Draw Partitions in Anything Other Than Plan View

[JohnLloyd]

Is there any chance we could get the 'draw partitions' tool to be available in views other than 'plan'? It would be really useful if we could draw horizontal partitions in either 'front / back' or 'side' view.

[ZapBran]

Yeh, that would be pretty nice. I'll not be holding my breath for it mind.
What I do at the moment is use the element heights thing... say I wanted to split a 8m space in two veritcally I'd take my spaces, set the height to 4m then copy it up. Nothing fancy but in 2 steps I've split the zones.
Zap.

[PCully]

or rotate the room you want to edit so the side you want to partition in is facing upwards.

and there's always the Divide Spaces tool which I know is scary at first but can be pretty useful

Phil

[JohnLloyd]

Divide space is what I have to use a the moment but it has a fair few limitations; you can't cut along an existing plane being the main one.

A side-view 'draw partitions' tool would be very useful for creating complex angled roof's.

[ZapBran]

would be good to be able to slice across the whole building at a set level.

[JohnLloyd]

Being able to do a "judo chop" hand gesture at the screen would also be aces.

Thanks xxx

[Marc Jensen]

+1 on the judo chop.

I have battled with ModelIt when creating complex roofs, and having the subtract space give errors on anything apart from test boxes, and trying to use free transform does not like tilting a roof from straight sides to be flush with another roof at 90 degrees to it.

If you could draw a partition in the other views you could delete the space it creates and there you go. I have contemplated making a roof using this where i draw it on its side and rotate the whole beast to divide it up because of the nothing apart from plan thing....

Every-time I am modelling i get annoyed at how something that would take me 30 seconds in Solidworks or Inventor takes me an age in IES and is not what I want.

[JohnLloyd]

Marc,

The SketchUp link can be very useful for drawing little bits of complex geometry, like the building's roof. I've followed this procedure a number of times and found it to be very successful:

1) Draw all of the simple geometry within ModelIT, excluding the roof.

2) Export the geometry from ModelIT as a DXF and import it into SketchUp and make it all one large 'group'.

3) Draw the complicated bits within SketchUp and when done, delete the original geometry 'group' that was imported from ModelIT, leaving only the complicated bits.

4) Use the IES SketchUp plugin to import the complicated bits back into ModelIT. It should slot nicely on-top of the existing geometry in ModelIT.

5) Sit back and feel a bit smug.

If you're very familiar with Solidworks I'd imagine it would be possible for you to import the ModelIT geometry into that, do all your drawing within Solidworks, then export that to SketchUp and bring it into IES using the plugin.

John.

[Marc Jensen]

I'd imagine it would be possible for you to import the ModelIT geometry into that, do all your drawing within Solidworks, then export that to SketchUp and bring it into IES using the plugin.

I will try that right this moment. I did not think that you could export from IES to other programs and back.... I might have to toy with this and see if I can get it to play nice.

So when you export a dxf to sketchup does it import into 3D? Interesting. I thought that dxf was only for drawings etc..
Il have a play around with the sketchup plugin and if any progress is made I am sure you will hear from me

[Marc Jensen]

OK, Just tried to get sketchup and IES to play nice...

Nothing. Apart from dxf's.

I have no toolbars etc and from what I can see the programs are meant to see each other, hand shake and automatically install or activate toolbars etc (According to documentation.)

However I think that only works with the free versions of IES?

I have VE Pro and Sketchup 8 free.
They do not want to hold hands.

I have a 3rd party dxf exporter for SketchUp but that only outputs flat lines like I thought. Not geometry.


At this stage modelling in IES is the only course of action for me.