Your first wall
Walls are where you meet the drawing conventions used by every Archeform tool. Learn them here and slabs, roofs, beams, railings and pipes all behave the same.
Make sure a storey is active first — see Your first storey.
Draw a chain
Section titled “Draw a chain”- On the Archeform toolbar, click Wall.
- Click the start point.
- Click each corner. The wall follows as a chain.
- Double-click to finish, or click the first point again to close the loop.
The input conventions
Section titled “The input conventions”These are the same in every drawing tool:
| Double-click | finish the chain |
| Esc | step back one point — not cancel |
| Shift | lock to an axis |
| Type a number + Enter | exact length of the current segment |
Esc steps back. It removes the last point rather than throwing the chain away. Press it enough times and you’re back to an empty chain; press it once more and the tool exits.
Points you have already clicked are snappable, even though they are not yet real geometry — move near one and it will catch.
Justification
Section titled “Justification”Justification — Baseline in the dialog — decides where the line you click sits in the wall:
| Center | you draw the centre line |
| Left | you draw the left face, looking along the drawing direction |
| Right | you draw the right face |
Left and right are relative to the direction you draw, not to the world. Draw the same wall in the opposite direction and left becomes right.
Set it before you draw: double-click Wall on the toolbar and pick the baseline. It cannot be switched while a chain is in progress.
Use a face justification when you are tracing a survey or an existing outline and the dimension you have is to the face, not the axis.
Corners take care of themselves
Section titled “Corners take care of themselves”Where two walls meet, Archeform mitres the corner and keeps it mitred. Move one wall and the corner recomputes — you are not maintaining the joint by hand.
If you want a butt joint instead of a mitre, Joint in the wall’s right-click menu toggles it. The wall you click is the one that gets cut; its neighbour runs through.
Changing a wall afterwards
Section titled “Changing a wall afterwards”Select it and open Wall Properties — right-click. Double-clicking the Wall button on the toolbar opens the defaults used by new walls instead.
Selecting several walls and opening the dialog edits them together. Name, tag and description stay per-wall, so you don’t end up with fifteen walls sharing a name.
| Field | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Thickness | 300 mm | changing it keeps the wall’s centre line |
| Height | 3 000 mm | from the base of the wall |
| Baseline | Center | recomputes faces from the axis |
| Composition | none | layered build-up, drawn in sections |
| Section fill | by type | hatch pattern used where the wall is cut |
Editing tools
Section titled “Editing tools”Right-click a wall and open Archeform → Wall Tools:
| Join | bring two walls to a shared corner |
| Extend | run a wall out to meet another |
| Trim | cut a wall back at another |
| Stretch | drag a whole wall, neighbours follow |
| Stretch Endpoint | drag one end along its axis |
| Joint | toggle a corner between mitre and butt |
| Offset | parallel copy, corners resolved |
In IFC and in drawings
Section titled “In IFC and in drawings”A wall exports as IfcWall with Qto_WallBaseQuantities and
Pset_WallCommon. In plan it is cut and hatched; if it carries a composition,
each layer is hatched separately.