Solid Element Operations

[Anonymous]

I am working on on the interlocking corners of some square log walls. I used a morph and solid element operations to eliminate the material i didn't need on the first wall and it worked out fine but on the second wall it wont remove the material. Any ideas on why it wont subtract the material?

[Anonymous]

This is the first wall that worked

[NCornia]

Hi Ben,

There are many ways to model complex situations. It is possible there is a better way to get the result you are after, but see the image below for one possible solution. Of course each solution may have its pros and cons. You will need to decide what works best for you.

Keep in mind that the more SEOs you add to a model, the more calculation will be required in 3D. So if you develop a large number of intersections like the one below then you may or may not notice performance slowing in your 3D model.

One way to improve performance:
- Split the corner pieces from the walls; select the corner pieces and save as a single object. See
- The single object may be re-used at all similar corners eliminating the need to repeat redundant SEOs throughout your model.
- By placing objects at the corners you may also keep all exterior walls on the same layer instead of 2 as I have shown below.
- One decision will be the floorplan representation. You will need to edit and cleanup the 2D Symbol of the corner object. See
- Depending upon the result you may or may not need to take additional measures to cleanup the floorplan intersections at corners. But this is true for SEOs also.

There may be other considerations to be weighed when using this method that you may discover as you create your design. So if you use the method below, you might report the pros and cons of your experience.

I hope this helps.
Best regards,

[Anonymous]

NCornia,

Thanks for the response! Your post has been the most helpful so far. How do you save just the end of the logs? For me it keeps trying to select the whole wall.

[NCornia]

Hi Ben,

Just use the split command and split off just the ends. Please beware though, you might undo one or all of the SEOs when you split the ends off. So check it right after you perform the split. You might just need to repeat the split and select a different side in the last step of the split command or you might simply re-do the SEOs on the small wall end.

After you have your end pieces you might select them both at the same time and go to File > Libraries and Objects > Save Selection As... Object. Or you might save each interlocking end separately, although at this time I am not sure what the advantage of that might be.

After that, turn on your SEO layer, group the walls and operators to keep them aligned; then drag them away from the building model to prevent any unwanted interaction. Or if all items are put onto the SEO layer with an intersection Group Number of 100 as I have shown above , then that might be enough.

Where the end pieces used to be, there should now be an empty niche space. Now place the object in this niche. If you split the walls right at the inside corner, where the interior wall faces meet, then the object will slot in rather well. In 3D, Section, Elevation, it should all clean nicely. But in flooorplan you may need to do a little cleanup. I placed a link in my last post to Shoegnome's blog with some instruction on how to cleanup the 2D symbol of the object.

By turning the wall ends into objects, they will no longer be calculated as part of the walls. This may or may not have any effect on your schedules or take-offs. Another thing is that if your design changes, these objects will not automatically change with the walls, so watch out for that and make sure this method is the right choice for you. The primary benefit of this method is that it will keep your 3D model performing better and might only really be advised if you will have a dozen or more of these corners

Best regards,

[Mats_Knutsson]

NCornia wrote:
Hi Ben,

There are many ways to model complex situations. It is possible there is a better way to get the result you are after, but see the image below for one possible solution. Of course each solution may have its pros and cons. You will need to decide what works best for you.

Keep in mind that the more SEOs you add to a model, the more calculation will be required in 3D. So if you develop a large number of intersections like the one below then you may or may not notice performance slowing in your 3D model.

One way to improve performance:
- Split the corner pieces from the walls; select the corner pieces and save as a single object. See
- The single object may be re-used at all similar corners eliminating the need to repeat redundant SEOs throughout your model.
- By placing objects at the corners you may also keep all exterior walls on the same layer instead of 2 as I have shown below.
- One decision will be the floorplan representation. You will need to edit and cleanup the 2D Symbol of the corner object. See
- Depending upon the result you may or may not need to take additional measures to cleanup the floorplan intersections at corners. But this is true for SEOs also.

There may be other considerations to be weighed when using this method that you may discover as you create your design. So if you use the method below, you might report the pros and cons of your experience.

I hope this helps.
Best regards,

This was really neat!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the help! I think I've got what i need now!