Trimming exterior siding to stay off sloping grade (nuisance task)

[Robert Nichols]

In typical residential construction, the masonry or concrete foundation wall supports wood stud framed wall. On the exterior side, the sheathing and siding usually drop below the lowest elevation of the wood framing, and thus overlap with the foundation wall below. There are several solutions to modeling this condition, but none (that I know of) to me seem obviously superior to the others. An additional complexity is that I often want to trim this lowest bit of exterior siding to remain roughly 6-8" off the finished grade, following the slope of the grade. Obviously there are a few ways to do this, but they are tedious, and painful when it's time to modify the design.

What methods have people developed for this condition?

Thanks in advance.

[SenecaDesignLLC]

I wrote exterior cladding and wall framing accessories to solve this problem.  still some tedious work but certainly much easier than needed roofs for SEO.

Prior to this i used the railing tool for my trim work which worked quite well as it became the operator for the SEO.

if you are trying to have one wall then using a custom profile would allow you to set the sheathing and siding down. and then cut with the railing trims.

[Barry Kelly]

Use a complex profile wall with modifiers to allow you to adjust the height of the bottom of the sheathing on a wall by wall basis - separate walls but all using just the one complex profile.

Unfortunately if you want the sheathing to follow the sloping terrain at a set distance, then you really have no choice except to duplicate the terrain in a layer you can hide, elevating it slightly, and performing a Solid Element Operation.

Barry.

[Robert Nichols]

Thanks for the replies, Seneca and Barry. I had considered a complex profile solution, but honestly the capacity to create "stretchy" skins in the profile tool is still a new and unexplored feature for me! I guess now is my opportunity to learn it. I assume that solution will still yield all the benefits I get from using multi-skin composites (control over internal lines, etc.).

Seneca, I do a lot of my work using GDL. What language do you write the accessories in? Sounds intriguing, but not sure I need a new learning curve in front of me. 

Thanks again for responding.

[Erwin Edel]

It doesn't sound the case for this particular problem, but quite often I find that I need to model some sort of finish or trim anyway that follows quirky lines and then I can use this as the Solid Element Operator. Single plane roofs are great for the ability to 'trim' them to each other by selecting one, pressing CTRL and clicking the edge of the other roof.

[Hmooslechner]

This leads me to a new idea for a new wall-addon-GDL...

[SenecaDesignLLC]

All my accessories are just GDL coded and can be used with basic library add on the Graphisoft already provides.

Here is a video of an older version.

https://youtu.be/pT5XHndhV4E

[Hmooslechner]

some possible solution with the wall-Addon and a new GDL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3qopo85m240gfd/Perimeter.pla?dl=0 

I just uploadet it also here: https://community.Graphisoft.com/t5/Parametric-Object-Factory/con-p/parametric-object-challenge/tab/... 

[Robert Nichols]

That is super interesting. Seems like a very good solution that does a good job of leveraging built-in functionality (SEO). I will investigate further. Thanks for sharing this.