Rectangular Rooms with a Vertically Extruded Ceiling

Vertically extruded rooms allow for an irregular ceiling profile that is extruded from the baseline through the entire depth of the room. These rooms may be specified with “open” ends allowing light to enter the room, if desired. After the room footprint is created, using the three point input, an Elevation view is presented to you with the room walls already in place. Simply create the ceiling profile and right click when you are finished. Rectangular Rooms with Vertically Extruded Ceilings may also be converted automatically into Tunnels - for Tunnel Luminance calculations. The Surfaces within the tunnel are automatically converted to appropriate surface types for the necessary calculations.

1. From the Add menu select Room - Rectangular - Vertical Extrusion, or from the Rooms/Objects Toolkit click the arrow adjacent to the Room - Rectangular button . The secondary menu appears. Select Vertical Extrusion.
2. Specify a unique label for the room up to 32 characters long. The default label will be Room_1. Unless changed, subsequent labels will be Room_2, Room_3, etc. If a number is used for the label, subsequent labels will be incremented accordingly.
3. If desired, a description may be entered, up to 80 characters long. Meaningful descriptions including size and color will be useful for schedules.
4. The room will be created in AGi32 using the selected Wire Frame Color. This color is not used in AGi32's Render mode, it is only used to represent the room's shape in the graphics window. By default, this color is green. To change it, click in the color cell. The Color dialog will appear for your use.
5. If surface labeling is desired, click on the Labeling button. A separate dialog will appear for specification of text labels for the room and/or its surfaces.
6. Enter the height of the room walls in the Wall Height text box.
7. All of the surfaces within the room are assigned a color. By default, the colors are made up of varying shades of gray corresponding to reflectance values of 0.8 (ceiling), 0.5 (walls) and 0.2 (floor).You may change the Reflectance by simply typing a new value in the Reflectance cell for the Ceiling, Walls or Floor. You may change the surface colors and their corresponding reflectances by clicking in the Color cell for the Ceiling, Walls or Floor. The Color Selection dialog will appear allowing you to select surface colors based on user defined reflectances.
8. You may assign a texture to the surface by clicking in the Texture cell. The Select Texture dialog will appear so that you may choose a texture from the Textures database. Alternately, you may browse for a texture anywhere on your system or assign a texture already in use on another surface in the job file. Once the desired texture is selected, you'll determine how the texture should be applied to the surface. Textures may be stretched across the entire surface, applied in a grid pattern or assigned a Static size (representing real dimensions) and tiled on the surface accordingly. In addition, you may opt to rotate the texture on the surface.

To delete a texture from the surface, Ctrl-click in the Texture cell and select the Delete key on your keyboard. When a texture is deleted from a surface, its correlated color and reflectance are used as the current color and reflectance.

9. To open the ends of the room as in a tunnel application, click in the Ends of Room and Vertical Extrusion Are Open selection box so that a check mark appears. Rectangular barrel vault rooms with open ends only have two walls, perpendicular to the open ends.
10. Make Room into Roadway Tunnel - selecting this option will assign unique surface types to your "room" surfaces to use in Tunnel Lighting calculations per IESNA RP-22-2004
• Ceiling and Wall reflectances are used; surfaces change from One-sided surfaces to Roadway Contributors.
• Floor reflectance is disregarded, reflectance based on selected R-Table's Q₀ value is used instead. Surface changed from One-sided surface to Roadway Pavement.
• By default, when Make Room into Tunnel is selected, the Ends of Room and Vertical Extrusion Are Open selection box is also selected. The tunnel will be assigned open ends, unless you uncheck this box.
• When the option to Make Room Into Roadway Tunnel is selected, you may click on the Select button to open the Roadway Surface dialog. This will enable you to select an R-Table from a list and/or set a Q₀  value for the road surface. (The default R-Table is R3.) Important: This function enables the user to specify the surface type for multiple surfaces independently of the calculation grid, which allows the user to consider more than one roadway surface type in an inter-reflective environment. However, this function must be used with caution! There is no association between roadway surfaces and roadway calculation grids. It is up to the user to place the proper calculation grid on the roadway surface; i.e., specify the same R-Table and Q₀ value in the Roadway Calculation Grid dialog as here.
11. Additional Tasks (performed after creating Room):
    • Specify Calculation Points (selected by default): After clicking OK, the Automatic Placement dialog will open, with the workplane selected for the calculation grid. You may change any settings and then click OK. You will be returned to the graphics window, where you can draw the room (see Step 12).
    • Automatically Create LPD Area (not selected by default): If selected, an LPD Area will automatically be created, using the settings in the LPD/UWLR dialog. Exception: Creating an LPD Area this way sets the line color of the LPD Area to be the same as that of the Room for which it is being created. Clicking the Settings button opens the LPD/UWLR dialog, where you may set your preferences for this LPD Area.
12. Click OK to return to the graphics window and locate the first point of the room. Click the left mouse button. Before clicking the first point, you will have the opportunity to change the Z coordinate of the floor if desired. Move the cursor into the Z-Coord text box and enter the appropriate value.
    • Note: If the Z-Coord value is not equal to zero,a warning icon will be displayed to alert the user to this condition.
13. Drag the cursor to the second point on a room edge and left click again. These two points define the room's baseline.

Drag the cursor to open up the room perpendicular to the specified baseline and left click when the appropriate depth has been achieved. The room may be created on either side of the baseline.

The current view will change automatically from Plan view to an Elevation view at the baseline looking into the room. The room floor and walls will have already been created. Notice that the cursor is attached to the right room wall. Locate the points in the ceiling with the left mouse button. Arcs may be added at the current vertex by pressing the F4 key on the keyboard then clicking in the other endpoint and fit point of the arc. You may undo the last line segment or arc in the ceiling by clicking on the Undo button or by pressing Ctrl+Z on the keyboard. All of the ceiling panels must be located above the topmost portion of the wall. If your ceiling needs to dip down into the room, make the first ceiling panel a vertical one, so that the walls are actually a little higher.

15. When you have completed creating the ceiling, click on the right mouse button to close the room and create the surfaces. You will be returned to Plan view.

Notes:

• Important: By default, Rooms are composed of single-sided surfaces, facing inward. This attribute allows you to see into the room without having to walk inside in Render mode. You may flip the surface direction or change the surface type to two-sided in the Surface Edit command as well. Important: See Adding Rooms - Concepts (first section) for effect of single-sided surfaces on calculations.
• When specifying the profile in Elevation view, the Snap is changed to .01 and is locked at that value. This small snap setting ensures that the room surfaces will be created correctly.
• To apply additional surface properties (such as Texture, Transmittance, Transparency, Luminance, Specularity, Color Bleed control or surface specific Mesh Levels) to any of the object surfaces, you must first position the room in the environment. Then, either Edit the room and select the Surface Edit button in the Edit dialog or use the Surface Edit command to select the object.
• Removing Surfaces - Removing surfaces allows you to append other surfaces to factory defined shapes and create more complex models. Surfaces may be removed by Editing the room or using the Surface Edit command once it has been placed.