Aligning House & Boundary

[Burgo]

In the attached image, I am trying to align the eastern wall of the house to the boundary so that it is exactly 1200mm from the boundary line. I have tried to rotate the house but cannot get the precise alignment. Is there a simple way to do this. Any help would be appreciated.

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Bob,

Personally I think I would be doing the opposite, aligning the boundary to the house. If you need to alter the house later it will be very difficult to get things straight it it does not align to the top of the screen. Normally plans are drawn with the house parallel to the paper and a North pointer just indicates the direction.

I have not tried this with boundary lines but I think when you rotate something you can enter the angle of rotation in the Commander bar can't you? I am not at home to be able to check that at present.

Allan

[Burgo]

Hello Allan, I have tried to align the boundaries to the house but this is proving to be also difficult to achieve, the other problem is that all the bearings change to reflect the new position, which is a bit of an issue. Yes you can enter the angle of rotation but getting the precise angle is very difficult to achieve. I thought there may be a trick to aligning house and boundary line, or maybe not.

[Doug.S]

A possible solution that may work for some desired views (but not for scenes showing terrain as grass) is to create an image of the site boundary (such as a good .jpg created in Photosop or Illustrator or similar program) and apply that to the terrain as a texture instead of "grass"; and align by using texture alignments.

You will have full control of the image, dimensions, notes, etc. and colors etc.

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Bob,

I thought there may be a trick to aligning house and boundary line, or maybe not.

Sorry - not that I know about - but I have never used Site Boundaries.
You could of course just use the Line tool and draw a line alongside the boundary line, then move it over 1200 using the Nudge tool. You would then have a precise line to match to and can Object Snap to it but you would still have the problem of getting the rotation angle correct.

Allan

[Burgo]

Allan, thanks for the reply. This is a difficult one. I cannot see the point of Site Boundaries if you cannot properly site a building on the allotment. Also if you line up the site boundaries square with the building the bearing coordinates change to reflect the rotation. Will just have to work in TC with this one.

[Doug.S]

Please be aware that if you align the house to its correct rotation angle to/from true north (not magnetic north), you will get sun shadows that render OK. 

If you keep the house at square to North and rotate the boundary lines (which is the better solution so house walls are easy to keep squared/90degrees) then the shadows will render wrong, BUT you can change the sun angle position in render setup to make shadows render in correct angles anyway.

Best to make a setup and render a few checks....such as a tall column casting a shadow to ensure the shadows are correct for the location, date, time etc.  Verify by comparing to a real photo which you know is correct.

Of course if shadow position correctness is unimportant to you, then you can ignore above.

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Bob,

Try this:

Use the Layout Line tool and draw a Line 1200 from your boundary.

Select the full house and move it over so that one corner is exactly on the 1200mm Line at the point wherethat corner should be.
Turn off GridSnap and AngleSnap and turn of ObjectSnap.
Select Rotate and choose the corner that you moved onto the Line.
Rotate the house until the Wall lines up with the 1200mm line.
Delete the line.

Not ideal as you still have to control the rotate (unless you know the angle to enter) but I found it worked quite well.

Allan

[Burgo]

Thanks Doug and Allan for your input. I will experiment and let you know the results.

[Robu]

Hi All, this is my 1st post so I hope I get it right!

To easily align your wall to the boundary you can use the setback box in the site boundary edge properties box & set it to 1200mm.
You'll then have a line 1200mm inside the boundary to which you can snap your wall once it's rotated.

However, as Doug & Allan say, it's much easier if your walls and boundary are aligned with the screen edges to keep everything square by snapping ortho.
The attached shows an example of your situation.
To achieve this you need to do the following:

1. Set Angles Precision in units of measure to #.###
2. Set north direction angle to 318.331 in Global Settings
3.Set Bearing Format in Site Boundaries Settings to Angle Bearing.
4. Set Ortho on

When you draw your site boundary line from your peg1 to peg 2 it should go horizontally right to left but will be notated at 311 degrees 40'08".
You then add your other site lines using the commander to enter exact lengths & angles.

Once that's done you can align your wall using the setback as above.

If you want to show the North Arrow you have to import one then rotate it to 41.669 degrees.

Hope this works for you.

Rob

[Burgo]

Rob, many thanks for the post, it is an interesting method which I will try and let you know the results.
Thanks Bob

[Burgo]

Rob, your method works in principle, but the bearings are not exactly correct and are out by several minutes because you cannot enter a decimal point in the global settings, it appears to accept only whole numbers.
Bob

[Robu]

Hi Bob,
Did you do step 1. ie in Units of Measure settings, set the Precision of Angles to  #.###
as per attached.
Then you should be able to enter the decimal point.
Hope so,
Rob

[Burgo]

Rob, many thanks, that worked. Just one question, how did you calculate the north direction angle? Also, when I entered 1200 mm in the setback box a line did not appear as shown on your site boundary example. Perhaps I am doing something wrong.
Bob

[Robu]

Bob, if the Setback line doesn't show I can only think that you need to check in the Site Boundaries setting for Lines that Setback Line is set to something visible.

OK calculating the North angle, hope you have a degree in maths (I don't ) or have studied navigation (I have ).

In order to get your 1st boundary line to run horizontal on screen it has to be rotated to match the normal 270^o line.

So subtract 270 from 311.669 (which is 311^o 40'08" converted to decimal) which gives 41.669. That is how much you have to rotate North.

As you're rotating in Global Settings you have to enter an actual bearing rather than a rotation angle so subtract 41.669 from 360 which gives 318.331, the number you enter in Global Settings.

Hope that makes sense.
Rob