5. Editing Profile Attributes, Shapes, and Paths

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In this tutorial, we’ll cover more about profile attributes, including getting profile member attributes, and assigning attributes to edited profile members. We”ll also cover the Trim to Face operation, editing profile shapes, and editing profile paths.

We’ll start with this model, continuing from the previous tutorial in which exterior walls were added. Interior walls are marked in red on the plan.

 

Add a new layer for interior walls.

Create a new rectangular profile for interior walls that measures 4” x 11’. Use Bottom Left placement, keep the default material for now, and set the layer to the one for interior walls. Use Butt Joint junctions, so that each wall will be created as a separate profile member. This will make it easier later to make changes to individual walls. And keep Normal extrude mode. 

Click Build and start tracing along the interior wall lines, ignoring cuts for doors. Use the arrow or Shift keys to lock directions, and press Esc after completing each set of walls. In this example, the closet walls in the lower right corner were purposely left out. It can become hard to keep track of which build direction matches the profile placement point, so some wall lines may fall on the wrong side.

 

When finished, you can Shift-select all of the walls that are on the wrong side, which is easiest to do while in Top view and Parallel projection. Right-click on a wall you want to switch and choose Profile Builder / Reverse Selected. 

 

 

Now everything matches the floor plan, though there are some wall junctions that need to be fixed. We’ll see how to do this a bit farther on.

 

 

Go back to Perspective view. 

Now let’s say we want to change the properties of these walls. Add a light blue color to the model. (It’s often helpful to change color or material names to make them recognizable.) Set this new color in the Profile Dialog, and reduce the interior wall height to 10’.

Select one of the walls, click Edit Member Properties, and apply all properties. Now this single wall group is blue and a foot shorter.

 

But say we want to change all interior walls, not just one. To get the original interior wall attributes back in the Profile Dialog, click Get Attributes.

 

 

Then click any of the original interior walls. The Profile Dialog now displays all of the attributes of the wall you clicked. 

Now we want to select all profile members with these original attributes, in order to change them to have the new attributes. To do this, click Select Members by Attributes.This tool selects all profile members in the model whose specified attributes match what’s currently in the Profile Dialog.

 

If you choose only to select members with the same placement point, rotation, and mirror, you’ll get all profile members in the model, including exterior walls and the modified interior wall.

If you clear the selection and select by attribute again, this time adding Profile to the checklist, you’ll get all interior walls, including the modified one. This is because the modified wall still has the same profile name. 

So clear and select attributes again, this time also check Material, to differentiate between the two types of walls. 

 

 

(Or you can just select all properties, so that everything selected will be an exact match.) 

Now all original walls are selected, but not the modified one. 

 

 

Now set light blue again for the material, reduce the height again, edit member properties, and apply to change them all at once. 

 

For another useful application of Get Attributes, let’s say you close and reopen the model. But you didn’t save the interior wall profile, so it’s not listed anymore in the Profile Dialog. If you need to add two more walls for the closet in the corner, just click Get attributes, click a wall you want to copy, click Build, and add in the walls for the closet. 

To fix wall junctions, click Trim to Face. 

 

 

The first click, indicated by the 1 on the cursor, is the face to trim to, which will be this wall. 

 

 

Next comes click 2, the profile member to trim, which is this wall. 

 

 

You can click more walls which need to be trimmed to the same face.

 

 

Press Esc to reset back to Click 1, then continue clicking sets of faces and walls to trim until all junctions look good. This tool works for extending profile members as well. 

 

To make a change to the profile shape of a profile member, in this case the exterior walls, first double-click the profile member while the Select tool is active. 

 

 

Then click Edit Profile. 

 

The original profile appears within its own group, in a head-on view and full-screen zoom. 

 

 

You can make any change you want to this profile, as long as it remains a single 2D face. Keep in mind that if you make the face wider, such as by adding a small step along the left edge, this will also move the Bottom Left placement point farther to the left. Which will, in turn, affect the placement of the entire profile member relative to its path. 

 

 

But if instead you add some small cutouts along the left edge, the placement point will remain as it.

 

When finished, right-click and choose Close Group. You’ll be asked if you want to make this change only to the profile member you opened, or to all of the profile members with the same name. In this case, the exterior walls are all in one group, so both options have the same result. The details you added appears along the entire profile member. 

 

 

Finally, you can also change the path of a profile member. Double-click the same set of exterior walls, and click the Edit Path icon. 

 

 

It’s easier to see the profile path when the rest of the model is hidden. You can do this in the View / Component Edit menu, and we highly recommend setting up a shortcut for this, since you’ll want a quick way to toggle the model on and off while editing profile members. (Keyboard shortcuts can be set up in the Preferences window, on the Shortcuts tab.)

 

Change the walls by adding a new bump-out; even if you leave a face within the path you’ll still get the correct results. Also add a new set of three attached walls, as well as a separate path for four new walls.

 

 

When you close the path group, you’ll be notified that multiple paths were found - click OK. 

 

If any of the exterior walls are now facing the wrong way, Shift-select them and reverse them.