I.
II.
Joining -
Walls can glom together into wallsets (in fact, a single wall by itself is it's own wallset). Every wall has the capacity to join to one and only one other wall at each end; a corollary to that is that a join involves exactly two walls, no more and no less. Wallsets may be open (the ends of the set are unjoined) or closed, forming a circuit (you know, that "no beginning, no end" romantic thing).
III.
Glomming - Walls glom together as a result of being drawn together, or their unmated ends being dragged into proximity of each other. Once joined they cannot be separated except by deleting one or the other of them, or the use of the TKE BreakAll PowerTool. Walls will glom when their unmated ends are dragged by a mouse into proximity, but not when nudged together. The act of glomming will always involve the extension and rotation of either or both walls, which is most disconcerting - this is where most CAD draftsmen throw up their hands in dispair with Punch!. However, once merged at each end, a wall will not move further unless selected and dragged or nudged. It's length can be fixed then by nudges or to an exact non-snap grid value.
IV.
Exterior Walls -
All the exterior walls on each floor should form one or more closed circuits for their features to work correctly. Those features which exterior walls have, but interiors walls do not, include:
- Providing an optional autofloor that extends throughout the inside of an exterior wall circuit.
- Providing an optional autofoundation footing. This is the only way to draw a foundation footing, too, which is not a really a good idea.
- excavating of the terrain surface from inside the walls (known as "cutting the grass"). In AS18 (v6.0) and before, the hole in the terrain that a house occupies is the size of the maximal extent of all the the exterior walls on all three floors. Starting in AS3000 (v7.0), only one floor may have the autofoundation turned on, and that floor determines the dimension of the terrain hole.
- not having base trim by default on the outside, and usually on the inside as well, though trim may be added or deleted manually in all cases.
- Providing the new version 8 Roof Designer with the clues on where to build and hang roof pieces, as well as the v10.0 ceiling/floor/soffit wall interface.
V.
Wall/Wallset Properties - Some wall properties are per wall, others are per wallset. Per wall properties include wall shape, heights and elevations, color/texture on each side, trim or lack thereof on each side. Wallset properties include wall thickness, interior/exterior type and trim coloration. Therefore, all walls in a wallset will have a common type and common thickness, but may have individual shapes, elevations and colors, but the same thickness and trim colors. These latter values will be shared by all the walls in a wallset.
Version 10.0 has chamged the trim type and textures/colors to the wall side of the ledger, and in fact has created separate values for each side of a wall. They are no longer wallset attributes.
VI.
AutoFloors - Exterior wallsets, only, have autofloors and autofoundation footings, which are optional. If optioned on, autofloors become further exterior wall properties, which include thickness and color on each side of the autofloor. The autofloor elevation is the same as that of the lowest wall of the wallset (the one with the lowest elevation), since elevation is a wall attribute. See the Ten Commandments of the Vertical for more information on how floors work with walls.
VII.
AutoFoundations - Autofoundation footings are nothing more than additional lines drawn on the foundation plan around exterior walls, visible only on the Foundation plans. There is no 3D aspect to these (or any other foundation items except for the walls and the slab, with one small, odd exception - deck post piers show up in the Framing PowerTool). After all, to be useful foundations features all have to be buried, and therefore invisible in any case. Since a real house may well use foundations and supporting walls internally, the Punch! tool is lacking in tying the definition of foundations walls to exterior walls like it has done; see The Ten Commandments of Punch! Philosophy for more discussion on this.
The autofoundation switch also serves, in v7.0 and higher, to turn on the grass cutting for that floor. These versions will only allow one floor to have the autofoundations on.
VIII< Breaking a Wall.
- Wall breaks (using the WallBreak tool or the BreakAll PowerTool) form two joined walls in a wallset where one was before. They can now be separately colored. Punch! has, since v4.5, supported teh BreakWall tool (on the Floor tab) for breaking a wall at any given point, and in v8.0 has added the +. and -. functions to add or delete points in most other structures (like floors or decks) as well. These suffer fomr a problem: if there is any attachments *doors, windows, etc) on a wall, it cannot be broken without removing the attachments. The BreakAll PowerTool by TKE avoids this problem, and can break or join walls containing attachments. It also can, exclusively, unjoin a pair of walls.
IX.
