Pathways
A pathway is a route through the space: the way a trolley goes from the store to the bench, the way a person walks from the door to their station. Drawing them is how you find out that two routes cross where they should not, or that a corridor is doing three jobs at once.
Drawing one
Open the Pathways tab from the rail.
- The kind of traffic the next route will carry. It is chosen before the route is drawn, and it decides the colour and the default width. When the kind has one, the sample under it is the texture the plan lays along the route; its description follows.
- Draw pathway starts the drawing. Click along the plan from one end to the other, corner
by corner, and press
Escto finish. - Every route the project already has, with its length, and its level on a building with several. Click a row to select the route and take the view to it.
A route is drawn as a line and carries a width, so what you get is a band on the plan rather than a thread. That band is the point: it is what shows whether the route actually fits.
Adjusting one
- What kind of traffic this route carries. Choosing another kind gives the route that kind's width, colour, opacity and elevation.
- Measured from what you drew rather than typed. The quickest check that a route is as long, and as convoluted, as you assumed.
- How wide the traffic is. This is the setting that matters: it decides whether the route actually fits between two machines. Once the width differs from its kind's, a button beside it puts the standard width back.
- How it is drawn: the line colour and the opacity. A pathway is laid over the plan rather than built into it, so it is usually worth keeping it see-through.
- Used by the 3D view only: how tall the band is, and how high off the floor it sits.
Corners can be added and moved after the fact, so a route drawn roughly can be tightened once the layout around it settles.