Offset the hole not the whole

Steven_g

The offset command appears obsessed with the outer boundary of an object, is there a way to also make it offset from inner boundaries, as an example I make a slab with void cuttouts for lifts, services etc. I then want to add walls around these edges, the offset command will only offset the outer boundary, and I have to pick individual internal boundaries using the tab cycle method (which will only pick individual edges and leaves open corners) or some other workaround that is time consuming, is there a shortcut or trick to cycle "outer boundary - inner boundary - all" as in so many cases in BricsCAD.

Jason Bourhill

This is how I would offset inside edges in BricsCAD:

1 - Select the face. Depending on SELECTIONMODES you may need to hold the CTRL key down to select the face.
2 - Pick GENERATE BOUNDARY from the QUAD.
3 - Hover over one of the inside edges and press TAB to cycle selection to the generated POLYLINE.
4 - Pick OFFSET from the QUAD.

To EXTRUDE between the inside edge and the offset boundary, switch SELECTIONMODES to enable boundary detection. Now when you hover over the enclosed area with the QUAD you will see the option to use EXTRUDE

This video demonstrates the steps involved
BricsCAD - OFFSETTING inside edges - Method 1

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

Hans De Backer

Nice one, Jason!

@Steven,
when offset is used on a boundary containing islands, only the outer loop is used indeed. It is not straightforward to offer cycling through boundary loops, perhaps some way could be found... It would be straightforward to offset all boundary loops, but how many times would that be what you hoped for...?

For the time being, knowing that boundary detection is performed in the XY-plane of the current UCS, there's a simple workaround.

Hover the top face of the slab with the cutouts and click the 'Align Ucs' button from the Quad's Model tab.
Now when hovering one of the cutouts, boundary detection will offer you the outline of the void, so you can offset it ;-)

Remember to switch the UCS back to 'World' afterwards.

Michael Mayer

Interesting.
That would be nice.

I just tried it.
Is a bit more cumbersome but,
As long as the lines created from Offsets holes are still existing,
you can hover over a hole's line and offset from there.
I tried also Boundary Detection but that doesn't seem to work for me.
And I see no way when the extra 2D lines were already deleted (?)

So yes,
an additional STRG Option Action for Offset would be nice.

Michael Mayer

@Jason Bourhill said:
2 - Pick GENERATE BOUNDARY from the QUAD.

Cool !
I learned ....

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Why not use the _PolySolid command to create the walls? It might be faster.

Michael Mayer

^ I thought it is about mechanical objects where you need to do some
extensions around the holes or such things.

If it is about architecture I would also do Polysolid Walls around the holes.
Or better I would first draw the Walls and use these to select the Regions
from for the Slab Cutouts by Extrude (?)

Because if you would create an Offset from a Hole, you will get a Face
(with a hole in it) from it that you can Extrude and apply a Wall Tag,
but because no "linear" Element Geometry this will create problems
if you want to assign a composition later.
I create such complex objects sometimes, but Split/Slice/Separate it
into smaller parts before BIM usage.

Jason Bourhill

@Hans De Backer said:
Nice one, Jason!

@Steven,
when offset is used on a boundary containing islands, only the outer loop is used indeed. It is not straightforward to offer cycling through boundary loops, perhaps some way could be found... It would be straightforward to offset all boundary loops, but how many times would that be what you hoped for...?

For the time being, knowing that boundary detection is performed in the XY-plane of the current UCS, there's a simple workaround.

Hover the top face of the slab with the cutouts and click the 'Align Ucs' button from the Quad's Model tab.
Now when hovering one of the cutouts, boundary detection will offer you the outline of the void, so you can offset it ;-)

Remember to switch the UCS back to 'World' afterwards.

Thanks, and here is a video of the method you suggest
BricsCAD - OFFSETTING inside edges - Method 2

I put a twist on your suggestion by using SURFACE EXTRUDE followed by THICKEN from the QUAD to create the walls. Following on from this you could use SPLIT if you wanted to separate the walls out.

