OPENINGS AND DOORS

SPECIAL OPENINGS AND DOORS by Paolo Marcuccetti

special opening rendering 1

Introduction

Unsatisfied of the openings-in-the-wall tool offered with VectorWorks, I begin to study a parametric opening in the wall comprehensive of reveals, splayed jambs and lintel. After a while I produced what I had in mind and here's openings plugin. This is the main effort of this set of plugins, however, I included other 5 goodies to complete the palette. Here's sliding door, accordion door and curtain, not often used, but complicated to obtain when you need them.

Installation

Place the plugins into Vectorworks plugin folder

Start (or restart) VectorWorks® and modify the current scheme or create a new one, then create a palette "Name it as you like" where you will add the 6 tools.
Close the scheme editor and you should find the new created palette in the palette -> instruments menu and it should appear as the following figure:

palette the special openings and doors palette

Usage of plugins

Opening Use it as the usual hole-in-the-wall tool . It has various kind of lintels (straight, angled, asymmetric, round, arch and pointed arch as the one you can see in the rendered image). It can be used as window hole, as door hole or as a recess. Each side has a proper reveal/jamb/lintel independent settings. (Except for some lintel kinds, see restrictions note). The object class is automatically set to the wall class. Some input restrictions are applied to the fields reveal / jamb / lintel (in some cases their independency is inhibited to avoid possibly incoherent configurations). Available vault types are:

straight	angled	asymmetric	arch	round	pointed arch

Sliding door The plugin object is a sliding door accessorized with handle and optional porthole. The sliding door thickness allows to get all-glass sliding doors. The offset field shift the Center insertion point from the center of the wall. Insertion popup is there for three insertion choices: front, back and inside the wall. You can set also a percent opening (both in 2D and 3D). A trim is optional and has a proper join option, width, thick and class. A class popup is present also for the door, while the handle class, is created on the fly.
Porthole door Similar to the previous but with the usual pivot opening. It has a Come-and-Go setting that draw the appropriate 2D symbol for this kind of door (usually you find this door in restaurants to separate the public area from the private rooms (kitchens, laboratories etc.)). A trim is optional and has a proper join option, width, thick and class.
Accordion door You can set the number, width and thickness of elements (folds) and the door % closure (this helps you to control if effectively the door elements are enough to close the opening). A trim is optional and has a proper join option, width, thick and class. A class popup is present also for the elements, while other classes such handle, pivots etc. are created on the fly.
Curtain The plugin object is a hole closed with a curtain (used in shop dressing room). The usage is similar to the one of the accordion door with customizable number of folds and fold width. Even here you can set a percent opening (both in 2D and 3D). A trim is optional and has a proper join option, width, thick and class. A class popup is present also for the curtain.
Trimmed opening Obviously if you want a just simple trimmed opening in the wall, here it is! Trim has proper join option, width, thick and class.

Notes about classes:

When you insert one of these openings in your project for the first time, some classes are automatically created. Use the class dialog to open and edit classes attributes. It is easy to individuate the classes name because of their prefix.

Some classes are assigned via popup button, some are assigned automatically from the script. You can customize easily popup items to use your usual classes. Simply enter the Plugin Vectorscript... menu, search the list for the plugin name, select it and click on the parameter button. You will see the parameter list, search the menu you want to change and click on modify. Add / remove item classes, click ok then, when you return to your plugin info window, you should see your added classes in the popup.

Be careful to not remove the "None" and "Plugin class" items. They are special items used inside the plugin code.

About the author

Paolo Marcuccetti, via De Gasperi, 372/L - 55040 Stiava (LU) - Italy
e-mail: pamarcu@tiscalinet.it

From the same author in the Vector Depot market section:

Bartools plugins set:
Is a set of plugins realized to speed-up the assembling of barrooms workplace.
It consists of parametric objects such as workplanes, sinks, double sinks, bottle holder, doors and slide doors.
Created objects are almost fully customizable in sizes, classes and symbols.
You can see rendered examples at http://www.arcoarredamenti.it/eng/food/virtual/virtual.htm

Explosion plugin set:
Explosion is a set of tools to create and handle exploded drawings from 3D elements.
It works on 3D ISO view front-left, front-right, rear-left and rear-right even if most of
tools operate on generic 3D view and in the plan view.

Plan utilities plugin set:
A set of tools to aid in drafting plans of existing conditions. In a perfect world all buildings and rooms would be square with right angles in all corners but that just isn't the case. These tools help work with our imperfect world.

And in the Vector Depot free plugin section:

3tree script: A vector script tool to create 3D trees in VectorWorks®.
fractal mountain script: fractal mountain create 3d terrains. It is based upon the Loren Carpenter's method.
rotate hatches: modifies hatches definitions to rotate the patter as specified.
merge text: select individual lines of text to combine into one text block for easier editing.

Sources

The plugin sources are open, feel free to modify them as you want. In that case the author shall not be responsible of consequences.

Disclaimer

I am not responsible for anything SPECIAL OPENINGS AND DOORS Plugins does or does not do to your system. I am also not responsible for illegal use of SPECIAL OPENINGS AND DOORS. There is no warranty.
I'm here at your disposal on an e-mail base for help and suggestions.
The SPECIAL OPENINGS AND DOORS studies are always progress, due to users feed-back, new tool's ideas, VectorScript and VectorWorks® future improvement and so on. Regular users will be kept informed of new future releases.

Enjoy it!
Paolo Marcuccetti
May 2004
pamarcu@tiscalinet.it