Wall connections strategy - desired outcome

VisualARQ
1

Hello,

in continuation with the post: Hiding Wall-Solid intersection lines in hidden mode

I’d like to have some guidance on such complex-narrow wall connection situations.

I need to have accurate - as desired wall connections, without un-needed lines between walls or walls-solids-interferences. Add solids or wall-solids combinations is not an option due to the limitations described on the other post.

I am struggling for about a day on this. I have played with core-normal in wall styles. I would not prefer to work with curtain walls for the interior etc.

Non perpendicular cuts in walls should be an option in my opinion.

Please check the sample .3dm:

test.3dm (1.5 MB)

Structurally speaking the stone wall layer, is an existing part of the structure. I am working as follows:

existing file –> walls as they exist now
new phase file –> walls enriched with insulations and other elements side by side with the existing ones.

A thought of mine was having all the existing ones in a block in order not to interact with the actual walls but we are loosing the point of BIM information in my opinion and we will result with single insulation layer walls without having the structural parts.

I have not yet tested existing walls from solid and all the rest normal wall styles walls.

With a small test, walls from solids interact with non solid walls.

I would appreciate some guidance or any tips-experience related to this.

But problems persist not only on complex situations but also in the left red circle. Without the door the desired relation is doable. But when you enter the door the relation breaks.

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2

I came up with this: anything complex like existing stone walls, created from solids. Rest controllable new construction elements will be mostly usual VA walls.

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I believe there should be an official direction on the best applicable strategy for walls creation. It would be very helpful for many VA users.

It’s the first time I am trying to use wall from solids. I fell into this limitation:

the curve should be continuous, not a polyline. Otherwise I’ll have to use segments of the desired polylines, with separate wall segments, resulting to having again the unwanted lines between the different wall segments (as described in the connected thread above).

Until now, I am separating walls per level, so one wall style on top of the other. When normal walls used, the hatch is unified with no lines between (in a section). When walls from solids is used, then the lines appear. But not only this, as you can see in perspective, the section is different (white with hatch and material with hatch - no white in the wall from solid). I’ll send to you the file, if you’d like to check this.

So the possible solution is: create a big solid entirely for the whole building - not separated per level and turn it to a wall from solid, hoping that the curve we are going to select will be ok for the whole project windows and doors - which does not sound promising.

In this case, a big motive to use BIM, vanishes because automation such as geometry modification by VA guides changes is not possible. Practically this way we create solids through traditional rhino tools and then we turn everything to va objects, without having them parametric. But all this is driven not by choice, but from dump limitation such as lines between geometry in the plans or wrong connections of walls in (not that) complex situations.

Also as you can see the curve has too many points. I’d like some guidance on an optimal way to transform - easily drafted - polylines to continuous curves acceptable from the wall from solids dialogue. Please find attached the .gh file:

WALL_FROM_SOLID_CREATION.gh (15.6 KB)

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3

Hi @GabrielB knowing the limitations of walls created from solids, what is the reason why you are turning solids into walls and not leaving them as solids?
I imagine you take the advantage that you can insert doors and windows in them. But are there other reasons?
Remember that you can assign section styles to the solids. You can also assign custom parameters and metadata to these solids, and tag them as ifcWalls.

I know it would make sense to turn solids into walls if they can intersect with other walls, and hide the intersection line when they have the same attributes, but this is not currently possible right now.

Regarding these joints:

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The right situation is not likely doable with VisualARQ regular walls. So creating the stone thick wall as a solid and the rest as walls seems a good solution.
In the case of the walls in the left circle, you can try to play with the “maximum extension” value of one of the walls, and changing the wall join to “Butt”. I managed to achieve this:

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I also needed to set the wall join between those two to None:

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4

Fransesc, I understand the logic. Due to current functionality, I agree that solid is the only way. The problem is that I am taking too much time to construct everything from the ground up based on the very useful guides that VA offers, and gradually I built up the buildings with a very specific logic that we have came up with throught our practise and the communication in the forum those years, for example, same style walls on top of the other, when geometry changes per level, center alignment with allignment offset and not righ-left alignment etc.

So I am at 80% of something, and then I need to either create the lines manually or to explode all the walls, separate stone from insul layers, re-create all alignments, boolean union to the created solids etc.

For that reason I believe that we should have a Bible for the strategy of setting up a project, based on experience from your side or other fellow VAers.

How far are we from a higher level of precision and more control of wall connections? I am sure you have in mind some kind of roadmap on the subject.

Till then, I agree that solids is the way for now. I am curious if guides work with solids as well in order to create solid geometry for the entire building, content cached via grasshopper, in order to mimic the functionality missing for from wall connections.

5

Hi Gabriel,
As you know, VisualARQ objects are quite simple in terms of level of detail. Anything that has an irregular shape or it is very detailed might not be suitable to be modeled with VisualARQ objects.
But that’s totally fine. You can model them with Rhino geometry, attach metadata, assign attributes, line-weights or section hatches and show everything nicely in plan and section views.

Of course you lose the parametric features existing in VisualARQ objects, but you have more freedom to model anything.

This depends. As I mentioned in other posts, we plan to add “Interference groups”, which may help in some cases. What other situations you wish to control? please provide examples we can take into account when improving wall joints.

Guides work with Rhino solids.