Not yet. I just wanted to get the essential idea down and validate the approach of using a very short and wide “door” to create the needed span. Don’t think I need any of the advanced options for that. For the “door” at this level, all I needed was the rough opening.
1 Like
I’ve been looking at various details of wall construction this morning and possible permutations are a bit daunting to the say the least.
Specifically with regards to exterior walls I’ve seen some details showing a layer of foam insulation between the gypsum and the framing or where shearwalls come into play a layer of OSB or Plywood beneath the standard gypsum layer (double shearwall).
I am thinking about adding in the option to be able to add one additional layer of sheathing to the wall on its interior. This sheathing will be able to be set to OSB, PLY or Insulation.
Whichever way you decide, I’m still in favor of interior wall covering options other than “Gypsum”. I’m likely to use some sort of planking when I do my Tiny Home.
Bug Report! And a suggestion!
Here’s the model:
I created the long wall and the red wall exclusively with the Wall Plugin. I created the Green wall first with the Wall Plugin, then a small bit of editing which I’ll describe later.
The bug is visible with both colored walls: Their upper top plate extends to overlap the upper top plate of the long wall, but the upper top plates of the long wall aren’t trimmed to allow the connection. Hence the Z-Fighting you’ll see when you take a closer look.
The Green wall illustrates my suggestion: a possible option for how interior walls meet exterior walls - and I suppose it could be used for any T or X intersection. I altered it from what the plugin created as follows:
- Lower wall plate and bottom plate trimmed so that they end away from the long wall.
- All studs except the freestanding end stud moved away from the long wall by the same distance I trimmed the plates.
This results in the ability to apply a continuous membrane and gypsum (or other wall surface) on the inside surface of the long wall without fiddling with corner details. This makes it easier for the drywall installers as well as your air infiltration measures (if they include an inner membrane).
I haven’t seen this treatment in real life, but I’ve seen a couple of YouTube videos that advocate this approach.
I really like Huber Engineeered Woods various sheathing products.
I’ve added in the sheathing material option for their 7/16 and 1/2 sheathing products:
The exterior face has the branded face as shown and the rest of the group (solid) is the OSB texture.
This will be rolled into the next release, version 0.7.4.
Densglass will be included in Version 0.7.5:
This sheathing product is more commonly used on commercial projects.
Let me first suggest turning on the materials and layers option in the global settings, it is much easier to differentiate the studs and insulation this way within your model.
What you are observing is not so much a bug as an unfinished item. Typically when you frame a wall into another one like this the top plate (with a two top plate wall system) laps over the main wall so that thing are tied together nicely. I need to finish adding the algorithm that checks for tee intersections when it creates the top plate and have it trim out the appropriate sections as required. This is on the todo list.
For structural reasons and other construction reasons you will never see someone frame up a structure as you suggested. Typically the framing is completed before the drywall crew ever gets on site. The framing crew would not want to leave a gap between the walls, and the drywall crew would not want to try and slide drywall through this gap.
I can see what you are trying to do in this situation and it probably would make sense in a retrofit scenario but in new construction I don’t think it would work for most contractors and their subs.
Never say never! I found one of the videos that show this in new construction:
https://youtu.be/qZ71h8DUPqg
And I’m glad my “bug” is already on your punch list.
1 Like
Nor sure if what I experienced is a bug or ??? but when I set all the options for drawing the walls in Global Settings, some of the settings do not appear in the extension until I draw the wall, then Edit Wall, set the advanced options, and save those.
This happened with the cladding. I selected the Khaki Brown Cedarmill but the initial drawing was drawn with the default and did not change until I Edited the wall the set that option. Same thing occurred with the inside corner trim. It did not appear on the initial drawing of the wall, but after I edited the wall the inside corner trim started working on all walls where appropriate.
It seems that some of the Global Setting are not set until editing a wall. Then the setting works for future walls in the same session.
1 Like
I guess I stand corrected but to be honest I’ve never seen it done this way. As the video suggests there could also be a conflict with the electrician and the plumbers. They can’t run their stuff through the tee otherwise the drywall crew can’t slide the drywall through the gap. I just see a lot of problems with this method, but in certain situations I guess it makes sense, especially pre-fab construction where everything is more planned out.
1 Like
As you can tell from the edit menu there are a lot of advanced settings. In the wall creation tool I am currently not giving the option to set all of these values in an attempt to not overwhelm the user with a tonne of options, some options such as vertical offsets and cladding material are passed through from the global settings. The idea being that some of these options may not be as commonly used and may only needed to altered from the global defaults on occasion.
However, I can easily make more of these options exposed in the wall creation tool giving the user more granular control right from the get go.
My other idea with how best to deal with this UI problem is simply have an html menu open up with all of the possible options and it stays open while the user creates the walls. Midstream if the user wants to change something up they can modify a setting and then click a button to proceed creating walls again or something along those lines. The current system of multiple menus popping up one after another, especially with a wall with all of the various options enabled, can be a little bit much in my opinion.
