Modelling: elements and views

The elements

Each kind maps to an IFC class and carries its own parameters, so it exports as what it is.

• Walls, floors and ceilings, with their build-ups
• Roofs in 15 families: flat, mono-pitch, gable, hip, half-hip, Dutch gable, saltbox, mansard, gambrel, pyramid, butterfly, sawtooth, M-roof, barrel vault and dome
• Doors, windows and openings, hosted in their walls
• Stairs, ramps and railings
• Columns and beams
• Curtain wall panels and mullions
• Rooms and room separators, numbered and measured
• Furniture and landscape
• Pipes and ducts
• Masses for massing studies, and mesh solids for free-form and ornamental parts
• Topography and the earth under a building
• Context from the map: neighbouring buildings, roads and green

The views

• Site plan, floor plans, room plans and reflected ceiling plans
• Elevations north, south, east and west, and interior elevations (square to a wall or at an angle)
• Sections, including jogged sections, and a section box in 3D
• Schedules and legends
• Drafting views for details
• Axonometric, perspective and eye-level 3D
• Phase views: existing, demolition and proposed, for renovation work

Working on the model

The element is its own grip: drag an end to extend a wall, its face to slide it, a corner to turn it. Selection is one store shared by every view, so what you pick in the plan is picked in the 3D and in the schedule.

Masses can be pushed and pulled and joined into one body. The brush paints a mass, a unit you drew, or a facade along a stroke on a plan or an elevation.