Wall building lies at the heart of any project. Walls are grouped together into rooms, which are then grouped together to create a house (or houses). There are two ways to draw walls, "Free Draw" and "Fixed Draw". - Free Draw:
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To begin drawing walls, select the Walls button located on the Building Tab. When a new project is started, the wall tool is automatically selected. With the Wall tool selected, a stylus will appear under the mouse cursor when the mouse is moved over the scene. The stylus will point to the location on the ground where the wall will be drawn. The height of the stylus matches which story is being edited, e.g., the top of the stylus corresponds to the top of the wall. To start a wall, left click on the desired starting location. Drag the mouse to the desired end point and left-click again to complete the wall. The length of the wall is displayed on the property panel. After a wall is complete a new wall is started automatically. Walls can continue to be created, one after another, in this fashion. To stop drawing walls, press the Esc key or switch to a different tool. Non-Orthogonal Walls: By default, walls are drawn along the North-South or East-West axes and will form right angles to each other. While this is desirable for most walls, non-right angled walls can be created by holding the Shift key while building the wall. - Fixed Draw:
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To place a fixed wall, start by entering the wall length and angle. DreamPlan will then create a wall with these dimensions. Use the mouse to position the wall and left-click to place the wall. The same wall can be placed multiple times. Note that the wall length and angle can be changed at any time. When walls come together to form a closed space, a new room will be created with a floor and ceiling. - Wall Style:
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Wall style can be either "straight" or "curved", determined by which option is selected when creating a wall. When you draw a curved wall, it will initially appear to be straight. After drawing the wall, use the Select tool to select it. You will see a pink pin in the middle of the wall. Click and drag on this pin to curve the wall. - Snap points:
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"Snap points" are places, such as corners, when the engine detects a logical place to begin or end a wall. For instance, when a wall is drawn close to the end of another wall, the stylus will snap the walls together. This ensures walls are correctly aligned. However, this can sometimes get in the way when walls are close to each other but not actually connected. To disable snapping, hold the Ctrl key while moving the stylus. But do so with caution, because walls that appear to be connected may not be if snapping is disabled. - Wall types:
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On the wall control panel, a list of wall types is presented. For each story in the project, a default wall type is created. A wall type has the following properties: - Display Name: The name of the wall type.
- Height: The height of walls drawn when using this wall type.
- Width: The width of walls drawn when using this wall type.
- Room: Denotes if the wall is used to construct rooms. If marked "No", the wall is only decorative.
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