Concrete block fence and railing

[IanPellant]

This is a little tricky.

 

The clinet wants a privacy fence as in the attached picture. The missing dimensions are 2000mm overall height; 1200mm high slat panel.

 

I've been doing custom objects in Chief for many years and versions... thouht this should be easy.

 

However, corner intersection are proving a problem, so I dropped the posts out of the symbol defintion and created exterior fixture symbols for the posts so that they may be manully added.

There are limits to automated procedures.

 

A qirky problem is that railing walls are not quie behaving as do normal walls. Exerior Fixture symbols will usually attach to a normal wall reagradless of the angle of the wall and will move with the wall.

I am finding that my fixture columns will only locate and attach to walls at orthogonal angles (0,90,180,270). Railing walls are not being recognised at odd angles.

 

Has anyone ever ceated fences such as this and found a few tricks or problems?

 

The attached "Feces.calibz" can be imported into your library. It contains two fecing wall types and two fixture columns.

 

 

Fences.calibz

[Alaskan_Son]

4 minutes ago, IanPellant said:

The attached "Feces.calibz" can be imported

 

I make it policy not to import feces. 

[John_Charles]

I did a fence not unlike that although my columns were more detailed and my rails were made up of various thicknesses and materials....

 

I created a column in Sketchup, imported it and placed them at the panel width locations I wanted, then did the same with the rail panels.  By creating them in Sketchup I was able to manipulate them in CA as I wanted.  It meant I had to create the gate etc but just took a bit of fiddling around.....

 

I've done the same with creating 3D solids by again creating it in sections and then placing/sizing as I wanted....

 

I'm sure others here have a better way....

[Alaskan_Son]

17 hours ago, IanPellant said:

A qirky problem is that railing walls are not quie behaving as do normal walls. Exerior Fixture symbols will usually attach to a normal wall reagradless of the angle of the wall and will move with the wall.

I am finding that my fixture columns will only locate and attach to walls at orthogonal angles (0,90,180,270). Railing walls are not being recognised at odd angles.

 

There definitely seems to be some weirdness with the Inserts Into Wall Symbol behaviors when it comes to both railing walls and off angle walls.  Not something I feel too inclined to dig into, but I can easily reproduce and see what you're talking about.  Here's a couple ideas fro you to possibly play with though:

• You might try using an Inserts Into Wall Symbol or even windows for the slat panels instead of the other way around.  This way you'll simply be attaching to a solid wall.
• If you decide you still have to use a railing, you may find that inserting the symbol before converting to a railing will behave a little differently. 

[imodel]

Hi Ian,

 

This would be my approach.  Panel portion needs to be a millwork symbol with stretch plane a x=0.

 

 

Ian.plan

[John_Charles]

A simple way would be just build a half wall in the material/height/width you need and then just put a pass through to create a cut out.  Then create the panel blades as a 3D solid, locate 1 and then multiple copy them in the dimensions you want.

 

Here is a rough up that only took a couple of minutes with the file attached....

Boundary Wall.plan

[IanPellant]

Thanks guys,

 

I did a lot of hacks in early versions of Chief and I've done those suggested. They all have problems. I stopped at X8 in 2016; I have just recently been invited to do work in X14.

I am exploring what has been improved. The oldest box set on my shelf is ART Chief Architect 6. I may build it onto a Windows 2000 computer for old times sake. A lot of hacking in the past using openings in walls instead of posts with beams, etc. Flat sites only.

 

If you use Terrain to model an inclined site, then using fencing walls saves a lot of hassles - they will follow the terrain and will not readily interact with house walls, etc. I haven't seen this site. It's about 350km away. There is some slope to deal with... but I have no details yet.

 

The required fencing is of variable sections. It is on a boundary where nothing is allowed to be built outside the boundary - so the posts must be flush on the outer face and the footing flush as well. The fence may have to be stepped if the site has much slope.

 

We are working with hollow concrete blocks that must be kept to module as much as possible. The blockwork will require some saw cutting where the boundary changes direction by peculiar angles. We are in a cyclone zone, so the intermediate 400mm "posts" will be heavily reinforced and the whole wall grout filled. Walls are rendered to hide the cuts.

 

Stretching the slats or space in between is not an option. The slats should be kept to the standard full length for cost reasons. May cut one panel if needed to suit overall length. Blockies will grumble if lengths get away from 200 / 400 modules.

 

Always try to use CA as a real building modeler... if you can't model it without fudging; then you probably can't build it.

 

Using the posts as exterior fixtures that can be manually positioned has advantages; but the problem then is that CA is not rotating the symbol when the wall is not orthogonal.

 

The client wants a vandal resistant fence because youth crime and house breakins are increasing.

 

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[imodel]

It would be useful to be able to modify the location of system generated newel posts individually.  A way to enter an "edit mode" and have edits stick.

[Alaskan_Son]

53 minutes ago, imodel said:

It would be useful to be able to modify the location of system generated newel posts individually.  A way to enter an "edit mode" and have edits stick.

 

I currently do this in a roundabout way by placing a break in the wall at that desired location.  A small section of perpendicular Room Divider Wall at that desired break location can help give more refined control over where the break takes place and can be relocated to move the break.  The main downside of course is that you're no longer dealing with a single wall.  To keep the wall from auto merging you have to either toggle Auto Merge Colinear Walls off  or change something about the adjacent walls (reverse layers, change a structural setting, or just create a copy of the wall type). 

[imodel]

OMG, that's quite the workaround .  I usually turn off newels and panels/balusters in Plan.  Then draw posts manually in a 2D layer for plan layout.  And just go with "good enough" for camera views.  I don't like it though .