Architectural Blocks

A while back someone from Chief said they were working on some improvements to the Architectural Blocks tool, or feature set.

Since then I have taken a second look at using Architectural Blocks for some of the applications that I would like to use solids for. This is a very good tool, and it could be even better for what I would like to use it for with a few additional options.

The two things that are the most time consuming issues that I run into are the way the program merges solid objects when their surfaces are co-planar. I talked to tech support and they said this was intentionaly programed this way. There has to be some separation between the objects for this effect not to occur.

I would like to see an option added so that surfaces would not merge if that is required for the task at hand. I have a pic that shows what I am talking about. In the lower left corner of the 3D overview the small block is shown merged. The block is actually separated from the surrounding objects, but the program still merged it.

It would also be very helpful to be able to apply a fill to both Architectural Blocks and Solids. It was mentioned before that the developers found it helpful when they were presented with a particular problem users were trying to solve so they could better relate to the requested features.

I posted this here in the general forum because I was curious as to how many people are actually using the Architectural Blocks feature and why they do or do not use the feature.

Rod,

If you edit the 3D objects so that they don't have the same material or layer then the surfaces will not merge.

I don't use Architectural Blocks that much since I am more inclined to create a Symbol. However, Architectural Blocks do allow you to maintain the Layers of the individual pieces while Symbols don't (which IMO is a shortcoming of the Create Symbols Tool.

I had not tried changing the layers yet. Thanks

I agree that layer control on symbols would be very useful.

Layers do not seem to be working for me, at least so far. Changing the material type worked great. Thanks again.