I will work on adding in a second sheathing layer and organizing the draw and edit menus a bit better:
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First look at an exterior wall with the second layer of sheathing material installed. In this case I have chosen foam insulation as the material:
To model ZipR sheathing, Cladding 1 needs to be foam and Cladding 2 needs to be ZIP. Are you including the necessary options for that?
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Either layer can be any of the typical sheathing materials as well as custom materials from the Material Library.
So yes, you can use Zip Sheathing on Layer 2 and insulation on Layer 1 as shown:
*Cladding layer turned off for visibility.
** Each sheathing layer is set to “LAP” at the corners.
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A couple more possible permutations:
If you turn off layer 1 of the sheathing the 2nd layer will be installed as if the first layer existed which allows one to introduce an air gap (equal to the thickness of layer 1) between the sheathing and framing.
The second example shows an air gap between the framing and sheathing and an air gap between the sheathing and cladding (via the cladding air gap parameter).
P.S. I’m not sure why one would ever want an air gap between their sheathing and framing however the option of enabling the second layer and not the first layer gives the user this ability and the air gap may be warranted if the user wants to represent the space taken up by cross framing, battens or some other intermediate layer within the wall that is not modeled in detail due to the high poly count it would add to the model.
Now I just need to do a whole ton of error checking to make sure all of the other routines for placing doors, windows, trim, quoins, and annotations all work seamlessly when this second layer of sheathing is invoked. It will be another 2-3 days of tedious checking and testing, at a minimum.
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Just as a side note, shutters can be disabled by default in the global settings under the Windows tab:
I’m trying to transition from a 2x6 exterior wall to a 2x4 exterior wall, but it seems like the 2x6 wall is expecting a 2x6 wall returning the corner because the top plate doesn’t extend to meet the 2x4 top plate. Am I doing something wrong? I’ve got both of the walls snapped to the same exterior corner point (you can see the sheathing lines up correctly.
These are walls that were originally 2x6, but I updated them to be 2x4. The plates are not resolving correctly.
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FYI-I had this issue with two interior walls, one 2x4 , the other 2x6, also.
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You are not doing anything wrong. You just need to update the “Corner Offset” parameter(s) to reflect the adjacent wall (stud) thickness. In this case you would change it from 5.5" to 3.5". Notice that any given wall panel will have this parameter for the start condition and end condition of the wall:
It’s not an issue per say it is just a matter of understanding how the corner offset parameters work and affect the wall.
P.S. Also one other suggestion is to choose the miter option for the wall cladding corners, that will close out your cladding better and make your model better for rendering purposes.
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Ohhh! ok, yeah, that makes so much more sense now. For some reason I thought the extension was recognizing adjacent walls automatically. I did see those corner offset values but thought they were doing something else. I must’ve been looking at the wrong end of the wall when I was playing around with it. Thanks!
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The extension does recognize adjacent walls but that algorithm only automatically runs during the wall creation process.
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Version 1.8.2 - 01.26.2021
- Enabled a second layer of sheathing for exterior rectangular walls.
- Added four additional parameters to the Sheathing tab of the Global Settings.
!!! CAUTION !!!
Upgrading from all previous versions of the wall plugin to this version (1.8.2) will require that all rectangular wall presets be deleted and recreated. Please do not upgrade to this latest version until you understand the implications of this upgrade. Also note that the 2nd layer of sheathing has not been implemented for gable, shed or hip wall types, only for rectangular walls.
Is this the way to resolve a 2x4 wall turning a corner into a 2x6 wall? I seem to remember really struggling with that connection.
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As I was wrapping things up today with the new release (Version 1.8.2) I got yet another email requesting steel studs be incorporated into the plugin.
With a bit of clever manipulations of some basic materials applied to certain faces you can create a fairly realistic looking steel stud (also one face is hidden):
View model here:
The problem I see with this is that the stud lengths are really not the correct lengths that the steel studs would be. The other major issue is that the around openings the configuration of steel studs with steel headers is a bit more complex than a standard wood framed wall.
So barring major changes to the code the best I can probably do right now is a “cosmetic” steel framed wall. To do this properly would require entirely new algorithms for bottom and top channels, steel headers and the proper configuration of the king stud to header connections.
I also don’t have a lot of experience with steel studs, but of course that can be quickly remedied with a little effort on my part.
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Version 1.8.2b - 01.27.2021
- Enabled a second layer of sheathing for exterior gable walls.
I only have the hip and shed walls left to update.
!!! CAUTION !!!
Installing this update will require that you delete and recreate any GABLE wall presets that you have previously configured. This update will not affect any rectangular, shed or hip wall presets.