Hello everybody,
I need t create a dynamo script for a specific propose i need to share with you, as i ran out of thoughts. In our standards we always need to illustrate the hidden lines of the wall core, in the screen shots, these are simple 4 walls, each wall has a finishing layer, in the elevations of these walls, revit will project the full wall with the finishing layers, we always draw manually hidden lines to represent the wall core location also like shown in the screen shot.
I worked for a while to find a method to automate this process by dynamo, i went through a lot of methods and ideas, but i never get a result.
For example, i went through extracting the faces of the walls and get its curves, and give them an offset then get model lines from these curves, and this method failed for many reasons.
Also i tried to get the walls solids, and collect the solid edges and then also nothing further.
Also i tried to draw like an outer boundary for the building perimeter to help the node to define the building borders, and thought if i can generate the lines i need with assist to this outer boundary, but no result also.
I thought if i can some how extract only the wall cores as solid or geometry or any thing, and then try to represent them as lines any how, but i couldn’t even find a way to extract the walls cores.
so, this is about the script method or idea, so i’ll be very thankful if someone could share with me their thoughts about how to execute such a script or even a part of it
Not quite sure I grasp the issue - are you looking to draw the dashed lines on elevation? What do you currently do for non-orthogonal wall faces where the offset distance wouldn’t be the same as the finish thickness?
Probably the only practical way is to just draw model lines on the wall face. You would need to pull the information about the non-core layers intersecting the wall in elevation This is further complicated for walls that are not symmetrical, since you will need to figure out facing of intersecting walls.
For orthogonal walls intersecting at 90 degrees, the line’s offset from edge is easy. You shouldn’t need solids or any fancy geometry - just edges. For non-orthogonal walls - you’ll need some trig to calculate the offset. What about walls that intersect at “T” intersections? What about curved walls?
What is that line at the top of the wall? Is that showing a finish wrapping over the top of the wall? So that adds in another level of complexity as you need to determine if a wall has the same finish on the top as the sides? Or is it capped by trim?
This will have to be recalculated every time you change a wall.
Can this be done in Dynamo? Probably. I’d probably want it in C# as this could take some time to run.
Now the big question…
Why?
This is a major effort for seeming little payback, Is this something structural? What value does it add to the documents?
I’m wondering if making a copy of the view, setting the only visible objects to be the wall cores and going full transparency, with a dashed line style… Then overlay the view on the page for printing purposes.
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The Override Host Layers only works when a wall is cut in plan or section.
No - that won’t work.
Only option along those lines would be to create parts for each wall. It will be view-by-view. From there it will again be a lot of editing.
I thought they had individual walls for each layer already… or did I miss-read that? If so the isolation would be easy. Or I think it would… Really need a file to know.
we draw these lines only for the orthogonal walls,
the line in the top indicates the block work end as above the wall there is 20mm of plaster layer, sometimes we model it as floor, sometimes we model it inside a wall type by several methods.
Regarding your big question, I’m glad to give you the answer.
Our standards are to give the priority of illustration to the most earlier phases in the project, i’ll explain, now, structural elements have a priority on the block works which have a priority on the finishes.
this priority drives us to keep illustrating as far as we can the hidden important elements. so, from an architectural point of view we always need to see where are the blockwork edges, the site engineer need always to have this information as clear as we can, because block work is a priority as i mentioned, and if blockwork was constructed properly that means that all the later phases will be built on an accurate pre-phase.
you may ask, ok why don’t you illustrate the concrete structural model if it has the most priority as per our method.
the answer is, simply structural elements do not use architectural drawings for construction.
in addition, and the challenge is while we need to show the core of walls as hidden lines we cannot ignore or turn off the finishes layers (some firms in our region do this- but this is unacceptable for us) as finishes layers control and effect a lot of engineering details and relationships, so we need it and we need to illustrate the wall core lines (both)
we all know that engineering is not an easy job 
but we love it the most
actually i like this proposal, however there is no way to separate the non-core layers of walls in elevations…
or there is a way i don’t know ?
no, usually and for tender drawings, we model walls with finishes in the wall types, for LOD 400 or for workshop drawings we separate the wall finishes in another wall models
here is what i got until now, and i think this is a very good stage
but i still have some problems in the script
Elevations Hidden Lines.rvt (5.6 MB)
Elevations Hidden Lines v1.1.script.dyn (396.2 KB)
