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Windows and Doors -

Introduction

Creating Interior Windows and Doors - Introduction

Time Estimate: 1 hour

Adding doorways between rooms can be a challenge because, in AGi32, cutouts cannot be added that extend all the way to
the edge of a surface, and the walls of rooms have no thickness so a doorway is not properly represented. Interior windows
between rooms present similar problems. The biggest issue with these is the inclination to place the rooms adjacent to each
other without any space between them. This causes co-planar surfaces, which do not calculate correctly or look correct in
Render Mode because a wall from each room is occupying the same space.

Problem Statement

Create a pass-through doorway and interior window between two rooms. You should be familiar with the methods utilized
in the Instant Gratification and Auditorium tutorials before attempting this one.

Note: If you would like to see what this project will look like when complete, you can open the Tutorial-
Windows&Doors.agi sample file, which you can find in the AGi32 Sample Files. You can download them from here.
Scroll down to AGi32 Sample Files - Version 15/16 (or whatever is the latest version). Information and instructions
regarding the Sample Files: After you click on the Downloads button, select Save (rather than Run). Next, locate the saved
file and right click on it. Select Run As Administrator. Follow the installation dialogs. All Sample Files are installed in
your personal Windows folder (e.g., My Documents\AGi32). (Note the other items that are available on the web page for
download.) There will be two folders of sample files: AGi32 Sample Files and CAD Sample Files.

Tutorial Summary

Step 1 – Create two rooms next to each other

Step 2 – Remove walls and replace with new Objects as the walls and doorway reveal

Step 3 - Create window reveal between the rooms

Step 4 - Cut openings for the window

Conclusion

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Windows_Doors_Step2.htmCreating Interior Windows and Doors - Step 1

Step 1 – Create two rooms next to each other

We will work in Feet for this project. Click on the Units button on the bottom toolbar to change the units if necessary.
(Illuminance units are not relevant.)

Also on the bottom toolbar, set Snap = 0.5.

Create a Room with a 9' ceiling that is 14' wide (X dimension) and 16 ' long (Y dimension). The default reflectances are
fine.

 In the Room dialog, uncheck the box for "Specify Calc Points for Room." We won't need calculation
points in this exercise.

Copy this Room immediately to the right, leaving a 0.5 ft gap between the two rooms.

We will create a doorway and then a window between these two rooms.

AGi32 copyright 1999-2016 Lighting Analysts, Inc.

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Creating Interior Windows and Doors - Step 2

Step 2 – Remove walls and floors and replace with new Objects

Open each room (or both of them together) in Surface Edit.

Navigate to the common wall in each where the pass-through

door will be added and set these 2 walls, 1 in each room, to
“Removed=Yes” (in the Surfaces section of the dialog). These
are the east wall of the west room and the west wall of the east
room.

Click “OK” to apply the changes and exit to Model Mode.

Next, we will place an object to represent the pass-through doorway.

Add an Object (Rectangular) that is the height and width of the

desired doorway (7.5 feet high x 4' wide in this example) that fits
between the rooms.

Open the Object in Surface Edit and:

- Use the “Tag All Surfaces” button to tag all the surfaces on the
Object.

- Use the “Flip” button to flip the ‘normals’ to the inside of each of
the Object’s surfaces.

- Click the “Remove All Tags” button.

- Navigate to one of the two large surfaces, tag it with the “Tag
Current Surface” button,and then navigate to the other large surface and tag it.

- Change the properties of both of these surfaces to “Removed=Yes”.

- Click OK to apply the changes and exit the Surface Edit dialog.

The blue object shown above represents the pass-thru part of the doorway. Next, we will add the walls that surround the
doorway.
Starting in Plan View, click on the “Elevation View Looking East” button and then at the location of the east wall of the
west room (in our example, clicking any coordinate where X=14).

Add a Planar Object (a Polygon, not a Quadrilateral) to replace the west room wall that was removed. Make sure to exclude
the doorway when specifying the coordinates.

Go back to Plan View and repeat the process for the other wall. This time, in an Elevation View Looking West, click on the
west wall of the east room (in our example, where X=14.5) and add another Planar Object. Remember to exclude the area
of the doorway.

In this view, the two Planar Objects (walls) have different wireframe colors just to help distinguish them from each other:

Using Surface Edit, select both Rooms and the Object. In the Surface Edit dialog:

- Click on the Tag Floors or Bottoms button.

- Set the Removed condition to Yes, and then click OK.

Go to Plan View. In this view, we will create one floor for both Rooms and the doorway between them.

Click on the Planar Object button. Set its Reflectance, Color, or Texture, if you like.

Again, select Polygon for the Surface Geometry and click OK.

Trace the outline of the two Rooms as shown here in Plan View (black outline):
Seen in Default Isometric View:

Next, we will create a window between the two rooms.

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Creating Interior Windows and Doors - Step 3

Step 3 – Create window reveal between the rooms

While it might not seem intuitive, our first step in creating a pass-thru window between our two rooms will not be to cut the
opening for the window, but rather to create the pass-thru portion of the window, similar to what we did with the doorway.

Set Snap = 0.25.

In Plan View, add an Object (Rectangular) between the

rooms that is 5' tall. The Z-coordinate of the object should
be 2.5' (this is the bottom of the window). Place the object
in the Y dimension where you wish it to be. In our example,
the distance between door and window is 6'. Make the width
(X dimension) of the object only HALF the width of the
space between the rooms.

Repeat this process and add another Object of the same size
to take up the other half of the space between the room
walls.

Perform a Surface Edit on these Objects and:

Tag All and Flip all surfaces.

Remove All Tags after flipping the surface normals.

Remove the two larger surfaces on one of the Objects.

Remove only one of the larger surfaces on the other Object.

(Leave the surface that is in the middle of the reveal in place.)

Navigate to the one remaining large surface and change its Type to “14-Glass”.

Optional: Under the Advanced heading, assign a Specularity of 0.4. Note: Specularity will only be seen in a Ray Trace
image.

Click OK to save changes and exit the Surface Edit dialog.

Next, we will cut openings in the Planar Objects that are our walls, using the object just placed as our guide for location.
AGi32 copyright 1999-2016 Lighting Analysts, Inc.

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Creating Interior Windows and Doors - Step 4

Step 4 – Cut openings for the window

Our next step is to cut matching openings in the two walls that line up with the window-reveal object we just created.

Go to the Rooms/Objects Toolkit and click the “Cut an Opening in an Object Surface” button.

Click on one of the Planar Objects that represents a wall.

You are now in Elevation View. Trace around the Object representing the window and reveal. Do NOT add an Insert when
asked.

Go back to Plan View and repeat this process to add an Opening in the Planar Object that represents the other wall. Do
NOT add an insert here either. (Remember, the glass pane is on one of the objects that form the reveal.)
AGi32 copyright 1999-2016 Lighting Analysts, Inc.

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Conclusion

Creating Interior Windows and Doors - Conclusion

Conclusion

The image below shows the two rooms with the door and window as created in this project.

To achieve this image, the following steps were performed:

A luminaire was added and the room calculated.

In System Settings, Advanced, "Force Luminaire Subdivision" was selected and set to 0.25 to make the single luminaire
behave more accurately in the model.

The image below was Ray Traced. Notice the reflection of the luminaire and the near wall in the glass window? The far
room has no luminaire and is therefore much darker, allowing the window to act as a mirror.
Note: If you would like to see what this project will look like when complete, you can open the Tutorial-
Windows&Doors.agi sample file, which you may have download previously. (Instructions are on the Introduction page of
this tutorial.)

AGi32 copyright 1999-2016 Lighting Analysts, Inc.