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1. How do I draw in doors and windows so that they share the same mullion frame? One method could be as follows: - Draw a large door opening equal to the width of the door base + the window base It's not possible to draw walls inside windows and doors. If you need to do that, you have to draw them outside, group them in an object and drag the object over the window or door opening. 2. When I print onto my A4 HP laserjet IIIP - 300dpi - it prints as dotted lines, not as solid lines. What do I need to do so that the lines are solid - particularly plan, & section views...and, do you have a suggested printer for printing? We are using a 600 dpi postscript laser printer for black and white, a 1440 dpi Epson for colors and a 300 dpi HP 488 E for large formats. The problem you mention depends on resolution. We produce similar results when printing gray lines on the 300 dpi HP 488 E.
3. How do you control the depth of the Section view, say at 1:50 so it shows detail to a depth of 1-2m. There is no way to automatically control the depth. Domus.Cad always shows the entire model. If you need to see different details when you change the scale, I suggest you should use different materials to decide which parts of the drawing you want to show or hide depending on that scale. With the parametric selection you can then select elements of a certain material to delete them, change their visibility, or move them to a different layer.
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4.How do you construct a roof slab, at say a 25 degree pitch, that is supported/buts up to a curved wall? (Sort of like a garret wall except in the opposite plane). I have thought of ways to do this, such as construct a rectangular slab and then cut it using the scissors tool and remove the unwanted section, but I don't know how. In Domus.Cad 10, there are two new modeling tools which do this job easier and faster. The first allows you to cut or drill a slab with a curve/polygon. The second allows you to extrude a slab from a curve/polygon in any direction.
5. I notice on your examples and in the file you just sent me, that your door/window frames have some thickness/width and colour - how do you get that? Mine just seem to be openings in the walls. I used "slabs" to build the door/window frames and glass. Each part of the frame is a "slab". The glass is a "slab" with three vertixes. The first and last vertixes are coincident. You can obtain the same result using a "wall" with a zero thickness.
6. Is it possible not to have walls fuse together? If so, how do you do that? I am thinking of this in terms of making timber beams and rafters with the wall command, but such a way that they don't fuse but remain as separate elements. Set the Attach Maximum Distance at zero in the Wall Parameters Dialog box.
7. Is it possible to initially draw a solid wall, say 270mm thick, and then later convert that wall to single leafs - aka cavity brick/stone work, such that there is a 50mm cavity, all without having to redraw each wall? There isn't a direct command. I suggest the following method: 1) Lets start with a room with 270 mm walls. 3) Select all the walls and convert them to segments with the Covert to Segment command in the Process menu. 4) Click anywhere to de-select the segments. 5) Double-click the wall icon and set the wall thickness at 110 mm. 6) Select all the segments and execute the Generate Wall on Segment command in the Process menu. The result is the following picture where there is an external 110 mm wall, a 50 mm cavity and an internal 110 mm wall. Total = 270 mm. Note: 215 mm is the distance between the internal and external wall axes.
8. Do you have any suggestion on a good memory allocation? It depends on how complex the project is (not how large it is but how many elements are included). A detailed library object can include more elements than a skyscraper. Enough memory must be assigned so that QuickDraw 3D functions correctly. Based on experience, we suggest assigning Domus.Cad half of the available memory before opening the program.
9. How do I create a Garret wall that is void below the lower roof and solid above the roof line? Select the wall and the roof and execute the command Adjust Walls on Roof from the Process menu.
10. I am trying to work off an existing plan of own of my project, by scanning the plan then importing it in Domus.Cad and tracing off it. To get the full image on the scanner I have to fit it a particular way. Then, to have this plan useful, it needs to be rotated about 30 degrees CW. Pictures can't be rotated in Domus.Cad. so I tried saving the picture as an object, then rotating it, but it doesn't work. Any suggestions? P.S. - the scanning software and graphic converter only allow rotation in 90 degree increments. What scanning software are you using? What are the supported exporting formats (PICT, GIF, JPEC, TIFF, ... )?
