Modeling electrical wiring

[chee_dee]

Hi all

 

I'm doing a 3d Model of a House and the Electrical wiring there of in AutoCAD 2007.

 

I've drawn the wires as a ply line through the specific route, then do a circle at the beginning and then extrude it with the polyline a s the path. This works nicely but it takes up way too much space in the drawing.

 

Ant other suggestions how I can draw the wires in 3d?

 

Please.

[Attila The Gel]

Hi all

 

I'm doing a 3d Model of a House and the Electrical wiring there of in AutoCAD 2007.

 

I've drawn the wires as a ply line through the specific route, then do a circle at the beginning and then extrude it with the polyline a s the path. This works nicely but it takes up way too much space in the drawing.

 

Ant other suggestions how I can draw the wires in 3d?

 

Please.

 

Try to change the global width ot the plinesmaybe that would help?

 

no sorry that doesn't help

[Attila The Gel]

why actualy? isn't it enoug to know where it starts and where it ends just with a pline

[chee_dee]

I'm not sure u undastand what I wana achieve. I wana model a piece of electrical wire. Which may go in any direction.

[Attila The Gel]

The only thing i can come up with is to change the linewight thickness wich gives you a 3d like vieuw of the pline LWT hase to be on to see it tough.

 

again its not realy 3d solution but for me it could pass.

[chee_dee]

When I render the drawing, I cant see tose lines. So that won't work

[ReMark]

"This works nicely but it takes up way too much space in the drawing."

 

As I see it you only have one choice and that is to make the diameter of the wire smaller. It's just there to represent the path of the wire so the diameter really isn't critical. It's not like it will follow that route exactly when it is installed. The electrician will make the decision as how to run the wiring.

[shift1313]

i too am a little unclear. If you are drawing a house(to scale?) how are the wires taking up too much? is it making the file too large?

[chee_dee]

i too am a little unclear. If you are drawing a house(to scale?) how are the wires taking up too much? is it making the file too large?

 

Yes, When the house was done, the file was about 5Mb, I started putting in the wires, and after I put in abt 20 meters of wire, the file shot up to 9Mb... now its taking 4 minutes just to open the file.

 

hence I was wondering whether I can draw/model the wires in another way than extruding?

[ReMark]

Don't extrude them. Put the house wiring on a separate layer and give it the appropriate lineweight.

[shift1313]

the lineweight wont show up in a render will it remark? i think he mentioned wanting that. Well you can model your wires as a surface instead of a solid. Im not sure about a surface extrusion over a path, but i know if you draw a circle and go to properties you can give it a thickness. Hopefully someone can chime in with a solution to that. How is the house modeled? is everything a surface?

[ReMark]

Modelling house wiring is overkill. It is only necessary to indicate the location of the wall outlets, light switches and any overhead, hard-wired light fixtures and/or smoke detectors. Just because you can do it doesn't mean to have to do it.

 

shift: You're right, the wiring won't show up.

[mugshot]

any lines, how thick or thin, long or short, or how colorful it would. it will not show on render, unless it is being regioned or extruded... em i right guys?

[shift1313]

you are correct mugshot.

[chee_dee]

Modelling house wiring is overkill. It is only necessary to indicate the location of the wall outlets, light switches and any overhead, hard-wired light fixtures and/or smoke detectors. Just because you can do it doesn't mean to have to do it.

 

shift: You're right, the wiring won't show up.

 

 

Your right, but this is for a presentation for a new wiring system that I am preparing. So I HAVE to draw/model the wires

[ReMark]

Well then you better beef up your computer specs if you really want to model everything including the wiring. A better graphics card and more RAM are two places to start. Clean out your hard drive too and consider defragging it to help speed things up. One last, drastic measure, just run the OS and AutoCAD and nothing else. That means don't run your antivirus program or any other program in the background while your working.

[chee_dee]

Ok, thanks. guess there's no other way of modeling it then.

[SEANT]

Would a composite work? In other words, render the house with wire layer frozen; re-insert the resulting raster image aligned to the appropriate view; print with wire layer thawed.

 

Aligning everything correctly may be a pain in the ass. And pre-processing the vector wires via one of the usual WMFOUT/DXB PRINTER/ FLATSHOT(?) may also be required. All in all, however, it should be feasible.

[acidburn]

if you're really wanted to have a 3D model of your wires, you have to put you wire model in a separate file and xref it to you orig model, it will reduce the size of you orig model file.. I've have used this technique many time model complex and large file.. Its also act as my security method to model each phase in different file and combine everything using xref. I hope this help... if you really want to make ur wire visible on your rendered file, you have to make a 3D of it,

 

I just wonder why you need it on your visualization...!

[czc]

How about changing the settings of isolines. Like when you make circles only have 8 points instead of 32