The attached image indicates a situation where the wall connection methods do not permit a proper zone boundary to be created. The area measurement requirements for this situation are:
1. Measure to the outside face of the glazed facade (i.e reference line).
2. Measure to the inside face of the shared concrete party wall on the boundary.
Now in order for the reference lines to sit in the correct alignment for measuring area, they just cannot connect. Due to this there is a small gap in the reference lines forming the zone boundary and the update fails. Little gaps like this occur all over the place for one or another perfectly legitimate reasons.
In the past I have just joined the gap with a simple line ('Zone Boundary' ticked) but im getting sick of all these 100mm bandaids everywhere - they are hard to maintain and they just don't feel right.
Zones should be a little more accomodating in their definition of a valid boundary IMO
Matthew wrote:Whilst the gross area should not have any deductions, surely it wasn't intended to include the area of any rooms enclosed within that room (zone). Having a series of connected walls forming a Zone Boundary within a zone should exclude the contained space from the gross zone area.
There are at least two (maybe more) area calculations built into the zone functions (within the GDL). The basic gross area calculation just shows the actual area bounded by the fill polygon with no deductions.
I think this has to be a flaw in the Zone Tool.
Matthew wrote:Which means drawing it manually
To get the riser out of the gross area you have to make an explicit hole in the zone. In this way it functions just like the fill tool with the area turned on.
As i point out above the walls to the riser (room, lift core, whatever) are set to Zone Boundary so the zone should recognise them as a hole - why do i have to cut it manually!? Space click inside a room with a hole and the fill tool will pick it up, so why not the zone tool.GS what is the story here? If it is meant to work this way (i.e ignoring internal Zone Boundaries) it just doesn't make sense to me. The automatic zone boundary setting of the Zone tool is useless if it behaves this way. Say you had one large room with 3 smaller ones contained within it. Your area calcs would be a joke as the large zone would include the 3 small ones and they'd get counted twice ..
This is exactly what I am getting now .. the sum of my all my gross room areas is more than the sum of the gross floor plate areas. I've check and there are no duplicate zones - its simply due to this flaw in how automatic zones calculate their gross area.
I've given up on it for the moment and redrawn nearly all my zones manually. Will have to wait and see what AC11 brings
Sorry no it doesn't. Now i really feel like an idiot, I could have sworn i had been doing this! Guess i was just so used to quickly space-clicking that second time for the hole i'd forgotten about it. Or maybe i was thinking of the Photoshop paintbucket. Both poor excuses, oh well ..
This TopCad sounds ahead of its time .. any chance you still have a copy you could send to GS so they can see how its done. That 15 year old code could feel right at home with AC
Matthew wrote:
But it's not really necessary. TopCAD was a Graphisoft product.
A little before my time so i did a little searching, very interesting!
What ever happened to it? I can find very little information, it just seems to have disappeared some time after
Still looking?