To rotate the picture, you can use the PictRot module from the Module-PlugIn menu, In Macintosh there are two kinds of pictures: Bit-Map (ex. scanned images) and Vectorial (ex. those exported from a CAD software). If you have vectorial pictures, then it's possible to transform them into Domus.Cad objects and to rotate the objects. Basically each vectorial element of the picture (lines, polygons, texts etc.) is transformed in a correspondent Domus.Cad element. If you try to transform a Bit-Map picture in an object, then the picture disappears.
11. Can you please suggest a way of drawing such that you can have a door and then a window above it in a wall ?. When I try, it won't allow the insertion of an upper window once a door ( or window ) has been inserted in that wall. Why is it that sometimes I can't select anything - in a wall, or slab, no matter where I click on it? My first suggestion is to use two walls on top of the other. To do this, change the height of the original wall so that it's just high enough to allow the door to fit. Then add another wall in exactly the same plan location but with a base height that matches the top of the original wall. Then you should be able to add windows to this. My second suggestion is similar, but with different handling of the second wall. That is, shorten the original wall as above, but before adding the second wall, make a new layer, say clerestorey layer, and give it a base elevation that matches the top of the original wall. Now when you add the second wall it is on its own layer which should make it easier to select whichever part of the wall you want to work on. Regarding the second part of your message, about selecting objects - is it because of which tool you have active at the time? For example, if the wall tool is active you can't select anything else than a wall. Also with walls, I think you need to click on the axis, rather than the edges, so try having the option "show wall axes" active. The selection points for the various elements are as follows: Walls, windows and doors: on the axis
12. How do you do vaulted roofs? To make a vault: 1) draw an arc with the desired measurements (in your case, 10 m) and number of vertixes (double click the arc icon to recall the "Polygon Characteristics" dialog box - more vertixes will make it smoother). Activating the Snap to Grid might help when drawing. The extrusion function can be used to make the structural or frame elements too. For a slightly different element, you can select the arc and choose the "Generate Arch on Polygon" command. In this case the arc is generated according to the set wall parameters. A cross vault (like the one you saw on my web site) is nothing more than 2 intersecting vaults: 1) draw an arc
2) select the arc and choose the "Extrude Slab From Polygon" command. Enter the depth equal to the diameter of your arc so the vault will be perfectly square in plan. 3) separate the object using the "Separate Object" command in the Edit menu. This separates the generated vault into its base slab parts. 4) with the Slab icon activated use the scissors icon (right) to cut the slabs crossways from one corner to the other.
5) select and delete the unwanted slab parts.
6) select all the slabs and duplicate (Edit menu). 7) while all the duplicated slabs are still selected, rotate them 90 degrees (commands in Edit menu, rotate on mouse click), being sure to click the exact center.
8) regroup all as an object. You can set the ref. ht. of the object where you want. 13. To do a rafter, spanning from one wall to another do you suggest the same for columns, walls, roof slabs etc Either method is fine but drawing a polygon first adds another step. Beams and other things can also be created with wall elements but I usually find it easier to use slab elements. I draw them at ref. ht. 0 (maybe even saving them as an object for future use) then place them at the ref. height needed.
The easiest way to do this is to use the same polygon you used to generate the vault and choose the "Generate Arch on Polygon" command to make an arched wall (make sure your wall parameters - width, height, etc - are set at what you want before generating). The generated arch is your garret wall. It seems like you've already done this though. If you need a more complicated garret wall shape you can modify the original polygon and generate an extrusion. As for inserting the window opening, the best thing is to have a garret wall composed of two elements, a top part (the arch itself) and a bottom part (a wall element to fill in the rest...inside which you can easily insert a window).
But I imagine that life is not that simple and you want to insert a window right in that top part. This is a bit more difficult. The arch is made up of many vertical wall parts. The best way to do this would probably be to lower the wall height of the parts where you want the opening, then, using a polygon traced over the correct area, generate an extrusion to fill in the missing piece. Place the extrusion at the right ref. ht.
15. I have a design where we are building a barrel vault - 4.5 m radius out of straw bales.I extruded from an arc a barrel vault, and then inserted it over the floor plan, with straw bale internal walls. How can the internal walls be modified to suit the vault (ie like a garret wall, ). Same as above, using arches or extrusions (working in section too might be helpful to get the correct polygon shape - you can generate a section and flip back and forth between section and plan). Again it's best to make an upper part and a lower part so that it's easy to insert doors in the walls.
