Friday 23 September 2011

Using the Plan Region Tool

So you have created a transom window in a wall and placed the sill above your view cut plane (4'-0")... you wont be able to see your window in plan view even though you'll be able to see it on the model.

  
You have a couple of options, you could raise the cut plane but that goes against the rules of drafting. your other option is to use the Plan Region tool.

The Plan Region tool lets you define a region within a plan view that has a different view range from the overall view. Plan regions are useful for split level plans or for displaying inserts above or below the cut plane. Plan regions are closed sketches and cannot overlap each other.


Draw a boundary for your plan region and then in the properties you can then specify the cut plane height that is assigned to that plan region.

You will now be able to see your transom window in the plan view.

This tool can not only be used for windows that are above your cut plane but to accurately show pony walls that are higher than your cut plane, to show floors that may be on another level (similar to a split level home) or even objects below your floor level.
 

Here's how to create a plan Region courtesy of WikiHwlp.

Plan region in a floor plan
Plan regions are view-specific. You can copy and paste them into the same view or different views. When you copy a plan region into a different view, the view range settings are maintained from the previous view. Plan regions export and print when they are visible in a view.

Creating a Plan Region
  1. Open a plan view.
  2. Click View tab > Create panel > Plan Views drop-down (Plan Region).
  3. Sketch a closed loop using lines, rectangles, or polygons.
  4. On the properties palette for View Range, click Edit.
  5. In the View Range dialog, specify the primary range and view depth.
If the value for Cut Plane is specified as Parent View’s Level, then the level used to define all the clip planes (Top, Bottom, Cut, and View Depth) is the same as for the entire plan view.
Note: Values for offsets need to make sense with respect to each other. For example, the top offset cannot be lower than the cut plane offset, and the cut plane offset cannot be lower than the bottom offset.

  1. Click OK to exit the View Range dialog.
  2. On the Mode panel, click (Finish Edit Mode).
You do not have to enter sketch mode to edit the shape of a plan region. Each boundary line of the plan region is a shape handle, as shown in the following image. Select the shape handle and drag it to modify the size.

 Controlling Visibility of Plan Regions

  1. Click View tab > Graphics panel (Visibility/Graphics), or type the shortcut key combination VG.
  2. In the Visibility/Graphics dialog, click the Annotation Categories tab.
  3. Scroll to the Plan Region category.
  4. Select or clear the check box to show or hide the plan region.
  5. Click in the Projection/Surface Lines column, and click Override to make changes to the line weight, line color, and line pattern of the plan region.
Click OK.

4 comments:

  1. When I do this, I find that items that are outside the plan area but within a certain distance to its edge show up even though they are below the view range for the area they are in.
    Easy fix, possibly?

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  2. I just looked at it and couldn't find an easy fix that I know of. It sounds like it's acting like a annotation scope box associated to the view scope box ... but view range doesn't have an annotation box, and these elements you mention are not annotation objects.. so I'm mystified!
    Just have to play with the sketch of the view range box. Let me know if you find a solution though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. David M.

    Thank you. This will save me enormous amounts of time raising and lowering windows, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I struggled for a long time getting "some" Plan Regions around windows to work properly, while others with the same settings didn't seem work as well. The problem was that while all of the plan regions displayed the proper window opening... some of them would display the window object, while others would not, rather there would just be a cut in the wall but no window graphic. The problem I discovered was not making the Plan Region big enough around the window, particularly in the interior/exterior directions. After I simply made the offending regions a little bit bigger, the window graphic suddenly appeared. Hope this helps someone.

    ReplyDelete