Adapted from my brief presentation at the DC Archicad User Group meeting earlier this month. If you want to look at the files, there is a download link at the end of the post. This is a simple scheme for using a single site model for multiple projects. It is applicable for everything from detached garages, to townhouse blocks, to
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Download This started, as so many things do, with making a symbol fill for a tile pattern. A challenge of symbol fills is they need to tile (left and right meet, top and bottom meet, invisibly). You can make new grid, running bond, and herringbone fill patterns by duplicating the extant ones and changing the dims. Anything more complex, you
Element Transfer Settings is a new feature of Archicad 21. It allows the user much greater control over what settings are injected during a syringe operation and/or when favorites are applied. I haven't explored the feature enough yet to be inspired by what it can do, but I think it's going to be helpful. But I have a problem with
Are you interested in unsolicited email management advice? This isn't a lightly covered topic by any means, but I find a lot of organizational guidance to be perfectionist bordering on, no offense, compulsive. I don't care if my inbox is completely empty, or if I have too many folders or too few. I only care that: • No important messages
Here is a most ancient and despised bug in Archicad's wall cleanup behavior. In most cases, if two surface edges meet whose materials are the same, the line between the surfaces is eliminated. Where three walls meet, two of the walls will often form a corner, which results in a 'strong' line that will not be removed despite the matching
Update: This method works through Archicad 12, with the key Recent Files. In 13 through 15, it still works, but the key you need to modify is called "Recent Documents". In 16, the Recent Documents key disappeared. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find where the recent documents are stored in 16 and 17. Also: Under Mavericks (OS X 10.9),
Does everybody know that you can do calculator actions directly in Spotlight in Leopard? I use it for arithmetic, but it will do most scientific functions if you know the syntax. Trig functions are intuitive, but others (pow(x,y) for xy instead of x^y) are less so to me. As usual, intuitiveness is in inverse proportion to the need to know
Autogroup: On Hide locked layers: Yes Pet Palette movement: Jump Tracker: Off Coordinate Box: On XY Button: Up RA Button: Down Move the origin a lot: Yes Do that thing where you rest the cursor on a point and enter distances followed by + or -: No Magnet: On Info Box: Vertical Navigator Preview: Off Quick Layers: Off (Toolbar buttons)
The other day I had a puzzling problem with VR objects saved out of Archicad. Some files would open in QuickTime as conventional movie files rather than VR objects. (Press play and the building spins around once for each parallel. It runs about five seconds. It's not making any sales.) As is often the case with puzzling intermittent problems, I
Pen 50 is the poché pen. It is gray (80% +/- I think) in model and layout pen sets. It should be the background color of any cut fill in new construction. (Existing condition elements are white.) That said, one of the advantages of pen sets is having black+grayscale output while the much more colorful model pens help you stay
Somewhere, a roof is unhappy. Most likely, the angles of nearby roof edges are causing the geometry to turn inside out. The report will say something like: Invalid polygon, self intersection or hole intersects boundary. (Roof 004) This is actually helpful! Use find and select to find a roof with that ID, and you can fix it. The trouble is
Every viewpoint has a name and an ID. The name is important and is often used for output. The ID is never used for output, but wherever possible we use the ID to help organize the project map and view map. For viewpoints with with a marker, the name and ID appear in the Info Box and settings dialog. This
This is a complicated condition. It's surrounded by ordinary modeling elements, but it's difficult to weave those elements together such that it all cleans up and looks correct in section. Here's the ordinary elements by themselves. I put in some detail objects for clarity: The joist deck slab is basically right. The concrete slab needs to reach in to
What? I know how to open a file! Jeez! OK. Just in case: Always open AC files via right click -> Open With or by dragging the file to requisite AC icon on the dock. I do the dock thing; I'm just not a context menu person usually. Most important, don't double-click PLNs. Double-clicking will only give consistent, predictable results
A slabified window is easy, considering it's a window and windows are hard. Build up a few slabs of varying thicknesses and IDs and you're done. But it's tedious to set all the thicknesses and IDs, right? How about a module of slabs preset to the proper settings? Then it's just a matter of option-clicking and magic-wanding each part.
Pretty tricky This is so trivial/obvious that I hesitate to point it out. You can't rotate a conventional beam element about the long axis. (Why? Dunno.) But you can rotate profile beams. So you just need a rectangular profile. But if it's so obvious, why isn't there such a profile in the default templates, among the faux-proof-of-concept distorted steel
Archicad 10 offers a new all-in-one library file format, the Library Container File or LCF. In Archicad 9, you could use a PLA archive file as a library. LCFs are pure library stuff, with no model space or attributes. It is allegedly faster to load the libraries as a single large file than from folders full of folders full
The templates have a fax transmittal as part of the layout book.
Did you know? Cmd+` (the key above tab) switches windows within the current application. Pairs nicely with Cmd+tab for switching apps.
When they mashed up PlotMaker with Archicad, they had to make views-in-layouts into proper elements, rather than flaky PM things. So we have the Drawing element, which can be edited as a polygon, assigned favorites, and given a marker, all of which makes the mashed up AC views-in-layouts much more pleasant than their ancestors. But drawings aren't just for views;