Example of the Use of Construction Aids
As an example of the use of construction aids, let us go through the steps to insert a perpendicular wall.
To form a new room we want to insert a wall from the left inside edge of the protrusion straight up to the dividing wall between room 1 and room 2. The start point of the wall has already been defined using ‘Ctrl+w’ (change reference point) so that the right corner of the wall corresponds to corner of the protrusion. As long as the preview of the wall we are creating is still attached to the cursor, a right-click opens the context menu for construction aids.
From the list of possible construction aids select ‘Perpendicular’ to insert the wall at an angle of exactly 90 degrees.
A perpendicular is produced by defining two lines, the first of which is the line to which the perpendicular is subsequently dropped. During input each step is accompanied by information in the status line.
After the first line has been defined, the perpendicular is generated automatically and can only be positioned along the line. In the example shown, the perpendicular is positioned exactly on the corner where the wall to be inserted is to start.
A click on the mouse drops the perpendicular and returns so that the end point of the wall can be entered – the start point of the wall had already been defined before the construction aid was activated.
The cursor to insert the wall now snaps to the construction line generated and so enables precise insertion of a perpendicular wall. With a second mouse-click the length of the wall can now be defined. In the example shown, we move the cursor along the perpendicular up to the face of the horizontal wall in the middle, thus creating the new room we wanted.