Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Design Options and Phases: Post #2

This post assumes you already have some exposure to the Parts tools or that you think the Split Face and Paint tools are the only tools available for defining scope of materials.

MORE CONTAINERS: Think of the Parts tool as yet another container... an instance of a family is duplicated in two containers... (Original vs. Parts).

USING SPLIT FACE AND PAINT: Parts are a nice alternative to using the split face and paint tools, a workflow that, in my experience, does not behave well with changes to the main model and other Design Option sets.  Split face sketches can get deleted (or moved) and painted surfaces can, often without warning, bleed onto adjacent faces.

PARTS REDUNDANCY: Create Parts from an original wall. You will end up with two walls in two separate containers (Original vs. Parts). Keep in mind that Parts, Design Options, and Phase containers are nice in that clash errors do not occur when used properly. Try using your Workset containers to study design options and you'll run into many clashes/warnings.

Parts (or layers) of a wall, floor, roof, ceiling and other categories can be:
  • DIVIDED for breaking up layers of a walls, floors, etc. (ex. for defining variable finishes on an elevation/plan)
  • EXCLUDED for very specific scope of finish applications (ex. where wall finish meets a sloping grade)
  • DEMOLISHED for removal of existing finishes to make way for a new finishes

THE BEST PARTS (no pun intended): Add the original wall to two or more design options and you will find that you can now divide, exclude, and demo parts... within Design Option containers!

If you are just replacing the finish layer for a remodel consider dividing the finish into two parts, reshaping them both to the shape of the original...  it's ok if the finishes overlap ;) and set their demo/create parameters as independent of the original. "Show Shape Handles" to change the thickness of your proposed finish.

Every view can be set to "Show Original," "Show Parts," or "Show Both."

Show both is quite nice when the Parts category in Object Styles is set to line weight (1) for projection AND cut and your plan view is set to "coarse". The Object Styles of Original elements will override the Object Styles of Parts "when both are present" so don't feel like you have to pick one or the other.

This in mind, you can also combine solid and line patterns when you "Show Both".  Try making your Original material solid fill grey and your Part material any line pattern.  This works in cut and projection ;)



In addition, you can quantify for the area and volume of parts in material takeoff schedules, resulting in more specific takeoffs than what you would achieve in the scheduling of Original elements only (ex. separating an insulated stud layer from a non-insulated layer of the same thickness).

There are many advantages to exploring the Parts container... and not just for construction modeling!