Inserting doors and windows

Daniel Wright wrote "I've been everywhere and I've no hair left to pull out.  How come when inserting windows into walls on Autodesk viz sometimes the hole is cut and sometimes it is not. "

The best way to get consistent results is to use your 3d EDGE SNAP. Place the window or door by eye at first using the edge snap marker. This part is important because the first points you choose should be coplanar to the wall you’re inserting them to thus linking the geometry together.  Remember the steps or order of points, you define are width (actually the width of the window pane or door panel) then depth (the depth of the window or door frame) and then the height (the header of the AEC element).  

Approximate the size of the AEC element and then, once you’ve placed it, resize it by typing in the exact value in the modify parameters roll out.   It should now be subtracted from the wall.  You can test if the door or window has truly subtracted by going to shaded mode and then changing the opening percentage. Once you roughly placed the element in world space, you can then move it up using the transform type in z axis. 

Tip: I prefer to use a perspective view to place my AEC elements.

Note on Troubleshooting:

If you follow my instructions you may still find that a door or window may not break the walls properly.  This can usually be fixed by Unlinking then Linking the door or windows again manually. The UNLINK and LINK commands can be found in the IK Toolbar.  

As you may already know, you can create doors and windows independently of walls.  I imagine there are rare instances you would intend to do this.   When you create a door or window, VIZ should automatically detect the collision of these objects to a wall and generate a child parent relationship, otherwise known as 'linking.'  Provided that your windows and doors are aligned properly they should cut the holes into the wall.

Start by drawing some walls.  You can find walls in the create panel -geometry-AEC Extended panel as indicated in Figure 1

Figure 1

Select on wall and type 5 for the width of the wall and 96 or 8'-0" for the height.

Figure 2

Ceate your walls by left clicking for the beginning corner and end.  Right click to complete the creation of walls and end the command.

Figure 3

Click onto the 3D Snap Toggle to turn on your snap tools.Now Right click on the 3D Snap Toggle. - This will launch the Grid and Snap Settings

Figure 4

Make sure that EDGE snap is checked

Pick on the X to dismiss the dialog box. .

Figure 5

We are now ready to add a door or window to our walls

Figure 6

 Select PIVOT in the Create-Geometry -Doors panel.  We will now add a Pivot door to the wall.

Figure 7

Figure 8   

Notice the Edge snap is aquired by the snap marker on the wall.  Try moving your mouse about the wall. 

When you create the Door or Window you are creating the width of the element by using a PICK -DRAG-RELEASE method.   The your next pick defines the depth of the door and the last mouse pick defines the height.  Do not worry about precision at this time.  Just try to approximate the door size at this time.  Then we can worry about the precision later.  TIP: you may prefer to change your viewport to wireframe mode to do this part.

Figure 9

If you find that the door still does not break or subtract from the wall then delete it and try selecting your first points in reverse.  PICK-DRAG-RELEASE instead of left-right try doing it right left. 

Now that we've added our door we need to resize it.  Select the Modify Panel and in the Parameters Roll-out change the size of the pivot door to match Figure 10.  Finally Change the opening percentage value to see the door open. Note: The opening percentage parameter is animatable. 

Figure 10

Figure 11

You're finished.  

Final Note:

The Boolean effect of doors and windows has never been a good feature since it was introduced, in my humble opinion.  Nor am I particularly happy with the wall object in viz.  It seems to cause more artifacts when using GI in the program and requires time consuming Regathering to fix it.   The problem is that the walls are not neatly seamed when created.  I’m surprised this wasn’t revised or fixed for this release but they did manage to pack a lot into this release, so I’m not going to complain.   If you are really ambitious you will learn ADT 3.3,  Once you learn it, the process of creating complex windows and doors is quite efficient.  Of course there are some other issues once you put ADT into the mix but that’s another discussion entirely.

I hope you found this useful. 

Contact me if you have any questions.