Can I easily copy wall caps to other existing walls?

[mgianzero]

Just upgraded from HDP to Chief Architect.  I love the wall caps feature.  So I applied a new wall cap to one of my retaining walls.  Is there an easy way to copy this feature to the other existing walls, or must I do it all manually?

 

Here's a sample plan that I want to copy the cap from one wall over to the neighboring walls.  My walls are retaining walls.  Is there an easy way to do this or must I change each wall individually?  I thought the object eyedropper would work but it doesn't.

 

Marc

 

 

[Renerabbitt]

8 minutes ago, mgianzero said:

Just upgraded from HDP to Chief Architect.  I love the wall caps feature.  So I applied a new wall cap to one of my retaining walls.  Is there an easy way to copy this feature to the other existing walls, or must I do it all manually?

 

Here's a sample plan that I want to copy the cap from one wall over to the neighboring walls.  My walls are retaining walls.  Is there an easy way to do this or must I change each wall individually?  I thought the object eyedropper would work but it doesn't.

 

Marc

 

 

 

Easy to do. Familiarize yourself with restrictive selections with an enabled Tool. Familiarize yourself with the Select Marquee Similar Tool in the Edit Toolbar that is enabled from an Active Selection. Also familiarize yourself with the Marquee Selection Modes in your Preferences under the Edit Panel.
Simply select all walls that you want the cap applied to and edit in the Wall Cap Panel of the wall dbx.
 

[mgianzero]

21 hours ago, solver said:

Multi select and do them all at once.

 

Okay, that worked beautifully.  I'm assuming you are suggesting the technique as demo'ed in my video below.

[mgianzero]

I'm still learning about the Marquee Selection Mode.  Read directions, still struggling to see how exactly it works in this scenario.  Perhaps you can show me how to do this in my plan?

Terrain wall caps V2.zip

[mgianzero]

20 minutes ago, solver said:

 

 

 

Very basic ...

 

 

Watch on YouTube: http://youtu.be/K1mpfdxhNWQ?hd=1

 

 

 

Hey, now that's really slick!  Never knew about that.  I haven't read the CA manual cover to cover, but learning as I go.

 

By the way, how do you search for such a video?  I noticed it's titled "Recording #610" so what does that mean?  Are you searching under "Videos" from CA main website, because doesn't show up for me. 

 

Again, I'm learning how to navigate and use all the support tools (both online and written docs) for CA.  So I apologize if I'm slow here.

[mgianzero]

Wow! You've got a lot of videos on there. Many don't have descriptive titles to them, so it's hard to search.  But I'll see what I can find that I can learn from.

 

What software are you recording with?

[mgianzero]

I see.  Okay  ...  didn't know if there was some embedded feature in CA for recording itself since I know it records walkthroughs.

I discovered that Catalina comes with it's embedded version of Quicktime which I've started to use.

 

Thanks for all the resources regarding researching / searching for answers to my CA questions.

 

I also updated my signature as you suggested.

 

Marc

[SNestor]

@mgianzero - I have a YouTube page also...might be a few videos to help you get going. Here: Chief Skills

My webpage: mychiefskills.com

 

[mgianzero]

On 9/23/2020 at 6:32 AM, SNestor said:

@mgianzero - I have a YouTube page also...might be a few videos to help you get going. Here: Chief Skills

My webpage: mychiefskills.com

 

Thanks so much!  I'll check it out.

[mgianzero]

By the way, is there an easy way to round the corners (like a fillet) for wall caps?

 

I'm trying to make some nice detail to my swimming pool - have a raised spa that I drew walls around with caps.

 

Again, didn't see much in the literature about this.

 

This was done using countertop feature.  Kinda cumbersome doing it that way.  Wanted to just use terrain walls with caps if I could.

 

 

[mgianzero]

20 hours ago, solver said:

 

You can use any molding profile for a cap. The problem is the end of the wall as there are no controls that control the cap in that location.

 

How about creating walls with rounded corners?  Can we do that?

[robdyck]

4 hours ago, mgianzero said:

 

How about creating walls with rounded corners?  Can we do that?

Radius walls, yes.

Square inside corner with round outside corner, No.

[glennw]

It is possible to do rounded corners like this (I can't get zero inside radius, is, square inside)  but they play havoc with some of the auto functions like auto roofs and auto foundations and chief doesn't handle them well generally.

 

 

[DRAWZILLA]

Until Chief comes up with radius corners without using a curved wall, it's just too much trouble for me to mess with.

[mgianzero]

 

On 9/25/2020 at 10:31 AM, robdyck said:

Radius walls, yes.

Square inside corner with round outside corner, No.

 

5 hours ago, DRAWZILLA said:

Until Chief comes up with radius corners without using a curved wall, it's just too much trouble for me to mess with.

 

Wait, perhaps I'm misunderstood here, but I DO want curved walls both inside and out for my raised hot tub.  I tried doing it three different ways with a certain degree of success but nothing easy and really working like I want.  See my attached pic at my attempts, along with the actual pic of the hot tub. 

 

The easiest is to use a negative terrain rectangular feature for the hole and the I created 3D molding polylines, but there are no walls and this needs to be raised about 15 inches.

 

Then, I got as close as possible to what I wanted using terrain curved and straight walls.  I think this is the way to go if I can get it work properly.  I really struggle with the editing features of terrain walls.  It's so difficult to make this thing symmetrical since terrain walls always like to dynamically attached themselves to each other and so, essentially ignores my wall changes when they are close to each other.  That other model with the curved walls is almost there but not exactly the size, shape, symmetry I want.

