Inserting Doors and Windows in a Wall

3ds Max can automatically make openings for doors and windows in a wall. At the same time, it links the door or window to the wall as its child. The most effective way of doing both is to create the doors and windows directly on a wall segment by snapping to the faces, vertices, or edges of the wall object.

If you move, scale, or rotate the wall object, the linked door or window moves, scales, or rotates along with the wall. If you move the linked door or window along the wall, using the door or window's local coordinate system and constraining motion to the XY plane, the opening will follow. Also, if you change a door or window's overall width and height on the Modify panel, the hole will reflect those changes.

For further information, see the procedure To create and place a window or door in a wall.

Walls and Materials

By default, 3ds Max assigns five different material IDs to walls. The aectemplates.mat material library includes Wall-Template, a multi/sub-object material designed to be used with walls. Each component of the wall/material is listed below along with its corresponding Material ID.

Tips

• To make a passageway through a wall you can perform a Boolean operation with the wall as Operand A, and another object, such as a box or an extruded archway shape, as Operand B. The wall will still be accessible at the Boolean sub-object level. Then, you can add a window or door in the passageway, and link it as a child of the wall.
• Single walls with many windows and doors can become slow to use because of the amount of boolean calculations used. To speed up movement and editing, you might consider using multiple walls instead of a single wall.
• You can speed up performance in a scene with many walls, windows and doors by collapsing them. First save an uncollapsed version for any future parametric changes you might want to make. Then double-click the wall to select it and its children. Next use Convert To from the right-click menu to convert them to an editable mesh, and so on.

Procedures

To create a wall:

You can create a wall in any viewport, but for vertical walls, use a Perspective, Camera, or Top viewport.

1. Set parameters for the Width, Height, and Justification of the wall.
2. In a viewport, click and release, move the mouse to set the desired length for the wall segment, and click again.

   This creates a wall segment. You can end the wall by right-clicking or you can continue to create another wall segment.

3. To add another wall segment, move the mouse to set the length of the next wall segment and click again.

   If you create a room by ending a segment at the end of another segment of the same wall object, 3ds Max displays the Weld Point dialog. This dialog lets you convert the two end vertices into a single vertex, or to keep the two end vertices distinct.

4. If you want the wall segments to be welded at that corner so that when you move one wall, the other wall stays correct at the corner, click Yes. Otherwise, click No.
5. Right-click to end the wall, or continue to add other wall segments.

To attach separate walls:

1. Select a wall object.
2. On the Modify panel, click Attach, and then pick another wall object.

   The two wall objects become part of the same wall object, but are not physically connected.

   Attach stays active, and you can continue clicking wall segments to attach. To stop attaching, click the Attach button or right-click in the active viewport.

   To attach multiple wall objects simultaneously to the selected wall object, click Attach Multiple on the Modify panel to open the Attach Multiple dialog. This works the same as the Select From Scene dialog, except that it shows only wall objects; choose multiple walls to attach, and then click the Attach button.

To connect vertices in a wall:

This method lets you connect two separate wall sections with a new segment.

1. Select a wall object that has more than one section. Typically you would use Attach to create such an object.
2. In the modifier stack, go to the Vertex sub-object level.
3. Click Connect and point the mouse over an end vertex until the cursor changes to a cross.
4. Click once over the end vertex.
5. Move the cursor to another end vertex, and then click to connect the two segments.

To insert a vertex in a wall:

It is easier to work with wall vertices in wireframe view mode.

1. Select a wall segment.
2. In the modifier stack, go to the Vertex sub-object level.
3. Click Insert.

   A highlighted line appears along the bottom of the wall, showing where you can insert vertices.

4. Click anywhere on the highlighted line to insert a vertex.

   The new vertex is attached to the mouse cursor.

5. Move the mouse to position the vertex, and then click to place it.

   Now the mouse is attached to one of the new segments.

6. Move the mouse along the segment and click to add vertices.
7. Right-click to finish working on this segment. You can now insert vertices in other segments, or right-click again to exit Insert mode.

