5.3. Editing plan view<br>

## 5.3. Editing plan view

### 5.3.1. Basic rules

The main stage of editing construction is the drawing of the arrangement of rooms using the “Wall” and “Curved wall” components. Room may be of any shape. After acquiring some skills you’ll be able to draw the construction quite fast, and the effort made at this stage will facilitate and speed up the process of designing the system and calculating heat losses.

Before starting to draw the construction, look to the current program settings. It is advisable to enable the AUTO and ORTO modes, which will enable fast and efficient inserting of walls into the project. If there are many walls arranged diagonally at the same angle, you can specify that angle in the ORTO mode.

¨ To change the value of the additional angle in the ORTO mode, select “Options / General data (F7)”, select the “Edit” tab and enter the required value in the “Assist” field.

When editing construction it is useful to activate the REP mode. When this mode is enabled, after inserting one wall, the mode of inserting that component is retained. Otherwise it is necessary to use the F3 key (repeat last item).

Drawing of the floor plan starts by inserting subsequent walls. A wall in the program must be a straight segment, if the actual wall has deflections, then it should be made up from several “Wall” type components. The walls that you place in the drawing have to be joined with those that are already on the drawing. The wall may be joined with the middle or one of the ends of an existing wall.

All operations described below are carried out on the “Construction” layer.

¨ To draw a wall:

1. Click the button on the “Components” toolbar. The wall-inserting mode is enabled.

2. Position the mouse pointer at the spot where the end of the wall is to be located. You can specify the co-ordinates of this point by moving the mouse pointer or by double clicking on the status bar in the area of co-ordinate display – then you will be able to enter the required co-ordinates of the point. If the wall is to be joined with another wall displayed in the drawing, position the mouse pointer at the end or on the axis of the existing wall. In the AUTO mode the proposed point of joining the new wall is indicated by a cross:

3. Press the left mouse button. Wall inserting starts at the position of the mouse pointer.

4. Move the mouse pointer to the spot where the wall end is to be located. The same rules as above apply if you want to join the end of the wall to an existing wall. When the ORTO mode is enabled, you can only place walls at angles of 0°, 90° or at other additional angle specified in general data. When you are inserting a wall, the length and angle fields (if the data table is enabled) display current values, that is the values that will be assigned if you click on the current spot to indicate the end point. This field may be edited when placing walls, so the length and angle can be specified.

5. Press the left mouse button again to indicate the end point. The wall is now inserted.

6. You can make use of auxiliary lines when drawing a room. If you have two walls in the drawing and you want to draw the third wall, you do not have to operate the mouse precisely in order to maintain adequate distance. When you move the mouse pointer onto wall axis, auxiliary broken lines are displayed. The wall is automatically attracted to these lines.

7. The REP mode facilitates the process of inserting components of the same type. You can use when inserting subsequent walls. When that mode is enabled, the selected type of component (e.g. a wall) is inserted until you press the right mouse button.

You can modify the walls that are already on the drawing: by dragging one of the ends of the wall you can change the length or the angle of the wall, you can also move the entire wall.

! When you move a wall in the ORTO mode you cannot change its angle. To change the angle you have to disable the ORTO mode.

! It is possible that in the AUTO mode the proposed point of connection causes slight inclination of the wall being inserted, making it difficult to place, for instance, a horizontal wall. In this case the operation of joining the walls must be done with the AUTO mode disabled. You can do this by pressing and holding the Shift key:

! Remember that to join a new wall to an existing wall with the AUTO mode disabled, the mouse pointer must be positioned on the wall axis exactly

Special attention must be paid to the wall joining mechanism. It functions like the one used for pipe feeds or pipe-runs in the graphical editor – the point of connection of walls is indicated by a small solid square, whereas a wall end that is not connected to another wall is indicated by a larger empty square. Moreover, joined walls, as opposed to those that are not joined, have their outlines drawn properly:

– example of joined walls,

– example of walls that are not joined.

Sometimes there is a need to separate joined walls – for instance, in order to move one of them without modifying other walls. In this case, instead of deleting the wall, you can separate it from other walls and modify it.

¨ To separate a wall from other walls, mark it and select “Components / Disconnect” (Ctrl+R).

Each area enclosed by walls is automatically recognised as a room. This is indicated by the appearance of a room label in the geometric centre of the room and by the crosshatching of the room area. If the data table is displayed, the room data fields appear.