Draw rooms

Overview

Rooms are drawn in VICUS Buildings as extruded floor plans: you click the floor polygon in the 3D scene, specify the room height, and the program creates from it a room with a floor surface, a ceiling surface and one wall surface per polygon edge. Rooms created this way are simple rooms (floor polygon + extrusion height); their walls and ceiling are automatically regenerated on later changes to the floor polygon, see Align & repair surfaces.

Invoking

In the toolbar of the 3D view, activate Add mode. In the property window the “Add geometry” panel appears with the Zone group:

• Extruded polygon — arbitrary floor plan from individually clicked points
• Extruded rectangle — rectangular floor plan from three points (two points for the first edge, the third determines the depth)

Draw the floor plan (vertex list)

After starting the drawing mode you set points by left-clicking in the scene; the snap options help hitting grid and object points exactly. Each point appears in the Polygon vertices table (for the rectangle: Rectangle points) with the columns #, x, y, z:

• The x and y coordinates are editable directly in the table.
• When changing a z value the program asks: “Only horizontal polygons can be drawn. Do you want to change all z values to …?” — room floor plans are always horizontal, so the z value is set jointly for all points.
• Delete last removes the most recently set point, Delete selected removes the points marked in the table.
• Create polygon (for the rectangle: Create rectangle) completes the floor plan — alternatively the Enter key suffices as soon as the polygon is valid.
• Cancel discards the input and returns to the “Add geometry” panel.

Building and storey assignment

Directly on the vertex page you choose via the Building: and Storey: combo boxes where the new room belongs. Using the adjacent ”+” buttons you create missing structural elements immediately:

• Add building — asks for the “Name of the new building:”.
• Add storey — dialog for entering the name and elevation (field Elevation:, in m) of the new storey.

Without a selected building and storey the polygon cannot be completed (message “Please select a building and a building level before completing the polygon.”). The full storey management is described in Storey management.

Elevation-level checkbox

The Set polygon points to elevation level checkbox (vertex page, active by default) couples the drawing plane to the elevation of the chosen storey:

• The z column is locked and all points get the storey elevation; additionally, the grid plane is temporarily moved to this height, so you draw directly “in the storey”. When switching the storey with points already set, the prompt “Changing the storey moves the room to a different height (… m). All z coordinates will be updated. Continue?” appears.
• The coupling also applies on completion: the finished floor polygon is set to the storey elevation when the room is created. If you enter your own z value in the vertex table, this coupling is automatically removed.

Room height

After completing the floor plan the panel switches to the Zone properties page:

• Room height: — extrusion height in m. The default is 2.7 m; if the chosen storey has a height assigned, it is adopted. The extrusion preview in the scene follows the input immediately.
• Choose the room height — interactive mode: move the mouse in the scene above the floor plan, the extrusion height follows the cursor perpendicular to the floor-plan plane and is continuously transferred to the input field. Clicking the button again (or setting the point) ends the mode.

Construction defaults

The collapsible Show constructions area contains the Wall construction:, Floor construction: and Ceiling/roof construction: combo boxes. The lists show all constructions of the database, with entries matching the intended use (e.g. exterior-wall constructions for walls) highlighted at the top. The project default constructions are preselected; a change also updates this project default (undo step “Construction defaults updated”).

Create room creates the room. Each created surface gets a component assignment with the chosen construction as well as boundary conditions from the project defaults: walls and ceiling interior/exterior, the floor interior/ground. For details on later adjustment see Assign constructions and Boundary conditions.

Related topics

• Draw roofs
• Surfaces, holes & shading elements
• Drawing aids
• Storey management