Attachments - Walls may have attachments, such as windows, doors, switches, sinks and baseboard heaters, all applied by the appropriate tab tools. Attachments travel with the wall, and their elevations are recorded relative to the wall's own elevation.
X.
Trim Problems - Wall trim /autofloor color/texture has long been a problem in Punch!. The autofloor bottom shares a color/texture with library paneling used in a wallset. The color of a specific trim, such as base trim, wainscot or library panel has to be the same for all walls in a wallset, and also on each side of those walls. [Note: as noted above, this color "bottleneck" has been eliminated in version 10 and forward. All trim color, on either side of the wall and with autofloor colors, are all completely separately assigned now, for each wall within a wallset, and each side separately.]
XI.
Holes in a Wall - The only way to make a hole in a wall is to add an uncased (untrimmed) door or window. Since window trim cannot be reduced to less than 1" width, doors are better. Surprisingly (or not), there is no problem in elevating a door above the wall's base. Note that this reduces the possibility for holes in the wall to rectangular holes only. [Note: AS4000 (v8.0) has overcome this problem with the advent of the custom door/window wizards, which can create odd shaped holes in walls, and can do so without any of the acoutrements of real doors/windows (like frames), if needed.]
XII.
Wall Shapes - Walls have a shape attribute, and four other measurements (two heights and two pitches) to support them. Proper manipulation of wall shapes can do some surprising things. For example, a right-triangular wall with the hypotenuse running from the lower left corner to the upper right corner, suitable for a dormer sidewall, can be produced from a type F (counting from the top or left) wall with the base height set to 1" and the length adjusted to be very small. Beware; some of these odd configurations will collapse into "broken" wall pieces. For this "dormer" wall in particular, get it oriented and placed correctly before making the base very small, because they are very difficult to manipulate in that state.
XIII.
Wall Uniquenesses - Walls have three unique properties (as opposed to all other objects):
- They support a class of Punch! items called "wall attachments", mentioned in article IX above. These include doors, windows, custom trim (in AS4000), sinks, the toilet, the base heater, switches and plugs, and a dimensions tool that specifically measures distances between walls. They can only be placed on a wall.
- Unlike other objects, the lasso will select whatever points of a wall set that are inside the lasso. All other object types must have all their points within the lasso to be selected at all.
- Exterior walls always visible on the foundation, floor, electrical, plumbing and HVAC plans on the floor they are drawn on. Interior walls reside on the floor plan, and are visible on all the same plans except for the foundation plan. The reason for walls being shown on those plans is that the plans support attachments that must have walls to attach to. Besides, it is traditional - without them you would have just a disconnected bunch of wall switches and other objects. All other objects belong to the plan they are drawn on or moved to, and appear on other plans based on the plan visibility selections.
XIV.
Sidedness - An attribute of walls, called "sidedness", determines on what side of a wall an attachment lies. This was of interest to programmers only, until version 8.0 brought out enhanced coloring of window and door frames. The two side of a frame can be colored differently; the frame color on the right side of the wall also colors the area between the frames, the "casement". The sidedness is determined by the way the wall was drawn; the starting point is the wall start, and the right side of the wall is the one on the right while looking down the wall from the starting point. This means that the casement color is controlled by the direction the wall was drawn in.
Unfortunately, that is not the whole story. A wall's sidedness can be changed when it joins another wall, as sidedness is one of the attributes of a wallset rather than a wall. Which part of a join controls the other depends on their respective ages. This fact causes a lot of problems fot programmers, and is therefore the font of a lot of errors. [Thanks to David B of Australia for pointing out the existance of this difference.]
XV.
Appearances - Walls, as we have seen, come in a variety of shapes and have loads of properties for coloring themselves and their sutofloors and trim. However, wall edges are a problem. Edges may not be colored (or rather, they can be colored, but they will not remember it the next time the plan is opened. In most wall end the edges are flat, but in the joined edges (where exposed due to elevation/height differences) the edges are mitred.
The top and bottom edgtes of a wall are left open by Punch!. This causes problems with retaining and low walls that are intended to be loweer than eye level and uncapped. A cap can easily be constructed by using a manual floor of low (like 1/4") thickness.
XVI.
Repairing an Incorrect Exterior Wall - After a building is built and it is found that the exterior walls are incorrect, how should one fix it? Here is a quicky tutorials on what to do. The following plan was sent to me:
