Hi,
is there an option to define a separate material for the sides of a slab? I am able to define 2 layers for the slab and assign individual materials to them, so I end up with different appearances for the floor and the ceiling as intended. However the side view is showing those two layers at places the slab is cut like in the attached pic. I would like to be able to assign a custom material to the sides, so I would have a homogeneous appearance without adding additional geometry.
2 Likes
It’s not possible unfortunately. You need to put extra geometry on the slab sides.
thanks you Francesc for your reply, I think I would like to make this a wish then!
We are doing architectural visualisations and I am currently evaluating if VA could possibly save us some time without introducing to much “overhead”.
I personally think that VA has a lot of potential for this industry, since we have to change the client designs a lot, so parametrization beyond blocks would be a very welcomed thing, but at the end of the day it is often simple things like this “slab material thing” which can speed up your workflow, since it is saving you from having to do extra unnecessary repetitive work.
best
Andreas
Hi walther,
I’ve added this request for the wish-list. So I’ll let you know when there are news.
I can think about a workaround trick for this case. You could create a 3 layer slab style. You can make the top and bottom layers very thin, for the top and bottom surface materials. The one in the middle would be the thick one that has the slab side material.
Hi Francesc,
thanks for the suggestion, I also thought about that and we did this in the past with grouped rhino geometry (without using VA…)
However this approach introduces a new problem so we abandoned it, If you go very small, you will mess up your object snap, meaning you cannot see /tell which layer it is referring to, which will produce small very, very annoying inaccuracies in your model in the long run.
best
Andreas
That makes sense. I’ll keep you posted whenever there are news on this feature.
any news here? I this hard to implement? Archicad has this since 1996 
(honestly!)
Sorry but there has been no progress on this yet. We have scheduled it for a future version since it has not so many votes, at least for now. We will contact you once this feature is added.
Kind regards
thanks Ramon,
for everyone who wants to use the VARQ 3d modell for visualization ( and my guess is that would be many …) this is an very important feature, even if it might not have so many votes yet. Of course votes are important, but they are not everything, also look at the other software packages (these things are there for a reason…) and maybe listen to seasoned pro users from time to time
I kind of want to buy Visual ARQ, but each time I give it a try I stumble upon one or two of these things… is there an (un)official list of features which are planned for the next release?
best
Andreas
2 Likes
Hi @walther,
I think that the solution that Francesc Salla has proposed you (2 very thin layers at top and bottom) is the best one. I don’t think we will implement the ArchiCAD solution as it has some issues:
- It is not real: in real world, there will be two layers, as finishing is a real thin layer.
- It could not be exported to IFC, as IFC needs to have a material per layer.
- Rhino doesn’t handle very well multi-material closed meshes. If you want them to be rendered correctly in display and renders, we’ll have to explode them into separate meshes. Then, the sections features of Rhino and VisualARQ will fail, because non-closed meshes are not capped when sectioned.
If you have some other issues with the thin-layer solution, we can try to solve them, instead of using different materials on a single solid piece.
Regards,
Enric
Hi Enric,
Well the “thin layer” approach is not a suitable solution, it is the workaround I have to use now… as I already mentioned above, this is not very practical since it gives you problems with object the snap…
So regarding your 3. remark, lets say the new slab would consist of e.g. 3 layers, and ideally another user defined “side” slab which would optional cover visible sides of the slab, could this be a single VARQ objects which would behave like a normal single slab in relation to object snaps? I mean that the object snap would just “see” the outer edges / vertices and not the internal ones…
slabdemo.3dm (2.0 MB) !
the attached files illustrate very typical every day situations where these problems occur…
Hi @walther,
I think that the best solution is allow “0.0” in the slab layer thickness. This will create a surface, instead of a solid. This won’t create new slab points as they will be coindident. The only issue I’ll have to deal with is overlapping surfaces, but I’m sure I’ll find a solution.
Enric
2 Likes
this solution also important for walls and ceilings & roofs 
2 Likes
Hi @jon-vrin,
Yes, sure! We’ll implement that on all layered objects (walls, slabs and roofs). And probably on columns, as we plan to add support for column layers as well.
Enric
2 Likes
Wow!!!
this is fabulous ! Will this work with our octane render pipeline?
→ If you guys would really implement this, for me that would be the “straw that broke the camels back” in a positive way 
and I will instantly buy it !
Hey,
in the first picture from Andreas you can see the different layers of the slab… actually that’s not wrong… the completion of the slab border is not a thin layer or a work around… there is a metal sheet with a thickness… so just build a small wall with the hight of the slab and the thickness of a metal sheet at that open slab and group that wall with the slab… if you edit the slab you edit the small wall as well…and you get a better and realistic picture and section as well…
much more important is to automatic join and cut walls and slabs
Markus
Hi Markus,
I tend to disagree here, while you are of course correct saying that actually building the metal sheet (which I am constantly doing right now, together with manual wall and slab splitting for correct material assignment 
…) would be more “correct” in terms of the construction it is very cumbersome to do. For my personal use in 95 % of all cases I don’t need or event don’t want to see a sheet so I would still very much like to see this feature. Especially in the early design phase where we often have to edit, add and remove stuff it would make the workflow considerably better IMHO.
well, it might be for you, but lets not play the game “my wish for feature X is more important than yours”, let’s just have both
best
Andreas
Hi,
I’m glad to announce that VisualARQ 2.6 will include support for layers with 0 thickness. I think this feature can partially solve your issues. 
- Any layer with a thickness lower that the document tolerance will create a surface instead of a solid.
- Works on all layered objects: slabs, roofs and walls.
- Top/bottom offset is supported (this is also a 2.6 new feature).
- Supports transparent materials for both, thick and thin layers.
- Sections are supported.
- Works on real-time display modes and render.
- It works well for planar objects, but there is some Z-fighting on walls with non-linear path curves. We’ll try to fix this on future versions.
- And before you ask: override the material per instance is already on our wish-list, and it will be probably implemented in VisualARQ 3.
Here is a small GIF thats shows how it looks like:
Here is the latest installer of VisualARQ 2.6 for Rhino 6, just in case you want to try it now:
https://visualarq.s3.amazonaws.com/download/visualarq-2.6.0.13534-rhino6-setup-snapshot.msi
Our plan is to publish VisualARQ 2.6 later this week if we don’t find any serious bug.
Please, test it and let us know if it works for you.
Enric
1 Like
Hi Enric, this is fantastic ! -> downloading right now…
I will thest it ASAP!
best
Andreas
1 Like
OK, it works … but I found some problems… sadly the z-fighting is pretty visible when rendering with octane…
walls.3dm (2.8 MB)
but great start ! thank you !