16. Also when I have the vault layered over the plan, can't see the internal layout - its like the vault is solid - how can I make the vault look transparent or outlined while I work on the other parts of the design. There a couple of ways: 1) put the vaults and any other elements that might interfere on a separate layer and simply deactivate the layer in the Layer Parameters and/or Technical & 3D View Parameters. As a general rule it's better to use lots of different layers (and materials). Put all like elements and design levels (floors, walls, garret walls, roofs, etc) on separate layers. It's much easier to control visualization, make selections, and modify elements. 2) Separate the vault object, select all the individual slab elements, and deactivate the borders and surfaces in the Slab Parameters. Remember though to activate "All Slabs" in the Technical & 3D View Parameters or the slabs won't show at all!
The easiest way: 1) on a clean layer, create the object using the appropriate 2D and/or 3D tools (assigning whatever materials, etc.) I usually find using extrusions and slab elements the easiest way to model objects, but it depends. For example, your louvred window: the frame is just a wall element with a window cut into it and the louvres are a simple inclined slab duplicated changing the z component. That's how all those shutters in the library were made. or 1) create the object on any layer
You might be taking the separation a bit to far and then it becomes counterproductive trying to manage everything flipping between layers. Separate layers are used primarily for two reasons: 1) to control what you want visible on a layer We usually separate the roof structure from the floor plan because they're two conceptually different entities, but it depends on what you have to do. If you need to generate garret walls, you need to have the walls and roof on the same layer. So there's really no "best" way. It sounds like you've solved the problem well, doing what worked best for that particular situation. The layer reference heights can all be the same...then you don't have to worry about that anymore and it's just a matter of setting the individual element reference heights.
19. Would you mind explaining a bit more about this parametric selection and the AREF code. AREF means Architectural Exchange Format. It's a file format that allows the communication between Domus.Cad and other engineering software. AREF code is a name that we can give to any element to identify it in other softwares or in Domus.Cad. We can use it to name elements, to group them and retrieve them quickly by the Parametric Selection. Parametric Selection allows to select or de-select elements depending on their characteristics (color, element type, fill, set etc). Let suppose that you want to select all the walls of the drawing excluding the red walls. You can select all the walls usually with a selection rectangle and after, with the Parametric Selection command, you can take off all the red walls. AREF code, Set and Category add three not graphic information data to the drawing and you can use this information for a more quick, flexible and productive use of Parametric Selection.
20. When I draw circles, ones that particular have a tight radius (150- 300mm) the number of points seem to default to about 5 or so creating a pentagon ,rather than a circle. Is there a way of altering the number of points in a circle and if so, how do I do it. Inside the Oval/Polygons parameters dialog you can see two fields: - Max. num.vertixes Let suppose that you have 40 vertixes in the first field and 400 millimeters in the second. If you draw a large circle , you obtain a polygon with 40 vertixes . But if the circle is small then the value in the second field begins to work, reducing the number of vertixes until the length of the polygon side is greater than 400 cm. In your case is better to reduce to 1 mm the Maximum edge length and to control the circle shape by the vertixes number only. By the way, you can change the number of vertixes of an inserted Oval-Circle-Arc as follows: - Change the Oval/Polygons parameters dialog as you want This command re-generates also stretched and modified ovals, circles, arcs and rectangles, using the original radius or sizes.
21. what modifications can you make to an object - eg if an object is an "I "beam can you lengthen it, make it deeper ? what are the limitations The following modifications are directly applicable to an object: - Rotation, by mouse or by value Deforming re-scales the object proportionally in any point. 22. Maybe you could explain how to use sets and categories , including their differences, and if ther is any functional differnces? Set and Categories allows creating group of elements and handling them easier and faster. Practically there aren't differences between them. Each element can be part of a set and of a category; this allows creating intersecting groups (groups where some elements are members of both groups). The user is free to use Set and Categories as he prefers, they are tools to organize the drawing. A couple of suggestions: - Define a group (set o categories) named Construction-Line. It's easier to delete all the construction lines when they aren't necessary. - Define groups of elements when it's necessary to tray different solutions (different colors, different height, different thicknesses etc.)
