Architect Drawing Precision

[Lisa Claxton]

Hi.

I've been a product visualiser for many years, and am very comfortable using Rhino + 3ds Max + V-Ray. I've had the odd project in the past where I've needed to create an architectural visualisation, but have always ran into the problem as mentioned below, but simply used a bit of artistic license to resolve it. However, I'm going to be doing a lot more archviz work, so would like to address my reoccurring issue.

The Issue: Whenever I've worked with architect's plans (both independent and national developers), the drawing dimensions never align with standard brickwork. Logic would tell me that a window aperture should be x-number of bricks wide/high, and positioned x-number of bricks across/up a given wall, however, I've never found this to be the case.

The current project I'm working on has an external wall 10965mm wide, with a 610mm window, placed 3327.501mm(!) across. None of these numbers align to the standard UK brick size of 215mm x 65mm (plus 10mm mortar).

Has anyone else had this issue? Do you just use artistic license and resize windows, doors and even walls, so when it comes to texturing, the brickwork texture flows nicely around everything? Is this a normal part of CGI life, and am simply expecting too much from drawings? 

I really would appreciate some light on the matter.

Thank you.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Lisa Claxton

[James Vella]

14 hours ago, Lisa Claxton said:

Do you just use artistic license and resize windows, doors and even walls, so when it comes to texturing, the brickwork texture flows nicely around everything?

The opposite, slightly adjust your bricks to suit. Dont change the dimensions of the structure.

 

14 hours ago, Lisa Claxton said:

Is this a normal part of CGI life, and am simply expecting too much from drawings? 

Yep. 

 

Take into consideration the corner bricks. Have a look at the reference below, you can see on the far left how they overlap nicely on the edge, towards the center they are cut to shape, this happens on site often and brick layers have to adjust as well. My rule to keep things consistent is corner overlaps should be either a full or half brick, and the rest can suit the reference image I have attached.

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by James Vella

[Lisa Claxton]

Thank you for your reply James.

Rest assured all my corners are both perfectly aligned full and half bricks.

I can see from your reference that the windows are perfectly sized to fit within a define number of full and half bricks, and also positioned within the wall as such, too.

Are you suggesting there are poor brick layers on sites subtly shaving ends off thousands of bricks to make an odd-sized window fit, and at an odd position within a wall? I do find that hard to believe. Again, these are huge, nationwide developers, who pump these properties out on a large-scale production line.

And then there's texturing. How on Earth do you manipulate the brick texture to fit these odd-sized brick lengths.

I'm not convinced.

Thanks anyway.

[James Vella]

1 hour ago, Lisa Claxton said:

Are you suggesting there are poor brick layers on sites subtly shaving ends off thousands of bricks to make an odd-sized window fit

lol, I'm referring to the wall in the center (right side of the window). These are not subtle, its just a clean snap I've done this plenty myself when I worked with brick layers. In regards to the window they sit directly on the top layer of bricks, you have to remember there is also boarding and waterproofing that goes around the window which you may not be accounting for usually 2-3cm thick on each sides/top/bottom etc. Also be aware sometimes if the boarding is on the CAD it may not be using the correct thickness as its just a template used to reference the total window size, details can be slightly different. There's also situations where you will increase the grout thickness by a few mm to adjust for CAD errors or hide things behind boarding, I've been on site and we have had walls that don't work according to the plan so you improvise (as long as its structurally safe).

Basically you just manipulate your brick texture to suit for things which are omitted from the CAD drawings or similar. Just stretch it a little on the U/V tiling for the walls which you are having issues with.

Edited November 30, 2022 by James Vella

[Scott Schroeder]

You may also be getting too deep into the weeds on hyper accurate texturing. Sometimes it just needs to pass the smell test and you move on to bigger things.

Also, are your dimensions of the wall to the outside of the frame or the brick? Many times the dimensions are to the outside of the frame and the masons can take one look at the wall and know exactly how to lay the bricks out to make it look correct. The masons I've worked with in the States when I was a residential framer back in the day, they are so good at what they do they can score and chop a whole pallet of bricks before you could even ask them how they do it. You are also assuming that in a pallet of bricks they are all the same size, which they are not and the good masons can spot these irregular sized bricks and know how to use them to make up odd dimensions here and there. Plus most masons have apprentices which those are the poor sods who have to do all of the hard cuts. The master mason just hands the apprentice the cut sheet, gives a good slap on the back, and walks away laughing.

The issue arises in the CG world where our textures are indeed perfectly sized bricks with perfectly space grout and that just doesn't really happen in the real world. There are subtle differences that most people will never be able to tell unless you use a laser to measure, but those differences mean that they can make the bricks fit odd dimensions a lot easier than us using our perfect textures.

[TomD_Arch]

Brick is a modular building material.  Good architects respect the dimensions of the module and will design to that module as opposed to letting a mason decided how to fill a course.  The architect will take the time to figure out where windows can occur in the module and how wide they can be in order to hit that full and half brick sweet spot.  So yeah, the architect counted bricks to get to the width he needed and then adjusted the final width to land at the end of a brick.  Modular brick are 7 5/8" wide and typically have a 3/8" mortar joint.  Guess why.