 

The last model is drawing it all using straight walls, which again is almost as hard as doing curved walls.  But then I get an octagon and not truly curved walls.

 

Am I trying something that just isn't that easy with CA?

 

 

[robdyck]

11 hours ago, mgianzero said:

Am I trying something that just isn't that easy with CA?

A pool like the last photo you attached is quite simple. Using walls with a wall cap and defining the room they make, or by using a molding polyline. One tip would be to first create the exact shape you'd like using a few polylines for referencing and to snap your walls to. Don't use retaining walls, just a regular wall that you've defined as your pool wall type.

 

[glennw]

Do not use terrain walls - there is no need to - they will only complicate the process.

Just use plain walls.

My best tip if you want to use curved and straight walls is to use the one with the 45deg corners.

Use the Change Line/Arc on the 45deg walls.

Then use the Make Arc Tangent tool where you can specify a radius during the process for the curved wall.

 

No need for guide lines or worrying about locating arc centres or trying to get arcs to locate. 

[mgianzero]

 

On 9/27/2020 at 3:46 AM, robdyck said:

A pool like the last photo you attached is quite simple. Using walls with a wall cap and defining the room they make, or by using a molding polyline. One tip would be to first create the exact shape you'd like using a few polylines for referencing and to snap your walls to. Don't use retaining walls, just a regular wall that you've defined as your pool wall type.

 

 

Well, I figured out this technique on my own.  But I would have certainly saved time and frustration if I had read your post beforehand.  Thanks for the advice!

 

On 9/27/2020 at 4:56 AM, glennw said:

My best tip if you want to use curved and straight walls is to use the one with the 45deg corners.

Use the Change Line/Arc on the 45deg walls.

Then use the Make Arc Tangent tool where you can specify a radius during the process for the curved wall.

 

No need for guide lines or worrying about locating arc centres or trying to get arcs to locate. 

 

Also a very good suggestion.  I simply used the "chamfered lines" on my polyline outline of my spa and then converted each diagonal wall to a curve as you described.

 

Then I made my hole by lowering the flooring and adding a rounded molding on the bottom.

 

Now I have a rounded hot tub, with rounded corners on inside and out with a matching rounded cap.

 

Here's my result:

 

[glennw]

Now you can fill it with water by using the Floor Finish setting, applying a water material and making it the height of the water.

 

[mgianzero]

21 hours ago, glennw said:

Now you can fill it with water by using the Floor Finish setting, applying a water material and making it the height of the water.

 

 

Yes, I know about the water, but I'm not ready to add it just yet.

 

Having difficulty with the spill way.  I made it by pulling down just a portion of the wall height in "Cross Section / Elevation" view but now I want to remove the cap on just that section and cover with another cap. 

 

Here's my pic of spillway along with it's elevation view where I made the cut:

 

How do I "split or break" a wall so that I can change the cap in one portion of a continuous wall?

 

 

Marc G.

[rgardner]

21 minutes ago, mgianzero said:

 

Yes, I know about the water, but I'm not ready to add it just yet.

 

Having difficulty with the spill way.  I made it by pulling down just a portion of the wall height in "Cross Section / Elevation" view but now I want to remove the cap on just that section and cover with another cap. 

 

Here's my pic of spillway along with it's elevation view where I made the cut:

 

How do I "split or break" a wall so that I can change the cap in one portion of a continuous wall?

 

 

Marc G.

Select it in plan view and try the 3 key or wall break tool.

[glennw]

You do exactly what you said.

You Break the wall into 3 sections.

Pull the spillway section forward out of alignment so that the wall doesn't want to snap together again.

Change the cap.

Move that section of wall back to its original location.

The different cap will stop the wall from snapping together as 1 wall.

Or create a new wall type for the spillway section.

In a vector view, you will probably get a line where the walls meet, but that will probably line up with the edges of the waterfall anyway.

[mgianzero]

Then I want to be able to add these little pilasters on the corners of the pool like this:

 

 

But I have a similar problem  ...   I don't know how to break the wall so that I change, not only it's cap and height, but also it's width.  Here the pool cover is 12" wide everywhere with a 24" x 24" pilaster sitting at each corner.

 

Here's my attempt:

 

I did the same thing by pulling up the walls using "Cross Section / Elevation" but then I can't change the cap and the wall width for just that section of wall.

 

 

[mgianzero]

28 minutes ago, rgardner said:

Select it in plan view and try the 3 key or wall break tool.

Yes, that was my first approach, but it didn't quit work as I expected.  If I try to even move the section of "split" wall by any amount, it automatically "heals" the wall by unbreaking it.

 

As an example, I broke my spa wall where I wanted the spillway.  Then once I selected that wall and deleted the cap, CA merged the broken wall with it's neighboring walls and deleted the cap on that entire side.

 

Then I tried to take that piece of wall that I broke away from the main wall for my spillway and lower it's height using Cross Section / Elevation and it moved the entire wall downwards, not just the section I wanted.

 

I've attached my plan for someone to play with.  Notice that the wall where I want the spillway is already broken.  But if I edit it in any fashion, such as it's height or remove it's cap, it joins this piece with the neighboring straight walls and applies the changes to everything.

 

 

Marc

My spa w: spillway.zip

[rgardner]

2 minutes ago, mgianzero said:

Yes, that was my first approach, but it doesn't work.

Need more info of how you are trying to do it.  Glenn shows it works above.  Note you need to break it in two sections and if you don’t change something at that point it will rejoin.  At that point you can change the main side of the wall to keep it from auto joining.