To detach and reorient a copy of a wall segment:

1. Select a wall.
2. In the modifier stack, go to the Segment sub-object level.
3. Select a wall segment.
4. Turn on both Reorient and Copy, and then click Detach.
5. Enter a name for the new wall object in the Detach dialog or click OK to accept the default name.

   3ds Max copies the original wall’s Local coordinate system when it makes the copy of the detached segment. It places the new object so that its Local coordinate system is coincident with the World space origin.

To add a gable point to a wall profile or adjust for uneven terrain:

1. Select a wall.
2. In the modifier stack, go to the Profile sub-object level.
3. Select a wall profile by clicking a wall segment.

   A grid appears.

4. To add a gable point procedurally, set the height and click Create Gable.

   If you prefer to add the profile point manually, click Insert, click a point on the highlighted top profile, drag the new point into place and then release where you want to place the new gable point. You can move profile points you create with Insert only within the plane of the wall segment, and you cannot move them below the original top edge.

   If you want to adjust the profile for uneven terrain below a wall, click Insert, pick the highlighted bottom profile and add points as necessary.

   If you want to extend multiple segments uniformly downward below floor level, do the following: At the Segment sub-object level, select the segments and, on the Edit Segment rollout, enter a negative Bottom Offset value to move the segments downward. Add the absolute value of the Bottom Offset setting back to the Height value to bring the top of the wall height back up and make it flush with the other wall segments.

To apply a texture to a wall:

Walls are created with five different material IDs for their various parts.

The aectemplates.mat material library includes Wall-Template, a Multi/Sub-Object material designed for use with walls. You can copy or copy and modify this template, or create your own material as follows:

1. Create a Multi/Sub-Object material using five textures for the following Material IDs:
   • Slot #1 is the material for the vertical ends on the wall
   • Slot #2 is the material for the outside of the wall
   • Slot #3 is the material for the inside of the wall
   • Slot #4 is the material for the top of the wall, as well as any inside edges cut out of the wall
   • Slot #5 is the material for the bottom of the wall
     NoteThe definitions of slots 2 and 3 are interchangeable; inside and outside simply depend on your point of view, and how you created the wall.
2. If the top and bottom surfaces of the wall aren't visible in the rendered scene, you can use a three-sided material instead. The inside and outside of the wall are relative to the direction in which the wall was created. To swap a texture between slots in the Material Editor, drag one of the textures over the other slot in the Basic Parameters rollout of the Multi/Sub-Object material, and then choose Swap.
3. For greater control in tiling across the wall surface, apply a Map Scaler world-space modifier to the wall. Then adjust the scale of the map in the Map Scaler's Parameters rollout.

To create and place a window or door in a wall:

For best results, perform this procedure in a wireframe viewport.

1. Create a window or door (hereafter referred to as "window" for brevity) directly on an existing wall. You can define the window's exact dimensions after insertion. Use edge snap for the first snaps to place and align the window on the wall and to establish its exact depth. Snap to and then click the near top edge of the wall to start creation. Drag to another edge snap point on the near top edge of the wall and release to align the window with the wall segment and to set its width. Snap to the rear top edge of the wall to set the proper depth and click. Move the cursor downward and click to define the window height. This final click doesn't require a snap, as it simply defines a rough height.
2. The window should now be cut out of the wall. On the Modify panel for windows or doors, set the correct width and height. Change the depth if it's different from the snap depth you set above.
3. Use vertex snap to move the window or door from a reference point to a known point on the wall segment. Then

   Next, use relative offset values from this new position to accurately locate the window or door. As an example, following the next two steps, you could move a window from its top left corner to the top left corner of the wall segment so that you can then move it 3 feet to the right and 2 feet down.

4. With the window or door selected, set the coordinate system to Local.
5. On the Coordinate Display, activate Offset mode and then enter the offset distances on the X axis for horizontal and the Y axis for vertical.

Interface