Overview
This tutorial will showcase to you what architectural elements a regular scenario in Fenix+ consists of, will teach you about object structure, a master plan tool, and show you some useful object interactions and tools affecting how the scene looks.
We will mostly explore these parts of the interface in this tutorial:
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- Control panel (object manipulation);
- Scenario browser (search, hierarchical and component view);
- Additional toolbar (scene view instruments);
- Object parameter window.
Common objects
Fenix+ provides a set of tools to create and edit 3D elements from scratch, without the need to rely on imported files. Some of the most common elements could be grouped by two general characteristics. The first such group includes objects having a physical presence in the scene, i.e. they will obstruct the evacuation paths or a spread of fire. And second are the elements that would help group other objects or label a specific zone in the scene (such as Rooms or a Floor).
Some of the common elements are:
- Doors, windows, fire source, ventilation, etc. These are the elements that could be logically joined to other geometry (like a Door in the Wall).
- Walls, stairways, solid objects. We had some practice with these elements in our previous few tutorials, starting with The Smallest Project.
- Rooms, Floors, Buildings.
- Master Plan (multiple buildings).
Object structure
All the created objects could be found either in the current view of the topology editor or, in a scenario browser, via these options:
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Hierarchical view. Objects in this view and in most interactions with the topology editor follow a hierarchical structure. Fenix+ provides a folder-like (or waterfall), expandable view to represent this. Objects could be nested within the others. For example, a fire source on top of the furniture, a window inside a wall, a text label next to a building, all could be found by it’s parent element.
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Component view. Here, objects are split by “type”. We categorize them, mostly, by what type of instrument you’ve used to create them. For example, all doors will be in the Doors category, all solid objects, no matter the shape - will be under the Solid objects (folded) category. At the same time, a few different types of ventilation are different enough to be put into different categories
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Free search of the specific elements could prove useful in a huge scenario with many elements. A filter could be put to search within certain types of objects. This search has a few search syntaxis features. For example, if you use double parenthesis "" around the word, it will search strictly by the name you typed in. Once your search will find an object, it will center it on the screen.
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Visual search is just a way to look up the elements in the topology editor.
A few instruments from the Additional toolbar can change the view of the scene to help with that. For example, you can turn off color fill for objects for them to appear transparent. You can hide certain elements from view (without deleting them, they could be found in the scenario browser later). Here, you could turn on the option to not show floor slabs (basically, a flat roof for each individual floor) and see your elements transparently from above. Turn the floor contours on and off if you have imported one before.
Important to note here that a hierarchical object logic works in the topology editor selection. If you select an object with multiple elements attached to it, all the connected elements will be selected together. For example, if you select a wall with a door and a window placed inside — all three elements, a door, a window and a wall will be selected.
And, a 3D view is available in Fenix+, controlled via multiple hotkeys, more in Building overview.
You could switch your view to center a desired object on the screen by Double-clicking its name in the scenario browser or selecting it by right-click and Show in editor.
Building overview (Additional toolbar)
A building in Fenix+ can be viewed in detail by creating different angles or adjusting the visibility of its elements. Use cases for this include creating visualisations for a report or a presentation (like screenshots or a video), as well as clearer navigation through the model to help you find the right object. A number of additional tools in Fenix+ are available to make visual navigation through the topology editor more efficient, such as:
- Move (the camera);
- Rotate (switch to 3D-view);
- Zoom;
- View All (objects);
- Top View (switch back to 2D, top-view);
- Rendering modes (fill the objects on the scene with colors or leave outlines only);
- Show/hide coordination grids;
- Show/hide coordinate axis;
- Show/hide (imported) background images;
- Show/hide floor slabs.
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3D view. One of the most prominent features of Fenix+ is the ability to switch from a top-down view, to an angled 3D view of the model instantly. You can switch to a 3D view if you start to Rotate 
the building via the same-named instrument in the Additional toolbar list on the left side of the screen. You can also use a keyboard shortcut by simultaneously holding Shift + Right Mouse Button + Move Mouse. To find a more precise angle of the camera, you can adjust the scene for a better angle using the other buttons on the additional toolbar, or click Top View to turn the view back to top-view.
Room explication is a table that helps aggregate data for a building with multiple floors.
