127 — Exterior Face

Form liners and face materials give a tilt-up panel its architectural finish: a textured liner on the bed, thin brick, stone, exposed aggregate or sandblast. The Exterior Face button records them on the panel, area by area, and the sheet hatches each area with its material.

This is not Casting Face Down. Casting Face Down, on Main Panel Details, chooses which face of the panel lies against the bed (lesson 37, lesson 28). Exterior Face records what is on the exterior face. The dialog shows which face is down in its own heading: on AAA039, which is cast with the outside face down, it reads Material (the exterior face is cast down).

Where it is

ConstructiVision toolbar → Exterior Face (tooltip: Exterior Face). It sits after Reveals and Vertical Reveals, before Weld Connections. The button runs CV-FEAT-FACE.

Open a panel drawing first. The button opens ConstructiVision – Exterior Face (Form Liners and Face Materials). It holds eight face areas; you pick one at a time from Face area.

field

what it holds

choices or default

Face area

which of the eight areas you are editing

Area 1 … Area 8

This area has a face treatment

turns this area on

clear

Kind

the material

Form liner, Thin brick, Stone, Exposed aggregate, Sandblast

Product or pattern (as catalogued)

the product or pattern name, exactly as catalogued

empty

Relief depth

how deep the treatment cuts into the face

empty

Pattern orientation (degrees)

turns the pattern

0

Lay-out starts at

the corner the pattern is laid out from

Bottom left, Bottom right, Top left, Top right

Left, Bottom

where the area starts, from the panel’s lower-left

empty

Width (0 = the whole face), Height (0 = the whole face)

the size of the area

empty

The last four sit in a group headed Area on the face (from the panel’s lower-left). The buttons along the bottom are OK, Cancel and Help.

Try it on AAA039

AAA039 is a panel from the Arlington Airport A sample project, 28’-0” wide and 34’-6 1/2” tall. Its title block gives 126.2 KIPS and 31.2 Cu. Yd.

  1. Open AAA039.dwg.

  2. Click Exterior Face. Face area shows Area 1, Kind shows Form liner, Pattern orientation shows 0 and Lay-out starts at shows Bottom left.

  3. Tick This area has a face treatment.

  4. Set Kind to Thin brick.

  5. Product or pattern (as catalogued): Modular, Tab.

  6. Pattern orientation (degrees): 30, Tab.

  7. Leave Relief depth, Left, Bottom, Width and Height empty, and leave Lay-out starts at on Bottom left. A Width and Height of 0 mean the whole face.

  8. Click OK. The command line reads:

    [CV-FEAT] Exterior Face accepted -- redrawing panel...
[CV-FACE] 1 exterior face area(s) drawn on layer face_area, 1 hatched.

What you see

The whole panel face is hatched in a brick pattern, turned 30 degrees. On layer face_area the area is five objects:

  • a closed outline of the area (here the whole face, 139,272 square inches);

  • the hatch, pattern BRICK, at 30 degrees, covering exactly the outline;

  • a small filled square at the corner the lay-out starts from;

  • two lines of callout text naming the material and where the lay-out starts: on AAA039 they read THIN BRICK: Modular and pattern at 30°, lay out from bottom left.

With Relief depth left at 0, the title block still reads 126.2 KIPS and 31.2 Cu. Yd.

Reopen it. Click Exterior Face again. Face area now reads Area 1 -- Thin brick, and the empty fields show what was stored: Relief depth 0, Pattern orientation 30°, and Left, Bottom, Width and Height all 0. Click Cancel:

[CV-FEAT] Exterior Face cancelled -- nothing changed.

Openings stay out of the hatch

Add a window and the face hatch steps around it.

  1. Click Standard Opening (lesson 108).

  2. Tick Enable on row 1. Measure L, Distance 10'-0", Elev (Btm) 4'-0", Width 4'-0", Height 3'-0". Click OK.

  3. The panel redraws and the command line reports:

    [CV-FEAT] Standard Opening accepted -- redrawing panel...
[CV-FACE] 1 exterior face area(s) drawn on layer face_area, 1 hatched.

The hatch now has a hole for the window. Its area drops from 139,272 to 137,544 square inches: 1,728 square inches less, which is the 4’-0” x 3’-0” window. The area’s outline does not change.

If the panel is also a sandwich panel

The exterior wythe of a sandwich panel (lesson 123) has to be thick enough for the deepest cut into the exterior face, and a face area’s Relief depth counts. When it is not thick enough, OK stops at an AutoCAD Message that begins The face areas were saved. Check this before the panel goes to the engineer: and names the exterior wythe. Read it and click OK.

What this lesson does not cover

  • Doors, dock levelers and reveals. Standard openings are kept out of the hatch, as shown above. Doors and dock levelers as holes in the hatch, reveals stopping the hatch, and face materials in the materials list are planned next steps (CV-3317). None of them was observed when this lesson was checked.

  • Callouts on a crowded sheet. On a dense sheet a face callout can land on other text. The command line says so and leaves it in place. Known open defect CV-3318.

  • Metric. This lesson was run in imperial units only.

Watch the lesson

The video follows Try it on AAA039, the reopen, and Openings stay out of the hatch on a plain copy of AAA039. It does not cover a sandwich panel.