Window Trouble

smorales02 · 7 Oct 2008, 01:34

How do I go about placing a window on my model and actually having it to where you can see through it and not just placed on the face of the wall??

Hazza · 7 Oct 2008, 02:00

Hide everything but the wall and window.
Edit the wall component
Select "Edit -> Intersect -> Intersect with model"
Delete the parts you don't need.

I have attached a tut model.

window-tut.skp

smorales02 · 7 Oct 2008, 02:22

Awesome...one question though,what exactly does clicking the wall and intersecting it with model do?

Also why is it that my walls are a blue shade and when I insert a component or creat a new face it is white??/ What does that mean?

Tobobo · 7 Oct 2008, 07:27

The blue/white face is SU telling you front and back of a face. Blue is the internal face and white the external face. It only make a real difference if you are going to use a rendering programme like podium, vray etc. It is good discipline to get into keeping the blue side of the face on the inside of the object

Hazza · 7 Oct 2008, 12:37

@smorales02 said:

Awesome...one question though,what exactly does clicking the wall and intersecting it with model do?

Here is another tut for you. If you want to know why you need to edit the wall instead of just clicking it. Use the first tut and do the following:

In scene 1, select the wall
Do "Intersect with model"
Hide the wall.
Look at the windows edges.
Undo it all.
Edit the wall and select all (Ctrl + A).
Do "Intersect with model"
Close the wall and hide it.
Have a look at the windows edges now.

intersect-tut.skp

smorales02 · 7 Oct 2008, 15:34

Thanks for the tuts, its starting to make sense to me know.

As far as the color of faces go...the outside walls should be blue and everything inside the house white??? If so how do i make that happen..right now evrything is blue

pbacot · 7 Oct 2008, 15:49

They mean the surfaces that will be seen by the camera in the finished models should be the white faces. Surfaces hidden inside objects or facing the ground etc. should be blue. You change by hold-down right-clicking on object and choosing "reverse faces" in the pull down menu. It is also in the Face submenu under Edit (on a Mac anyway), once you have the face(s) selected. As noted this becomes more important when you go on to rendering the model in a different program.

So if you use two surfaces to make a wall, you will see white inside the house and out. You should only see the blue when you are inside the thickness of the wall itself.

Sounds like you might select all and use "reverse faces", but review the model right after to see if this looks right, so you can undo.

smorales02 · 7 Oct 2008, 16:12

Thats what I was thinking about doing (select all) just wasnt sure if that wast the right way to go. So when I Push/Pull a wall up the two sides of the wall (interior and exterior) should be white, and the face showing the thickness should be blue correct??

How does SU know what to shade what?? is there a setting or do you just have to keep an eye out for it and adjust as you go??

Jean Lemire · 7 Oct 2008, 18:13

Hi Smorales02, hi folks.

See this SU file for ideas.

Window in thick wall.skp

pbacot · 7 Oct 2008, 18:15

SU apparently doesn't know which face to make which color. There are ways of predicting how SU will assign the faces, but there's differing opinions on how reliable these are (from discussions I've read here). Just observe.

In your comment about the thickness of the wall... not necessarily. It just may be that the top of the wall (seen without a roof) is blue, If the surface is not to be seen normally then don't worry about it. If it is a garden wall you'll want it to be white so you can add texture and render it later. I wouldn't worry about it too much if you are not rendering but, as they say, it's good practice--besides it looks better to have all faces in the model one color, while you're working on it.

EDIT --Jean is the experienced one, check his post. Great tutorial, Jean. That should be a standard SU Help video.

smorales02 · 7 Oct 2008, 19:31

Eventually I would like to try rendering it, so in the mean time I will just make the faces that are to be seen white and as I get the model looking better I will post it and get opinions on it.

Thanks for the replies

Hazza · 8 Oct 2008, 01:43

When you push/pull a face you make a solid, when you go "inside" the solid you should see the faces are blue.

White is the colour of the "outside" of the solid, blue is the "inside" of the solid. Within SU it does not matter, you can put a texture on the inside face with no problems.

When you use a program external to SU is when the inside/outside faces issue becomes a problem. What's the point of rendering the "inside" right? You will end up with strange results and holes in the model where there should not be any.

Have a look at the following model, they look identical right? Now go "View -> Face style -> Monochrome"

The left block will render fine, the right will not because it's "inside out".

inside-out-tut.skp