Two things I should state before further testing:
1.) Please click on the global settings, visit each tab, familiarize yourself with the various options, turn on layers, materials etc… I have had a number of questions about why the plugin does not keep the materials assigned to it. Realize that any manual edits to the wall assembly (group) will be eliminated once you make any modifications to the wall with the plugin, it has to rebuild the entire assembly from scratch in order to capture any changes made to it, otherwise it cannot be fully parametric and editable. The downside to being fully parametric is that the plugin has full control of the assembly. If you need manual edits to live with a wall then you have to place that geometry outside of the wall assembly group, if you place them inside they will be erased on a rebuild. There may be some workaround for this in the future but I haven’t quite got that far yet.
Each wall assembly (group) has a fairly extensive library of attributes that are essentially a database for the wall panel. Every aspect of the wall assembly is defined by a parameter in this database. The wall panel can be rebuilt from scratch just from this dataset. The 3D model generated by the plugin is simply a geometric manifestation of the dataset stored in the attribute library.
2.) If you have a specific bug to report, please if possible, include any error codes generated within the ruby console. Without these codes I am running blind and merely guessing in some cases. Some of the issues I’ve seen today I am unable to duplicate on my machine so I can’t fully address them. The error codes are critical to my debugging process and ultimately correcting any issues that may exist. Of course this may not apply to functional types issues involving UI behavior or specific feature requests, I do recognize that.
Version 0.7.4 - 05.29.2018
- Fixed a bug with the wall polyline tool so that the wall line will snap to the X or Y axis.
- Added ZIP Systems(c) 7/16" and 1/2" wall sheathing materials to the sheathing tab of the global settings.
- Added the Z Height option to the wall creation tools. The Z height parameter and option to enable this feature are found in the walls tab of the global settings.
- Created icons and added toolbars for the Simpson Strong-Wall module and the Columns module, both of which are still under construction.
The video also says that it is better to let the electricians and plumbers stay within the Vapor barrier of the exterior wall and to go through the basement or ceiling.
Better for airtight, sustainable, zero emission buildings
I’m not saying it can’t be done I guess, but I’ve never seen it done this way.
I’ve also spent some time wiring houses (even though I’m an engineer and not an electrician) and I could see some real difficulties with this method especially with the amount of wiring modern homes get these days.
Just when I think I’m starting to figure this thing out it gets a little more complicated.
Take for instance the wall below with the exterior stone wainscoting:
Typically we see stone or brick with a siding or stucco product above it.
So instead of a single type of cladding and cladding thickness on the wall we might have two different types on the same wall panel.
The brick or stone might be up to the windows or even somewhere mid height as shown below:
Any thoughts on this type of construction, preferences or further complicating factors?
I think I basically need to allow for more complicated cladding scenarios.
With brick you often see a rowlock course at the transition:
Here is a good example of a stucco structure with a cultured stone wainscot:
Notice the stucco trim just above the wainscoting and then the ledge of stone that projects beyond the wainscoting just below it.
The additional parameters for a two cladding exterior system (wainscoting) would be:
Exterior Wall Wainscoting: YES/NO
Wainscoting Thickness: in./mm
Wainscoting Air Gap: in./mm
Wainscoting Corners: Flush/Lap/Miter/Return
Wainscoting Material: Brick/Culture Stone etc…
Wainscoting Height: in./mm
Wainscoting Ledge/Trim: YES/NO
Ledge Height: in./mm
Ledge Depth: in./mm
Also in the Trim Tab another couple of parameters for the Exterior Trim option above the wainscoting:
Wainscoting Trim: YES/NO
Wainscoting Trim Width: in./mm
Also notice how the stucco trim around the window and doors meets the wainscoting trim and terminates there.
Why can’t you designers and architects keep things simple, I’m going to have to jump through some hoops to code all of this. 
One “meta” thought: Stop worrying about this stuff right now!
I admire your desire to anticipate all types of construction and architectural details that might, someday, be wanted by one or two of your users!
Finish the basics. When you have thoughts like this, record them and put them in a “future” basket. Once you’ve got the basics running well, summarize the contents of your “future” basket and run an online poll to inform you as to the demand for the various bells and whistles, then proceed accordingly tempered by your own knowledge of what’s easy to do and what isn’t!
2 Likes
Duly noted. I have a separate page in my todo list just for this feature. You’re right I’ve got a few more important fires to put out right now. This will get done though.
I’ve already rolled out two revisions since the initial beta release. Please download, uninstall the older version of the plugin and then install the most current version.
I’ve seen some issues with corrupt installations where a newer version is installed on an older version. You need to uninstall the plugin first before upgrading, that is the safe bet.
Also please check the changelog so you are aware of the updates, even though I do post each update on the board:
I am still noticing a lot of people sending in comments that they are unable to get materials applied when they have not enabled the auto material assignment in the materials tab of the global settings.
I think what I am going to do is have the plugin set this particular setting to “ON” as the initial default behavior rather than “OFF”. I will make this change live with the next release.
The tee intersection algorithm has been revamped and is now properly cutting out top plates when walls intersect at these intersections:
When a wall gets rebuilt (ie. edited, moved, opening added, or switched between modes) the tee intersection algorithm is run and any intersecting walls will be detected (any walls that are touching the wall in question and have a “tee corner” configuration at that end).
What this means is that if you manually move an intersecting wall and slide it along the main wall and then rebuild the main wall the top plate will automatically update with the correct cut out as shown above.