Viewing your Design (BathCAD)

This chapter covers the various options for viewing your design. 

Elevation

An elevation view will show you everything touching a selected wall run. Units have to be touching the wall to appear in the elevation. If you elevate a wall and units you expect to elevate don't appear, check that they are locked flush against the wall.

To generate an elevation, left-click on the wall run you wish to elevate:

Now that you’ve highlighted your chosen wall, click ‘View’ - ‘Elevation’ or alternatively, click on the ‘Elevate’ icon.

To change from line drawing to colour, click ‘View’ - ‘Elevation Options’ or, click the drop down next to ‘Elevate’ - ‘Elevation options’:

The default setting is ‘Line Drawing’, but you can change it to ‘Rendered’. 

As you can see, this elevation doesn’t include the toilet basin, as this unit isn’t touching the selected wall. To create an elevation including this, highlight all of the desired units in ‘Plan Mode’ by holding down left-click and dragging the selection box over them:

Once selected, right-click these to ‘Elevate selected’:

This will elevate all of the selected units with the Elevation options you last used:

Bird's Eye View

The bird's eye view gives you a top-down view of your current design. The view will fit your entire design onto the screen. You can generate this by clicking on the drop down menu next to ‘Render’ and selecting ‘Birdseye’.

Bird’s eye view as a line drawing:

Bird’s eye View as rendered: 

Switching from Line Drawing to Colour Views

There are different options for creating 3D images in BathCAD: Line Drawing, Photo-Realism, HD (High-Definition). VR (Virtual Reality) is also an available option, where you can move around the design in Photo-Realism.

To change between these options, select ‘3D options’ in the drop down next to ‘Render’.

Selecting a ‘Style of 3D drawing’ means any views (apart from elevations) will be generated using that style.

Line Drawing

Photo-Realism

HD

Back Against Selected Wall

This option generates a view facing into the room from the middle of the selected wall run. To produce this view, highlight the wall and click ‘View’ - ‘3D Perspective’ - ‘Back Against Selected Wall’:

Setting Your Own Camera Position

This allows you to position your own camera anywhere within your design. 

The Camera

The camera defines which part of your design you wish to view.

The green line on the above image shows the field of view of the camera. Once you have positioned your camera you will see everything above the green line. Everything below the yellow line is outside your field of view.

When positioning the camera you should the try and keep the field of view inside the room. If the field of view is outside the room the 'gap' will be filled with the current sky colour.

Summary of controls when positioning your camera

Hold down the left-mouse button to perform the action. Single right-click to cycle through the camera options.

Holding down the ‘Control’/’Ctrl’ key whilst using any of the keyboard controls will decrease the amount the camera attribute changes e.g. holding down ‘Ctrl’ + ‘A’ will rotate the camera in smaller measures than pressing ‘A’ alone. This allows you a finer degree of control.

Moving the camera

Right-click until the ‘Movement’ icon appears next to the mouse. Hold down the left mouse button anywhere on the camera and drag it into position. 

Rotating the camera

The camera rotates about the centre of the front of the camera (shown in green, above).

When using the mouse it is best to hold the camera by the point (shown in blue, above) and drag around the point of rotation. If your mouse pointer crosses the front of the camera whilst rotating it will snap around to face the opposite direction.

Resizing the Camera

Right-click the mouse until the ‘Resize’ icon appears next to the mouse. Hold down the left mouse button anywhere on the camera and drag. Move away from the front of the camera to enlarge, towards to shrink.

Used when working with smaller designs as the default size of the camera may be physically too large to fit inside the design.

Using the below bathroom design as an example:

 

The default camera size is too large for this design. There is a white border either side of the image. 

With the size of the camera reduced, the image only shows the interior of the design. You can see that the view is much wider than the original above.

Positioning the Cut Line

Right-click the mouse until the ‘Cut line’ icon appears next to the mouse. Hold down the left mouse button in front of the camera and drag.

The cut line allows you to remove items from a view that may be blocking your line of sight. Used when working with smaller/narrow designs. Everything in front of the camera but behind the cut line will be removed from the view.

Using this plan as an example:

Due to the layout of this design, it is difficult to get a view of the units running down either of the long walls. The camera can be positioned outside the room so that the entire wall is visible; however the units on the opposite wall obstruct the view:

By moving the cut line forward you can remove the units that are in the way: Notice that the cut line slices through all units.

WARNING - Do not move the cut line too far forward:

In the above example the cut line has been moved too far forward so that the camera extends to either side of the plan. This results in a section of sky either side of the image. 

Camera Height and Pitch

The current position and heading of the camera are shown in the top-left corner of the screen. The height is the height of the camera off the floor. The pitch is the angle the camera is looking relative to the horizontal.

Increasing the pitch looks up towards the ceiling (a pitch of 90 would be looking straight up).

A negative pitch looks down towards the floor (a pitch of -90 would be looking straight down).

The pitch can be any value between -90 and 90.

Using the below bathroom plan as an example:

NOTE - The camera size has been reduced so it fits inside the design. 

With the camera height increased to 1400

With the pitch set to -20.

Pressing the ‘Tab’ key will reset the camera back to the defaults.

Once you have the camera in the correct position, click ‘OK’ in the top-left corner of the screen to generate the image.

Clicking the ‘Cancel’ button in the top-left corner will return you to the design screen.

Clicking the ‘Options’ button is the same as clicking ‘View’ - ‘3D Options’.

Storing your images for printing

In order to use an image on your ‘Page Layout’, you need to store it first.

NOTE - A stored image only exists in the current BathCAD session. These images will be lost when you exit unless they are saved.

Click ‘View’ - ‘Store Image’.

A dialog box appears to confirm the image has been stored. Click ‘OK’ to remove it.

To see the images you have stored, ‘Window’ - ‘Browse Images’ or click on the ‘Gallery’ icon.

The stored images are displayed in a list from left-to-right. The currently selected image has a red outline:

Save: Saves the currently selected image. You can specify where to save and the file type (bitmap, JPEG etc).

Save Images: Saves all the currently stored images. You can specify where to save and the file type. The file name specified will be used for the first stored image (e.g. SmithKitchen.JPG) and any other images will have a number added (e.g. SmithKitchen1.JPG, SmithKitchen2.JPG, SmithKitchen3.JPG).

Delete: Removes the currently selected image from the list. NOTE - does not ask for confirmation.

Delete All: Deletes all the images on the list. You will be asked to confirm your action.

Load Image: Loads an image from your PC.

Slide Show: Displays all the currently stored images in an enlarged window. Use the previous/next buttons to cycle through the images.

Seeing Inside Your Units

The following applies to all room systems.

To see the interior of your units, click ‘This Design’ - ‘Room Settings’ and select ‘Remove Unit Doors’ under ‘Elevation / 3D Views’.

NOTE - This setting is saved with your design. If ‘Remove Unit Doors’ is selected when you save your design they will still be removed when you next load the design. 

With Include Unit Doors selected

With Remove Unit Doors selected

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