Custom or “complex” walls are really no different than complex roofs or floors. They are defined by an array of points. I was just going to adapt my current “Outline Edit” method for Custom walls but I felt like it was time for a bit of an upgrade. I’m hoping people will find this new tool a bit more intuitive. After I fully test it I may incorporate the same logic/tool into the other plugins for the following: Complex Roofs, Floors, Slab-on-Grad foundations, Polyline Stemwalls and Railings.
Version 4.6.8 - 07.06.2026
This new “custom” wall is still not quite ready for prime time, however I want to put it out there so that the power users can BETA test it for me and tell me what works for them and what does not. I still need to add in all the advanced options and I’m sure there are a few holdovers from the previous wall menu (ie. Wall Height and Wall Length) that are not relevant to this wall type.
Please be advised that this new wall type is not production ready. Right now it is for testing purposes only.
P.S.
Note that in-wall columns, sheathing, cladding, etc… are not yet enabled. Just the basic framing and windows, doors and garage doors.
Working on in-wall columns and custom walls today. More extensive testing will be required but it looks like we have basic integration for full height and partial height columns. The algorithm for the kings studs also needs to detect the top plate above it and determine its slope and height at the point of contact. These custom walls are turning out to be a bit more challenging, as I predicted.
This is why I am spending quite a bit of time on custom walls. There are a lot of advanced options for walls and with custom walls we get all sorts of “edge” cases that need to be checked and then dealt with. With in-wall columns there is the beam pocket cut out option that needed to be adapted for custom walls.
Most of the blocking algorithm was derived from the existing rectangular wall code however the addition of “vertical steps” within a wall did lead to further complications. In the end, we landed on some fairly robust code but it did take a while to sort it all out.
What I show here is complete overkill but it validates that algorithms and also checks to see that performance is acceptable even in the most extreme cases. Currently the plugin will limit you to a maximum of six rows of blocking.
Throwing everything I can at this to see if I can break it. I’ve found a few things already and I’ve been patching them up one by one. Even so I know there will be customers who will find some configuration or state that I somehow missed and they will manage to break it. This is the life of a developer, it is what I do.
The inside wall (2x6) should be set to “terminal” on that end, which it looks like it already is. The issue is that we want the gypsum on the 2x8 wall to be removed. There is not a way to do this currently unless the other wall is set to “tee”, however in this specific circumstance setting the (2x6) wall to tee would probably confuse the corner configuration algorithm. I will need to look at this a bit more and see if I can refine the algorithm further so that it addresses this specific situation.
Any manual edits to a wall assembly will disappear with a regen or edit of the wall by the plugin. This is the reason for the CUSTOM and SUBTRACT geometry. Also if you put raw geometry into an assembly (wall group) it will also be retained (ie. edges, faces), but from and organizational standpoint I tend to steer clear of this only because I prefer that all of my geometry is grouped.
This specific problem has been on my radar for some time now but I’ve never dealt with it directly because I know that if I added to the corner configuration or tee detection algorithm it will probably work when you don’t want it to and not work when you want it to. However you have got my gears turning again and I will give this some more thought and maybe I can come up with a more user controllable method for dealing with these situations.
First look at quoins applied to Custom walls.
With quoins complete I think we have pretty much configured all of the advanced options for custom walls. It has taken me a little longer than I projected, but this is exactly why I dreaded even attempting something like this previously. The walls have so many options now that adding a completely new wall type is almost like building an entirely new wall plugin. Fortunately most of the heavy lifting in already in place and a lot of the code can be refactored but it is still a monumental task.
The thing I really like about this paradigm is that all of the “custom wall” types I was originally planning on creating mostly go away and can all be created via this one additional “CUSTOM” wall type. The point is that it is truly flexible and the new wall profile tool is actually easy to use and intuitive, much more so that my outdated profile editing tool that I am currently using for complex roofs, floors and slab-on-grade foundations.
I still need to look at a few more edge cases and also configure the other framing modes (ie. No Framing, 2D, CMU, ICF, SIP etc…), but those will go quickly since they are relatively simple compared with the full framing mode.
Initially there will be no shearwalls for this new wall type, currently that is only available for rectangular walls. If there is a demand for it I will work on adding it in, but so far the demand for it with the other walls types (gable, shed, hip) has not been there. As usual the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Version 4.6.9 - 07.16.2026
Currently the custom wall draw tool requires that a face be draw and then selected to draw a custom wall. I think I also need to allow for a point-by-point polyline method. I will give this some further consideration tomorrow.
I also think it might be convenient to be able to switch a rectangular wall to a custom wall, however the ability to switch back will be disabled or disallowed since a custom wall will potentially have too many points that define it so it can’t be cleanly converted back into a rectangular profile, I will need to give this some additional thought.