For this situation I would like to see a select Chain & Loop options in the QUAD, similar to what is offered in FILLET (but doesn't seem to work in BricsCAD). Could have two modes:

With selected FACE
Chain would select tangential edges to the selected face
Loop would select boundary edges of the face, use TAB to cycle through loops of faces that have inside openings, r cycle by simply hovering the cursor over the preferred face.

With selected Edge
Chain would select tangential edges to the selected edge.
Loop would select connected edges around the one of the faces of our selected edge, use TAB to cycle through faces, or cycle by simply hovering the cursor over the preferred face.

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

Steven_g

Some nice ideas in there, but still requires selecting all the 'holes' individually, or drawing around them individually. I found another workaround that will get everything in a slightly quicker way, I copied the slab off to the side 'pulled' it up to the wall height+(2*thickness) then used solidedit to shell the body with the walls thickness, then extruded the top and bottom surface back into the solid by the thickness which just leaves the "walls" and split left me with the results I need.
The real purpose is to quickly get all the plywood shuttering from an office building without having to select every single column, wall, void etc

Jason Bourhill

@Steven_g said:
Some nice ideas in there, but still requires selecting all the 'holes' individually, or drawing around them individually. I found another workaround that will get everything in a slightly quicker way, I copied the slab off to the side 'pulled' it up to the wall height+(2*thickness) then used solidedit to shell the body with the walls thickness, then extruded the top and bottom surface back into the solid by the thickness which just leaves the "walls" and split left me with the results I need.
The real purpose is to quickly get all the plywood shuttering from an office building without having to select every single column, wall, void etc

What about:

• turning SELECTIONMODES to enable boundary detection.
• ALIGN UCS if necessary.
• Pick SURFACE EXTRUDE from the QUAD to extrude up all the edges to create wall surfaces.
• Pick THICKEN from the QUAD to apply a wall thickness

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

Steven_g

That does the outer edge correct but then thickens the 'holes' into the hole and not onto the slab. But that is probably just a question of selecting the correct surfaces, so this is looking promising; Thanks

Steven_g

OK the outer walls are ok but when I go to the inner walls thicken is just creating balloons!

EDIT wierd if I select all the internal sufaces I get balloons, if I select all but one it behaves

Louis_Verdonck

@Roy Klein Gebbinck said:
Why not use the _PolySolid command to create the walls? It might be faster.

See attached video.

Michael Mayer

Generate Boundary was pretty new to me, not bad.

But what is the workflow with all that extra Coedges and 2D Lines.
Do you just ignore them or use SIMPLIFY or delete all 2D stuff from
Structure Panel, from time to time ?

Steven_g

This is a floor plan showing the concrete structure, I need to create the shuttering details around each wall and column, the inner walls and inside of the columns are then extended up to the underside of the floors and beams (4 different heights) the outside of the columns up to the top of the columns. So drawing around each item wouldn't take an enormous amount of time, but it's enough to drive me dotty. And then the next 2 floors are a different layout. Being able to get those outlines in just a couple of clicks saves my sanity, the method outlined by @Jason Bourhill works really well and gives me the sheeting in a matter of seconds.

Michael Mayer

Do you use all Walls on Top of Slabs per Story only ?

I think for me,
Bricscad's option to use Objects running across multiple Stories,
like outer Walls, Staircase/Lift Walls, ....
when Story Navigation is done by Section Clipping,
could be a timesaver opposed to other BIM Solutions.

That would mean that Slabs would end in front of and sit between
those Walls.

Steven_g

No we have to create buildings as they are built, and specified, although there is no difference in the concrete itself we have to be able to split it up into columns, walls, beams, floors, etc due to the amount of reinforcement required for the structural stability, so columns always run from top of floor to top of floor and not between floors, and in the same way beams and walls will always go to the top of floor, and therefore create a hole in the model slab. They also don't run the full height of the building the planning and phase of the construction will at some point need to be added to the BIM data. We have to be able to split everything per floor, it gives the term "as built" another meaning
I had started out using wall compositions until it was also pointed out that we need to somehow be able to differentiate that this week the walls are poured and in 3 months time they will be plastered, another couple of months before they are painted or tiled, so having everything separate is a far more logical method.

