Layers, reveals and front layers

1What layers are for

Each panel you draw is a layer. A layer can be:

• A wall of the building. A four-walled building has four layers, one for each wall, and the 🏠 Building window turns them into a kit (chapter 5).
• A board behind a wall, such as an inner reveal with larger openings, so the windows sit back in the wall (section 6).
• A board in front of a wall, glued on its brick face, for pier columns, pilasters, sunk panels and stepped gables (section 8).

Hodsons Mill, one of the examples that comes with BrickIT!, shows all of this in its Layers column: four walls 2, and a front layer of pier columns for each of them 1.

Only one layer is open in the editor at a time: the active layer. Every card in the left-hand column (size, bond, gable, windows, marks) and in the right-hand column (string courses, quoins, chimneys) works on the active layer. Each layer has its own size, bond, openings and dressings; the brick size and the scale are shared by the whole project.

2The Layers column

The Layers column sits between the preview and the export buttons. Click Layers ▶ at its top to fold it away to a thin strip, and ◀ to bring it back.

1

+ Add Layer starts a new layer.

2

Inner Reveal makes a reveal layer from the active layer (section 6).

3

The layers, front to back. Click a layer to make it active: the preview and all the cards switch to it.

4

Show inactive layers draws the other layers in the preview with the active one (section 5).

Each layer's row has its own controls:

3Add and name a layer

Here we start from a new project: a front wall 90 × 45 mm in Flemish bond, with two windows and a door, drawn as in chapter 1. Now we add the house's gable end as a second layer.

1. Click the first layer's name, Front Panel, and type Front wall.
2. Click + Add Layer. A new layer called Panel 2 appears, already active: a fresh 99 × 80 mm panel in stretcher bond, 3 mm behind the furthest layer, with the next line and fill colours.
3. Click its name and type Gable end.
4. Draw it as you would any wall: in Panel Dimensions we made it 60 × 45 mm, and ticked Enable on the Gable Wall card.

4Hide, reorder, copy and delete layers

• Hide a layer with its 👁. A hidden layer is not drawn behind or in front of the active layer, and it is left out when you export or print all the panels: the Export DXF menu's All Panels (Combined) and All Panels (Separate Files), and Print 1:1's All Visible Panels. Each menu says how many panels are visible.
• Change a layer's depth with ↑ and ↓. The list keeps the layers in depth order, the nearest the front at the top. The depth decides which layers the preview draws in front of the active one and which behind.
• Copy a layer with 📋. The copy is called … (copy), sits 3 mm behind the original and becomes the active layer. Copying is the quickest way to start the back wall of a building from its front, or a front layer from its wall.
• Delete a layer with ×. There is no undo, so save your project first if you are not sure.

5See the layers together

With Show inactive layers ticked (as it is when BrickIT! opens), the preview draws every visible layer with the active one: the layers behind it show through, tinted with their fill colours, and the layers in front of it are drawn over it. The Opacity slider under it sets how strongly those other layers show, from 10% to 90% (30% to start with): turn it up to see where they sit, down to keep your eye on the active layer. Untick Show inactive layers to see the active layer on its own.

Layers can be different sizes, so Layer Alignment, under the list once a project has two layers, says how they line up with the active layer in the preview:

• V: Bottom (ground) stands every layer on the same ground line; Top lines up their tops.
• H: Left edge, Centre line or Right edge.

Alignment only changes how the preview stacks the layers, to help you line up openings and bands between them. It is saved with the project, and it does not move anything on the panels themselves.

6Window reveals: an inner reveal layer

In a real wall the windows are set back from the face. To model that, glue a backing board behind the brick panel with every opening a little bigger than the panel's: the glazing, cut that much bigger than the opening, sits in the pocket behind the bricks. BrickIT! makes that backing board for you.

1. Make the wall the active layer (here, Front wall).
2. In the Inner Reveal box 1, set how much bigger the openings should be on each side, in millimetres. It starts at 1 mm.
3. Click + Reveal from Active 2.

A new layer, Front wall (Reveal), appears 3 mm behind the wall and becomes active. It has the wall's outline, and every opening grown by the reveal size on each side (but never past the panel's edges).

A reveal layer is a plain board: it has no brick joints, string courses or corner quoins, and its openings have no arches, cills or mullions - they are square-headed, to the opening's height. Export and cut it like any other layer.

7Reveal cuts

Where a window is set back, the edge of the brick panel shows round the opening. Reveal cuts are short cuts at each mortar joint up both sides of every opening, running from the opening's edge into the wall, so the courses show on that edge. Round openings with a brick ring get one at each joint of the ring.

Open the Reveal Cuts card and set the Length: 0.5 mm to start with, up to 5 mm. The preview shows them on every opening of the active layer.

