A Simple Balcony using the Balcony Tool

The balcony tool is a very quick and easy way to create an outdoor platform, veranda or traditional balcony that can be simply added to your existing building.

One of the advantages of using the balcony tool over and above creating the balcony manually by moving walls is the way in which the roof tool reacts. Using the balcony tool means you don't have to worry about the effects of moving and resizing walls on the roof structures or other floors of the building.

So using our basic house, we are going to create the following balcony:



Download the completed project here:  A Simple Balcony using the Balcony Tool

So we've seen what we want to acheive and here's how we do it:

1. Firstly open the project with the building you wish to add a balcony to. For this you can either create a new building, use one of your existing buildings or download one of our example projects.
2. Make sure you are in Construction Mode (F12 toggles between Design mode and Construction mode)
3. Now we need to make sure that we are working on the floor on which we want to place the balcony. If you are using the example basic house, we're going to place our balcony on the Upper Floor. To select the upper floor either pick it from the drop down list of floors on the main horizontal toolbar or navigate on the menus to Floor>Current Floor>Upper Floor.
4. At this point it is a good idea to place some guidelines so that we have our marks to work to to ensure we get our balcony in the right position. If you are familiar with the use of guidelines you can skip to tip number 6.
5. Firstly I will place a simple horizontal guideline at the distance from the house to which I want the balcony to overhang.So select the GuidelinesHorizontal Guideline. Place the guideline outside the building at a distance away from your outside wall that is the same as the width you want your balcony to be. As I want my balcony to be in the centre of the wall, I need to find the mid point. Select the Guidelines tool again and choose Guideline Midway. Click on the inside left wall, followed by the inside right wall and you will be given a guideline at the mid point of the two clicks. To then find the edges of our balcony use the Set Distance Parallel guideline. Click on the centre guideline you have just created and move the new parallel guideline left and click. Enter the distance you require from the centrepoint (Remember we are about to repeat this so make the distance half you final balcony width). Repeat this for the other side of the centre line. You should now have 1 horizontal and 3 vertical guidelines. This is sufficient for a rectangular balcony, should you wish to have angled sides like the example, then place another guideline either side of the left and right vertical guides. We now have our lines to work to when adding our balcony.
6. We now need to add our balcony. The balcony tool has one additional feature that is unique to this tool. The balcony realises whether or not it is connected to a wall and shapes itself accordingly. This means that if you create a freestanding balcony, all four sides will be surrounded by a parapet wall. If however, you connect the balcony to a wall of a building, the parapet walls where the balcony touches the building will automatically be removed. To make sure that we are connecting our balcony to the wall ensure that we have snap turned on (hit CTRL + Spacebar to open the snap and select menu).
7. So select the Balcony tool from the left hand vertical menu. We are now given the option to place either a rectangular or polygonal balcony. As we have angled sides on our example we will use the polygonal Define Balcony tool. (You may also find this tool is preferable over the rectangular tool if you have a building with angled or no-straight walls).
8. As with all the polygonal based tools in Arcon, each click represents a point of the shape, with a line being drawn between that point and the next defined point. To get the shape of the balcony in the example, we start by first clicking at the junction of our outer wall and our far left guideline. From here draw a line to the junction of the horizontal guideline and our inside left guideline (This will give us our angled left hand wall of the balcony). Now place the next point at the junction of the horizontal guideline and the inside right guideline and finish off by placing the final point on the crossover of the outer building wall and the far right guideline. When all these points have been placed, right click to complete the balcony.
9. You should now be presented with a dialogue box showing the properties of your balcony and a 3d preview. Here you can set the textures for each side together with the sizing of the elements of the balcony. The following is a brief description of the sizable elements on this dialogue box:
   
   Height: Adjusts the height of the balcony (parapet) wall
   Step: Allows you to move the balcony up or down from floor height
   Parapet: The thickness of the balcony wall (parapet)
   Floor: The thickness of the balcony floor
10. For our example we are staying with the default settings so simply hit OK.
11. Your balcony is now in place and completed. Now you can add finishing touches such as column supports and a doorway to enable access.

Now sit back and enjoy the view from your new balcony! tool and choose the