8th scale it doesn't print with clear distinctions and so have migrated to simpler fill type walls that can be output controlled (solid, cross hatch, patterned, etc) more easily.

So the question is: if one is not doing detail cuts or using the calculate function to keep a tally of the materials, why use the composite wall structures?

What am I missing? How are others handling wall types?

[Anonymous]

sorry to confuse things---

in 8.1 there is increased adaptability in the display of composite structures. You can now vary the skin separator line weights.
It is not through "Display Options" though.
Go to: Options/Composite Structures/Edit skin and line weight.

[Anonymous]

Archiben wrote:
[also - by using composites for even single skin wall construction types, you can control the fill direction and ensure that the fill remains perpendicular to the wall at all times. very useful on a complex, non-orthoganal building. ]

This is a great reason for using composites.
I tried to implement it BUT.... it is not working in my version of 8.1. The radio buttons for orientation have no effect on the result. I did go back to V7.0 and it works fine there. Is this an 8.1 bug or what?

Can anyone else confirm this one way or the other?

(DISREGARD----my error. :oops: )

[Anonymous]

Craig wrote:
Perhaps in 8.2 it would be useful for walls have a scale dependant option much like doors and windows do now.

This would be a tremendous improvement in the composites. Along with the new line & pen setting it would make them fully useful. I have long wished for the ability to define what wall fills display at what scales. At least I can revisit the disappearing pen trick; it should work now.

[Djordje]

Craig wrote:
I tried to implement it BUT.... it is not working in my version of 8.1. The radio buttons for orientation have no effect on the result. I did go back to V7.0 and it works fine there. Is this an 8.1 bug or what?

Construction fills are bitmap or vectorial?

[Anonymous]

Djordje wrote:

Construction fills are bitmap or vectorial?

Dang---I think you are correct to question this. I can't recreate the "defect" so it must have been me setting it to bitmap.

[Djordje]

Craig wrote:
Dang---I think you are correct to question this. I can't recreate the "defect" so it must have been me setting it to bitmap.

Been there ...

PlotMaker 3.x tip: make sure that you always set the fills to keep the original settings! That way you can play with the graphic representation of the, for example, solid walls and vectorial ceiling or floor tiling fills ...