Walls

General information on architectural elements

Using the Wall tool, you can draw different types of walls:

• Straight Walls
  The approach is the same as with lines in the Draft module.
• Rectangular Walls
  This lets you create four straight walls in a single operation - the approach is the same as with rectangles in the Draft module.
• Curved Walls
  A polyline is used to approximate the circle: this results in short, straight wall sections that can be addressed as a single entity.
• Circular Walls
  Use this to draw walls as you would a circle in the Draft module. You can enter full circles and arcs. A polyline is used to approximate the circle.
• / Polygonal Walls
  As with curved walls, you can use this to draw walls with any number of corners, delimited by an arc. A distinction is made between walls that are ”inscribed" and ”circumscribed" in/about an imaginary circle.
  Inscribed means that the start and end walls have half the length of a segment. The division is at a tangent to the circle that you entered when defining the geometric outline.
  Circumscribed means that the start and end segments have the length of a normal section. The division is on a secant with the circle that you entered when you defined the geometric outline.
• Entity-Based Walls
  This draws walls based on 2D entities (e.g., lines, polylines, splines) or composite elements. The wall is drawn along the donor element. The donor element itself is not affected by the operation.
• Spline Walls
  Use this to draw walls as you would a spline in the Draft module.

Clicking Properties displays a dialog box in which you can define the walls more precisely. Enter values for the height of the wall, its thickness and elevation. You can also define additional properties such as the building trade, material, priority rating, element interaction, format properties (pen, line, color) and surface properties (hatching style, pattern or fill).

Previews keep you informed about the wall structure, showing how the wall looks in the standard views and in the Wireframe, Hidden and Animation view types.

Note: To save time, define the materials and other attributes when you enter the walls. Allplan uses the information you define here for subsequent analyses and reports based on the building model. Of course, you can also assign materials and attributes at a later time. Materials can be transferred directly from applications used for tendering, awarding and invoicing such as Allplan BCM.

Walls are generally drawn like the base 2D entities. For example, you draw a straight wall just as you would a straight line – all the construction aids available when you draw a line are also available when drawing a wall.

The only other thing you need to do is define the wall’s offset direction and enter Properties for it in the dialog box. The standard approach is to define the height of the wall using reference planes: Define the height of the default reference planes once. All the walls associated with these planes are automatically correct.

Other wall types

The wall types listed above are complemented by walls with a freeform outline or cross-section (profile walls). Moreover, various automation tools are available that you can use to generate single-tier or multi-tier walls on the basis of lines (sketches, for example), parallel lines (e.g., 2D outlines) or based on rooms that you have already defined and 2D floor plans obtained from scans of drawings. This way, you can quickly convert a 2D design to a complex 3D building model.