Discover the methods and tools to add and modify wall finishes in a linked model where walls are unmodifiable. Understand the use of generic paint, the paint tool, and the split face tool to create custom wall patterns and apply finishes to both entire walls and specific portions.
Key Insights
- The article explains how to add and modify wall finishes in a linked model where the walls are unmodifiable. Specific tools such as the generic paint and the paint tool are employed to make these changes.
- For walls with more than one finish or pattern, the split face tool is utilized. This tool allows for the application of different materials or finishes to specific portions of the wall, creating a custom wall pattern effectively.
- The article emphasizes the flexibility of these methods, allowing for tagging of materials and creating different wall types or paint styles depending on the project. However, using a generic paint type is recommended for projects susceptible to frequent paint tag changes.
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Now let's go ahead and add some wall finishes. Because we're working here in a linked model, we don't have access to modify any of the walls that are part of it. We're going to need to draw everything that we want to show for this project.
And so for basic things like a paint finish where it's just being applied everywhere, we don't necessarily need to show something in the model. But for other things like maybe like a tile backsplash or some side accent tiles here or around the tub, or maybe there's something in the bathroom that we want to add. Those are things that we could model.
And so I want to go through a couple of different options on how we could do this so that we can become familiar with the different methods that are available to us. The first thing I want to do is get us situated in a view that's going to work better for this project. And so what I'll do is I'll open up my default 3D view.
And from here, I'm going to go ahead and change my view by clicking on this context menu here. And then I'll go to orient to view, floor plans. And then I'm going to grab my one bedroom unit finish plan.
And this is going to give me a crop region around the plan based upon those settings. And so with this 3D crop region here or section box, what I can do is then adjust it so that I can have a better view of the interior of the living unit. And then I could draw a wall in place if I wanted to in those different locations.
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And so the first thing I'll do is we're just going to take a look at putting a wall kind of in this area here. And if I go to my wall command, you can see just like the floors, we have options like generic eight inch and all these kind of basic ones in here. But I can add a wall finish to this.
And this will literally just be the finish that gets applied on top of the wall here. And so I could say duplicate. And like I said, there's a couple of different ways we can do this.
We can create a wall type like we did for the floors for each of the different types of finishes, or we can create a generic wall finish. So I could say generic paint. And then I'll call it just eighth inch because I don't want to give it too much thickness because then I'll start to have an impact on our plan.
And then I just simply edit this to be that dimension, which is just eighth of an inch. And then if I draw it to have a location line of finish face interior, like I said, we'll just use this wall as a guide here. And I draw it in at that point.
You'll notice it did not show up in this view. And I'll give you three seconds to take a guess why. And if you guess because it was on a work set that's not visible in this view, then you got it correct.
When we look at our finishes work set, which is our current work set, it is set to not visible. We just need to change it to show. And you can see there's our wall right here.
And then now we can see our floor finishes. And I just need to double check in plan. If I pop back into our plan view, I can see that the exterior is facing this way.
So I can flip it so we can see the interior on the other side. And so now we've got our wall finish here. And one of the things we could do is we can apply a finish to any material.
That's why I was saying we could use a generic paint wall type that we can then go in and I can use the paint tool, which I use keyboard shortcut PT, or you could use this tool right here. And I can apply paint to that. And so if I were to say a paint finish, it'll give me all kinds of different things in here.
But we want to pick something that we'll use for this project specifically. So you can see there's different steel paints and parking stripes and metal paint and all kinds of different things in here. But we're going to pick one for us to use throughout the entire project.
But in this case here, I could paint the finish to the wall and then define it. I could also, if I wanted, and I'd really want to do that if I had, say, two different finishes on a wall so that I can define it. Here's just an example that we're using just to go through the different options here.
And the other thing, let's say I had like a paneling that was going to be on here, like a metal panel or any other type of panel, but something that had a pattern to it. I think we had some in here, like the vinyl comp tile for whatever reason, but we're just going to put it on there. But you can see there's the pattern for that that shows up.
And that finish was applied to this material using the paint tool. But let's say, for instance, we didn't want to apply that finish to the entire wall. Then what I could do is I could use the split face tool which then will allow me to modify this wall to say, let's say I only wanted that material for the first three feet or so, right? Then I can pick this, change that dimension to three feet, and then now I can change the material from here to there.
The key with the split face is a couple of things. You can add it as a line all the way across. You can see I go from extent to extent here.
I could add a closed loop where it's just a box like you see there. Or I could cut out different pieces so I could do something along these lines. The ticket is I either have to have a closed loop within the box.
And when I say box, I mean the extents of the wall. You see those orange lines there. Or I need to go from point to point where I'm touching the edges.
But I can't go over or have anything drawn outside of that boundary. And I've got too many on here, so I have to dial it back a little bit. But essentially, I could leave it like this.
I could finish the sketch. And now you can see there's a hard line at that point, which means I could paint in this case here where I could grab a different material. And the other option is instead of painting a material like we have here with all the other ones is let's say I was like, oh, you know what? I really didn't want that up here.
I wanted to go back to the default material. I can then remove paint and remove it from that portion there. And now I've got the finish just on the bottom of the wall.
By using the combination of, say, drawing a wall like we did here, and then also using the option to split face, I'm able to create a custom wall pattern anywhere in the project. And I'm still able to tag these materials if I wanted to. And so the trick is in a case where you're dealing with a linked model like we are here, you can draw that wall on top of it and then use split face and paint to apply the finish.
The other option is instead of creating a generic wall paint type material here, you could then create your different paint styles. If I were to, instead of saying generic paint, but I was saying, OK, well, that'll actually be P-1 for paint number one or PT1, whichever designation you want to use. I could then go in and do that same process that we did with the floors.
And I can go ahead and create new materials for the different paints on here. And you just got to pick one that you want to start with. The parking stripe, maybe not the best example.
But essentially, you could create your different materials in here for all the different paints that you want to have. And then now you've got a wall type to apply it to. And it just gives you more things.
I'm more inclined to use the generic one because paint tags could change quite a bit. And depending on the project, you can have a whole bunch of them. So to me, it seems like the generic is appropriate for this project type.
But other projects, you might want to create the different wall types. And so what we'll go ahead and do here is we're going to dive back in. This was just an example just to kind of give a brief overview.
But we'll dive back in. And we're going to add some wall finishes to our kitchen and our bathroom to designate the different tile finishes that we have.
