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At Rill & Decker Architects we run ArchiCAD on Mac OS X. If you work at Rill & Decker, this is your stuff. If you don't, but you work in ArchiCAD, you may find something interesting. Anybody else, I don't know.
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Start with a polygon wall in the shape of the firebox and chimney plan. The height should be the height of the firebox opening. The fill should be rubble, assuming stone veneer.


1 Stone polygon wall

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Instead of cutting a hole all the way through the grade mesh, use slabs on the X Site Cutting layer to subtract material to the proper depth.

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Place layout lines where you plan to split the wall.

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Once you've got the stair hole, try the same trick on a chimney:


Stone chimney, brick flue

Like this...

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Solid Element Operations allow you to modify the geometry of one element using the geometry of another. You can add volume, subtract volume, get the intersection of two volumes, or subtract upwards or downwards with a volume.

SEOs make several things that used to be hard easy (true roof thicknesses with nice eaves), and some things that used to be practically impossible possible (differing materials at a slab's perimeter and a hole).

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As follows...

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Here goes...

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When you put a regular hole in a slab, the hole edge material is the same as the slab outer edge. This is a problem, since the slab can't clean up to walls of different materials. Using SEOs instead makes it possible to have a different material at a hole. The key is the option for new surfaces of target to 'inherit attributes of operator.'

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Update: In AC10, they made some changes to wall cleanup that simplify this process quite a bit.

Yes. Perfect. If you're into that sort of thing. It takes some doing.

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