Round Rooms with Dome Ceilings

Round or elliptical rooms with dome ceilings are easily specified in AGi32. The appropriate dialog is presented to you prompting for the room, label, description, wireframe color, labeling options, wall height, dome height, surface reflectances and room aspect ratio. The aspect ratio defines the ratio of the left-right radius relative to the top-bottom radius of the room. A ratio = 1 produces a circle. A ratio > 1 produces an ellipse in the left-right (X) direction. A ratio < 1 produces an ellipse in the top-bottom (Y) direction.

Once the specifications in the dialog have been completed, the room is created by locating the center point of the room at floor level and then dragging the cursor to specify the room's X-radius.

1. From the Add menu select Room - Round/Elliptical - Dome, or from the Rooms/Objects Toolkit click the arrow adjacent to the Room - Round button . The secondary menu will appear. Select Dome.
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.

Enter the height of the dome, above and beyond the room wall height, in the Dome Height text box.

8. 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.
9. 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.

10. If the room shape is elliptical, enter the appropriate aspect ratio in the X-Y Aspect Ratio text box. The aspect ratio is specified as the ratio of the X radius to the Y radius. If the room is longer in the X direction, the aspect ratio will be > 1. If the room is longer in the Y direction than in the X, the aspect ratio is < 1.

• For example: To create an elliptical room 40 feet long (diameter in the X direction) and 20 feet wide (diameter in the Y direction), an aspect ratio of 2 would be specified. When the room X radius is prompted for a radius of 20 would be given. The resulting room will be 40 feet long (X radius = 20) and 20 feet wide (Y radius = 10).

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 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 center point of the room. Before clicking in the center 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. Click the left mouse button.
    • 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 specify the X radius of the room and left click again. Alternately, you may specify the X radius from the keyboard.

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.
• 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.