I’m just starting to use VisualArq and am very excited for the level of control it brings to Rhino. The project I’m working on is an existing building that we will be renovating so in the end I’ll need to produce demolition plans and renovation plans. What options do I have for having two different sets of geometry within the same file and being able to turn each set on and off?
There are aspects of the existing conditions that will remain such as some walls, structure, and exterior. However, there are walls that will be demolished and ideally I could simply hide those, their cuts and joins would go away, and I could turn on the new scheme.
Hi Scott, unfortunately there is no good solution right now to achieve what you are asking for. You can organize the model by layers (you can place each VA object style in a specific layer that you can turn on or off depending on what you want to see). You can also use the section attributes (that can be defined by object) in order to show one specific renovation status of elements in 2D drawings.
In any case there are problems if two VisualARQ objects of different schemes are in the same position because they will interact with each other even though they are in hidden layers. So you should have two different models that are not coinciding in the same position.
I’ll let you know if there’s anything new on VA development that helps you in this request.
Kind regards,
Thanks for the response. I ended up taking and placing the two different
schemes each in their own block which prevents the walls from
auto-joining. However, I now have challenge that I can’t get some of the
detail such as door swings to show up in drawings unless I am editing the
block. Is there anyway around that?
Hi Scott, up to the 1.9 version the 2D representation of VisualARQ objects doesn’t show up correctly in plan views when they are inserted in blocks but we have fixed that in the upcoming VisualARQ 2.0 version.
Hi @fsalla, I’m wondering if there is an update on this topic? I’m also struggling with a proper way to handle a renovation project. Especially intersecting walls (demolished and new) that I don’t want to intersect.
You can also manage the walls with different renovation status values, by creating a new wall style (you can duplicate each style), and assigning the desired value to each style (which is something that can be overwritten by wall instance), and also specific attributes.
These values can be reported in tables.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to automate the wall joins according to the value of a specific parameter or by wall style.
We can study how to implement this in future versions.
@david25 For renovation projects I typically end up having 3 separate files: the primary BIM file, an existing file, and a demo file. The existing file is more or less a backup.
As I work through the design, demo’d items like walls, doors, etc. are split or separated, exploded and then grouped (so they don’t interact with the newer geometry), and then put on a dedicated DEMO layer and turned off.
When I’m ready to make the demo file, I copy the DEMO layer into the existing file, save it as a new demo file, and then clean up any overlap.
The primary reason I keep it as a separate file is to simplify the layer structure later on when things show up in detail views. Once it is clear what is being demo’d, I don’t generally have to go back and forth very much for the rest of the design process, so the demo scope stays completely on it’s own sheets. If we later decide not to demo something after all, it is easy enough to copy and paste from the existing to the proposed file and update those areas.
Dear @fsalla, I tried out your suggestion with the wall joints panel, but I can’t seem to figure out why sometimes this panel appears after selecting 2 walls and sometimes it does not appear. Is there a logic behind this?
The “Wall joints panel” will be shown only when you select all the walls that interfere in a connection. For example, if there are 3 walls that connect in one single joint, you need to select the 3 walls. Selecting only 2 of them won’t show the joints panel.
If you think there is a bug, please send us a sample model to visualarq@asuni.com.