8Front layers: pier columns, pilasters and sunk panels

Many buildings have brickwork that stands out from the wall: pier columns between the windows of a mill, pilasters and an entablature on a chapel front, a stepped gable. Draw these as a front layer: a second panel, the same width as its wall, nearer the front (a smaller depth), with the recessed parts cut out as openings. Cut it from the same brick board and glue it on the wall's brick face.

The Robertsbridge chapel example uses a front layer for the pilasters and entablature of its west front:

How BrickIT! knows a front layer

A layer counts as a front layer when it is the same width as a wall, in front of it, and has openings - and, in a building, when it is not one of the walls the Building window builds. When several walls are the same width (opposite walls often are), it goes on the wall whose name its own name starts with: South gable - columns (front layer) goes on South gable. So name your front layers after their walls.

Once BrickIT! has matched them:

• the 3D window stacks each front layer on its wall;
• the Building window's parts list includes them, and its assembly guide has a step to Glue on the front layers: engraved face outwards, the bottom edge level with the wall's and the ends flush with the wall's ends;
• the windows sent to GlazeIT! are taken from the walls only, as a front layer's openings are recesses, not windows.

9Trace a reference picture

To copy a real building, put a photograph or an architect's drawing behind the preview and draw over it. The picture is only shown in the preview: it is never exported or printed.

Load the picture

1. Click 🖼️ Ref on the preview's toolbar. The Reference Image box opens.
2. Click Choose File and pick your picture. It appears behind the panel at 50% opacity, sized to fit the panel, and the Ref button turns green.

Scale it by a measurement

The picture needs to be at your model's scale. If you know one real distance on it - a scale bar, a door's width, a wall's length - BrickIT! can work the scale out:

1. In the Reference Image box, click 📏 Calibrate Scale. The box says 👆 Click first point on image.
2. Click one end of the distance you know. Here, the 0 of the drawing's scale bar.
3. Move to the other end - the line locks to horizontal or vertical, whichever way you move first - and click. Here, the 5 m mark.
4. In 📏 Enter Real Dimension, type the full-size distance and choose its unit: mm, cm, m, inches, feet, or ft & in. The box shows the new scale. Click Apply Scale.

Line it up

Now slide the picture so the panel sits on the part you are drawing: drag in the preview, or type X (mm) and Y (mm). Then size the panel to match (the house here is 9 m wide and 5 m to the eaves, so 118.5 × 66 mm at OO), and draw its windows and doors over the picture.

The other controls in the box:

1

Visible shows or hides the picture. 🔒 Lock stops it moving or changing size by accident. ⚓ Anchor fixes the panel's place on the picture.

2

The picture's position against the panel, in millimetres.

3

Scale (%), to type a scale yourself; Fit fits the picture to the panel again.

4

📏 Calibrate Scale, as above.

5

Opacity, from 10% to 100%.

6

Rotation, to straighten a photograph: ↺ and ↻ turn it 0.1° at a time, the buttons below 0.5° or 1°, and 0° puts it back.

7

💾 Save keeps the picture, with its position, scale and rotation, in a file of its own; 📂 Load brings it back. The picture is not saved in your project. Replace swaps in another picture and Remove takes it away.

10Sloping ground and tops

Not every wall stands on level ground or has a level top. The Sloping ground & top card, in the left-hand column under Gable Wall, gives the active layer a ground line (its bottom edge: a street or footway that rises along the wall) and a top line (its top edge: a sloping coping, a stepped wall top).

1. Open the card and click + Add beside Ground line or Top line.
2. For a straight slope, type the heights at the left and right ends into straight from … to … and click Set.
3. For anything else, edit the points: each is a distance along (mm) from the left end and a height (mm) from the foot of the panel. + point adds a point half-way along the longest stretch; ✕ takes one away.

The card's title shows which lines a layer has, such as (ground + top). The cut follows the lines and the brickwork stops at them, in the preview, the exports and the Building window. A top line replaces the gable, and the panel grows to the top line's highest point. Remove takes a line away.

11Custom outline (beta)

For a shape the gable and slope cards cannot make, draw the outline in a drawing program and import it. Save it as an SVG file holding one closed shape (a path, polygon or rectangle), drawn in millimetres at model size: one SVG unit is one millimetre.

1. On the Custom Outline card, click 📐 Import SVG outline… and choose the file.
2. The panel takes the shape's width and height, and the brickwork is clipped to the shape. Curves are followed closely, with many short straight cuts.
3. Untick Fill outline with brickwork to go back to the panel's own outline for a while, or click Remove to take the outline away.

Where next

• For sash windows, doors, mullions and tracery in your openings: Windows and doors.
• To cut the layers out: Cutting it out.
• To turn the walls into a building with cores and floors: The Building and Plan windows.