On Land

Location: 01 General / 1 Graphic Symbols

Same features as the AC9 version, with a simplified interaction for getting the loop off center.

More»

Options

A text object for writing the date.

If Auto Update is on, the date will be read from the system. (Tip: turn it on and then off to get today's date while keeping it from updating by itself tomorrow.) The Year, Month, and Day can be set manually using the pulldowns.

There are a lot of Date Format options. I've tried to cover all the conventions that I know of.

Any of the formats with a separator character will use the character given in Date Separator. You can choose from the list or make something up.

Two-Digit Day will zero-pad single digit days.

Day of Week can be on or off. If it's on, it will be read automatically along with the rest of the Auto Update. It will not fix itself for a manually set date. (It doesn't know the 30th is a Tuesday.) The Format of the day of the week can be long or short. Note that the list will always give the short form. The day of the week can be followed by an arbitrary separator, where the default is a comma.

You can add Leading or Trailing Text.

Text Formatting: All the usual suspects. Font, size. (You can choose mm or points to define the units.) Bold, italic, underline. The object can be anchored by any of the nine typical text block spots, using the Horizontal and Vertical Anchor parameters. You can have a Background Pen and the Outline Pen. Setting either one to zero turns it off. Finally, you can set the Padding between the text and the background/outline polygon. (This uses the same units option as the text size.)

Non-locals who would like to try it out can download it here.

If you're local (in the same room), this won't make much difference to you. I have generalized the old CL symbol so I can offer it for download on the new Archicad Talk Object Depository. This means I'm enabling flexibility which I, and the locals, don't need.

For everyone else. This is your basic CL symbol, since most fonts don't have it. You can change the font and size, and apply bold formating. Now I'll copy and paste the helpful commenting from the 2D script:

!! The default font is Arial, since that
!! seems to be the default font of the
!! universe. If you have Gill Sans, use
!! that. It looks best IMO. It's the font
!! in the preview image. Full disclosure:
!! I'm not into the faux-hand lettering
!! thing.

!! If you put in a custom font, and you're
!! graphically particular, you might need to
!! adjust the Text Offsets to get the right look.

!! The top & bottom hotspot offset is
!! proportional to the point size. I don't
!! know what happens with very large sizes;
!! you might need to adjust 'spotY' as well.
!! Personally, I never mess with the size; I just
!! put it in for completeness.

!! Why aren't the offsets parameterized?
!! Because you shouldn't change them for
!! specific instances. They should be standards
!! that are invisible in regular use.

Placement tip: Set the object to insert by the top or bottom hotspot, and use the Rotated geometry method of the object tool.

Download (AC9)

Location: 01 General/1 Graphic Symbols

A shape with a text block in it. The old version was called 'Character+Shape'; it only had a few shapes.

This one has square, rectangle, triangle, circle, ellipse, oval, diamond, and hexagon.

The rectangle, oval, and hexagon will elongate to accommodate the text, if the 'Stretch for Text' parameter is on. The square will turn into a rectangle.

The 'Height' parameter refers to the vertical dimension. The 'Length Factor' parameter is multiplied by the height to get the length of the rectangle, ellipse, and oval shapes. If 'Stretch for Text' is on, the length is overridden by the text length.

The text, by default, is the global ID of the object. You can also choose to enter a custom text.

The size of the text can be set by points, millimeters, or as a fraction of the shape height. All these parameters are hooked together, so when you switch among them the actual height stays the same.

There is a value list for the font, and you can enter any font name. The text can be shown bold, italic, underlined, or any combination.

I'm making this object available for download on ArchiCAD-Talk. (Hence the mm size option.)

Or download here.

Basically a hotspot. Why not just use a hotspot? Since it's an object, you can show it on all stories, ensuring that the centers stack, and move together.

Also the astronomical symbol for Earth, if you ever need that.

Download (AC9)