Michael Mayer

Ah, makes sense, thanks.
I do not need to care about that much so I always forget about time phases
and such things. But should keep that in mind.

I thought about making use of the new freedom of multi story objects.
As Story based System may lead to need funny rest parts of Slabs between
such Walls or Columns, to renounce of extra object styles ....

Steven_g

Yeah there are some really nice time savers, but we have to consider project planning plus a whole host of collaborators on numerous systems and it all needs to work together.

Jason Bourhill

@Steven_g said:
I had started out using wall compositions until it was also pointed out that we need to somehow be able to differentiate that this week the walls are poured and in 3 months time they will be plastered, another couple of months before they are painted or tiled, so having everything separate is a far more logical method.

I guess you need the ability to suppress the ply of a composition. You could mimic this by setting the composition thickness to 0, but this is tedious in itself, and you are destroying information that is needed later. Also BricsCAD compositions are global, you can't modify for an individual wall.

I'm not sure that it is appropriate to do this in a CAD application. It may be more natural to have the capability in a document management application. Perhaps this functionality will appear in bricsys247.com

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

Steven_g

Actually, although it sounds more work to produce individual plies, I actually find it quicker and certainly easier to work this way, supporting walls and internal walls go down to concrete. Screed runs up to the walls with a sound barrier between, plaster down to the top of the screed then sound barrier & floor finish on top of the screed skirting on top of that and finally paint or tiles starting at the top of the skirting (yes it does make a difference to the price). And when you take into account half the rooms have a floor tile the other half parquet, bathroom tiled up to 2m high (but not under or behind the bath). Kitchens have a 60cm splashback but the floor tiles do run under the bath. By the time you have straight in your mind how many different combinations of compositions you need in a building, I've already been round and lowered the plaster and paintwork to apply the false ceilings. Try doing that in Revit.

Michael Mayer

I see a large potential in separate components.
For modeling itself and for information separation, when LOD
gets more and more detailed in the future.
I like the as built approach.
Basically Bricscad has the potential to do so.
BIM Drag worked fine with my (accidental) multi Solid Wall.

Damian Harkin

When an architect is designing the layout and planning rooms, the walls should move around as single objects. When planning the construction process, hopefully, design has finished and nothing is moving around Then it can make sense to break it down into structure, insulation, finishes etc. It may also help to break the model into multiple xrefs representing storeys. That allows mass production (repeated typical floors, multiple users working on different parts of the building). Also it's a lot easier working with one slab and one level of walls per model. BimClassify the xrefs as BIM XReference and give each a storey number. BricsCAD can export the whole thing to a single IFC file.

Steven_g

We are aiming at LOD3 and I think I can surpass that. My main goal at the moment is IFC that's the way to communicate between the various other programs used in the different departments and stages, so that's my next step, tweaking things so the dwg model has the BIM information and export that as IFC so that people in the rest of the company and outside can pick up that IFC file and continue as they are now doing with the same naming conventions etc in the software that they normally work with.
Actually, that's my next step today's goal is to export the volumes and shuttering out into our scheduling table and do a few quick adjustments to the design to see how quickly editing would be

@Michael Mayer it surprises me how well BIM Drag does work, I had a stepped beam covered on 3 sides with lose shuttering and other beams enclosing it and I had to move it from the outside face halfway across the building, I grabbed one face and dragged it along the base plate of the other beams and everything went with it and adjusted around it flawlessly. The only downside I can see at the moment is that I don't see how BIMsugesst is going to handle it all (I imagine it won't)

Michael Mayer

Yes, that whole super AI BIM Drag Tool System is fascinating.
Especially when selecting similar planar faces to edit multiple Solids at once.
That brings my Microstation "Fence Stretch" functionality back, where you
could do things like changing a whole Story Z Level at a time.

I often try BIMSUGGEST but am still not used to it enough, what it will do
and what not. There are often situations where I would think are identical
but BIMSUGGEST thinks not and e.g. offers situations from 1 single story only.
Or an operation seems too complex that it will not see any of those similar
situations anymore.