I have create 4 new courses for Vectorworks 2017:
These are not like the manuals I have previously written, these are online courses that use video to teach you. The courses are broken up into logical chapters and some chapters have several movies. When you have compeleted the lesson, you can move to the next lesson and so on until the course is completed.
Vectorworks spaces have the ability to create and read Adjacency Matrices. OK, but what are they and how do you read one. In simple terms, the Adjacent Matrix tells you the relationship between rooms. The Adjacancy Matrix uses and scale from o to 5. 0 means that the rooms have no need to be near each other, 5 means that the rooms have a strong relationship.
For example, the relationship between the master bedroom and ensuite bathroom might have a number 5 relationship, they should be next to each other.
In this example we will use the master bedroom. We want to find the relationship between the master bedroom and the ensuite. Start with the the room name and follow this to the right. Now follow the diagonal down.
Now go to the other room, in this case the ensuite. Follow this room to the right and follow the diagonal until you intersect the diagonal from the other room.
The next example is the relationship between the master bedroom and the double bedroom. Start with the the master bedroom and follow this to the right, then follow the diagonal down. Now go to the other room, in this case the double bedroom. Go to the right and follow the diagonal until you intersect the diagonal from the master bedroom.
In this example the relationship is a -, or no relationship. So if I was the designer, I would make sure that these rooms are not near each other.
My final example is the relationship between the master bedroom and the outdoor area. If you follow the matrix you find that the score is 3. This means that the rooms have to be close to each other. You have to be able to easily access the outdoor area from the bedroom, but they do not have to be right next to each other.
Once you have this Adjacency Matrix, you can use many other Vectorworks tools and commands to create spaces, create a concept design, and later on, use the spaces to create the walls.
There are two things that you may not think that Energos requires. The first is that Energos needs to have a Heliodon in the same design layer as the walls. It uses this Heliodon it on to find the location of the site. It needs have the location of the site because the climate data changes from location to location. The other thing that you may not have thought of is that Energos requires spaces. It requires the spaces so that it knows which rooms or parts of the building are habited, and it also needs these spaces to calculate the volume.
In this example I'm using the Circular Stair tool (remember this is part of the legacy tools that you will have to add to your workspace). Like the simple stair, the curve stair allows you to create a quick curving stair, which I find is useful for concept drawings where you do not want focus too much on the detail. The Object Info palette has all of the options that you need for the stair.
Energos doesn't just look at the insulation on your walls, it looks that the entire project and looks at the properties of all of the components of your walls, slab, and roof. This means that if you want to use Energos to analyse the energy in your building you have to set up your project correctly. Walls have to be drawn correctly, rooms have to be connected to the walls, and slabs have to be properly constructed. Of course this is using common BIM principles so setting up the project should also include making sure that your stories, layers, and levels are also well considered. It might seem like this is a lot of work to set up a project, but these are the things that you should be doing already because using these BIM principles will speed up your workflow from concept to contract documentation.
• Here is our situation. We want a window between the 2 roofs.
