On Land

Electrigon is a free set of symbols for electrical fixtures with the ability to calculate electrical requirements for a project. The new version brings some more geometry options and improved calculations.

Yes, such functionality should ship with Archicad. We do what we can.

The Drawing Manager appeared in Archicad 10, taking the place of Drawing Usage in PlotMaker 9. You can open it by clicking the button at the upper left of the Navigator.

It lists every drawing placed in the project, displays various settings of the drawings, and offers tools for performing drawing-related tasks such as updating, changing the linked view, breaking links, and changing drawing element settings.

You can perform most of these tasks elsewhere on a drawing-by-drawing basis by right-clicking on a drawing element, or on a drawing item in the layout book tree. But Drawing Manager offers you a power-editing mode where you can modify many drawings at once. Examples:

• Update all the manual-update drawings.

• Change all the instances of a drawing title to a different object.

• Make all of one kind of plan use a new, specialized pen set.

The key to these mass-modifications is to organize the list by the various properties, by clicking on the column headings. There is similar functionality in the Finder and many other programs.

For example, to update all the Manual Update items, click on the Update Type column, highlight the Manual ones, then click the update button.

For another example, sort by Drawing Title to change all the Drawing Title JM10 to Drawing Title JAM10a.

Etc.

In Archicad 11 they didn't change the Drawing Manager much, but they did change the way you choose what columns to display. In honor of the occasion I thought I should point out which columns are most valuable and which you should leave off.

Columns can be resized by clicking and dragging on the joint between two headings.

If you look closely at the headings you'll see that one has a triangle and another has two triangles. The one is the last column you clicked, and the two is the previous click. This gives a two-level organization where the list is sorted by the last criteria, and within that, by the previous one.

These columns should be on:

• Type. Plan, section, external file, etc.
• ID. Of the drawing in its layout. Not critical, but it's little.
• Name. Of the drawing, which will usually be the name of the view that created it.
• Placed To. Name of the layout where the drawing is. (Usually a layout. Drawings can be placed in model windows, as you might a DWG. In this case that window would be listed here.)
• Source View. Name of the view from the view map, actually the whole path, including the stupid '/Residence' or '/Addition' notation. This is the kind of half-baked design decision you make when you develop primarily on Windows.
• Path. If it's an external drawing. Otherwise it says 'Internal'.
• Pen Set Name. Pen set assigned to drawing element. All drawings need a pen set.
• Update Type. Automatic or manual.
• Drawing Title. Object name of the automatic marker, if it's in use. Plans, among others, don't use automatic titles, so this field would be blank.

The new templates for Archicad 11 have an improved fill pattern for concrete in section, Concrete Random. I got it from Andy Thomson.

As you can see it has more size variety in the specks and is more random overall.

I've chosen to leave the old fill in place with its attribute ID unchanged. Why. To avoid potential conflicts when merging project stuff that has the old fill.

For new projects, this won't make any difference. All the composites, favorites, and standard details are set up. For running projects, it means some work to deploy the new fill.

So here's a pretty good list of everywhere you have to look to fully modify such a common attribute:

• Slab elements, including 'slab' slabs and footing slabs. In the 3D window, do a Find & Select for slabs of fill 'Concrete Lightweight'.
• Wall elements. In the 3D window, do a Find & Select for walls of fill 'Concrete Lightweight'.
• Other elements: A roof in the role of a ramp? A mesh for a slab sloping to drain?
• Favorites for any of the above need to be redefined.
• Composites for walls and slabs. Favorites with composites don't need to be redefined.
• Fills in drawing windows, primarily details, but including 'Drawing' sections, elevations, and interior elevations. There shouldn't be many of those.

The fills in the Material Symbols and assembly modules are a management responsibility.

It sounds like a lot but it really isn't, and the new fill looks a lot better.

You can use Attribute Manager to get the fill from either of the zTemplate 11 folder's .tpl files. Overwrite, not Append. (It will overwrite 'Concrete Structural', which is even lamer-looking and we never use it.)

As you know, you don't cut the grade mesh using the building elements. You place slabs in the shape of the holes you need to fit the building.

You might find cases where it's more appropriate to use a roof:

Create the roof with the pivot line at one edge. Go to a section and fix the slope graphically, using the slope button.

Standard pens updated for AC11.

Changing the pens is a pain, and it's potentially disruptive. I try to avoid it. With this update, I'm trying to minimize disruption while building a system that can adapt in the future. It should hold us for a while.

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