The Arch Workbench can be confusing, taking it a piece at a time with the most simple constructions can help to flatten the learning curve. The Arch work bench is primarily for industrial use and therefore is centered around cement blocks. It is generally not a tool for residential housing ( as far as I can understand.)
I don’t recommend using the Arch workbench until you have a pretty good grasp of Draft. Many of the Arch workbench tools rely on an understanding of at least the working plane.
For this Tutorial we will start by Build a single freestanding Wall.
Start with a Line.
We will use the Draft Line tool for the basis of the wall which will be single line.
Bring up the Arch Workbench
Select the Draft Line Tool and make certain the Grid Snap is activated. Check that the view is on Top and the Working Plane is on Top.
Add a line by clicking the starting point and the the ending point. It’s location and length are not important now, but to make it easier lets just draw it along the “X” axis in the center. The grid snap, will make it easier to locate the line.
Make a Wall
At this point, you can add a wall simply by selecting your line and clicking the Wall tool. The wall can be created without being in abuilding.
Lets show the blocks.
In the Data Tab scroll until you find the Block Height and Block Length properties. Set the height to .5 feet and the length to 1 ft. ( Or whatever length and width suits your location. )
Now find the Offset First property and set that to .5 feet.
Finally set the Joint to .75 in to allow for mortar. You can type .75 in and it will be converted to feet.
That is our basic wall
Changing the Wall
We can modify the length and position of the wall but we cannot add egdes.
To easily edit the Line
Select the wall in the history tree, press space to hide the wall.
Change your view so you are looking directly at the plane the line is sitting on. In our case we can set the view to Top.
Double Click the “Line” in the Model Tree, to begin editing.
Click one of the white squares and drag it to a new position. The white squares can, at times, be difficult to select. The white square will dis-appear when succesfully selected. You will see a thinner line depicting where the new point will be placed.
Close the “Line” edit mode by clicking Close in the Tasks tab.
Click the wall in the history tree and press the space bar to unhide the new wall.
To get a better view Click the isometric View, Hide your Grid and Click the fit to window.
In this case, the only visible change is how the wall is oriented in it’s bounding box.
In future articles we can look at more complex walls. There are some caveats and workarounds, that will need to be addressed.