SketchuRATE Tutorial Part 2

  1. Now that you've completed a simple SketchuRATE model, go to the Plugins > SketchuRATE menu and work your way sequentially through the menu items, starting with Make Groups Unique. This step checks that if you have copied one Group to make another zone, that SketchuRATE doesn't get them mixed up with each other.
  2. Next, select the Intersect Walls menu item. This goes through your SketchuRATE model and works out where all of the internal walls intersect with adjacent zones, and draws a line at the point of intersection.
  3. Select Intersect Floors Ceilings. This does exactly the same thing as Intersect Walls, except for where floors and ceilings intersect in multiple storey models. You should still do this even if the model you are assessing is single storey, and this function also works out where ceilings intersect with the roof.
  4. Next select Auto Detect Adjacent Zone. This auto-magically works which zones are adjacent to which internal walls.
  5. You can also manually assign which zones are adjacent to a particular internal wall. To do this, go into the required Zone Group, and select the applicable internal wall. Select the Plugins > SketchuRATE > Set Adjacent Zone Manually menu item. In the dialog box, type in the zone of the applicable zone (if you have previously used the Auto Detect Adjacent Zone function, the adjacent zone will be shown by default). If you change the name of a zone after doing an auto-detect, you can use this function to assign the new zone same to an internal wall.
  6. Wherever an internal wall intersects perpendicularly with another internal wall, you need to tell SketchuRATE to ignore this part of the wall. Go into the relevant group, and select the section of wall to be ignored. Go to Plugins > SketchuRATE > Set Null Material menu item. The selected wall should turn black (Useful tip: assign a keyboard shortcut to the Set Null Material menu item so that you can do this with a single key stroke!)
  7. Almost there! Once you have assigned all of the relevant walls with the null material, the last thing to is select Remove Lonely Edges. This checks the model for any stray lines that may causes errors during the conversion process.
  8. One last to check with the model - select each zone group one by one, and using the Entity Info palette, confirm that each zone can calculate its volume. If a zone group does not show a volume, it won't be imported into AccuRATE! The most common cause of this error is if the geometry of the zone does not close properly, or there are stray lines in the zone group.
  9. We're done! Now go to the last menu item, Export .PRO file. Onto the final tutorial...