7 replies to this topic

[Jason Bloomingdale]

So I'm having an interesting problem, and the attached picture will be a necessary reference for what I'm describing. I'm working on a house where I have 3 players on the proverbial field: the 2-story main house, the 1-story dining room (Left side of picture), and the scissor-truss porch. All three of these have a different height, and in order to get the Porch roof to play nicely with its ceiling, it has to be drawn as part of the main floor. The rest of the roof is a multi-floor roof, which places it on the second floor. For some reason, and I cannot finagle my way into compliance, the left side of the porch behaves nicely, but the right side refuses. Both walls are set to 9' tall walls, offset by the thickness of the floor system, choosing the "Cover Floor" option for wall surfaces. Both have the same second story wall on top of them. For the left wall, I've also chosen the "Fit to Soffit" option, but for the right wall, choosing that same option makes the brick extend all the way up to the second story roof, covering the window and siding. The Porch roof can be set to reference either side of the wall, can be set as an Intersect, a Gable, or a Vertical Hip, I can check or uncheck Soffit on any roof edge that offers it, but nothing I do will make the wall surface reference the correct roof.

 

There is one way that I can temporarily make the change work: If I set the second story roof to Building Option 1, turn off that building option, choose the "Fit to Soffit" option, turn back on the building option, then switch the roof back to Default Building Option, the wall will temporarily behave as I want it to, but anything that causes the model to regenerate (even if item cleanup is unchecked) will cause the wall to once again reference the upper roof, even if it's on a different building option. Basically, if the upper roof is visible, the bricks are northward bound.

 

On one hand, yes, I could choose the "Fit to ceiling" option for the wall. I've already sacrificed the "draw it how it's built" principle by drawing the wall as if it's 2 separate walls for the first and second floor in order to accommodate the two different exteriors. That being said, I'd much rather my framing view have a few extra feet of wall plates than overlapping walls that have the potential to mess with the model construction if a cleanup gets cantankerous.

 

Ultimately, I think this is another symptom of Softplan struggling when items don't neatly fall into "main floor/second floor" definitions. It would be nice, within the "Adjust Wall Surface to..." section, be able to (a) choose which roof gets referenced when fitting materials to soffit, and ( add some version where, either in the "transition materials height" portion of the wall definition or the materials adjustment menu, be able to divide materials based off a roof and/or ceiling.

 

Thanks for reading my one-act play, and may the Force be with you.

Attached Files

•  Wall Materials.png   95.88KB   2 downloads

[Mark Petri]

Using a full height wall that has a transition between brick and siding might be best. Or, any wall that is set with a transition for the brick height might work. It is one of many issues with trying to "model how it is built" not working. I have wished for a long time that we could choose which roof it references, actually lock a wall or other entity once we set it how we want, have multiple transitions, etc. No luck with this upgrade in getting those things.

[Jason Bloomingdale]

Agreed, Mark. Or, to be frank, even to have the "cleanup item" option be functional. Defining one wall that uses both siding options would definitely be ideal. I did the two walls for the dual reason of not having to fight with the "exclude from unit openings" on my upper windows, plus hoping that I'd be able to use the "fit to soffit" options. Sadly, this wasn't the case. Also, for multi-floor walls, we should get the "Show on Floor Above" option like stairs have.

[Mark Petri]

I've gone back and forth between showing walls with openings that do not extract in 3D on an upper level vs doing a clipped overlay that just shows it is the wall below. So many things that could be better.

[Duane Foley]

It would be great if you could just right click and get an adjust surface option and just drag and drop the surface where needed. 

[Mark Petri]

Sounds like competing software Duane. Wish SP would figure it out. It would save so much time.

[Gary McKeon]

Sounds like competing software Duane. Wish SP would figure it out. It would save so much time.

Yep, Chief has been able to do this forever. Even their material list accounts for it. It would be so, so, so very nice to have this ability and not just for the wall covering. Saves a lot of grief when working on roof's as well.

[Mark Petri]

I've been begging SP to look at the competition and rise to the level of what is out there with some of these very features. It sure would help us deliver a better product and more reliable drawings for a generation of customers who want good visualization of what they are spending their money on and trades that rely more and more on the accuracy of a detail.