Wall cleanup and alignment problems

[ron.sanpedro]

Running into two wall issues on our pilot project.

1: Given an exterior wall with CMU core and brick finish both inside and out, an interior stud wall will actually cut the interior brick facing and run the stud all the way to the CMU. One workaround is to make the brick part of the core also, but then you can't dimention to the CMU. You can also just turn off cleanup, but then the cut line is wrong. Neither is really a viable answer.

2: Given an interior wall with studs, 1 layer of gyp on one side, 2 layers of gyp on the other, and laid out center of stud on column lines. Now, when I COPY a wall, it doesn't grab the center of core, it grabs the center of the overall wall. If I just place a wall, I can choose center of core and it works fine, but a copy results in a wall that is wrong.

Are we doing something wrong, or does it really just work like that?

Thanks,
Gordon

[Merlin]

Gordon
Any chance you can post a file containing the wall issues?....I think I understand but there are a couple of things that are not clear.

John Mc
PS....Just make a new file and copy/paste the walls into it.....upload that file to us.

[patricks]

You want this interior wall to go up to the face of brick I assume? Why can't you disable wall joins for the interior wall and do it that way?

I believe if you activate the dimension tool, choose whether you prefer center of wall, center of core, face of finish, and then go back to modify, pick the wall, then use the copy tool, I think it will gravitate towards the center of the core if you chose that previously under the dimension tool... not completely sure, though. I assume you're dimensioning to center of stud? Why can't you just pick the copy tool and then click anywhere and move the wall the amount you need? That's what I usually do when copying. I almost never try to snap to any certain part of a wall when I'm copying it, I just click anywhere, and type in the required distance in the temporary dimension that shows as you copy the wall.

[Merlin]

Yep, Patrick has suggested what I was thinking.....if you are a beginner, you might not be aware of the "disable join" abilities for walls......highlight the butting wall in question, you will see a blue grip/node/dot/whatever. Right Click over this dot and a menu will appear...select "disallow join"...you are then free to grip and dragthe end of the wall into the position required.

HTH
John Mc

[ron.sanpedro]

Yep, Patrick has suggested what I was thinking.....if you are a beginner, you might not be aware of the "disable join" abilities for walls......highlight the butting wall in question, you will see a blue grip/node/dot/whatever. Right Click over this dot and a menu will appear...select "disallow join"...you are then free to grip and dragthe end of the wall into the position required.

HTH
John Mc

The problem I see with Disable Join is that the cutline no longer profiles properly, you get a thick cut line at the junction between the walls, when you really want a thin line where the stud meets the brick, and the cutline profiles the combined walls.

I have attached a file with two flavors of wrong.

Thanks!
Gordon

[patricks]

Have you tried disallowing join on the interior wall, dragging the end up to the brick, and then using Join Geometry on the two walls? That might give you the cut line condition you're after.

[ron.sanpedro]

Have you tried disallowing join on the interior wall, dragging the end up to the brick, and then using Join Geometry on the two walls? That might give you the cut line condition you're after.

THAT does the trick! I will still argue that this condition happens often enough that the product should handle it. Basically I should be able to set the interior wall core to a lower priority and the exterior wall finish to a higher priority, and get what I want without resorting to workarounds. In the meantime, I have a swell workaround! ;)

The workaround I offered my user on the copy problem was to change the wall he wanted to copy to one with the same finish on both sides, copy at will, then change the walls in place to the double gyp. Or just draw all the walls from scratch, but he was so enamoured of the fact that when you copy a wall that has been attached to the structure above, the copy is also, he couldn't bring himself to grab all those new walls and attach them.

Gordon

[patricks]

I still don't see why you need a "workaround" for copying walls... as long as you're just entering the dimension to move the copy, or as long as the temp. dimension references the same point on both walls, it shouldn't matter if it's actually referencing the center of core or not, unless your double gyp. bd. is on differing sides of each wall. If that is the case, then simply copy the wall the specified distance you need it (from center to center of cores), make sure the wall copy has it's loc. line set to center of core, then hit the flip orientation arrow.

So if you have one wall with double gyp. on one side, and you need another wall 20 feet away measured to center of stud, but with the double gyp. on the opposite side as the first wall, then just pick the first wall, copy and move 20 feet, and if the wall is set to reference center of core, just hit the little blue flip orientation arrow and voila, done!

We pretty much keep all of our exterior walls set to exterior face of core, and interior walls set to center of core, so it's easy to do the required copying and moving as I have described.

[ron.sanpedro]

So if you have one wall with double gyp. on one side, and you need another wall 20 feet away measured to center of stud, but with the double gyp. on the opposite side as the first wall, then just pick the first wall, copy and move 20 feet, and if the wall is set to reference center of core, just hit the little blue flip orientation arrow and voila, done!

If 20' away is what you need, then yes. But what we need is "centered on all these columns" and the columns are not neat. The grids are not all the same, and the columns sometimes center on the grid, sometimes offset by 4", sometimes 6". But we want the stud centered on the column. Thus copy/basepoint/basepoint really is the best answer here. And no, we would never design this way; it is existing conditions, it really was built that way years ago.

Best,
Gordon

[patricks]

ah yes, those dad-blasted existing conditions :p

In your case then I would probably just keep the interior walls set to core centerline for the location line, and then just snap to various points on the columns when copying and pasting. I don't think I would ever need to change the wall type and then change it back just to make sure it copied the correct distance.

[ron.sanpedro]

ah yes, those dad-blasted existing conditions :p

In your case then I would probably just keep the interior walls set to core centerline for the location line, and then just snap to various points on the columns when copying and pasting. I don't think I would ever need to change the wall type and then change it back just to make sure it copied the correct distance.

But therein lies the problem. When you copy a wall, the only grip is at center of overall wall, as far as I can tell. I can't grab a core face either. Unless I am doing something wrong, which I am hoping for.

Gordon

[patricks]

I don't understand.... unless you're using some different method to copy. When you select a wall and hit the Copy button, you can click anywhere you like as the basepoint to copy whatever object you selected. You don't have to click anywhere near the wall if you don't want to.

[ron.sanpedro]

I don't understand.... unless you're using some different method to copy. When you select a wall and hit the Copy button, you can click anywhere you like as the basepoint to copy whatever object you selected. You don't have to click anywhere near the wall if you don't want to.

I don't know if I am doing something wrong or what, but when I do a copy on the single wall in the included file, I can grab any material face, or the center of the whole wall, but I can't grab the center of the stud. Just no green line to be had for me.
Any thoughts? Is everyone else able to find center of stud or core when copying?

Thanks,
Gordon

[patricks]

I don't know if I am doing something wrong or what, but when I do a copy on the single wall in the included file, I can grab any material face, or the center of the whole wall, but I can't grab the center of the stud. Just no green line to be had for me.
Any thoughts? Is everyone else able to find center of stud or core when copying?

Thanks,
Gordon

I couldn't open the file, said it was saved in a later version or something.

But what I'm saying is, when you copy a wall, it doesn't matter where you click as your starting reference point to move the copy. If you're trying to place the walls relative to columns, then I would snap and click on the columns as the reference points when copying the walls.