Certain Alignment Offsets (when window geometry collides with both walls at once) can force window opening through both walls but it can be an undesired position of the window.
Is it possible to have the window or door aligned back but cut through two walls at the same time? (I don’t want to use Substract Solids workaround.)
Window placed in the back wall can’t make the cut through the front wall
Windows are designed to cut one single wall. However, why do you need to create a different wall? Maybe you can create an additional layer and apply an elevation offset to it.
I tried to use exclusively “smart” layered walls even in Revit but this can lead to failure and frustration on many occasions… In simple scenarios, simple walls you will get away with this approach but not every time.
Often drawing separate layers as separate walls can be much quicker, much more flexible, and more intuitive. The more uncommon the task is, the easier is to draw layers separately. Especially if the project scale is not very big, this costs an acceptable amount of effort.
Also, I think that users relying solely on Elevation offsets for complex walls puts much more pressure on the developers than letting users draw different layers separately and cut multiple walls with one window. You would need to provide the tool that works every time in every rare situation
There is a property “Cut depth” in the window properties that allows specifying the depth of the solid subtracted from the wall. Unfortunately, as the other wall is not intersecting the window, that solid does not affect this wall. But I can make a small change in VisualARQ so this cut depth is taken into account when looking for near walls, as long as they are parallel.
Sounds good!
There is already some logic that removes wall edges if two walls are “sticked” together and have the same pattern.
Maybe this with a combination of Cut depth can be enough to determine how window should make wall openings.
I think that I can make it even easier: I can just treat parallel walls like if they were part of the wall, so the doors and windows that are inserted in any of two-or-more parallel walls will make a hole in all of them. What do you think?
I highly doubt anyone will place a wall parallel to another wall with doors or windows expecting to block all openings.
This logic will probably change to “same material” instead of “same pattern”…
I think it is a good idea as long as I don’t think about making window reveals out of wall layers.
With current behavior, I can manually subtract solid from one wall, but if windows will have “more power” in making openings it might be not possible anymore.
I think this feature is needed for the “detailed prototyping” phase when you don’t need nor have all the details yet, and you just need a quick way of changing window positions to evaluate facade options quickly, I wouldn’t want it to be a 2 step process per window.
I am trying to leave ArchiCAD behind and I am happy to see that VA can handle multi layered walls, as this is one of the biggest reasons I grew frustrated with it, together with the lack of openings trough multiple layers!
Off-topic: I switched to Rhino/VA because I started wanting to model my projects 1:1, full detail stopping only at fasteners. Is there a forum or community for this topic? Haven’t been able to find it.
This is the forum, I am not sure if there is another thread for this topic. Anyway, if you need to create more detailed objects, you can do it in two different ways:
looking for the same option too. multilayered walls are ok, but sometimes 2 (or even more than 2) parallel wall styles are needed, and to be both cut by doors-windows without boolean.
Through test i realized, like the first op post, that when a window or a doors is aligned “touch” 2 discrete wall styles, the hole goes through both styles, but if the window is interior aligned, only the interior wall style gets the hole. With three wall styles no hole to the 3rd wall can be achieved.
But now i am confused, because i think the above can be achieved with addInterferences command.
please correct me if am wrong, when i use three wall styles and insert a door to the interior wall style (cyan), if run the addinterferences command and select the next two wall types (green, gray) (the green one also being multilayered) to interfere with the door, i get a hole in those two wall types, that is also dynamic and updates when i change the door position.
so either i misunderstood the request of this post, or it seems that cuts through multiple wall styles can be done with add interference with whatever door alignment.
Hi @ng5_Alex the door/window is meant to create the opening ONLY in the wall where it is hosted. I’m surprised that in one of your tests, the door cuts through different walls.
However, the option to use the _vaAddInterferences command is a good solution. In the case of that door door that doesn’t cut through that multilayer wall, you can try to increase the door Cut Depth value, which by default is calculated in relation to the wall host thickness:
i tried many tests it seems like a good workaround for now. Most of the cases it works except
Sometimes doors/windows, no matter the depth cut value, do not go through multiple wall styles with multiple layers (like the previous post screenshot)
Sometimes, no matter the depth cut value, the maximum hole they create is around 1.50-60m (which maybe is too much for a wall, except very special cases).
Perhaps these cuts can be achieved with an update, maybe with addnterference tweaking, and be part of Visualarq 3 and not of a next version.
ps. Doors/windows go through single multilayer wall styles without issues.
Hi Alex,
The option to modify the cut depth will work on multiple walls if you have previously run the vaAddInterferences command between the window or door and the other walls where the opening is not hosted. This can serve as a workaround, but it is not the ideal solution, as it may result in parts of the wall being cut by window or door elements that you don’t intend to cut (instead of just the rough opening).
Hi Alex,
Aligning multiple walls is something VisualARQ doesn’t support, and may lead to unexpected situations. I understand that the cases exposed above are sort of extreme. Because instead of aligning multiple walls in parallel, you could create a unique wall style with multiple layers.
Still, you can create an opening that cuts through all these walls with an auxiliary solid of subtraction, and running the vaSubtractSolids or the vaAddInterferences command (and hide the solid).
