SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

[Brad Elliott]

Can anyone explain this behavior? I understand that somehow legacy changes the surfaces to their defaults but I don’t understand how it is affecting the Solid Element Operations. You can see that the outer skin is getting acted on but nothing else. My other projects aren’t showing this behavior. I need my SEO’s to work in non legacy settings. Otherwise I’m going to be spending a ton of time changing materials again. This is AC19.

[Brad Elliott]

I've known about the alt click as well as right clicking on a wall to pull up the composite in the contextual menu and use it frequently. I would love being able to get Building materials in the contextual menu as well.
I need to look more into the colors. I use them to sort my materials 2x4, 2x6 etc but haven't for the sub items because it can get busy fast. I may need to dig deeper into the color palate or create my own to get a subtler visual change.
I still think there has to be a better way than opening and closing multiple windows just to correct a priority issue. Maybe if I slow down this winter I'll work on mocking up a window. I think there should be a way to flow from Surface to Composite to Material in a less convoluted fashion.

[Richard Morrison]

Brad wrote:
I use them to sort my materials 2x4, 2x6 etc but haven't for the sub items because it can get busy fast.

This may be a source of your material proliferation. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a separate material for each dimension. These should just be a generic material only: "framing lumber," say, or maybe "vertical framing lumber." I've seen others conflate the material dimensions (which should show up only in the composite) with the building materials, and it leads to an unwieldy mess.

[Brad Elliott]

Be it layers, materials, fills, etc I am always trying to pare down to the minimum. However based on experience and contractor feedback I have a darker fill for 2x6 walls. This is more accurate and visible than noting each wall and makes it immediately clear to everyone on the job. We have an automated way to create clarity for construction and I try to take advantage of it.
The proliferation really comes from what material cuts what and needing to get it to visually work. i.e.. concrete cuts wood except for the few times it doesn't.

[Erwin Edel]

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but layer intersection group numbers can help to stop different elements interacting that do not need to interact at all.

We use a different intersection group number from the standard group 1 for a few layers in our template:
SEO operators (these elements are not visible in the model ussually)
Mocked up window parts (not saved objects, but like a column acting like a bit of frame)
Interior finishing
Exterior finishing
'help' lines/elements (typically invisble layer)

Within their own groups PBC will work, but they will not connect to the other group. hotlinked modules break this priority though!!, with these everything defaults to the intersection group of the layer that the module is placed on. So if you are publishing out modules, you need to separate out the different intersection groups for proper behaviour.

[Erwin Edel]

Regarding wood and concrete (and insulation) materials and such, our template (which is based on the Dutch standard template) uses a sort of load-bearing and non-loadbearing or structurual/non-structural setup for most materials that can be used in both ways.

So, for example, we have insulation for structural wood-frame wall elements with a high priority, as they are part of the structural core. We also have a high priority plywood for these elements as they have a structural function.

We also have a fairly low priority insulation for light separation walls with a low priority plywood.

This allows for light separation walls to connect to the structural wood-frame walls the proper way.

If you are making slight variations of materials to clarify your drawings (and why not, it seems like a good idea!), just duplicate the proper materials and increment the priority by 1. This generally works well for us.

For concrete we have a fairly high priority material for prefab structural beams/collumns so they get priority over the concrete used in slabs. We also have fairly low priority concrete for the stuff that gets poured on site.

Our template has just over 100 materials, which might seem like a lot, but it has quite a few 'subgroups', so you get to 100 fast. I'd say it is rather slim on materials.

We do try to not cram in every single colour finish option in the template materials though, rather create those per project as needed and tag them with a project ID to find them fast.