Add
precinct wall button under 3D Edit viewYou can add a precinct wall to surround the church by clicking on Add precinct wall:
Add
precinct wall button under 3D Edit view
This opens the bird's eye view where you can specify the corners of the precinct wall:
Precint wall creation screen.
You can zoom in and out using the right mouse button drag.
Here are the associated buttons:
Click on the bird's eye view to identify the corners of your wall.
If you make a mistake then use the Undo point button
Use the Redo point button to restore a deleted point.
After several clicks you might have something like this:
Precinct wall outline creation
You now have the option to leave the wall open or to close it
If you leave it open by clicking on the Finish open wall button then the gap between the beginning of the wall and the end of the wall will be kept.
If you close it by clicking on the Finish closed wall button then a final stretch of wall is added automatically to close the gap.
In each case, the view returns to the 3D edit view as shown below:.
Precinct wall open |
Precinct wall closed |
You can now edit the precinct wall as a whole:
The parameters are:
| Height | The height of the precinct wall |
| Wall thickness | The thickness of the precinct wall. Individual stretches of wall can be selected and given their own lengths. |
After such editing the wall might look like this.
Precinct wall with increased height and thickness
You can now add components to the precinct wall like any other wall so, for example, it might look like this:
.We have added a spite to the crossing tower, and an arch, buttresses and battlements and a round tower to the precinct wall.
Colour is used for two purposes in Church Builder
Change these colours by selecting the menu item Settings | Colour.
This opens the following dialog box:
The colour dialog box
The long term strategy for Church Builder is to model the materials from which the churches were made - different types of stone, wood, brick, slates, tiles, lead.
In the short term we provide a limited selection of colours to provide a stop-gap.
Here are the button effects for modelling church appearance:
| Walls | Cycle through a limited range of browns and greys to represent different types of stone |
| Roofs | Cycle through a limited range of greys and reds to represent different types of roofing material |
| Domes and cones | Cycle through a limited range of greys to represent different types of dome and spire material |
This is achieved by enabling the user to select their own background colour and selected item colour from the full range of colours available on the PC. This will particularly aid those who find the default background and selection colours difficult to work with.
Here are the button effects for aiding the building process:
| Background | Choose the background colour in the 3D view |
| Selection colour | Choose the colour used to highlight an item selected in the 3D view |
When you save a model you are asked for a model name. You are then asked for a folder in which you want the model to be saved. When you click OK, Church Builder will create in your chosen folder a new folder whose name is the model name you have just specified. Church Builder copies into that folder all the picture files you have used along with the Church Builder XML file that is Church Builder's way of saving the model.