Trick to find the Centre Line

[Srinivas]

Hi,

Can we find the centre line of a wall after drafting the wall under Left and Right justification? Please do let me know what the best trick you would follow when you drafted the entire building with walls without center justification and you know what to draft the centre line diagram for the building. Revit does have this facility of finding the centre line. Is ArchiCAD missing something here?

Or Anyone using ArchiRuler can tell me wether it has this flexibility? or any other addon.

In India we are still using AC 9.0

Thanks for the support in advance.

cheers,
Srinivas.

[TomWaltz]

Srinivas wrote:
Hi,

Can we find the centre line of a wall after drafting the wall under Left and Right justification? Please do let me know what the best trick you would follow when you drafted the entire building with walls without center justification and you know what to draft the centre line diagram for the building. Revit does have this facility of finding the centre line. Is ArchiCAD missing something here?

You can use the 2-point mid-point Constuction method to find the midpoint of any two points, but there is not a "snap-to-midpoint of wall".

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to draw a wall using the center line and then change it to the left or right justify and it not move? Say you are redrawing something from a previous time and have no file and you want to draw it the way it was drawn but want it dimensioned to the edge of the wall and not the center. Is this possible?

[Anonymous]

Srinivas wrote:
Can we find the centre line of a wall after drafting the wall under Left and Right justification? Please do let me know what the best trick you would follow when you drafted the entire building with walls without center justification and you know what to draft the centre line diagram for the building. Revit does have this facility of finding the centre line. Is ArchiCAD missing something here?

The exact procedures depend on what you want the centerlines for and whether you want to change the walls permanently or not. The following may help.

You can use the Modify Wall tool to change selected walls' reference lines to the center of the cores. I assume that this would do, since it is usually the centerline of the structure that matters. (I can't imagine why one would want to offset from the structural centerline due to differences in finishes.)

This might mess up some wall intersections and there may be other reasons that you don't want to make this a permanent change, so you could do it as a temporary way to find the lines and then use the same tool to revert them, or just don't save the changes back to the original file.

The Modify Wall tool is an add on that may not be in your menus. You can add it by editing your work environment.

[Anonymous]

jcude wrote:
Is there a way to draw a wall using the center line and then change it to the left or right justify and it not move? Say you are redrawing something from a previous time and have no file and you want to draw it the way it was drawn but want it dimensioned to the edge of the wall and not the center. Is this possible?

Unfortunately the Modify Wall tool does not work with center referenced walls. It is for this reason that I forbid anyone I work with to use the center reference option.

Since the walls are not drawn yet, you can simply offset the reference line by half the wall thickness. This way you will be drawing on the centerline but can still use the Modify Wall tool to change them later.

The dimension tool will work to the face of the walls in any case, so you don't need to change the reference line just for that.

[Anonymous]

(using composite wall settings) Would putting a hair line dead center of the composite wall that had a color to match the wall's fill work. That way there is a line to snap to as long as you can make the line somewhat invisible graphically in your composite wall. Would take a little playing around to get it right at first...

Would have issues w/ sections as well but maybe resolvable...

[TomWaltz]

You can make skins that do not have divider lines... I don't see any reason it would not work with normal composites.... stretchable profile walls might be another story.

[Anonymous]

g.h.design wrote:
(using composite wall settings) Would putting a hair line dead center of the composite wall that had a color to match the wall's fill work. That way there is a line to snap to as long as you can make the line somewhat invisible graphically in your composite wall. Would take a little playing around to get it right at first...

Would have issues w/ sections as well but maybe resolvable...

The composite trick works, of course, but I have a reluctance to split the core. I'm not sure why though, maybe I'm just silly. There is no problem with sections, as long as the two halves of the core are the same fill they will clean up with no separation. So you can even have the center line in plan (dashed or whatever) if you want.

[Anonymous]

You can use Modify Wall->Reference Line (I think its in the Tools menu) to move the reference line to the middle of the wall without moving the wall itself.

If you don't need the reference line in the middle are you just trying to snap to it? For that you can use Relative Construction Methods found on the Control Box Palette. Select the 2-point-midpoint option and then click the 2 sides of the wall. It will snap your cursor to the middle if Special Snap Points is set to Half.