Options window of elements such as Rooms, Floors or a Building, available in the right-click pop-up menu, will show you how many occupants is currently located in it.
Master Plan
A Master Plan is a special element in a scenario that is designed to model relative positions of multiple buildings and their development area. Use cases include modeling a fire effect on the nearby objects to a building. For example, walls, cars in nearby parking lots, nearby green spaces (forests), and others. This could help determine fire safety distances and take necessary action. We recomment importing a site development plan to work along with it.
Object interactions & Object properties
All objects in Fenix+ can be manipulated and have a set of properties that affect their shape, their role in the object modeling process, or how they will look for the visual aspect in visualisations.
Some common actions that could be made in the topology editor:
- Copy, Cut, Paste and Delete the objects
- Change the size and correct the shapes in the topology editor.
- Adjusted Copying, which allows to Copy objects with an offset, place a copied element to the center of the screen, or adjust the copied walls to the height of the floor.
- Rotate or Flip the objects.
Some common editable object properties include:
- Geometrical properties, like height, thickness.
- Properties that control the vertical dislocation of an object -
- A parameter to exclude the object from the simulation modeling process
- Transparency and visibility, object label.
- A parameter to include the object in the range of objects affected by fire and other dangerous factors.
- Specific parameters for each type of an element.
Parameters for multiple objects of the same type could be edited simultaneously.
Exercise #1
Make a multi-floor building using multiple object manipulation tools, set a few parameters, and add two buildings to the master plan.
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Turn on the gridlines
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Select the Floor in the scenario browser.
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Enable snaps to gridlines by Ctrl + Shift + A.
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Select the Wall instrument as the line shape and draw a 5-meter vertical wall.
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Select the Window instrument and add a window on the door by clicking on it twice while the Window is selected, right-click to stop editing.
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Set an offset to a copy feature by going to Tools | Settings | Paste properties and Go to Tools.
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Select the Wall
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Click paste Ctrl + V to create a copy of the wall 5 meters to the right.
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Click paste Ctrl + V again to create the next copy, 10 meters from the first wall.
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Add south and north walls and a Door to close up the building. Try and use other drawing tools, like Rotate, snap to Nearest and edit the wall length by selecting it and dragging it with a middle point on the edge.
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Go to a component view, open the drop-down for the Windows group and select all three windows by pressing on the first and the third with the Shift button pressed.
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Go to parameters and put a mark over Ignore during fire checkbox. This will turn the parameter on for all 3 of the windows.
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Select the whole building in the topology editor with the Selector instrument by drawing a square with a mouse press.
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Select all walls in the list of objects on the right part of the interface, in the object parameter window.
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Turn on Measure dangerous factors of fire. This will turn the parameter on for all the walls.
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Add two rooms by selecting the Room instrument, then clicking on the open space between the walls. By default, this will automatically mark the space enclosed by walls as one Room.
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Go to Tools | Settings | Paste properties again, switch to At the center of the scene editor and turn on Adjust wall height according to floor height, and click Apply
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Select the whole model on the screen and copy it by Ctrl + C.
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Select a Building in the scenario browser.
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Click the Add floor button on the control button.
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Select the second floor that’s created. Don’t move the camera just yet.
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Press Ctrl + V. This will put your copied model at the center of the screen, exactly on top of the first floor.
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To look up if it’s correct, select the Building in the scenario editor, hold Shift + Right Mouse Button and move your mouse. You should get a view like this:
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Go back to top-down view by pressing
top-down button on the Addditional Toolbar. -
And for the largest hierarchical scale editing, let’s create an adjacent building. For this, click Add Building button. This will create a new hierarchy in the scenario editor.
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Select the Floor on the new building.
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Select Solid object and place a smaller shape in the topology editor, around 3 meters in size. This could represent a car or a shed in our scenario. In the parameters section on the right side of the screen, you can change the material of the object to something flammable before you start drawing.
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Now, click the Master Plan button. This will create a new hierarchy in the scenario editor and automatically add all buildings as simplified models in the master plan.
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Adjust the buildings so they would not overlap.
Now, a scenario is ready to model fire from two adjacent buildings once you add a Fire Source and a Calculation Area, and the results will not include windows (or window breaking/leaking) during simulation, while the walls will be included in the list of objects affected by fire on the Results tab.
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