Having discussed how the user can use the measurements that HighRise gives them, we can now discuss the automated measurement adjustments that HighRise will attempt to do. These follow immediately after Phase 2 is completed by pressing the Finish button.
Note that these adjustments do not include setting the individual floor Ceiling Heights, The PowerTool interface does not allow them to be changed, so they still must be done manually as the Using the Settings inside Punch! page suggests.
There are four checkboxes on the second dialog page which we skipped over earlier. They are enabled (not grayed out) if the drawing contains any examples of the four objects that HighRise can work with: exterior and interior walls, floors (as floors or ceilings) and roofs. The checkboxes will always appear on the second page initially not checked. It is always up to the user to check those items that they want HighRise to automatically adjust.
When HighRise starts the automatic adjustment process, it will ask if the user wants to keep a log of the changes made. It is a very good idea to have such a log, for many reasons. If an error is made, the change log is valuable data about what was intended, so it can send it back to TKE as evidence that the program made an incorrect edit. The user may want the log just to know what edits were done. If the user requests a log, the program opens a file-open dialog so that the file the user wishes to receive the log may be determined; after that the log keeping is entirely silent.
It is nearly impossible to guess all the ways that these objects may be used in a drawing - for example, a floor piece may be used in landscaping to cover the backside of a retaining wall, or to finish off the open top of the retaining wall itself. In view of all the possible uses for these objects, it is inadvisable to simply turn HighRise loose to adjust everything on the plan; rather, HighRise will hunt for the checked-off objects, and as it finds them, it will suggest the changes and ask whether they should be done or not. A dialog will only appear if HighRise finds a value that is at odds with its computed values for wall elevation and height, for instance.
The problem with doing this is that there is no way at the present to identify unambiguously an object in a plan. Ideally it would be done by highlighting it on a plan drawing, but such will have to wait a while. In the interim, HighRise identifies objects as shown in the following dialog examples. Remember that these only appear if the appropriate checkbox was checked and if there is a difference between what the object's measurements and those computed for it in HighRise.
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The first dialog cites the discovery of a wallset (it may be interior or exterior). It mentions the number of walls in the wallset, whether it is open or closed, and the coordinates of the center of the wallset. These center coordinates are measured in inches (or millimeters, for those of metric persuasions) of scaled space with the center (0/0) at the center of the lot. A rough visualization of the grid system may be had by going to Options->Grid Properties->Grid Spacing->Grid Dots/Lines and setting the Grid spacing to 500" (the widest it will accept), and checking off (Options->Grid Visible). Positive values of the first parameter are to the right of the center point, and positive values of the second parameter is measured upwards from the center on the plan window. For example, a wall that starts at 350/-500 will be located .7 grid blocks to the right and 1 grid block below the center of the drawing, at the 500"x500" grid spacing.
A wallset may be adjusted in elevation and in autoFloor thickness. Below the description are two buttons; press Yes to adjust the wallset as suggeested, and No to skip over it.
The second dialog records the discovery of an individual wall within a wallset. This dialog will only be seen after the wallset dialog has been answered with a Yes above. A No answer will skip all the walls in the skipped wallset. It identifies an individual wall by its number within the wallset, by a character in square brackets which approximates the direction the wall extends in, and again, the wall's center coordinates. The character in the brackets may be one of: -, /, | or \, which indicates approximately the direction of the wall on the plan. The Yes button here will make the suggested adjustments to the wall. Suggested changes for walls always include the wall's height and individual elevation. (Note that each wall within a wallset may have an individual elevation, though this would be rarely used.)
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For floor objects, we must first determine whether a floor is really a floor or a ceiling on the indicated plan level. Floors designated as ceilings only occur on the topmost floor (in HighRise), and also to close a room when the floor above it is recessed and therefore not covering the entire ceiling space, so the first dialog only happens in that case. Note the Cancel button on this dialog; if it is pressed, the floor will be dropped from adjustment consideration. Once that is determined, then the second dialog explains the adjustments and asks whether to alter them. Adjustments to floors and ceilings consider their elevations and thicknesses.
Finally, roofs are considered (although they aren't necessarily last - objects are considered by floor and then by approximately their time of creation). It will be called a primary or secondary roof depending on whether it was located on the top floor or otherwise. The elevation and the pitch may be considered for adjustment.
As we stated at the beginning, HighRise is designed to be used when starting a new project, and so these automatic setting options would not ever be called (the checkboxes on the preceding window would be grayed out). However, with the addition of these editing features, the program may be profitably used later in a project, or even multiple times. The user must be careful, though, that only objects that need to be updated are updated, and it may be wise to make a copy before this sort of editing. As far as Punch! is concerned, all the edits are done at once, and a single undo after running HighRise will completely reverse all the effects of running HighRise.
HighRise and the contents of this help file are
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