23. When I insert a door or window in a wall, it creates a sized opening. this opening can be made transparent or coloured (in 3D view). The vertical plane inside the windows is useful to give a first idea of the house. The command Apply Object allow you to automatically add a window frame to the selected window openings. There are many ways to build doors and windows. Some months ago I showed you as draw a 3D window with slabs. This time I want to show you as to built simple frames with walls and windows. Follow the steps below. Let suppose we need a 170 x 170 cm window frame. - Draw a wall with l = 170 cm and h = 170 cm - Set a window with Sill = 10 and Height = 150 - Trace two windows in the wall
Select and group all in an object. You have the window frame. The limitation of this method is that it's impossible to have posts smaller then 8 cm. In the example above the posts are 10 x 10 cm.
24. Is this a function of the wall thickness?- ie post between window is limited to width of wall , and if so, if you want a post of only 50mm, would you then insert a wall of 50mm width into a another wall (in my case a 500mm wide straw bale wall), and then insert the window openings. It isn't a function of the wall thickness, it is fixed to 80 mm, independently from the thickness. If you need posts less than 80 mm ,then the method is different.In this case it's impossible to use the window tool to create the glasses inside the wall/frame and it's necessary to design it using walls and/or slabs. A mixed method could be useful in some cases. Try this: - In a 1600 x 1600 x 100 wall, draw a 1400 x 1400 window as in the last eMail example. With this method, and some variations, it's possible to built any-number-panels frame.
25. When you have drawn a circle, how do you determine where the centre of that circle is and what is the radius? Center determination - Select a circle, arc, rectangle or oval. Note: The Oval, Circle, Rectangle and Arc tools generate regular polygons that can be modified in various ways. Domus.Cad remembers the original shape and the centre is referred to it. The original shape can be regenerated in any moment. Circle radius The only way to determine the radius or the diameter of a drown circle is dimensioning or measuring it. 26. When viewed in 3D , the top of arch/vault looks like it is the correct thickness,, but it tapers down to a point at the bottom ends The slab thickness is always considerated in the Z direction, so the real thickness depends on the inclination of the slab. The extrusion process of the arc produces short slabs with various inclinations, which at the bottom are more inclined, so the real thickness is more at the top and less at the bottom. For this reason is often better to use zero thickness slab for extruding. How to solve your modelling request? There is one solution:
- Draw two concentric arcs. The distance between the two arcs must be equal to desired vault thickness.
- Add two vertexes at the bottom to join the two arcs
- Select the polygon and click on the Extrusion icon.
- Fix the created object pressing the space bar. You should have the following result.
Suggestions on where to start first and what I need to change on my drawing to aid the process? There are two different approaches. Some architects prefer the first and some others the second. 1 – Starting drawing construction lines and polygons to define rooms, distances, positions etc. After, adding walls and windows, following the underlying drawing. 2 – Starting tracing directly the walls. Tracing them longer than strictly necessary and delete the extra unnecessary parts after inserting the perpendicular walls in the correct place. Personally, I prefer the second way, because it avoids one step and use better some Domus.Cad features, as wall fusion. The Domus.Cad tutorial follows this method. The various project phases could be as follows: - Design all the 3d parts (walls, windows, slabs, stairs, roofs etc.) and control the model in the 3D view. Looking at your drawing I noted a lot of not fused walls. Some of them have a 0 attach. Do you want the walls to be fused or not? 28. I 've met an electrical engineer in our local Mac Users group ,who has G4 and HP 488 c networked together, who can print drawing for me. - He uses Vectorworks. 2. setting up page size. 3. If I set this up as a plotter file, what would I need to do? 4. The engineer suggested me to send him the drawing as a dwf file, which he can import into Vectorworks and then print., or send them as a pdf file - I have a print of pdf utility, which he can print as a postscript file. I need your advice. If you are using Mac Os X, then generate a pdf file from the Print dialog. With Mac Os 9 I can suggest two different approaches. It's true that it isn't possible to create a desktop printer from Laser Writer 8 if the device isn't connected, but there are some tricks. First trick: The postscript driver of HP 488 is a software driver, so it isn't really necessary to have the printer to choose the description file, but it's sufficient to install the driver on your computer. 1 - Install the HP postscript driver on your Mac Second trick Use AdobePS driver instead of Laser Writer 8. there is a Virtual Printer file with Adobe PS, that allows to choose a PPD file without any connected device. Virtual printer generates a postscript file that you can send to the engineer as above. AdobePs driver is surely in the HP 488 CDs.
