Polyline with height attribute

[KristjanM]

I use Chief for design work principally but also use it to generate data to input to energy modeling software. I use polylines and slabs to generate lengths, areas and volumes drawn over the plan pdf.. This works very nicely. What I would really like to generate is a surface are from a polyline or some other strategy to get a surface area. For example, to get the above ground area of a foundation wall, I could draw a polyline and give it a height thusly generating an area. I could use some version of a pony wall but it gets tedious and I am looking for simplicity. I tried assigning a custom field (defined as a number) and multiplying this by the line perimeter but this doesn't work (for me). Any clever suggestions out there?

[SHCanada2]

I draw a polyline on the elevations to get the wall surface area as the grade(terrain) may be different. The area of the pline then feeds a global variable for use in calculations (which i use for limiting distance calculations)

[KristjanM]

I do something similar for areas which have a sloping grade level but am looking for a way to use a plan view for areas which have a consistent height.

[SHCanada2]

so if I understand, you want to draw a pline along a wall in plan view to the length of the wall, and set its "height" somewhere  and have CA calculate Height times length? plines do not have length, per se, as they are not guranteed to have 2 sides the same length. They have perimeter. so you could use a pline stored in your library, which is a rectangle, and then stretch it to the length of the wall, and then make it the width you want, and then use the area of the pline in its label

 

and I'm guessing you do not want to use the wall length or wall OIP?

[KristjanM]

I don't have any walls in my energy file as I am drawing lines, slabs etc on top of the plan pdf. This gives me plan view areas, volumes and lengths. I use p-lines for things which go around corners (eg. gutter total length which go around a hip roof). I do need to calculate certain area items which I have to do in an elevation view such as the total wall area of the foundation which is above grade.  I total these in a schedule. This is all good. What I am trying to achieve is a reduction in the number of items I have to draw on the elevation views. For example - a house with 14 corners which has 8 wall areas which have sloping exterior grade. These areas all have to be drawn on an elevation view. The other areas have consistent depth above grade which if I could get a p-line perimeter multiplied by the area height, this would give me an area to total with fewer items to draw. I could use a rectangle as you suggest but the fewer steps the better. I can give a p-line a height custom field but even if this field is defined as a number, I can't multiply this height by the perimeter and get a number. I have the feeling this isn't possible. Might have to rethink my workflow.

[MarkMc]

43 minutes ago, KristjanM said:

I can give a p-line a height custom field but even if this field is defined as a number, I can't multiply this height by the perimeter and get a number. I have the feeling this isn't possible.

It is possible, the problem is that the perimeter is defined as a measurement. Change to both to a float and they will multiply. You will likely want to either also use the number formatter on the result or shorten the number of decimal places.

here is formula for macro in the attached.

# fill in field hgt in the OIP, convert both to float

A=(perimeter.to_f)*(custom_fields["hgt"].to_f)

#result is in sq inches so divide

A/144

Place macro in label or wherever you want it to report from.

pline macro.zip

[KristjanM]

Perfect. That does the trick. Thank you.