Brick sill material in Casements

[Tom Krowka]

OK, I give up. Where is the material selection for brick sills in this window. Materials (parameters) only has the mortar color, not the brick sill itself. I think it take the color of the casing....which is incorrect. Odd that it's not listed right under the mortar selection

[Karl Ottenstein]

Don't blame you for being frustrated, Tom. i'm infuriated about the apparent lack of any quality control in the library with little to no improvement over so many years. The embedding of all functionality in complex macros makes it so that none of us can reasonably fix these bugs on our own, either.

The problems with the US library Casements / brick sills are many after doing some testing with W1 Casement 15 based on your post. The most immediate UI problem is that parameters that should be UNlocked are LOCKED so you cannot change the brick material for the brick sill.

The brick sill will only appear if you select a Wall Closure > Closure Type of Brick Veneer. When one does that, both the Brick and Mortar material controls are LOCKED - with the default "Simple" 3D Detail Level. See attached.

Setting the 3D Detail Level to Detaile unlocks the Mortar Material. The Brick Material is still locked.

Turns out that the Brick Material is the SAME parameter as the Sill Material. But, the only way to UNLOCK the Sill Material to change it to brick is to change the Wall Closure to something OTHER than Brick Veneer. Of course, the moment you do that, the brick sill materials disappear - and you have to navigate back to the Materials list in Parameters, or the "Sill and Stool Settings" visual UI panel - where you can now change the sill material. Finally, go back to Closure and change back to Brick Veneer, re-enable Detailed for 3D (it will have reset to Simple during this process) and you'll see your selected material as the LOCKED "Brick Material". Set your Mortar and move forward, cursing or grinning and bearing it as your personality sees fit. 😉

Even though you can have a brick sill AND a wood sill, as soon as you've enabled the brick sill, you cannot change the material for the wood sill. And, of course, as you've seen, they use the same material ... and it is pretty rare to see a wood sill made from mortar, or mortar made from paint... 😞

Good luck with the settings for a brick header / masonry arch if you head there next. The defaults are a joke.

Sympathy,
Karl

PS Folks in other countries ... who use Graphisoft's localized libraries for your windows: do your windows work as expected? It seems that most complaints are from those of us in the US, and I don't know if it means that the US library is just being ignored, or if we just complain more. ;-

[Karl Ottenstein]

PS The wood sill uses the 'Frame Outside" material if the brick sill is turned on. It uses the Sill material if the brick sill is turned off.

Someone should be fired.

[Tom Krowka]

Phew, I thought it was me. I agree....have had many probs with door and windows since I started using AC V8. I think they need one guy just to keep them correct full time.

Am going to eliminate the sills and put in a sill object that I'm going to make. That chain of logic you wrote is just too much. Too bad.....

But thanks.

Tom

[Tom Krowka]

Tried your method of getting to the brick sill and was not too bad. Had no problems with the brick arch; either materials or access to it's controls

Tom