105 — Pilaster & Lintel

A pilaster is a thickened column built into the panel. A lintel is a ledge running across it. They are the same dialog, because they are the same idea: extra concrete on the face, placed between two elevations.

Two ways in:

  • Main Panel Details → tick Pilaster/Lintel

  • ConstructiVision menu → Pilaster/Lintel (c:cv-feat-pilaster)

Note

Looking for a brick ledge? This is it. The product calls it a Lintel, and that is the word on the menu and in the dialog. There is no separate brick-ledge tool.

Note

This lesson also exists in the browser. Work it in ConstructiVision on the web — same steps, same values, so you can follow either and end up with the same panel.

The row

Six rows are visible, and Enable wakes each one up. The dialog is paged — it holds twenty-four rows in all (tabs 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-24), so the visible six are a window, not the limit.

column

what it means

Enable

whether this one is built

Snap To

which edges it attaches to — L, R, T, B

Measure From

which side the distance is read from

Distance

from the edge you snapped to

Elev Left, Elev Right

the two ends

Width, Height

the feature itself

Add’l Thk

how far it stands off the panel face

U/D

up or down from the elevation

Why half the row is greyed out

This is the part worth understanding, because it looks like a fault and is not.

A row that is snapped to a corner — attached on two edges, say Left and Bottom — runs the full height of the panel. Its elevations are therefore not yours to choose: they are the panel’s own top and bottom. So the product fills those fields in and greys them.

The same goes for Distance and Measure From: once a pilaster is pinned to a corner, there is no distance left to specify.

A greyed field here means the product already knows the answer. If you need to set an elevation yourself, change what the row is snapped to — a pilaster that is not corner- attached has elevations you own.

Height behaves the same way: snap a row to both Top and Bottom and Height is derived too, because it spans the whole panel.

Steps

  1. Open Main Panel Details and tick Pilaster/Lintel.

  2. Enable row one. Notice which fields wake up and which stay grey.

  3. Width 24 — two feet across.

  4. Add’l Thk 8 — standing eight inches off the face.

  5. OK, then OK.

  6. Reopen from the menu and widen it to 36. It draws on OK.

What to take away

Position drives the row. What a pilaster is attached to decides which of its dimensions you still get to choose — and the greyed fields are the product telling you which ones it has already worked out.