Help with wall display.

[stelthorst]

Here's one for everyone to put on their thinking cap.

Is there any way to have a wall display a different color on each side?

Here's the reason why. I would like to set up my drawing so that I can show each side of the wall with a color to indicate GWB thickness. This way my guys will know what size mud ring they need to install on each device in the wall.

For example, if the wall has one-layer of 5/8" GWB they will need a 5/8" mud ring and I want to show the wall in one color but if the other side has two layers of 5/8" GWB they will need an 1-1/4" mud ring and I want to show this side in a different color.

I haven't tried to create anything yet, I thought I would get everyones ideas first.

Thanks in advance.

[dkoch]

How are your wall styles set up? Do you have a single component for the entire wall, or do you have individual components for GWB, Stud, etc?

[stelthorst]

How are your wall styles set up? Do you have a single component for the entire wall, or do you have individual components for GWB, Stud, etc?

Haven't created any yet. My thought would be to have different components for the GWB, stud etc. Although if I want different colors to show up for each wall thickness should I create one component for 2 layers of GWB instead of two separate components?

[dkoch]

Some random thoughts:

To get different colors, you would need separate components. You would also have to turn off the Shrink Wrap component, as that would overwrite the outer faces - unless you want that on and can live with just having the inner component line color indicate the number of layers.

You will also get a double line - one line on each side of the component - if you create the component at its "actual" thickness. If you want a single line to display at the outer face of the wall, you could turn off the Shrink Wrap, create zero-width components and position them at the outer face of the wall.

You could create a single component for the double layer of GWB, or you could have two components, side-by-side (in which case, you would get three lines).

If I were doing this, I would probably set up Material Definitions to control the display of the components. You could have a Material Definition for single-layer, that had whatever color you want for that assigned to plan linework and another for double-layer, with its color assigned. You may want to start out with copies of the out-of-the-box GWB Material Definition, renaming as appropriate, and only changing the Plan Linework colors. That way, in other views, the material will behave like the out-of-the-box material (surface hatches, rendering material, etc).

Do you need for these to plot this way, or is this just a visual prompt while placing devices? If the latter, you may want to set up a custom Display Configuration, with a custom Display Representation Set for the Top view, that uses a custom Display Representation for Walls and/or Material Definitions, that activates your colored components. That way you could leave the out-of-the-box settings alone (or whatever customized version thereof you may be using now) and have those available for "normal" plotting/viewing, and just change to the custom Display Configuration when you want to see the colors indicating the number of GWB layers.

If your wall styles always had a balanced number of GWB layers, you might also achieve a similar result using Display Themes. You would need to add a property to a Property Set attached to your walls to indicate how many layers of GWB were on each side, then have a Display Theme turn on the Shrink Wrap Hatch and color it accordingly. The problem with this is that there are partitions that have an unequal number of layers on each side of the partition, so perhaps your original idea of coloring the components is a better one.

[Steve_Bennett]

Yeah, umm... what the jedi master said^^^

In addition to what he so eloquently expounded on, don't forget that you will need to create end caps and opening end caps for your new walls too.

[stelthorst]

Thanks David and Steve,

I'll play with it this weekend. I want to do something that is relatively simple and easy since I don't get paid to draw walls but it helps me with my coordination. I had planned on creating a separate display representation since the only time I care about the wall thickness is on my boxing drawings.