28. How do I go about modelling earth fill on a site that is sloping and has sand added to make a level building area? I suggest to use "zero thickness slabs" to model the top surface of the fill as you want. You can add slabs, if necessary, with different hights to distinguish different parts of the ground. Ex. you can create an original ground surface and a second fill surface. Can the floor/roof slab be filled with hatching, to represent the difference between natural ground level and new sand fill on a generated section? Not automatically, but you can draw a hatched polygon on the filled part. Use a zero thickness polygon to have the hatching without bound lines. Can this be filled with hatching to represent the difference between natural ground level and new sand fill on a generated section? when paging one of the layers couldn't be positioned - was it off screen? any reason why? The x and y layer positions are relative to the left bottom corner of the page and to the axes origin of the drawing. When y = 0 and y = 0 the layer is positioned on the page with the origin corresponding to left bottom page corner. If the drawing is far from the origin, especially if it's on the left, then it goes out of the page and it isn't visible. In this situation, it's necessary to change directly the coordinates of the layer position to bring it on the page. It's easier to put the origin in the middle of the drawing, so the layer appears always inside the page. We plan to add a button in the next Domus.Cad version pagination window, something like "Bring Inside", to easier paginate drawings that are far from the origin.
29, I reckon I've got most of these completed except for the 1:10 details. How do I go about extracting details of the model so they can be printed at 1:10, this includes; stone strip footing detail; top plate detail; connection of rafters, to beam, to post detail etc Just draw them in new layers. If necessary, copy some parts from plants and sections and add details as you want. To have a preview of your drawing, set the video scale to 1:10. Probably a lot of details are very similar on different designs; in this case is convenient to save them as library objects for using them later. You must use always real world measures. On the pagination phase, set the scale to 1:10. On the drawing table you can mix layers with different scale. You can change the natural scale to 1:10, to have a correct reference scale for texts and dimensions. In this case click the OK button on the following two alert windows: Change the dimension of the macintosh text according on the new natural scale? And Modify Macintosh texts (modification is irreversible)? 30. when paging, the green reference cross shows, will that be printed - and if so how can I prevent it being printed? The green reference cross isn't printed. It's useful to show the position corresponding to the coordinates on the top of the windows and to easier align different layers. 31 I forwarded your reply to the engineer with the printer, but still not working, evidently his whole system locked up , after we loaded the Domus cad 9.3 demo on his system ( I wanted to show him how Domus.cad works - he uses Vectorworks)- his adviser suggested there was some quickdraw conflict? Anyway, he said he will send a email to your later to see if we can sort it out. Any other ideas why it isn't working? Looking in the HP DesignJet 488CA Software folder, you'll find a Cps.log file. It's a text file that you can open with any text editor (Word, AppleWorks, Simple Text or whatever you have). Inside there is a logging of all the HP software actions and the description of eventual errors. Get a look to it and, if necessary, send it me. QuickDraw 3D can influence Domus.Cad, it can't have any conflict with the plotting file. Domus.Cad needs QuickDraw 3D 1.5.1 or later. BTW, it's possible the download of Domus.Cad 10.2 demo from our internet site. I remember you the second method of my email of 11-14-00: ---------- Have you tried it? would it make any difference if I plotted (to file) the sheet rather than printing it, so the hp dj 488 can print it? There are some differences. - The direct plotting doesn't plot colored pictures. All the pictures are transformed and plotted black and white. To send the file to the plotter it's necessary a direct serial connection between the plotter and the Mac and a software to send the file to the plotter. We have the software and I can send it to you by eMail (free). It's name is PlotterIn, it runs on any Macintosh with a serial connection to a plotter. Dragging a file on it, the file is sent to the plotter. or could it be plotted by a HP design jet 430 b/w , which my structural engineer uses (connected to a PC with autocad). Yes, it can be plotted on a PC. It doesn't need Autocad, it's sufficient to type "COPY filename PORTname" command from DOS.
Many thanks to: Gary Dorn and Richard Lee Bergsma Jr for there indispensable contribute in realizing this Q & A |
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